Musical Lights: Illuminating the Shadows in Tennyson’s The Princess

Abstract: Tennyson’s The Princess (1847) has led readers to different conclusions regarding the poem’s stance on the issue of higher education for women. The Princess ’s complex structure and its multiplicity of voices create a sense of ambiguity that makes it difficult to determine what the true intention of the poem may be, as The Princess seems to mock and endorse the idea of higher education for women simultaneously. The trope of shadows and substance, this article argues, when read in combination with the musical interludes shed light on the poem’s stance on women’s right to higher education. The article begins by examining The Lady of Shalott (1832) in order to trace the importance of the shadow/substance theme and its connection to musicality and sound in Tennyson’s work. After this, analyzing the trope of shadows and substance in combination with the songs sung by the women between the different parts of the men’s tale shows how the tensions created by the disparate elements of The Princess ’s structure and its multiplicity of voices can be made sense of by the combination of music and light. Music and light, this article proposes, work together to offer an interpretation that corroborates feminist readings of The Princess .