Poetry and Views of TennysonAlfred Lord Tennyson and his works have been an important part of canonical literature for over a century. He is as important as he is because his work is exceptional in many ways. One of these exceptional differences, in my opinion, is the contradictory view of women that Tennyson describes in his poetry, particularly in his poem "Locksley Hall." Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" is, in my opinion, a poem that would benefit greatly from an ideological discussion regarding Tennyson's views on women. This poem asks the following questions: Do Tennyson's words describe a set of beliefs felt only by the narrator of the poem, or does Tennyson himself share these beliefs? Is the condescending but powerful view of women only that of the character speaking, or does Tennyson at least partly share this same condescending view? After all, Tennyson was a member of Victorian society. At the time Tennyson wrote “Locksley Hall in the 1800s,” women’s rights were just beginning to be questioned. Before this era of questioning, women were seen as totally inferior to men: ...it was argued that as a woman's brain was smaller in terms of cubic content, it was therefore inevitable that she would be incapable of reasoning , to generalize or to follow a continuous line. thought as well as a man could. It was the accepted belief that she was both mentally and physically inferior to man; that she was, in fact, a relative creature… (Crow, 146) But at the same time, Victorian men put women on pedestals. Yet this privilege of being put on a pedestal was actually more of a condescension than a privilege. Duncan Crow, author of The Victorian Woman, writes: “These were not privileges at all, but a code of prison rules; and women were not queens,... middle of paper... everything” like He did? Perhaps Tennyson never really made his views on women and the place of women known, but he seemed to think that the speech of this abandoned youth was typical of his time. Tennyson was writing for a Victorian audience who could sympathize with these abandoned youth. I believe that for someone like Tennyson, even to compose such a work, he was, at the very least, very familiar with the contradictory Victorian view of women. This, to me, makes "Locksley Hall" a sort of extension of his own ideas and beliefs regarding women, which were thus shaped and influenced by his own culture. Works Cited Buckler, William E., ed. The main Victorian poets: Tennyson, Browning, Arnold. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1973. Tennyson, Alfred Lord. “Locksley Room.” The poetic and dramatic works of Alfred Lord Tennyson. Ed. WJ Rolfe. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.. 1898.