In this artwork, how is the Description discussed?
The painting depicts a woman in a long blue dress, standing up from the embroidery laid out before her to stretch her back.  Her upholstered stool and the table are set before a Gothic window with stained glass, through which can be seen a garden with leaves are turning from green to autumnal brown.  Some leaves have fallen on the embroidery, and more onto the bare wooden floorboards beside a small mouse.  In the background, a small triptych, a silver casket and candles have been set out as a devotional altar on a piece of furniture covered with white cloth beside the curtain of a bed.
The work is painted on a mahogany panel, primed with a white ground, and measures 49.5 cm × 59.7 cm (19.5 in × 23.5 in).  It may have been painted wet-on-wet on a second ground, with graphite underdrawing.  The paint is thinly applied in some areas to enhance the reflective effect of the white ground, but thickly applied in others.  The woman's blue dress is painted with two blue pigments, Prussian blue and ultramarine.
The painting is packed with details that help the viewer to read the narrative of the work from Tennyson's poetry.  The autumn leaves indicate a story about waiting and the passage of time.  The woman's arched back makes it seem like she has been sitting too long and she must stand up to stretch before she sits back at her work, but her posture also emphasises her bust and hips.  The roll of completed embroidery on the table gives the viewer a clue as to how long Mariana has been working on it.
The altar in the background may be a reference to Mariana's fervent prayers to the Virgin Mary in "Mariana in the South".  The stained glass in the window shows an Annunciation scene, with the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary, based on a window at the east end of the chapel of Merton College, Oxford, and also an invented coat of arms with a snowdrop and the Latin motto "In coelo quies" ("In Heaven there is rest"), possibly a reference to the feast of St Agnes' Eve and John Keats's poem The Eve of St Agnes. 
Many of the details in the painting relate directly to Tennyson's poetry.  For example, the little mouse in the bottom right corner is a detail directly from the poem: "the mouse behind the mouldering wainscots shriek'd or from the crevice peer'd about".  An anecdote reports that the mouse was drawn from life – or rather death, as it was killed by Millais after it scurried across the floor and hid behind some furniture so he could immortalise it.
Together, Millais's painting and Tennyson's poem create an intriguing storyline for the reader to follow.  However, Millais's painting departs from Tennyson's narrative in some respects. The Mariana depicted by Millais is placed in a scene filled with vibrant colours; she is not the forlorn woman described by Tennyson, unwilling to live an independent life, confined to a dilapidated retreat, with a " mouldering wainscots".
In turn, Millais's painting was an inspiration for Elizabeth Gaskell's 1853 novel, Ruth.  Tennyson's Mariana and Gaskell's main character Ruth are both sensitive to the sounds around them and are constantly looking out of their window in image that represents their imprisonment within their homes.  The image of Mariana used by Tennyson and the later works are equally of a woman who is weary.
mahogany Annunciation The Eve of St Agnes Angel Gabriel Elizabeth Gaskell panel wet-on-wet Mariana in the South Ruth ultramarine snowdrop underdrawing Merton College, Oxford St Agnes' Eve Prussian blue Gabriel chapel Tennyson Virgin Mary Mariana