Gestures toward the subversion of the gender positions which patriarchal ideology seeks to promote, in Pollock's phrase, as "natural and unalterable" are additionally inscribed throughout the text in a number of ways, the first of which occurs at the end of the opening section of the poem:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to towered Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers 'Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott.'
As Herbert F. Tucker points out (following Lionel Stevenson), Tennyson's image of the Lady as an.....
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