SOURCE: Cogswell, Fred. “Feminism in Isabella Valancy Crawford's ‘Said the Canoe.’” In The Crawford Symposium, edited by Frank M. Tierney, pp. 79-85. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979.

In the following essay, originally presented at the fifth Symposium of the University of Ottawa Symposia series in 1978, Cogswell offers an analysis of “Said the Canoe,” which he argues is a feminist response to Tennyson's The Princess.

The thesis which I put forward below is highly speculative. It is, however, speculative in the light of certain demonstrable factors which, taken together, make the speculation more than idle exercise. These factors are, firstly, my assumption that Isabella Valancy Crawford was an intelligent, responsive, and sensitive woman; secondly, the notion that she was capable of independent thought and feeling; thirdly, that she was markedly influenced in her poems by the style and thinking of Alfred, Lord Tennyson; fourthly, that she lived during an...