The Lonely Woman in Tennyson’s Poetry: A Case Study in “Mariana” and “Mariana in the South”

Abstract

This paper tackles the theme of lonely women in Tennyson’s poetry. It studies the theme through the character of Mariana in the two poems carrying this name in the title, “Mariana” and “Mariana in the South”, with the objectives of finding similarities and differences and the continuity between the two poems. It studies each poem individually with focus on the characteristics of the protagonist, the setting, the correlation between the character’s psychology and the surroundings, and the presence of death and faith in each of the two poems. It ends with the conclusion that both Marianas are very similar in their situation and their suffering. Yet, the drastic change of setting in the later-written “Mariana in the South” from the setting of the earlier “Mariana” shows that, even in very different settings and with very different religious stands, women who suffer from loneliness and desertion end up similarly desperate.