ABSTRACT
La Belle is both a victim and seductive, inveigling and dependent, captivating and captive. 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' opens with the narrator's encounter of a 'knight at arms' in the barren wilderness of nature. The knight's obsession with La Belle's memory and image, his pale complexion, deteriorating health and inevitable death are directly associated with the image of the masturbating figure. The knight's questionable mental disposition is reinforced as author approaches the final stanza of the poem. The present tense of the knight's narrative and his use of diction in the last stanza indicate the knight's mental paralysis. The knight's futile efforts to possess La Belle's memory and relive his experience with her turn him into the passive and indifferent character they encounter at the opening lines of the poem, whereas La Belle's single action, that of disappearing, resonates throughout the tale. Keats chooses to silence La Belle to emphasise her objectification by the knight.
