For today’s class we looked at Alfred Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” and two illustrations for the poem. We were tasked with annotating the poem in the same way we annotated A Christmas Carol last week. The challenge that came after was looking at the two illustrations and try to make meaning of it using the image/text/context method. Since the poem was published about 25 years before the illustrations were made, the artists already had some previous exposure to the text before making their drawings. There was a lot happening in 1857 when the illustrations were published. The emerging women’s right movement (one of the notable events) must have had an impact on the presentation of the Lady of Shalott. Each of these scenes depicted from the poem surprised me because the artists manage to go beyond the words in the poem and create an image that they think suits the poem. “The Lady of Shalott” does include imagery but it is very limited therefore the artist must use their own interpretation. For the drawing by William Holman Hunt, it is fascinating to see the lines from the web wrapping around her body displaying the madness that she feels. It is evident that she is facing a situation where she must decide whether to pursue the temptation of sexuality or contain her innocence and stay alone in the tower.