Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman

by Tara Prescott

  Whitford, Margaret. Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine. London: Routledge, 1991. Print.

  Inverting the Fairy Tale

  The Value of the Complex Female in “Chivalry”

  BY JENNIFER MCSTOTTS

  chivalrous, adj.

  3. Of, belonging to, or characteristic of the ideal knight; possessing all the virtues attributed to the Age of Chivalry; characterized by pure and noble gallantry, honour, courtesy, and disinterested devotion to the cause of the weak or oppressed. Sometimes, “gallant, or disinterestedly devoted in the service of the female sex”; sometimes, in ridicule = “quixotic.”—Oxford English Dictionary

  “I’m on a quest,” he said.

  “That’s nice,” said Mrs. Whitaker, noncommittally.—Neil Gaiman, “Chivalry”

  In the short story “Chivalry,” Neil Gaiman re-imagines an Arthurian Grail quest as a fairy tale set in suburban Britain, casting a traditional Galahad (Galaad) as the hero, a volunteer shopgirl named Marie as the damsel, and a childless widow named Mrs. Whitaker as the Grail’s guardian. Gaiman re-interprets the quest from the perspective not of the knight or the damsel but of Galaad’s antagonist, Mrs. Whitaker. In a reversal of roles, the hero’s antagonist becomes the story’s protagonist, a domestic elderly woman passively disinterested in either aiding or thwarting Galaad’s quest. The reader follows Mrs. Whitaker through the story and Gaiman focuses his attention on her. By developing Mrs. Whitaker, rather than the hero or damsel, into a three-dimensional character and the heart of the story, Gaiman gives the otherwise traditionally depthless fairy tale an extended feminist layer of meaning.

  Gaiman refuses to typecast Mrs. Whitaker as the wicked witch, wise crone, or benevolent godmother. He instead inverts the fairy tale roles and expands the value and role of the older woman. In this particular narrative, he devalues the quest itself, making the winning of the Grail—and I argue the winning of the knight’s heart and eternal happiness—of marginal importance. Moreover, Mrs. Whitaker does not behave the way we might expect: she is neither threatening nor overly maternal, despite her regard for the young Marie and Galaad. This shows Gaiman’s sophisticated treatment of the childless widow as a character type. He subtly questions the unnatural nature of the immortality offered in fairy tales and myths through the decisions Mrs. Whitaker faces at the climax of the story. Mrs. Whitaker exists outside traditional fairytale female roles—villainess, princess, mother, and wife—and Gaiman does not place her in traditional male roles either. She is her own category.

  The Story

  Gaiman wrote “Chivalry” for inclusion in a collection of Grail stories.1 The story begins as Mrs. Whitaker explores a local secondhand store where she finds the Holy Grail among stale and musty clothes. With it is “a water-stained copy of Romance and Legend of Chivalry by A. R. Hope Moncrieff,” a collection of medieval stories and illustrations of chivalric romance (“Chivalry” 34). Mrs. Whitaker purchases the Grail along with two Mills & Boon romance novels—the British equivalent of American Harlequin or Silhouette novels: category romances produced in short but frequent publishing runs. Mrs. Whitaker’s incongruous purchase of an incredibly historic, religious, and mythological object alongside rather pedestrian and popular novels is humorous. Yet it also shows Mrs. Whitaker’s desire for romance, both in literature and in life.

  Once she returns home with her purchases, Mrs. Whitaker meticulously polishes the Grail and carefully considers where to display it. She finally selects the ideal location between a “small soulful china basset hound and a photograph of her late husband, Henry, on the beach at Frinton in 1953” (35). Mrs. Whitaker’s treatment of the sacred object is notable. She does not hoard it, isn’t concerned it might be stolen, and doesn’t exhibit it as a grand treasure. Instead, she displays it on her mantelpiece as any other middle-class widow might showcase a thrift-store find or similar piece of kitsch; her aesthetic reasoning goes only as far as to say that the grail “looks nice” there.

