The Princess

Abstract

Maud and The Princess have much in common. The two families in each have betrothed the children, and there has been some obstacle to the fulfilment of that pact. The man in each case—or the hero—pursues the heroine and has to fight her brother. The heroine’s father in each poem seems particularly obnoxious, but the mothers are saintly. The hero in each poem suffers because of his love for the heroine, and their suffering takes essentially the same form. The hero of Maud has what seems to be a nervous breakdown and is temporarily mad, or seems to be. His delusions of not being buried deep enough would seem to indicate a certain kind of disorientation, although he makes particularly acute observations during this period. His stay in the madhouse indicates, at the least, an inability to cope with the world. The hero of The Princess suffers essentially the same fate. His weird seizures are evident from the beginning, but certainly his stay in the ‘hospital’ is very similar to that of the hero of Maud in the madhouse. The hero in Maud cried:

Always I long to creep

Into some still cavern deep,

There to weep, and weep, and weep

My whole soul out to thee.