THE PRINCESS

ALFRED ARNOLD TENNYSON 1847, VICTORIAN PERIOD

SUMMARY:

The poem depicts the narrative of a brave princess who rejects the world of men and establishes a
women’s university that men are not permitted to attend. The prince to whom she was betrothed as a
child arrives at university dressed as two female students with two pals. They are detected and fled, but
they eventually fight for the princess’s hand in a battle. They lose and are injured, yet the women tend
to the wounded men. The princess eventually returns the prince’s love.

Tennyson’s (1809–1892) blank verse narrative poem is a parody on the status of women’s education.
The story revolves around a princess who aims to establish a university for women, but her plans are
thwarted by the arrival of a prince.

ANALYSIS:

This long narrative poem is not often read in its entirety by modern readers, although some of the
smaller poems contained within, including “Tears, Idle Tears” and “Now sleeps the crimson petal, now
the white,” are some of the most famous in Tennyson’s oeuvre. “The Princess” was published in 1847. It
is both serious and comic and has famously been adapted into a comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan,
Princess Ida. An earlier edition did not include the smaller poems, such as “The Splendor Falls on Castle
Walls,” which were added in the 1850 edition. The full title is often given as “The Princess: A Medley” to
connote the fact that the poem includes different sections improvised by different speakers (although
the reader is not aware of which of the partygoers is speaking). It is generally known that Tennyson and
his friends did this very same thing while at Cambridge.

PAULINE: A Fragment of a Confession

ROBERT BROWNING 1833

SUMMARY:

The Mother Superior has wrapped Pauline’s burned hands and is bemoaning the devils in the “boiling-
over kettles.” Pauline feels sorry for herself and believes God is uncaring. She notices a man with a bag
containing forks, scissors, and needles. He pierces her skin with them. She inquires as to whether he is
the Christ. He chuckles and proclaims himself the “Light of the World,” and she recalls that the devil can
recite the Bible. She can’t make him walk out the window or even see if he has a tail because she’s weak
in bed. He flies away when he hears someone outside the room. He promises to meet her in the desert.

ANALYSIS:

Pauline is a short poem about an unidentified narrator’s unwillingness to commit to poetry. His vision of
poetry is huge, and his blueprint is a Shelley apotheosis. Perhaps his analysis of vacillating weakness,
vanity, over-egocentrism, over-self-analysis, insincere religiosity, insufficient love for others, and the like
is correct, or perhaps he is correct to analyze traits of vacillating weakness, vanity, over-egocentrism,
over-self-analysis, insincere religios However, at the age of 21, Browning was not interested in the
minute details of character portraits; there is little concreteness of situation, little interpersonal
association, and a turbulence of inner development that seems to go on forever. Pauline is at her finest
when the narrator’s imagination is allowed to run wild, albeit fragmentarily and erratically, but full of
pent-up energy.

SOHRAB AND RUSTUM

MATHEW ARNOLD 1853

SUMMARY:

Sohrab's hunt for his father, who had vanished years before, is chronicled in the poem. Sohrab, a Tartar
warrior, engages in combat with Persian armies. Sohrab confronts Rustum, the Persian chieftain, in
single battle, not realizing that he is his father.

ANALYSIS:

Sohrab and Rustum, epic poem in blank verse by Matthew Arnold, published in 1853 in his collection
Poems. Among Arnold’s sources for this heroic romance set in ancient Persia were translations of an
epic by the Persian poet Ferdowsī and Sir John Malcolm’s History of Persia (1815).

Sohrab’s hunt for his father, who had vanished years before, is chronicled in the poem. Sohrab, a Tartar
warrior, engages in combat with Persian armies. Sohrab confronts Rustum, the Persian chieftain, in
single battle, not realizing that he is his father. The young warrior only mentions his birth when he is
gravely wounded by Rustum’s spear. The father and son discover their bond at this point. Rustum offers
to give Sohrab’s body a royal burial, despite his grief.

AMOURS DE VOYAGE

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH 1849

SUMMARY:

Amours de Voyage (1849) is a poetic romance divided into five cantos, or chapters, in the form of a
letter sequence. It follows a group of English tourists in Italy, including Claude and the Trevellyn family,
who become embroiled in the political turbulence of 1849.

ANALYSIS:

One of the richest poems in Victorian literature is Arthur Hugh Clough’s Amours de Voyage. It has a
charming story about a young English tourist in Rome who can’t decide whether he’s in love or not; it
beautifully delineates his own character while adding vibrant character portraits and social criticism; and
it’s written in a lively conversational tone. Despite all of its brilliant insights into human behavior, the
poem is relatively unknown. Amours de Voyage has almost completely vanished from Victorian
anthologies due to harsh criticism.
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 1851

SUMMARY:

This two-part poem was first published in 1851. The earliest looks at the hope that glowed throughout
Florence during the Risorgimento’s early years. The second recognizes the challenges that lie ahead on
the long path to independence. Together, they create one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s finest works
(1806-61).

She continued to believe in Napoleon III’s integrity, and the poem “A Curse for a Nation” in Poems
Before Congress (1860) was misinterpreted as a denunciation of England, when it was actually targeted
against U.S. slavery.

ANALYSIS:

This poem was written at a time when women did not have a voice in society. Women were not active
participants in society and were certainly not living in the perspective of their male friends. Elizabeth
wrote during a period when women were treated as commodities. Women were considered dead to
society by the majority of people at the time.