  Whitaker is fully aware of the value of what she has purchased for only 30 pence. She tells her friend, Mrs. Greenberg, about the Grail’s Biblical history. However, she discusses the Holy Grail as if it were of equal importance to everyday matters such as who Mrs. Greenberg’s son is dating. She employs the same casual attitude even at the next appearance of the fantastic or medieval in the form of a young man at her front door. He appears with “shoulder-length hair so fair it was almost white, wearing gleaming silver armor, with a white surcoat,” and introduces himself as Galaad, explaining that he is on a quest for the Grail (“Chivalry” 36). Up until this point in the story, Mrs. Whitaker has been presented as benevolent and polite, very quotidian in her pensioner’s ways.

  Gaiman subtly plants the seeds of Mrs. Whitaker’s neutrality—her disinterest in Galaad’s Grail quest—so it is not surprising to the reader when she refuses to yield the Grail to him immediately upon his request. She declines politely, stating, “I rather like it there. It’s just right, between the dog and the photograph of my Henry” (“Chivalry” 37). When Galaad offers gold for the Grail, she declines more sharply, emphasizing that her motivations are eccentric but not greedy or unreasonable. This distinction is an important one: Gaiman is careful to convey Mrs. Whitaker as sane and courteous, with her own code of ethics, never grasping or dotty. While Mrs. Whitaker’s advanced age is apparent in her physical description and bearing, Gaiman does not depict it as a mental weakness, nor does Galaad regard her as an intellectual inferior. Her reasoning might be irrational—or at least not profit-seeking—but her manner remains polite. Just as Galaad’s code of chivalry may seem outdated to us now, Mrs. Whitaker’s code too might seem misplaced to the reader, but the knight and the widow recognize in each other strong senses of fair conduct and treat each other well.

  Galaad does not regard Mrs. Whitaker as if she must be handled delicately, nor does he treat her as a villain to be defeated, but as a gatekeeper of sorts—one to be appeased. For this reason, he brings an item to exchange for the Grail when he returns a few days later: the mystical sword Balmung. Again, Mrs. Whitaker respectfully declines, though she admits to herself that her late husband Henry would have wanted the sword to hang on the wall and show off to visitors. Before they discuss the exchange, she has Galaad perform gardening chores for her, and afterward, she packs food for him: “Mrs. Whitaker made him some cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches for the journey back and wrapped them in greaseproof paper. She gave him an apple for Grizzel [his horse]. He seemed very pleased with both gifts.” The food and hospitality demonstrate Mrs. Whitaker’s courtesy and benevolence, despite her disinterest in Galaad’s quest. Another person might have taken advantage of Galaad’s chivalry and asked for his help in exchange for nothing. Gaiman carefully layers and develops Mrs. Whitaker’s character, establishing her need for company without making her appear desperate for human contact. For example, she is happy in her routines when the story begins, not lonely. In addition, she offers a type of hospitality that is independent of maternal care-taking. Like any host or hostess in the Age of Chivalry, Mrs. Whitaker provides for a traveler and his horse.

  Denied the Grail, Galaad departs, only to return with another offer. Where Galaad goes between his visits with Mrs. Whitaker isn’t clear, though it becomes apparent when Mrs. Whitaker next sees Marie that Galaad has encountered her. Gaiman reveals much in a simple exchange between the two women a few days later, by which time Marie has improved her appearance, dressing in “a rather smart skirt” and wearing lipstick, although “possibly not the best shade for her, nor particularly expertly applied.” Mrs. Whitaker opines, “It was a great improvement” (“Chivalry” 41). Marie inquires, none-too-subtly:

  “There was a man in here last week, asking about that thing you bought. The little metal cup thing. I told him where to find you. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No, dear,” said Mrs. Whitaker. “He found me.”

  “He was really dreamy. Really, really dreamy,” sighed Marie, wistfully. “I could
of gone for him.

  “And he had a big white horse and all,” Marie concluded. She was standing up straighter as well, Mrs. Whitaker noted approvingly [41].

  We have no reason to believe, from Marie’s observation that Galaad was “dreamy” or from her description of their interaction, that Galaad expressed any interest in Marie. It is not particularly surprising that a seventeen-year-old girl—especially the kind of adolescent who reads fashion magazines like Marie’s Modern Woman with its “Reveal Your Hidden Personality” questionnaire—would endeavor to improve and feminize her appearance in the hopes of having a second interaction with an attractive young man. If Gaiman’s Galaad is following the path of the traditional Galahad, at this point he is still virginal and disinterested in sex. In fact, part of the traditional definition of chivalry, as quoted in the above epigraph from the Oxford English Dictionary, is a disinterested devotion to serving women, meaning a knight of Galaad’s virtue would be doubly unlikely to interrupt his quest to romance Marie.

