Maidens and Melville

Abstract:In "After the Pleasure Party" Herman Melville presents a woman with both "turbulent heart and rebel brain," who seems out of keeping with Melville's view, expressed elsewhere, that women "feel," but do not "reason." The explanation for this may lie partly in a character in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's The Princess. While connections between that poem and Melville's have been recognized, they are based chiefly on similarities of theme, missing some points in the poetry. A careful reading of the two works shows how Melville absorbed language and characters from Tennyson, and reshaped them to his own purpose. Tennyson's vision of a bountiful future lying before his princess is inverted by Melville, with both similar and contrasting language, to form his character's vision of despair. Melville's character may have been suggested by the maiden aunt who is a key figure in Tennyson's poem; I propose that this maiden aunt caught Melville's attention, and helped to inspire the monologue he created for another maiden in "After the Pleasure Party."