Mariana,

By John Everett Millais (1849-1935)

Mariana
By John Everett Millais (1849-1935)

This evocative oil painting by John Everett Millais (1829–1896) depicts

Mariana – a woman isolated in a remote farmhouse, waiting for her lover. Like
other Pre-Raphaelite artists, Millais drew inspiration from earlier works of
literature, particularly those with a focus on female beauty and sexual yearning.
This painting was based on a poem called ‘Mariana in the Moated Grange' written
in 1830 by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), which in turn was inspired by the
‘dejected Mariana’ who lives ‘at the moated grange’ in Shakespeare’s Measure for
Measure
In Shakespeare’s play, Mariana is betrothed to the ‘well-seeming Angelo’,
but he has abandoned her because her dowry was lost at sea along with her
shipwrecked brother. Angelo’s ‘unjust unkindness’ should have ‘quench’d her
love’, but instead made it ‘more violent’.
Tennyson and Millais’s Mariana
Both Tennyson and Millais portray Mariana suspended in a state of longing.
The autumn leaves in Millais’s painting symbolise the passage of time, as Mariana
pauses in her embroidery of the garden outside her window. The stained-glass
shows the Virgin Mary receiving Gabriel’s news that she will conceive the baby
Jesus, perhaps to contrast with Mariana’s futile wait for her disloyal lover. This
profound sense of stasis and unrealised potential is conveyed in the haunting
refrain of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem:
She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
He cometh not,’ she said;
She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!’
Tennyson later returned to the theme in another poem, ‘Mariana in the South’
(1832).
Shakespeare’s Mariana and the bed-trick
In Shakespeare’s play, Mariana is released from her wait by a disconcerting
plot-twist. Her fiancé Angelo is now deputy to the Duke, and he has condemned a
young man, Claudio, to death for getting his girlfriend pregnant. Angelo makes a
bargain to save the young man’s life if Claudio’s sister, Isabella, has sex with him.
But Mariana is persuaded to take Isabella’s place in this sexual encounter. When
all is revealed, the Duke forces Angelo to marry Mariana and then threatens to put
him to death. As a widow, she would inherit Angelo’s property, but instead she
pleads for her new husband’s life and the Duke grants him mercy

Reference: https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/mariana-by-john-everett-millais-1851
 My composition entitled "Mariana" is based on my reaction toward the
painting “Mariana” by John Everett Millais. It is in E minor key which gives a
feeling of yearning and sadness. The melody reflects the character of Mariana in
the scene: tired, weary, and lonely. The bass part, from measures 5 to 8, is based
on the contrasting background, the inside and outside of the room, which gives a
nice perspective which helps describe Mariana's feelings.