The Ladies of the Small Onion (2022)
A loud satire of the poem Lady of Shalott wherein a shallot exemplifies the historical lunacy of women living in a world they cannot participate in.
In the Ladies of The Small Onion, there is an escape from control, unlike the tragic 1832 poem titled Lady of Shalott by Alfred Tennyson. When Shalott turns away from her obedient work of painting the reflection of the vegetable through a mirror, it is not due to a passing knight, but because the small onion is taken away by Elaine of Astolat. Seeing the shallot directly for the first time, liberating chaos ensues. Ironically, the audience is aware that the terror is overblown, as the cause of it is minute. In primaeval Dada style, recitations of the original poem play in reverse to create the soundscape, as if to undo the damage of it. According to art historian Dr Catherine McCormack, Tennyson’s poem illustrates how historically speaking, “women have not been allowed to look”. Building on this, scholar Nina Auerbach argues that images of angelic, corpse-like women were fuelled by cultural fears of unregulated female desire. To empower the Lady in this tale, the two ‘women’ reject the concept of sitting and suffering silently. They are rambunctious. Filmed in Montsalvat, benefitting from its Victorian architecture, the characters stare, frozen with the shallot at the camera for silly lengths of time. Moreover, ‘cross-dressing’ alongside the inclusion of Lancelot from the original story contribute to the hysteria over the tower and vegetable, involving exaggerated swooning, munching, terrible singing, laughter and peculiar noises. This film embraces self-expression, highlights the shallowness of romanticising feeling powerless, but foremost emphasises the absurdity of female oppression.
