At first glance the women in Arthurian Myths appear to be passive and unassuming but later it is revealed that there is more to the story. This paper will look at the women of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Morte D’ Arthur.
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the three female characters are Guinevere, Lady Bertilak and Morgana Le Fay. The first woman we meet is Guinevere and she is the embodiment of a confined woman. She is described as “moving gaily among them, taken her place on the dais, which was adorn with silk sides and a canopied ceiling of sheer lace, and behind her was glimmering tapestries from Tarsus, embroidered, and bedecked with the brightest and most expensive gems the jewelers could find’ (SGGK lines 74-81). The presence of Guinevere is so insubstantial that one soon forgets about her.
Next we have Lady Bertilak, who is quite different then Guinevere as she is described as being fairer than Guinevere and more harmonious and agreeable, than the silent, refined and somber Guinevere. Just as Guinevere is the dutiful wife Lady Bertilak acts as the temptress. Gawain himself likens her to many biblical temptresses including Bathsheba and Delilah. Lady Bertilak. Later after Gawain has behaved without honor and damaged his courtesy it is revealed that Morgana Le Fay had been behind everything and that she had wanted to scare Guinevere. It is in this that Guinevere herself gains some agency as one must wonder about Morgana’s motivation for going to such lengths to scare her. At the end of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight we realize that despite our first inclinations to dismiss the women as being inconsequential. We realize that that each woman has her own form of power: Guinevere’s power is in her silence and adherence to tradition, Lady Bertilak’s is in her seductive charms and willingness to bend tradition and Morgana’s power is in her ability to disregard all ideas of gender behavior as she controls and manipulate things, people and situations.
In Morte D’Arthur there are many women to examine but this paper is going to focus on Morgan le Fay, Guinevere, and Isolde. The overall theme of the poem when it comes to women is that their power, if they are given any comes from sex and is therefore seen as dangerous. In the case of Isolde, she is like many women in Medieval literature a pawn in the games of men. She is in love with Tristram but must be “given” to him by her father. Then she has no choice but to obey when Tristram decides to give her to Mark and then again when Mark allows Sir Palomydes to kidnap her. The only way that that she is able to exert any will of her own is by cheating on her Mark with Tristram, who is her true love.
Guinevere is the most interesting character because even though she is in many ways nothing more than a sources of motivation for the men around her. She both acts as the creator and destroyer of the Round Table and Camelot. In the poem her father gave to Arthur as her dowry a round table that could sit 150 knights and 100 knights and later it is through her affair with Lancelot that the Round Table is destroyed. Guinevere herself seems to be a truly volatile and unpredictable character and in many ways she comes off as though she is playing a game with him. She becomes angry that Lancelot sleeps with Elaine despite the fact that she herself is married to Arthur. She banishes Lancelot from Camelot because he defends the honor of other women, she also has him fight in a tournament even though he is injured and she gives him her favor, which basically opens the way for people to begin getting suspicious of their relationship. On top of everything else she has done to Lancelot she blames him for Elaine of Astolat’s death saying "myght have shewed hir som bownté and jantilnes whych myght have preserved hir lyff" (Malory 617.25-26). Guinevere despite her faults believes in justice as is shown when presiding over the tribunal in charge of deciding Gawain’s fate for murdering a woman decides that he must devote his life to women.
Finally, in Morte D’ Arthur we have Morgan Le Fay who is like Guinevere extremely confusing in her motives seeming only to exist as a foil for Arthur. She supposedly hates him and wants to destroy Camelot, for what reason is not very clear. Although it does seem in one scene with Accolon that she wants to rule Camelot. Despite her seeming hatred of Arthur, she is seen in the barge with him as he heads into Avalon. Another aspect of Morgan is that she is in love with Lancelot and spends a lot of time kidnapping him.
In conclusion in both Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Morte D’Arthur treat women very differently. In Sir Gawain the women promote the action without ever being the motivation for the hero’s actions. Gawain does not challenge the Green Knight for Guinevere, but for Arthur. Lady Bertilak continuously pushes the action between her and Gawain, which we learn at the end is part of Morgana’s game. Morgana herself is the ultimate promoter of action as she is the one that is behind everything. In Morte D’Arthur, Malory tends to treat the women more like pawns but he allows them their little pieces of power. Isolde has no control over which man she is given to, but she has an affair with the one she loves. Guinevere is the catalyst for many of the actions of the knights and Arthur, especially Lancelot. Despite the fact that she is a continual damsel in distress, Guinevere shows tremendous strength of character when it comes to her relationship with women, dispensing justice and dealing with Lancelot. Morgan seems like a generic villain; whose sole purpose is to be a foil to Arthur. This is because while she is powerful and ambitious and intelligent, but her motivations for her actions are rather unclear.
Works Cited
Greenblatt, Stephen, et al, eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ninth Edition. Volume 1. New York: Norton, 2012
Malory, Thomas. "Le Morte D'Arthur." Le Morte D'Arthur. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2016