  Galaad returns to Mrs. Whitaker’s home a third time—a typical number in many fairy tales2—after a longer period of days, and offers three gifts to Mrs. Whitaker in exchange for the Grail. First is the Philosopher’s Stone, the supreme object of alchemy, “which our forefather Noah hung in the Ark to give light when there was no light” (“Chivalry” 43). Second is an egg from a phoenix, and third is one of the Apples of Life from the garden of the Hesperides, nymphs who guarded the golden fruit with the aid of a dragon. Here too a fairy tale notion of guarded treasure is evoked through a specific example from classical myth. “One bite from it will heal any illness or wound, no matter how deep,” promises Galaad, “a second bite restores youth and beauty; and a third bite is said to grant eternal life” (44). Adding to the fairy tale atmosphere in these scenes are the nested threes: this is Galaad’s third visit, he has come bearing three gifts, the third of which offers three levels of blessings and was guarded by three nymphs.

  Mrs. Whitaker considers the offered treasures, pondering the possibility of eternal youth, and realizes, for the first time in full force, how virile the young Galaad sitting before her is. However, Mrs. Whitaker accepts the Philosopher’s Stone and the Phoenix’s Egg, not for their mystical or supernatural properties, but for their aesthetics: “They’ll look nice on the mantelpiece. And two for one’s fair, or I don’t know what is” (“Chivalry” 45).

  The story could have ended here, the dragon-proxy having yielded the prize to the hero, but instead the undefeated Mrs. Whitaker continues about her business, including another weekly visit to the secondhand store. Marie has abandoned her post as shopgirl to elope with Galaad (a departure from a traditional Grail quest, in which Galahad remains a virgin3). If the story is read as a romance, ending with a romantic pairing or wedding is typical and predictable. In turn, if “Chivalry” is read as a fairy tale, one may have expected this tidy resolution.

  Finding the Fairy Tale

  Pinpointing the fairy tale nature of “Chivalry” and defining it as such requires one to delineate the essential features of the genre. Maria Tatar, chair of the Program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University and author of The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, offers several useful definitions for understanding fairy tales. According to Kate Bernheimer, founder and editor of Fairy Tale Review, Tatar’s definitions are useful, particularly her “description of fairy tales as domestic myths.”4 Bernheimer offers that fairy tales may be recognized by the artistic techniques used in their craft: “abstraction, depthlessness, everyday magic, [and] intuitive logic.” While Bernheimer approaches defining fairy tales as an author and an editor—from the perspective of craft—these same elements are present in the more traditionally-framed definition from folklore scholar Stith Thompson. According to Thompson, a fairy tale involves “a succession of motifs or episodes. It moves in an unreal world without definite locality or definite characters, and is filled with the marvelous. In this never-never land, humble heroes kill adversaries, succeed to kingdoms and marry princesses” (8).

  It is both possible and useful to apply these definitions to “Chivalry” as a contemporary fairy tale. “Chivalry” is a domestic myth, a widow’s encounter with an Arthurian knight out of place and time. Gaiman offers a few glimpses of the otherworldly in an otherwise very grounded, middle-class setting. “Chivalry” includes all of the elements of a fairy tale as well as some of its most common tropes. For instance, when Bernheimer describes fairy tale abstraction, she analyzes both the dreaminess of tone and the very specific idea of separation or extraction. Gaiman performs this abstraction by removing Galahad from the Grail stories and relocating him to an unspecified British suburb. Although the story is contemporary, it does not offer a precise time or a “definite locality” where these events unfold, to use Thompson’s term.5 The story seems relatable, and yet unreleal; it is a type of fantasy, “a distorting mirror ... and a concealing mirror, set at forty-five degrees to reality, but ... a mirror nonetheless, which we can use to tell ourselves things which we might not otherwise see” (Gaiman “An Introduction” 2). In the public scenes of “Chivalry,” a knight on horseback comes and goes without question, drawing the attention of the town’s children and eventually sweeping Marie off her feet, but not drawing any attention from the authorities. Gaiman has stripped this world of the details that would fetter the story, those details that would have given it a dimension of realism and, I argue, would have kept it from being a fairy tale, a discrete form of the fantasy genre. The magic (per Bernheimer) and the marvelous (per Thompson) is treated as mundane by the characters in the story, from the children and passersby to Mrs. Whitaker’s friend, Mrs. Greenberg. For example, upon hearing the story of the Grail’s role in the Last Supper and Crucifixion, Mrs. Greenberg remarks, “I wouldn’t know about that, but it’s very nice. Our Myron got one just like that when he won the swimming tournament, only it’s got his name on the side.”

