The Once and Future Queen

by Nicole Evelina

  The influence of cultural and mindset shifts of the time are reflected in the story. As James Noble points out, writers like T. H. White and his contemporaries like Godfrey Turton often strove “to depict Guenevere with the psychological realism of the modern novel.”350 Brewer credits these novelists with creating a Guinevere who is psychologically complex, albeit neither as physically nor as emotionally appealing as the Guinevere who is to be found in the more recent novels of the 1970s and 1980s.

  Ross notes that “White takes a fairly standard Freudian approach toward his characters.”351 When applied to his female characters, the result is brutal. Brewer puts it bluntly: “White, for all the brilliance of his psychological analysis, belittles Guinevere as only a modern realist writer could.”352 While there is no explicit sex between Guinevere and Lancelot in this version, according to Brewer, there is a bit of Freudian influence to the relationship between Guinevere and Arthur—who functioned as a type of father-figure—and Lancelot, who is representative of the son the aging Guinevere couldn’t have.353

  In addition, the love between Lancelot and Guinevere reflects the psychological realism of the modern era, with Lancelot experiencing internal conflict and Guinevere tormented by jealousy. “Tender scenes between the lovers often end in the disharmony of misunderstanding,”354 Brewer notes. In keeping with the modern idea of psychoanalysis, White spends most of the story analyzing the motivations behind his main characters and the choices they make, which Brewer sees as part of the reason they can be seen in a negative light. “White, by contrast with Malory, sees the love of Lancelot and Guinevere as unfortunate rather than intrinsically virtuous. His main interest is in trying to understand and to explain the motivation and the relationships of the three participants in the love triangle…nor is there any redemptive power in their love; that is to come only from Arthur’s generosity and affection.”355

  White may have broken the physical mold of Guinevere (or Guenever, as he spells it) by giving the traditionally blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman dark hair and making her obsessed with aging, but otherwise, she is still the same weak woman who is dependent on the men in her life.356 Or, stated more strongly by Bonner, “White portrays her as incapable and idiotic, a clown-like figure at best.”357

  Many critics praise this portrayal as being the first where Guinevere is well-rounded enough to stand on her own as a character, and giving her a strength and intelligence not previously seen, but they still note the lack of internal insight into her character, especially at key moments like the three times she is threatened with death at the stake.358 One would think that at terrifying times like those, the reader would get a glimpse into Guinevere’s thoughts and emotions, but none is given, making her hard to relate to.

  As a result, this Guinevere is not a likeable character. She is petty, temperamental, and utterly devoid of sympathy for Lancelot’s intense spirituality, and prone to outrageous hissy-fits and exaggerations.359 In Bonner’s analysis, “Unlike the graceful and noble Guineveres of the past, White’s Guinevere is without manners. Her temper is not simply volatile as it was in Malory; it is extremely unbecoming. Furthermore, White clearly delineate [sic] Guinevere’s role in Arthur’s world as a subservient woman.”360 According to Bonner, White transferred all of his mother’s worst qualities on to Guinevere, especially her melodrama.361 White himself describes Guinevere in conflicting terms in his own journal from October 10, 1939:

  What sort of person was Guenever? She must have been a nice person, or Lancelot and Arthur (both nice people) would not have loved her…. And Guenever hardly seems to have been a favorite of Malory’s whatever Tennyson may have thought of her. She was insanely jealous of Lancelot: she drove him mad. She was suspected of being a poisoner: she made no bones about being unfaithful to Arthur; she had an ungovernable temper. She did not mind telling lies. She was hysterical, according to Sir Bors. She was beastly to Elaine. She was intensely selfish….

  Guenever had some good characteristics. She chose the best lover she could have done, and she was brave enough to let him be her lover. She always stuck to Arthur, although unfaithful to him, possibly because she really liked him. When finally caught, she faced the music. She had a clear judgment of moral issues, even while defying them, a sort of common sense which finally took her into a convent when she could quite well have stayed with Lancelot now that her husband was dead.

