This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.
Hermann Minkowski, former math professor of Albert Einstein, had once explained that “space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows.” (Isaacson 121) We must, in other words, be present in the transitory movement of our lives, present in our physical reality. Lost in the shadows, one does not see reality, but only a representation of it. The Lady of Shallot, however, does not suffer from limited awareness, though the confines of her chambers keep her separate from the outside world, from space and time, where she seems not to exist. When the Lady sighs, “I am half sick of shadows,” she refers to the trappings of her isolation, her detachment, and a desire to escape from it. Torturous though the journey may be, she does escape, and death is merely a consequence.
Her forlorn image reminded me of women whom I met while I lived in San Francisco, tragic women caught in the web of their own doomed shadows of existence, whose lives ended in an odd and unfortunate twist, some ending in suicide and some ending in drug overdoses, but having in common this self-destructive nature fueled by their insecurities and a desperate longing for love and affection. However, they chose to flee from the invisible truths lying under the apparent surface of their lives, unlike the Lady of Shallot who yearns to experience such truths, especially when she views Sir Lancelot from her tower.
Too often in Victorian art and literature, women are portrayed as silent victims, denied the right to experience, to discover, or to construct their own realities different from the dominant forces that attempt to box them into prescribed sexual standards. Stronger images of women seemingly emerge in the 1840s, such as Thackeray’s Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair. However, she is viewed as threatening, dangerous, and unpredictable, as if women during this period were required to be more cunning in order to gain greater freedom, to become something other than a victim.
Surprisingly, when I first began this project, I discovered that, besides The Fabrication of the Late Victorian Femme Fatale by Rebecca Stott, few studies have ever been carried out concerning the femme fatale’s image, even though she appears frequently in popular mid-Victorian literature. A number of texts deal with a historical study of feminine sexuality in the nineteenth century due to the arduous research conducted by Judith Walkowitz, Deborah Epstein Nord, Barbara Taylor, Michele Barrett, and Amanda Anderson. However, the absence of such a significant subject for study puzzled me.