Volume 21 Number 1 Article 2 Summer 7-15-1995 T.H. White's Defence of Guenever: Portrait of a "Real" Person Amanda Serrano Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Serrano, Amanda (1995) "T.H. White's Defence of Guenever: Portrait of a "Real" Person," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 21 : No. 1 , Article 2. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol21/iss1/2 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 Analyzes T.H. White’s characterization of Guenever, with detailed discussions of differences and similarities to Malory and Tennyson. Additional Keywords Arthurian myth; White, T.H.—Characters—Guenever; White, T.H. The Once and Future King 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/vol21/iss1/2 cpyQ RnoRe Issue 79 °*> JSucocoeR 19 9 5 p A Q e 9 10)c§{pgM ]© I ® (p (S&KSIHkSW SDSg ip®Dsmsinr ©a? & ”IEfci&L“ U3@ds©@n) < 9 c d a n Q a JS e R R A .N O n the recent film The Fisher King the question is asked No longer delicate, fair, eternally young and beautiful, as I "Where would Arthur have been without Guinev­ she had seemed in Malory and Tennyson, White's Guenever ere?"1 The answer given in the film is "Happily married, is dark, robust, still beautiful, but soon aging. In short, she is probably." Judging from audiences I have sat with in the a "real" person, rather than the physical Ideal of Woman. film, this also appeared to be a general instinctive reaction. Where Malory had portrayed her simply as the King's con­ Guinevere has been a much maligned figure in literature. sort, and Tennyson as a creature of impulse and self-indul­ Most people are familiar with the legend of King Arthur: gence, White gives Guenever a 'think-and-feel' reality. The the best-known aspects being the affair between Guinev­ episode (HI.4.331) when Lancelot realizes that he has hurt her ere and Lancelot, the Round Table and the Grail Quest. But provides a significant example of this quality. it is the love story which has become crucial, and around As in Malory, Guenever does not formally appear in which the rest of the story revolves: it destroys the fellow­ her own right until well into the work. But from her initial ship of the Round Table, and disqualifies Lancelot from appearance she is a maJor player. The reader is first intro­ achieving the Grail. duced to her in Book III, chapter 4, and it is, significantly, Throughout the ages Guinevere has epitomized the when she is introduced to the young Lancelot: Faithless Wife, as Kenneth Webster asserts.2 Guinevere's There is a story that her hair was yellow, but it was not. It infamy is further established by Margaret J.C. Reid, citing was so black that it was startling, and her blue eyes, deep and Arthur Rhys' statement that "in Wales to call a girl Guinev­ clear, had a sort of fearlessness which was startling too. She ere is to accuse her of wantonness."3 Regardless of the was surprised by the young man's twisted face, but not literary period, Guinevere, to varying degrees, has always frightened. (III.4.327) been 'the secret and crucial enemy of Camelot'.4 Surpris­ White's description of her is a radical subversion of her ingly, even today, in our age of moral and literary respect traditional image, implying a certain strength, intelligence for female motivations, many critics still take this narrow­ and hardihood which is absent from earlier Guineveres. minded and simplistic view of Arthur's Queen: they per­ Those blond Guineveres, very fair of skin and delicate of sist in expecting each version of the Arthurian story to body, offer the image of the helpless woman, there to be present a queen more or less like Tennyson's adaptation protected by her man.7 White's Guenever is inherently less of Malory's Guinevere. But since T.H. White's epic revi­ feminine, in this passive sense, than her traditional counter­ sionist work, it has become increasingly difficult to cate­ parts. Indeed, Arthur's summation of her "three great virtues gorize Guinevere as the Unfaithful Wife; her recent por­ . courage, generosity and honesty" (DI.16.386) affirms the trayals (especially by the current wave of feminist writers) less negatively 'feminine' aspects of her character. Further­ are far more sympathetic than ever before. more, Guenever refuses to be categorized by 'delicacy', evi­ This paper does not attempt in any way to re-evaluate denced in her reaction to Gawaine in HI.18.435. Here, both Medieval Arthurian material. My work analyses T.H. Arthur and Guenever refute the artificial delicacy and na­ White's essentially mimetic twentieth-century charac­ ivete so often imposed on women; clearly, the narrator him­ terization of Guenever, with detailed discussions of three self disapproves of such condescension. maJor predecessors. Attributes allied to Guenever's natural strength and T.H. White's tetralogy, The Once and Future King, offers hardiness are seen in her practicality and wisdom. White's the first full-length modem psychologically-based inter­ Guenever will not allow herself to be openly indiscreet pretation of Arthur's Queen, whom White calls Gue­ (IV.4.536). And when she is ambushed and abducted by never. White based his work directly on Malory's Morte Meliagrance (IH.41.494-5), "the Queen had kept her head", D'Arthur, and, in the course of the work, White frequently not only bargaining with her abductor for the tending of compares himself to his predecessors, most notably her wounded knights, but discreetly and quickly sending Malory and Tennyson, for example, in IV.3.524,529. From a young page for help. such authorial comments, it can be conJectured that White Later, in Book IV chapter 12, Guenever escapes Mor- meant his Arthuriad to be a radical revision or even sub­ dred's quasi-incestuous advances by barricading herself version of the traditional versions of the story, and of in the Tower of London, having slipped out of his grasp contemporary sentimentalizations of history — and leg­ under the effective pretext of buying her trousseau. This end. And so it is, particularly with regard to his portrayal image of the Queen besieged in the Tower is a traditional of the protagonists.6 one, used by Malory (Book Vm, "The Day of Destiny", P a.Q0 10 Is s u e 79 J0»ucocr>eR 1995 707), but never before had it been deployed to illustrate of Guinevere's portrayal, in either older or recent works. her acuity and decisiveness. Her Tennysonian counterpart Geoffrey and his direct successors Wace and Layamon shows a similar practical streak, but she is far more mali­ have Guinevere openly deserting Arthur for Mordred and cious and contemptuous in her reasoning. This is indi­ then fleeing to a nunnery when Mordred is defeated. Both cated, for example, in her rebuke of Lancelot's indiscretion Malory and Tennyson, White's direct positive and nega­ in "Lancelot and Elaine" (lines 97-101,144-57). tive influences, give Guinevere the virtue of generosity, but in a very limited way. Tennyson is particularly cau­ White's Guenever is physically very different from her tious in attributing qualities to his Guinevere: she only traditional counterparts: she ages, and her aging is far becomes virtuous after she has been "blessed" by Arthur from graceful. She retains some of her natural and famous and has lived a life of penance in the convent ("Guinev­ beauty, but with age comes a certain amount of physical ere", 663-92). Malory's acceptance of a Courtly-love di­ insecurity for Guenever, and she can be, at times, a pathetic mension (which first appeared in Chretien and the Vul­ figure. When she appears at Lancelot's homecoming, Book gate) and a Christian overview makes tragedy rather than III, chapter 32, she tries to "defy the invincible doom of mere guilt an outcome of Guinevere's story. Her tragedy human destiny" by recourse to "bad make-up and loud is further heightened when Mordred, and not Lancelot, is silks" (p. 455). Both she and Lancelot feel her insecurity in Arthur's replacement as her intended husband and King. the situation — which, ironically, makes her more inse­ Thus, her retreat into the convent can be seen, not as an act cure. She has become a parody of the beautiful, proud and of cowardice or penance, as in Tennyson, but as part of her stately queen she once was. It is only when she can come "central tragedy": she takes the only safe option open to a to terms with her ageing, and the fact that Lancelot loves woman in her position and of her standing.