One of the defining themes of literature that depicts the chivalric code was that of knightly devotion to idealized women. This tradition is the source of the familiar narrative wherein a heroic knight rescues a fair damsel in distress. Knights dedicated their successes to the names of their chosen lady-loves and looked to them as embodiments of virtue. That Lancelot’s shield shows him kneeling to a lady is both a nod to the mythic tradition, wherein Lancelot was the devoted lover of Arthur’s queen, and an ironic comment on male-female relations—both in the context of Arthurian legend and in Tennyson’s time. While Lancelot depicts himself as subject to the desires of a lady, in this poem he actually becomes a catalyst of her downfall. In a parallel sense, the women of Tennyson’s time were held to a strict and confining code of conduct by the imposition of a benevolent sexism that held them to be fragile and in need of protection.