  Was this a piece of clear-sightedness or was it cowardice? One way to put it would be to say that she grasped the best of two men so long as she profited by it, but afterwards betrayed them both. When there was no more to be got out of the Arthur-Lancelot situation, she preferred the convent. The other way to put it would be to say that she finally recognized her ill influence and shut herself up.

  She was brave, beautiful…she had very little control over her feelings, which were often generous…. It is plain that Guenever was a woman of character. She must have been a passionate lover.362

  Elsewhere he writes, “She [Guinevere] is an Anna Karenina, but her trouble is that she has no children…. Guenever is one of the realist women in literature: not a Dresden shepherdess or any stereotyped figure, but somebody with a frightful temper, enormous reality, etc. She was beautiful, sanguine, hot-tempered, demanding, impulsive, acquisitive, charming…but…she was not promiscuous. She must have been generous too. It is difficult to write about a real person….”363

  It is interesting to note that in this quote White blames Guinevere’s personality failings on her barrenness. As Whitaker puts it, “He has found a motivation for the queen’s jealousy, boredom, and irritability in her childlessness and the menopause.”364 Because, of course, all a woman—even a queen—could ever want is to bear children. And when she can’t, she will be miserable because she missed her chance to fulfill her role as a woman. This smacks of the highly misogynistic attitude toward women prevalent in the late 1950s and early 1960s when White was writing. Ross argues that it should, because it was that very societal attitude White was railing against. “The narrator attributes Guenever’s demanding, erratic behavior to…a social code which does not allow a woman to be active, but forces her to stay at home weaving while her lover can wear out his passion on a quest.”365 However, it is hard to believe that White, a self-professed woman-hater, would use his story to speak out against society’s repression of women; it is more likely he was espousing the status quo.

  It’s not just Guinevere that White denigrates. He’s not particularly adept at handling female characters, making Elaine, Morgause, and Guinevere “man-eaters.”366 Brewer notes that White never found love himself, had “a mother he detested,” and very few female friends, so perhaps he could not positively relate to women.367 His mother issues were definitely relevant to his portrayal of Guinevere, which some critics, such as Ross, say he “overc[a]me in his loathing for women in order to create.”368 But in-depth analysis seems to show that Guinevere ended up worse off at White’s hands than she was in the Middle Ages under the pens of the Cistercian monks, Malory, and the moralizing Victorians. By the time White was done with her, Guinevere was reduced to a histrionic, bitter shrew of a woman who was jealous of anyone younger than her.

  White’s ham-handed handling of Guinevere was not only a sign of times; it was a warning of things to come. A hint of a soon-to-be-recurring theme in Arthurian legend appears in Chapter Nine of “The Ill Made Knight” when White goes to great lengths to try to explain Guinevere’s behavior as being in part due to a “made marriage.” As Bonner writes, “He indicates that ‘the system’ was first at fault. Guinevere was a victim of patriarchal society; she was never consulted about her emotions or ideas.”369 A few pages later, Bonner continues, “Underneath all her hot temper and her other trappings, she is a meek and subservient woman who wants only to satisfy and please Arthur and Lancelot.”370 Enter Guinevere, victim of the patriarchy, who will be with us through the early 1980s when the feminists finally pull her out from the shadow
s to shine light upon her character in its own right.

  * * *

  336 Whitaker, Muriel, “Unifying Makers: Lancelot and Guinevere in Modern Literature and Art,” in Lancelot and Guinevere: A Casebook, ed. Lori Walters (New York: Routledge, January 4, 2002), 159.

  337 Howey, Ann and Stephen R. Reimer, A Bibliography of Modern Arthuriana 1500-2000 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006), 15.

  338 Ibid.

  339 Ibid., 14.

  340 Raluca Radulescu, “Why the Legend of King Arthur Still Resounds Today,” Newsweek. February 3, 2017.

  341 Ibid.

  342 Though the middle class had begun to form in the 1800s along with the Industrial Revolution, it wasn’t until after The Great Depression and World War II in United States and the fall of the Edwardian country house power system in England after World War I, that our modern definition of “middle class” living began to congeal, helped along in great part by the G.I. Bill in the United States and the rise of a fourth class of professionals in England. See Roth, Mark. “The Historic Roots of the Middle Class.” Pittsburgh Gazette. November 20, 2011, for more information on this topic in the United States, and Perkin, Harold, The Rise of Professional Society: England Since 1880 (Routledge, 2016) for information pertaining to England.

