While reading Anderson's Tirra Lirra by the River, I was a little confused at what was going on. Anderson would go back and forth through different time periods of Nora's life that I was easily getting confused. The title, at first, was unclear to me except for the fact that it was in that poem she heard as a child. After reading the whole book, I got hold of a copy of The Lady of Shalott, and then it started to make sense. I started to realize that Nora had lived her whole life with an unrealistic notion of herself. Her life has correlated with that of the Lady of Shalott. She had lived in a world full of unevenness between the imagination and reality and this novel tells of her quest for self-knowledge.
This imbalance is shown through the many connections to The Lady of Shalott and her fascination with Camelot. She wanted a life like that in Camelot all her life, just like that of Lady Shalott. Her "Camelot" was " a region in [her] mind, where infinite expansion was possible where no obtrusion could prevent the emergence of Sir Lancelot" (pg. 12-13). She longed for her "Sir Lancelot" and a perfect image, but she unfortunately never achieved this. Nora had been trapped in a life of "shadows", just like the woman in The Persimmon Tree. These attitudes of image and superficial attributes that all three of these women dealt with controlled them and caused them to lead unhappy lives. Nora becomes so involved with her appearance that she eventually tries to commit suicide because she cannot take the pressures any longer. Due to this pre-occupation with image, Nora fails to find herself and this novel is ultimately her realization of who she really is and how she eventually casts off this controlling obsession. It takes Nora a lifetime to come to realize who she really is. .
The woman in Barnard's The Persimmon Tree has lived a life the same way Nora has; infatuated with her self-image.
