La Belle Dame Sans Merci Flashcards
knight
- role: protagonist and seduced by Faery Lady. Also serves as main narrator.
- representation: possibly represents Keats or all men who are stricken by unrequited love.
- tragedy: Harmatia: superficiality/pride, Anagnorisis: realises the curse too late, powerlessness
- traits: noble, shallow, susceptible, reflective
“I see a lily on thy brow” (stanza 3)
AO2: ‘lily’ is symbol of death, forms a s.field with other pallid words like ‘palely’, ‘fading’ and ‘withereth’. The overall effect is to convey sense of being close to death, with life force drained from man
AO3: ‘lily’ is also symbol of motherhood. This brings Keats recurring idea that love and suffering are one. Keats nursed his mother while she was sick until she died. Perhaps a life of heroics (career in medicine), still brings you to the same place (death and misery).
AO4: This could foreshadow the knights tragic end, where he is abandoned on the ‘cold hill-side’ which is arguably his exile from reality (death). Sense of foreboding and tragic theme of death and illness.
AO5: Keats believes that ‘love is harsh and fleeting’ - Laura Jordan
“fast withereth too.” (STANZA 3)
AO2: adjective “fast” creates suspense as we are told time is short for the knight. As the final line in the quatrain, the iambic tetrameter of ballad is disrupted, perhaps conveying a sense of shock and urgency
AO3: reflects Keats’ own feelings at time of writing. His dilemma over his relationship with Fanny Brawne was causing him depression and physical illness.
AO4: this sets a tragic tone to the poem as it feels as though the knight isn’t in control as nature is “fast”
AO5: ‘The poem has an ‘elusive and unsettling tone’ due to the silence’ - Adam Oliver
“I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long.”
AO2/5: use of personal pronoun “I” could be used to support interpretation that Knight causes his own downfall. He takes an active role in these middle stanzas, allowing himself to become besotted and bewitched by the mesmerising woman.
AO3: at this time Keats was at the height of his unconsummated love with Fanny Brawne and could be perhaps referencing the idea that love can be all-consuming with the idea that “nothing else” was seen “all day long”
AO4: there is a tragic aspect of blindness in this line as the Knight is fully immersed by the “faery’s child”
AO5: Keats ‘struggled to reconcile his boyish conception of women as goddesses with the mature notion of their “realities” - Laura Jordan
Faery Lady
- antagonist of tale
- seduces knight and leaves him to die, just like her many other victims.
- Links to tragedies:
- deceit
- manipulation
- Excess
- Obsession
- Death
- suffering
traits:
- enigmatic
- alien
- seductive
- manipulative
- deadly
- representation:
- may represent dangers of indulging in fantasy. However, she may represent Fanny Brawne
“Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild” (Stanza IV)
theme: attraction, obsession
AO2: alliterative repetition of “I” creates a light and intangible impression of the Lady.
This is juxtaposed with the break in iambic tetrameter, which reveals her wild nature
AO3: This poem was written in the Regency era, females were still viewed as subservient and domesticated. The “Wild” appearance of the “farey’s child”, could be Keats subverting what was typically seen in females in order to make her seem exquisite.
AO4: tragic theme of obsession seen in many of Keats’ poems. I.E ‘Eve of St Agnes’ where Porphyro wants to “gaze” and “worship” Madeline (stanza IX)
Lord Byron’s poem ‘she walks in beauty’ written in 1814 focuses on visual aspects of a female character, perhaps the downfall of this man is a subtle challenge to Byron by Keats
AO5: In a modern 21st century context, we can see that this Lady is a symbol of women that reflects the ‘male gaze’. Focus on her physical beauty arguably objectifies her and supports the interpretation that the knight brings about his own tragic demise.
to support:
‘In Isabella, ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Lamia, Keats criticises the narcissistic love of his male protagonists who tend to objectify and idealise women into mere idols of beauty and admiration for their own personal gain.’ (Schulkins, 2016:68).
“I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;” (stanza X)
theme: death, danger
AO2: adjective “pale” is repeated, emphasising affect of Lady’s love spell on men. The choice of her previous victims being ‘kings’ and ‘princes’ connects neatly to the noble Knight and shows unrequited love as corrupting and destructive to even the most noble figures. Tragic downfall.