  343 Mancoff, "To Take Excalibur," 259.

  344 Higham, N.J., King Arthur: Myth-Making and History (London: Routledge, 2009), 26-27.

  345 Brewer, Elizabeth, “The Figure of Guenevere in Modern Drama and Fiction,” in Lancelot and Guinevere: A Casebook, ed. Lori Walters (New York: Routledge, January 4, 2002), 279.

  346 Whitaker, "Unifying Makers," 159.

  347 Thompson, Raymond M., The Return from Avalon: A Study of the Arthurian Legend in Modern Fiction (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985), 41.

  348 Ibid., 43.

  349 White, T. H., The Once and Future King (London: HarperCollins, 1994), 478-479.

  350 Noble, James, "Guinevere, the Superwoman of Contemporary Arthurian Fiction," Florilegium vol 23.2 (2006): 197.

  351 Ross, "The Sublime to the Ridiculous," 327.

  352 Brewer, “The Figure of Guenevere,” 287.

  353 Brewer, “T. H. White,” 84-85.

  354 Ibid., 77.

  355 Ibid., 221.

  356 Bonner, "Guinevere as Heroine," 74.

  357 Ibid., 68.

  358 Ibid., 9.

  359 Brewer, "T.H. White," 79.

  360 Bonner, "Guinevere as Heroine," 66.

  361 Brewer, "T.H. White," 91.

  362 Cited in Brewer, "T.H. White," 87-88.

  363 Cited in Brewer, "T.H. White," 89, 92.

  364 Whitaker, "Unifying Makers," 163.

  365 Ross, "The Sublime to the Ridiculous," 328.

  366 This is White’s own word. See Brewer, "T.H. White," 78, and Ross, "The Sublime to the Ridiculous," 301.

  367 Brewer, "T.H. White," 79-80, 85, 88.

  368 Ross, "The Sublime to the Ridiculous," 301.

  369 Bonner, "Guinevere as Heroine," 70.

  370 Ibid., 73.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Guinevere, Victim of the Patriarchy

  (1960'S—Early 1980'S)

  Beginning in the 1960s, the women of the United States and Britain started to advocate for their rights, to demand equality with their male counterparts in the bedroom and the boardroom. Like all of the cultural shifts before it, this focus on women seeped into the Arthurian legend produced from the 1960s to the 1980s. Bonner shows how this affected the stories of this period: “After the women’s movements of the 1960’s [sic]…a different species of Arthurian legend was required. Not only are the female characters of the legends more fully, and some say more realistically, developed, but also some of the legends are now written by females.”371

  Female authors and scholars of the period, who for the first time had formalized women’s studies programs at colleges and universities to aid them,372 began to raise questions about traditional interpretations of gender roles and how they affect women’s potential for leadership, both in literature and in the real world. They began to realize that prevailing cultural attitudes toward women in the time periods in which Arthurian legend is set had a direct effect on how Guinevere, Morgan, Elaine, and the other women of Camelot are portrayed. According to Cooley, this affected not only the literary aspects of the stories, but the historical as well. “A secondary factor that plays into women’s leadership is the author’s interpretation of sub-Roman British society, because a general trend across contemporary Arthurian literature shows that the more heavily the new society of Camelot relies on Roman standards of gender (instead of ancient Celtic ones, whatever they were), the less likely it is that women will be accepted into any leadership roles.”373

  However, even if the novelists set their Camelot in Celtic rather than Roman Britain, that doesn’t mean women were treated as equals. Hoberg shows that many of them were still shown as subservient. “Like Tennyson’s Guinevere, these contemporary ladies are emphatically subordinate characters, competing unsuccessfully for Arthur’s attention—and the reader’s—with Merlin or Lancelot, or Arthur’s vision of a new world order. Bereft alike of political influence and personal magnitude, each of them is consigned to cloistered seclusion when Arthur casts her off, and narrative oblivion thereafter.”374