  In many short stories, regardless of genre, secondary and tertiary characters like Mrs. Greenberg receive little development, but in “Chivalry,” even Galaad and especially Marie remain two-dimensional in an example of the fairy tale crafting technique Bernheimer refers to as depthlessness. Readers rarely learn the details or motivations behind secondary characters that might explain why a “wicked witch” behave the way she does. This is because offering more background to explain villainy would transform the villain from archetype or trope into character: relatable and too real. This observation holds true of many fairy tale figures: Why does Mother Gothel want the baby who grows to be Rapunzel? Why does the handmaid betray the princess in “The Goose Girl”? Why does almost every stepmother resent her stepchildren, and why does every father bow to his new wife’s wishes at the expense of his children? Unexplained greed, senseless jealousy, and other character flaws like cowardice and spite are, like much of the characters’ psychology, “just so,” without reason. When more backstory is provided, such as when viewers are given a brief hint of Cinderella’s stepmother’s own trauma in the 1998 adaptation Ever After—a glimpse of her abusive childhood and cruel mother’s behavior—it detracts from the senseless and shallow vanity the character otherwise exudes by complicating that vanity and giving it depth. The psychology behind a character’s motivation in most fairy tales is too simple to be fruitfully interrogated the way it can be in modern fiction.6

  In this way depthlessness interrelates with the intuitive logic Bernheimer mentions—the idea that events in a fairy tale happen because that is how they are meant to happen—and it is not limited to the negative aspects of character. The fairy tale’s structure keeps the reader on the surface of Mrs. Whitaker’s character inasmuch as we cannot question why she is neither generous nor selfish with Galaad. Yet, Mrs. Whitaker is the only character who Gaiman develops in any significant way. She has dimension, motivation, and a backstory. As a result of this combination of intuitive logic and the breach of depthlessness, the reader understands Mrs. Whitaker’s position (wi
thout regard for whether the reader agrees or empathizes with her). Galaad’s motivations remain unquestionable. Only late in the story does the reader learn Galaad’s history, none of which necessarily explains his quest or his interest in Marie, unless the reader draws literary connections external to the story from the allusions within it. The text states:

  Galaad told Mrs. Whitaker about his mother Elaine, who was flighty and no better than she should have been and something of a witch to boot; and his grandfather King Pelles, who was well-meaning although at best a little vague; and of his youth in the Castle of Bliant on the Joyous Isle; and his father, whom he knew as “Le Chevalier Mal Fet,” who was more or less completely mad, and was in reality Lancelot du Lac, greatest of knights, in disguise and bereft of his wits [“Chivalry” 42].

  Certainly this is an atypical level of referential complexity for a fairy tale. The narrative stands alone without the references to Galahad and Arthurian lore. Readers might recognize names and places from other Grail stories here, but it is equally possible a reader might only recognize Lancelot’s name in the final line. Even avid fantasy readers may have seen more than a few variations of the original Grail stories because there is not a single medieval story from which the others derive: “There are so many medieval versions of the Grail Quest that none can be genuinely said to be definitive, and the tale has been re-written since the Middle Ages so many times that this is also true of modern works” (Young 171). In regard to Galaad’s genealogy as Gaiman summarizes it, Helen Young wrote, “The passage relies on knowledge of either Malory or T. H. White for its humour. The tone has a gentle mockery to it that is reminiscent of White, but it is impossible to determine from this passage, or indeed any other, which canonical text of the Arthurian corpus Gaiman might be referencing” (Young 171). The story does not require readers to draw specific connections in order to follow the story; in fact, Gaiman almost certainly didn’t intend for “Chivalry” to have a single definitive interpretation. Overall, Galaad’s actions are guided by intuitive logic on the one hand and abstractions from literary history on the other, no matter whether a reader is well-read in Grail-lore or recognizes Galahad at all.