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Le Morte d’Arthur, book III
Feb. 13th, 2023 06:18 pmBopping along in Le Morte d’Arthur! In book 3, we have Arthur and Guenever’s wedding… which is instantly interrupted when a hart is chased through the hall by a brachet, who is chased by a lady, who is kidnapped by a knight!
So Arthur pauses his wedding feast to send out three knights to follow three quests: the quest of the hart, the quest of the brachet, and the quest of the lady who has been kidnapped by a knight. The rest of the book is more or less about these quests, because Malory is basically not interested in women and couldn’t care less a) how Guenever feels about marrying Arthur, b) how Sir Tor’s mother the milkmaid feels about being raped by King Pellinore all those years ago (“half by force he had my maidenhead,” she notes, and everyone’s just like mmm yes that explains why your oldest son is so knightly…blood always tells), or c) why a lady might scream when kidnapped by some random knight. “When she was gone the king was glad, for she made such a noise,” Malory notes.
(By the way, the lady turns out to be Nimue, the new Lady of the Lake, as Balin beheaded the original Lady of the Lake in book 2. By the end of book 3, Nimue has imprisoned Merlin in a tree, because he just will not stop pestering her to have sex with him.)
I can see why this book spawned so many feminist retellings. There is simply a LOT to be picked over here.
The other continuing theme is Malory’s hateboner for Gawain, who kicks off the book yearning to murder King Pellinore in a blood feud, never mind the fact that it will ruin King Arthur’s wedding feast. (His brother Gaheris restrains him by pouting that if Gawain kills Pellinore now, before Gaheris is knighted, Gaheris won’t get to help!) On the quest of the hart, he cruelly refuses to grant a knight mercy after a knight yields to him, then accidentally cuts off a lady’s head when she dives in front of her lord to protect him with her body. Then he takes the beheaded lady back to Camelot and everyone scolds him for being the worst knight ever and Guenever tasks him to be the knight assigned to look after ladies forever more.
So Arthur pauses his wedding feast to send out three knights to follow three quests: the quest of the hart, the quest of the brachet, and the quest of the lady who has been kidnapped by a knight. The rest of the book is more or less about these quests, because Malory is basically not interested in women and couldn’t care less a) how Guenever feels about marrying Arthur, b) how Sir Tor’s mother the milkmaid feels about being raped by King Pellinore all those years ago (“half by force he had my maidenhead,” she notes, and everyone’s just like mmm yes that explains why your oldest son is so knightly…blood always tells), or c) why a lady might scream when kidnapped by some random knight. “When she was gone the king was glad, for she made such a noise,” Malory notes.
(By the way, the lady turns out to be Nimue, the new Lady of the Lake, as Balin beheaded the original Lady of the Lake in book 2. By the end of book 3, Nimue has imprisoned Merlin in a tree, because he just will not stop pestering her to have sex with him.)
I can see why this book spawned so many feminist retellings. There is simply a LOT to be picked over here.
The other continuing theme is Malory’s hateboner for Gawain, who kicks off the book yearning to murder King Pellinore in a blood feud, never mind the fact that it will ruin King Arthur’s wedding feast. (His brother Gaheris restrains him by pouting that if Gawain kills Pellinore now, before Gaheris is knighted, Gaheris won’t get to help!) On the quest of the hart, he cruelly refuses to grant a knight mercy after a knight yields to him, then accidentally cuts off a lady’s head when she dives in front of her lord to protect him with her body. Then he takes the beheaded lady back to Camelot and everyone scolds him for being the worst knight ever and Guenever tasks him to be the knight assigned to look after ladies forever more.
