Excerpt from Transactions of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society, Vol. 5: Part II., October, 1898

There are thousands now Such women, but convention beats them down It is but bringing up no more than that, You men have done it: how I hate you all Ah, were I something great I wish I were Some mighty poetess, I would shame you then That love to keep us children O, I wish That I were some great princess, I would build Far off from men a college like a man's, And I would teach them all that men are taught We are twice as quick 1 It is not meant to be taken too seriously, but it has shaken the usual confidence in conventional methods of instruction and conventional restraints. It has been seen by many a parent and guardian, that girls were not only as a rule twice as quick as boys, but more than twice as industrious and so the story of the college where those who are twice as quick as men might redress the balance of knowledge apart from man's presence, has stirred many a misgiving as to what for long periods in the past, was thought quite good enough schooling for the girls of a family. Not of course that there were not thinkers and workers on this subject before The Princess was written. But a poem like this reaches minds which would not be attracted in ordinary ways. Its very fancifulness and remoteness from what makes up the common texture Of daily life, save it from being voted dull. A lecture, say, from Miss Buss, one of the noblest of all the pioneers of the higher education of women, would reach a few, it is true, but many more would pass it by altogether, and yet The Princess might present the same problem to their minds and they might at last begin to think about it.

Again The Princess has been all these years a constant reminder that in this movement towards greater knowledge and greater freedom of action consequent upon knowledge, there were certain to be extravagancies and mistakes. You all know that a great part of the poem is taken up by the working-out of the idea of the college, into which no male might enter on pain of death. For this ideal the betrothal promise is put on one side, and to this the Princess gives herself with all the force of a richly-endowed and vigorous nature. To maintain it, she will fight to the death. The love is half that of revolt from restraint, half that of aspiration after a noble idea.

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