AO3: Keats seems to inject qualities of his ill-health into the knight and his unattainable love of Fanny Brawne. Keats’ “negative capability” is seen within this poem and this was original derived from Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief”. It is the idea of remaining in uncertainty.
AO4: horrific imagery creates sharp shift to gloomy and doom-laden atmosphere. Theme of death dominates this section of poem with grim imagery of terminal illness.
AO5: ‘The femme fatale is increasingly associated with […] mysterious, highly erotic women who ensnare men with their sexual wiles and then lead them to destruction. Exemplary of this figure is the faery queen in John Keats’ 19th century romantic poem, La Belle Dame Sans Merci.’ (Kendrick, 2016:151).
“she looked at me as though she did love”
theme: manipulation, danger, misjudgement
AO2: prefix “as” is ambiguous determining whether the omniscient narrator means “while” she loved the knight, or “as though” though she loved the knight. Mystery used by Keats to create ambiguity and deception surrounding the female character’s intentions. If she is duplicitous in her stratagem Keats could be presenting her as a seductress who tempts and destroys the souls of men., tragically this would create an unattainable love. As a result, the “knight-at-arms” will inevitably fall from the heightened position established in this fake love.
AO2: Keats could be presenting the ‘Faery’s child’ as the victim here, where the knight is seeking to find pleasure and fullfill his sexual desires with this female. In this way, the reader can view the knight as a predatory male seeking to steal the innocence of this strange woman.
AO3: Contextually, female purity was an asset to females in the regency years in which the poem was written. Perhaps Keats uses the contemporary idea of a beautiful female to contend with the likes of Lord Byron who was known to write about physical qualities of women.
AO4: the idea of a predatory male character is also seen in the ‘Eve of St Agnes’ where Porphyro sneaks into Madeline’s room and ‘into her dream he melted’.
AO5: ‘In Isabella, ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Lamia, Keats criticises the narcissistic love of his male protagonists who tend to objectify and idealise women into mere idols of beauty and admiration for their own personal gain.’ (Schulkins, 2016:68).
- ‘The femme fatale is increasingly associated with […] mysterious, highly erotic women who ensnare men with their sexual wiles and then lead them to destruction. Exemplary of this figure is the faery queen in John Keats’ 19th century romantic poem, La Belle Dame Sans Merci.’ (Kendrick, 2016:151).
“I made a garland for her head” (
theme: patriarchy, masculinity, womanhood
AO2: “garland” associates, in this context, to a crown, suggests that the ‘knight-at-arms’ attempts to make the female construct his queen/princess. Although appearing a gesture of true love, Keats arguably plays on the known concept of traditional potency of a king which is historically greater than that of a queen. Keats criticises this official declaration of love as an assertion of control. Using a “garland” to symbolise proprosal of marriage early in the play, coupled with the use of natural imagery, in order to associate fall of their free love to restrictions imposed by social order, upon a man and woman who enter the legality of the real world through marriage. Therefore, from this interpretation, the “garland” crown veils the actual truth of marriage, suggesting that this declaration of commitment is really a mechanism used by men to entrap their women as property,
AO3: supported by convential vows of 19th century “honour, love and obey” her husband, thereby promising their subservience.
AO2: It is possible that knight could be trying to ensure everlasting love, cementing it within their marriage before God, however the objectification of woman in marriage during the 1800s indicates that his intentions are questionable.
AO2: the giving of the “garland” is the point of lusis in the ballad (resolution), as to tame his “Faery” “child” in marriage he later had to “shut her wild wild eyes”, in order to deny her, her sight, meaning she became unable to her own oppression as her position as a wife. Keats projects message of inattainability of love in real world. It is structurally important to Keats’ criticism of marriage that knight places “garland on her head” before setting her on his “pacing steed” because of the obvious phallic connotations this line has, there is an idea of female submission with loss of her innocence from being “faery’s child”, to “Belle Dame Sans Merci”. French name contributes to idea that love can’t exist in reality. He suggests its a foreign subject to men who impose the patriarchy and arguably imprison their wife “till death do us part”.
AO4: Faery is tragically enigmatic leading the knight to believe she
