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Arthurian Wantons: Language, Lust, and Time in Victorian Poetry and Drama

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Arthurian Wantons: Language, Lust, and Time in Victorian Poetry and Drama Volume 17 Number 3 Article 5 Spring 3-15-1991 Arthurian Wantons: Language, Lust, and Time in Victorian Poetry and Drama M. K. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Louis, M. K. (1991) "Arthurian Wantons: Language, Lust, and Time in Victorian Poetry and Drama," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 17 : No. 3 , Article 5. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol17/iss3/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Compares several Victorian treatments of the Matter of Britain. Includes Tennyson’s moralistic version as well as “theologically and linguistically subversive” works of later Victorians. Additional Keywords Arthurian myth—Women; Arthurian myth in drama; Arthurian myth in poetry; Arthurian myth in Victorian literature; Religion; Sexual mores; Victorian literature—Style This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol17/iss3/5 CPgTHLORe Issue 65 - SpRing 1991 a n co n s Language, Lose, and Time In VSccoRlon PoccRy and B room CD. K. Louis The verse fantasy of the Victorian period was In tracing this development, I shall focus on the specific profoundly, often fiercely theological — or anti- issue of language, which will be found to illuminate all the theological. On the battlefield of Arthurian legend, the other issues that I mentioned earlier. Thus, while writers of the Victorian period conducted an argument Tennyson's Guinevere needs to learn Arthur's Christian about the value of sexuality, the sanctity of marriage, the language, William Morris' radiant and audacious nature of language and the nature of deity. Is sexuality Guenevere — the New Woman of Camelot — develops a lovely and valuable in itself, or is it valuable only when language which is as shifting, as unstable, and as beautiful directed toward the service of a higher good, within the as any other natural process; language becomes an exten­ sacrament of marriage? Should language strive to ex­ sion of the transient and sacred joy of bodily life. A similar press a stable and eternal vision, or should it embody contrast appears between the Iseult in Idylls of the King and and celebrate the uncertainty and instability of the the heroine of Algernon Swinburne's epic, Tristram ofhyo- world around us? Is God a transcendent being, beyond nesse, published in 1882. Unlike Guenevere, Iseult is an and above this world, imparting to humans an absolute unrepentant adulteress. Both Tennyson and Swinburne, system of morality by means of his sacred Word? Or therefore, present Iseult7s language as forever unstable, shift­ does the divine move through the cycles of the natural ing and twisting as it accurately expresses her varying emo­ world and the vagaries of mortal love? These are the tions. Yet to Tennyson this instability discredits Iseult even Issues with which Victorian poets were wrestling, and as a romantic heroine, whereas to Swinburne it marks the Arthurian narrative provided one of the vehicles for vitality of her love. This deep division between Tennyson's their debate. Accordingly, when Victorian poets used God-centered vision3 and the dynamic vision of his succes­ the M atter of Britain, they focused either on the quest of sors crucially marks the Arthurian literature of the period. the Grail, the quest for transcendence, or (more com­ monly) on the quest for secular love. Tennyson's idyll, "Guinevere," and Morris' poem, "The Defence of Guenevere," were composed almost Even Tennyson, Victoria's Poet Laureate, placed the simultaneously, in 1857-58, quite independently. Yet these adultery of Guinevere at the center of his Idylls of the King, two poems read as if they had been designed to defy and as the "one sin" through which the realm crumbles; since denounce each other. Morris' Guenevere is seen on trial, Tennyson's Arthur has founded his kingdom on a basis of defying those who accuse her; though facing execution if "maiden passion" and domestic fidelity, his order is excep­ convicted of adultery, she "stood right up, and never tionally vulnerable to this attack from within.1 Later Vic­ shrunk, / But spoke on bravely, glorious lady fair!" (55-6).4 torian poets — discouraged perhaps by the bland specter She speaks and is silent