  Two very famous female authors of the period wrote surprisingly un-feministic portrayals of Guinevere in Arthurian legend: Rosemary Sutcliff and Mary Stewart. “These early women writers still spoke in the voice of male protagonists,”375 explains Roberta Davidson, implying this might be a reason for their lack of compelling female characters. Creating a strong Guinevere was not the intent of these authors, says Lori Walters. Rather, Guinevere’s reputation in these books “began with a desire to find excuses for her faults.”376

  Rosemary Sutcliff’s 1963 classic Sword at Sunset is groundbreaking in that it delves deep into Guinevere’s feelings and motives, especially around her more controversial choices, but it doesn’t show her as a strong woman, nor a particularly pleasant one. Hoberg and Gordon-Wise characterize her as a “sullen and neglected chattel bride”377 who tells her husband she’s “more likely to knife him in his sleep” than to become a clingy wife.378

  Sutcliff’s Guinevere (Guenhumara) is a lonely, often isolated woman379 who has very little chance at happiness, at least within the bounds of her marriage. Hoberg believes this contributes to her eventual infidelity. “Sutcliff develops numerous motives for Guenhumara’s adultery, beginning with Arthur’s reluctance to marry, his neglect of her emotional needs, and his absence during the birth and later the death of her child.”380 One has to wonder whether Guinevere’s marriage is a reflection of many at the time, which often were equally lonely and often emotionally distant due to societal conceptions of masculinity and traditional gender roles.

  Written roughly a decade later, Mary Stewart’s Merlin trilogy (1970-1979) was a bit more overt in its feminism, even though Stewart’s Guinevere is a “winsome but passive non-entity.”381 Despite Guinevere’s bland personality, Howey notes “Stewart’s novels tend to awareness of feminist issues through the representation of some of the female characters of the legend.”382

  Stewart plays with the Vulgate Cycle’s concept of the two Guineveres, making the women more than cardboard characters, yet not quite fully rounded. Howey explains, “Arthur’s first wife, Guenever, has been groomed for her role as Queen by Ygraine herself, and she demonstrates intelligence and political astuteness. Bedwyr describes her as ‘delightful. She is full of life…and she is clever…When she dies while miscarrying his child, Arthur grieves…Stewart makes Arthur’s second Guinevere share some of
her predecessors’ positive traits. She is also full of life and spirit; she possesses ‘a sort of outgoing gaiety and a way of communicating joy.’”383 In contrast, the second Guinevere’s position forces her “to create a public image to hide harsher realities.”384

  Those realities are that she is in fact a victim of both her husband and his society. As Walters writes, “Stewart attributes the queen’s major flaws of shyness and insecurity to the sense of dependency fostered by the patriarchal society in which she was raised.”385 At one point, Arthur even says, “Why even royal ladies are bought and sold and are bred to lead their lives far from their homes and their people, as the property of men unknown to them,”386 reflecting a clearly misogynistic and long-held idea that women are owned by their husbands and fathers.

  It is interesting that both of these writers approach their Guineveres with clear acknowledgment that they are living in a male-dominated world, yet neither of them seems to feel there is anything they, as the authors, or Guinevere, as a character, can do about it. Neither of them give Guinevere the agency to fight against or change her fate.

  That is left to future authors, who will challenge the patriarchal concepts these two pioneers had internalized. Inspired by the feminist movement and determined to reject traditional notions of patriarchy, female authors would soon begin writing what author Sara Cooley calls in her thesis “feminist Arthuriana.” She explains, “[it] is distinct from works in both the historical genre of Arthurian literature and the increasingly popular genre of feminist fiction because it usurps a pre-existing literary tradition and reclaims the canon for feminist ends.”387 They would do this by reinventing Arthurian legend yet again. As Amy Richlin “declares in her essay on feminist interpretations of ancient stories, women ‘can appropriate; we can resist. The old stories await our retelling: they haunt our language anyway.’”388