Womanhood became at once one of its dominant subjects in Tennyson and Browning.

Among the new political, social, religious, philosophic and artistic ideas which were then borne like torches through England, the idea of the free development of women was also born; and it carried with it a strong emotion.

They claimed the acknowledgment of their separate individuality, of their distinct use and power in the progress of the world.

This was embodied with extraordinary fulness in _Aurora Leigh_, and its emotion drove itself into the work of Tennyson and Browning.

How Tennyson treated the subject in the _Princess_ is well known.