As you suggested in the PM Elyse, here is my creatve writing. I completely scrapped my old one from my Mid Term exams and Trials as I was never truly happy with it. I'm doing Romanticism, so I hope that is ok. The story is based on William Waterhouse's "The Lady of Shallot" painting which in turn is based on Tennyson's poem by the same name. It's about 1320 words, as I'm not a fast writer so I'm also wondering if that is enough for Extension? Thank you in advance
I do not remember exactly when or why she caught my eye, but what I do recall is the overwhelming feeling of wonder that consumed me from the day I happened upon her. She was exotic and intangible. A creature of such beauty that caused even the Sun to hide it’s face in enviable shame. Likewise, although the connection to her was immediately intense, I did not know the reasoning behind it.
She was the reason I visited my grandmother so often as a young child. Down the gravel path I would skip and my untamed pigtails, like loose reigns, would fly in the air after me. When I rapped the old cedar door of my grandmother’s cottage, a benevolent and bent old woman, with a face that frayed as she smiled at my return, appeared and ushered me in. Before I could even set my luggage down I looked her pleadingly in her watery grey eyes and displayed my own toothy smile in an attempt to get permission to see the lady on the lake. Much to my dismay, the lady remained permanently shut away in the study. Away from an inquisitive little girl and a world that would adore her. When I asked why she must be removed from this world, the only reply I got was the same stern expression from my grandmother tinged with a puzzling and deep sadness. So, when the house fell quiet, I would creep in and stare at the painting for as many moments as time would allow in order to take in the entire composition. Before me was a lady with long, golden locks floating in the air like the boughs of the willows lining the river beside my grandmother’s cottage. Her white dress was lengthy too, and pooled down the sides of her wooden craft in a careless yet graceful manner. The lake that so delicately cradled the boat was a woven tapestry and patchwork of the trees that skirted it and the slate sky above. Yet, what intrigued me the most was her equivocal expression. Her eyes looked beyond the frame out onto the torpid water. Her lips didn’t turn up in glee, nor did they turn down in sadness. My unseasoned mind could not decipher the artists purpose and refused to think beyond the constraints of the frame, hence why it frustrated me endlessly. Nevertheless, I longed to be there with her to offer my company because despite the beauty and freedom that she lavished in, she seemed awfully lonely. Was it because her world was only of oil, careful brushwork and canvas? Was that the reason my grandmother was so strangely sombre when the topic of her came up? The loneliness seeped through and immediately sunk into me like a winter chill that gnaws at one’s bones. In resolution, to thaw this lonesome frost that settled on the cottage, I vowed to visit her when I could so as to be there with her while she sat, suspended in animation on the lake and it’s patchwork trees.
As my grandmother bent further under the burden of old age and her mind touched the fringes of senility, I was forced to study under the disciplinary eye of the preceptors. Here I learnt the theorems of Pythagoras and the maxims of Aristotle. While my mind absorbed the numbers and extracts from the tomes I read, my interest in the lady on the lake dwindled. I spent my youth inside studying the passages of philosophers and mathematicians; oblivious to the fall of the variegated leaves beyond the glass window and the flight of the swallows in the spring. No longer did I have the liberty or time to admire the petty paint strokes of an artist or the woman who once resembled a seraph but now was the meagre muse of one’s imagination.
The cottage must have been concreted in a chilled desolation due to my absence yet my adolescent self paid no attention until the day came when the gaunt branches of the willow bent too far and my grandmother passed away in solitude. While we cloaked her in dirt, bitter tears of regret swelled and hardened at the edge of my face as they met the winter frost. The adjacent river was hardened with ice when we later went to clear my grandmother’s house of the dust-clotted past belongings within. The door leading to that dreaded room matched the wood of the casket we buried her in but was forgiving as I placed my hands on it. Curiously, no creak sounded as I pushed it ajar, as if the house insisted on remaining silent. Even my footsteps on the cedar floor vibrated soundlessly. Through the crack in the door, I saw a blank space remaining where the lady once hung. With a fright I swung open the door completely. On the bed in the centre of the musty room she lay, covered by a delicate film of dormant dust motes. I felt my heart flutter with an unprecedented mixture of relief and sadness. As I neared the image, a wisp of wind blew from the crevice in the opposite window, stirring the motes into a wheeling dance in the air above. Her expression was just as ambiguous as it had been before I had knowledge on the mechanics of language and numbers; when the world beyond my familial one was only a dream yet to be ventured. Her locks still skirted the white garb she wore that cascaded down the sides of the craft. The lake remained permanently stamped by the patchworked trees. I pick up the painting by its framed edges, handling it like a moth’s wing, but as I do so a slip of paper falls from the frames crevice behind the canvas. Placing the painting back down, I pick up the paper. Inked words unfurl across the stained and warped background. Addressed to my grandma, it reads;
“Charlotte,
Lovely daughter of mine, I know we have so much more of this earth to explore, but our lives obey the doctrine of time, and I fear my time here is nearing an
ending horizon. If there is anything I pray you remember me by, it is this painting. Within the scene before you, remember me by our days of rambles by the
willo’d stream and the rainy ones we spent inside reading the poems that livened our imaginations. Minds filled by the lady in the Tennyson poem you so dearly
enjoyed. The lady who, despite being cursed to never venture beyond her spire in Camelot, graced the night for the first and last time;
"Down the river she came and found a boat / beneath a willow left afloat… She loosed the chain, and down she lay; the broad stream bore her far away… Lying,
robed in snowy white… thro’ the noises of the night… singing her last song, the Lady of Shallot” (extract from Tennyson's poem)
All my undying love,
Your affectionate father, William”
The whispers of wind stir me from my reverie and bring me back to reality. I see the lady in the painting with sharpened eyes. I see the lantern hung about the neck of the bow and its lit flame that anticipates the approaching night. Three candles are positioned on the side of the craft, however two have been blown out and the third appears threatened by wind, a portentous warning of her nearing fate. The formulae in my mind dissipate as I sink into my childhood and the woman before me reforms into the divine being I once knew her by. The reasoning behind the connection to her I felt dawns on me. Fated to be locked up by a system. Cursed to obey. She studied the woven threads. I studied integers and strict philosophies. To break the hoarfrost, we both must venture beyond the willows; beyond the frame. In the memory of my grandmother.