The Princess (Tennyson poem)

The Princess is a serio-comic blank verse narrative poem, written by Alfred Tennyson, published in 1847.

Several later works have been based upon the poem, including Gilbert and Sullivan's 1884 comic opera Princess Ida.

[1] Other critics speculate that the poem was partly inspired by the opening of Love's Labour's Lost and other literary works.

[2][3] Janet Ross, the daughter of Lucie, Lady Duff-Gordon recalled that "[Tennyson] told my mother that he had her in mind when he wrote The Princess.

[6] In Britain, the first university-level women's school, Girton College, Cambridge, was not opened until 1869,[7] more than two decades after Tennyson wrote The Princess.

[c] In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), however, Mary Wollstonecraft had been an early advocate of the equality of men and women,[6] and writers such as John Stuart Mill had argued for female emancipation.

[7] Nevertheless, "Tennyson was in the vanguard in writing of the subject[d] and although critics have rightly complained about the conservative ending of his poem, he must be credited with broaching the topic and voicing some of the injustices women suffered.

The narrative device is a tale of fancy composed in turn by some university undergraduates, based on an old chronicle.

[9] As with many of Tennyson's works, The Princess has an outer setting to the main narrative, consisting of a Prologue and a Conclusion that take place at a Victorian-era summer fête.

The characters in the Prologue agree to participate in a storytelling game about a heroic princess in days of old, based on an ancient family chronicle.

The prince declares his love for Ida, saying, "except you slay me here according to your bitter statute-book, I cannot cease to follow you... but half without you; with you, whole; and of those halves you worthiest".

The prince acknowledges defeat and pleads with Ida to let Psyche reclaim her child, but he falls into a coma.

The poet's son Hallam wrote that his father held that "the sooner woman finds out, before the great educational movement begins, that 'woman is not undevelopt man, but diverse', the better it will be for the progress of the world.

[6] The early view that Tennyson was sympathetic to a progressive view of women's education but found it expedient to subordinate it to the dictates of Victorian society[11] led the poet to rebalance The Princess by adding the interlude songs in his 1850 revision: "I thought that the poem would explain itself, but the public did not see the drift.

"[12] The songs, which relate to the contemporary world of Tennyson's time, are in contrast to the main narrative, which is male-oriented, with a mock-mediaeval setting.

Thus, it can be argued, Tennyson balanced the anti-feminist message of the men's narrative with the practical progressiveness displayed in the women's songs.

[14] W. S. Gilbert, perhaps attracted by Tennyson's serio-comic treatment of the subject of women's education,[15] adapted and parodied the poem twice.

[16] Later, in 1884, he adapted his farce into a comic opera with composer Arthur Sullivan entitled Princess Ida, which is still performed regularly today.

"[18] In addition, Holst wrote a set of five songs for female voices based on Tennyson's work including "Sweet and Low", "The Splendour Falls", "Tears, Idle Tears", "O Swallow, Swallow" and "Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal" while he was teaching at a girls' school in South London.