at her own will: "By God! I will not of Tennyson's "blameless King"2 — tended to avoid the tell you more today" (277). On the other hand, Tennyson's figure of Arthur as far as possible, focusing exclusively on Guinevere grovels before her offended husband, in the the lovers in Arthurian legend: Guinevere and Lancelot, classic pose of the guilty wife made popular by the paint­ Tristram and Iseult. Guinevere and Iseult had traditionally ings of Augustus Egg. And throughout their last inter­ appeared in literature either as adulterous whores or as view, she is silent with shame and love; while Arthur is icons of courtly love, in either case embodying a potent present, she says nothing at all. Indeed — until his and destructive sexuality. For Tennyson, such women as reproaches have brought her to a sense of repentance — Guinevere and Isolt debase sexuality by disconnecting it she has almost nothing to say throughout the Idyll that from the Christian sacrament of marriage, just as they bears her name. Earlier in the Idylls, she was fluent pervert language by disconnecting it from the stability of enough; then the language that expressed her love for Arthur's "large, divine and comfortable words" ("The Lancelot failed her, and in her last encounter with her lover Coming of Arthur," 267). These women are false to them­ the two of them could only sit "Stammering and staring" selves (again, in Tennyson's view), since they fail to em­ (101). At the beginning of the Idyll called "Guinevere," she body the moral idealism of King Arthur's vision. How­ has been publicly revealed as an adulteress, and has fled ever, in the poetry of the generation following Tennyson's, to the convent at Almesbury, hoping vainly to hide herself a new concept of the Arthurian heroine develops, and she in silence and invisibility. Yet, as one of the novices in­ becomes the goddess of a radiant and liberating sexuality, nocently reminds her, she cannot retreat into silence and able to connect her own nature and her lover's with the "weep behind a cloud: / As even here they talk at Almes­ pagan harmonies of the natural world. bury / About the good King and his wicked Queen" Page 32 Issue 65 - SpRing 1991 CPgTHLQRe (205-7). Presently Arthur arrives, to upbraid her, to (\Rt on Facing Page: reshape her mind and language. AR-PhaRa%6n DeFies rhe Ban oF rhe ValaR Tennyson's Guinevere must learn to alter her own language, to let her words acquire the stability of Arthur's see and worship God in him, to hear God's word through "simple words of great authority" (The Coming of Ar­ her husband's voice and to bow to it. thur," 260). Before Arthur's arrival at Almesbury, she thinks she has repented, for she has sworn, as she puts it, Implicit in all this are several assumptions to which "never to see [Lancelot] more, / To see him more" Tennyson's younger colleagues strenuously objected. ("Guinevere,” 374-5). But the loving repetition of her last First, Tennyson seems to assume here that the divine in words betrays her, and shows the instability of her resolu­ humanity is a restraining and controlling power — or, as tion; immediately, "from old habit of the mind" (376), she Blake would have put it (ironically), that "Good is the recalls her first ride among the flowers with Lancelot and passive that obeys Reason."7 Second, he implies that to her disappointment on meeting Arthur. Arthur then align themselves with divinity, humans must hear and seemed to her "cold, / High, self-contained, and passion­ obey a voice from above, must see by a light beyond them. less," colorless and remote from the imperfection of And, third, Tennyson suggests that the "warmth and "earth," and, therefore, less lovable than Lancelot (402-4, colour" (642) of human language and human sexuality 640-3; "Lancelot and Elaine," 131-4). At this point, how­ must derive from a superhuman authority, or be proven ever, Arthur arrives; and in a speech which (as George ultimately false, by their own evanescence. In short, Ten­ Meredith remarked) suggests the "crowned curate" as nyson turns the feudal structures of Arthurian legend to much as the wounded husband, Arthur imposes his own the ends of a traditionally hierarchical Christian vision of judgment, his own hopes, and his own vision of himself the soul's relationship to God. And this is what Morris and upon Guinevere's mind. Guinevere's reaction, when he is Swinburne refuse to accept.
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