Listening to Guinevere: Female Agency and the Politics of Chivalry in Tennyson's Idylls

Abstract

qualities are projected onto an actual person. It is of course absurd to construct an individual-let alone half human population-as embodiment of a concept as arcane as the grand unnamable Fact that gives meaning to human life. Yet such a construction of woman has a long history. Codified initially by medieval courtly love tradition, myth of romantic love permeated western literature with a conviction that union with beloved will enable sexual, emo2 See, for example: Dino Franco Felluca, Idylls, Pure and Market, Studies in English Literature 37 (1997): 783-803; Debra N. Mancoff, To Take Excalibur: King Arthur and Construction of Manhood, in King Arthur: A Casebook, ed. Edward Donald Kennedy (New York: Garland, 1996), 257-80; Alan Sinfield, and Cultural of Prophecy, ELH 57 (1990): 175-95, and Alfred Tennyson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986); James Eli Adams, Woman Red in Tooth and Claw: Nature and Feminine in Tennyson and Darwin, Studies 33 (X989): 7-27; Marion Shaw, Alfred Lord Tennyson (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities, 1988); Carol T. Christ, Feminine Subject in Poetry, ELH 54 (1987): 385-401, and Victorian Masculinity and Angel in House, in A Widening Sphere: Changing Roles of Women, ed. Martha Vicinus (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 146-62. 3 Commenting in general terms on Tennyson's poetry, Shires observes that his texts subvert gender ideology. . . . Ideological contradictions are obvious in verse itself (Rereading Tennyson's Gender Politics in Sages and Cultural Discourse: Renegotiating Gender and Power, ed. Thais E. Morgan [New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 19901,49). This content downloaded from 207.46.13.184 on Wed, 19 Oct 2016 04:26:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms go Female Agency in Tennyson s Idylls tional, and spiritual fulfillment. The ideal of woman as ennobling influence gained especial force in Tennyson's era, which saw a revival of interest in culture of chivalry.4 Identifications of beloved with a promise of ennobling self-realization pervade Idylls. Yet throughout poem cycle there is a pattern of implicit, and at times explicit, criticism of ways Arthur and his knights exploit women of Camelot for their own ends. This exploitation follows a common trajectory: knight idealizes his female counterpart, and when woman does not live up to demands such a role dictates, she is blamed for his failure to succeed in world. Within allegorical schema of Grail quest, attainment of ideal woman becomes, like attainment of Grail itself, a figure for fulfillment of desire. In their dealings with women of Camelot, Arthur's knights exhibit behavior that ranges from Pelleas's naive infatuation to Geraint's jealous obsession. These varied responses to womanhood become comprehensible when knights' actions are read as manifestations of same passionate yearning. The narrative makes clear that each of these men is driven by a longing for atonement, which is a longing both for attainment of a unified self and for a submersion of self in a larger whole. Galahad's declaration as he embraces Grail vision illustrates paradoxical nature of this desire: If lose myself, he asserts, I save myself.'5 4My own investigation here of politics of chivalry in Idylls is indebted to rich body of existing scholarship that examines religious, political, and aesthetic aspects of medieval revival in England from late eighteenth century onward. Insightful general studies include: Debra N. Mancoff, The Return of King Arthur: The Legend through Eyes (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1995); Florence S. Boos, ed., History and Community: Essays in Medievalism (New York: Garland, 1992); Raymond Chapman, The Sense of Past in Literature (London: Croom, 1986); K. L. Morris, The Image of Middle Ages in Romantic and Literature (Beckenham: Croom, 1984); M. Girouard, The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and English Gentleman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); and Alice Chandler, A Dream of Order: The Medieval Ideal in Nineteenth-Century English Literature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970). For Tennyson's particular contribution to rekindling of interest in Arthurian legend, see: Clinton Machann, King Arthur and Violence of Manliness, Poetry 38 (2ooo): 199z26; Mancoff, To Take Excalibur: King Arthur and Construction of Manhood; Roger Simpson, Camelot Regained: The Arthurian Revival and Tennyson, 1800-1849 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990); Beverly Taylor and Elisabeth Brewer, The Return of King Arthur: British and American Arthurian Literature Since i8oo (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), especially 68-167; David Staines, Tennyson's Camelot: Idylls of Kingand Its Medieval Sources (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1982); Girouard, The Return to Camelot, 177-96; and J. Phillip Eggers, King Arthur's Laureate (New York: New York University Press, 1971). 5 Alfred Tennyson, Holy Grail, The Idylls of King, in The Poems of Tennyson, This content downloaded from 207.46.13.184 on Wed, 19 Oct 2016 04:26:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms