THE MYTH OF MORGAN LA FEY ARTHURIAN AND COURTLY CULTURES
Arthurian and Courtly Cultures explores this dynamic field through the great variety of literary and cultural expression inspired by the lore of King Arthur, the Round Table, and the Grail. In forms that range from medieval chronicles to popular films, from chivalric romances to contemporary comics, from magic realism to feminist fantasy—and from the sixth through the twenty-first centuries—few literary subjects provide such fertile ground for cultural elab- oration. Including works in literary criticism, cultural studies, and history, Arthurian and Courtly Cultures highlights the most significant new scholarship in Arthurian Studies.
Series Editor Bonnie Wheeler, Southern Methodist University
Published by Palgrave Macmillan:
Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children: Essays on Arthurian Juvenilia By Barbara Tepa Lupack
Forging Chivalric Communities in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur By Kenneth Hodges
Violent Passions: Managing Love in the Old French Verse Romance By Tracy Adams
Hollywood Knights: Arthurian Cinema and the Politics of Nostalgia By Susan Aronstein
The Medieval Author in Medieval French Literature Edited by Virginie Greene
Comic Provocations: Exposing the Corpus of Old French Fabliaux Edited by Holly A. Crocker
Writings on Love in the English Middle Ages Edited by Helen Cooney
Andreas Capellanus on Love? Desire, Seduction, and Subversion in a Twelfth-Century Latin Text By Kathleen Andersen-Wyman
Medieval Literacy and Textuality in Middle High German: Reading and Writing in Albrecht’s Jüngerer Titurel By Annette Volfing
Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Feminist Origins of the Arthurian Legend By Fiona Tolhurst
Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Translation of Female Kingship By Fiona Tolhurst
Morgan le Fay, Shapeshifter By Jill M. Hebert
The Myth of Morgan la Fey By Kristina Pérez THE MYTH OF MORGAN LA FEY
Kristina Pérez THE MYTH OF MORGAN LA FEY Copyright © Kristina Pérez, 2014. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-34025-2 All rights reserved. First published in 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-46480-7 ISBN 978-1-137-33298-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137332981
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pérez, Kristina, 1980– The myth of Morgan la Fey / Kristina Pérez. pages cm.—(Arthurian and courtly cultures) Includes bibliographical references.
1. Arthurian romances—History and criticism. 2. Morgan le Fay (Legendary character)—Romances—History and criticism. 3. Women in literature. 4. Mythology in literature. I. Title. PN686.W65P48 2014 809.933522—dc23 2013040065 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: April 2014 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For my parents This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS
List of Figures ix Preface: Never Dream of Regretting xi Acknowledgments xv
Introduction Final Girl: The Once and Future Goddess 1 1. How to Handle a Woman: Perversion or Psychosis? 15 2. Courtly Masochism 35 3. Monstrous Mothers: Morgan la Fey and Mélusine 55 4. Divine Mothers: Morgan, the Dame du Lac, and the Virgin Mary 73 5. What Do Women Want? Gawain and Freud 103 6. Fals lustes: Malory’s Mistresses 137 7. Follow Me: Beguiling the Victorians 159 8. If Ever I Would Leave You: Morgan in the Modern Era 183
Notes 209 Index 245 This page intentionally left blank FIGURES
Cover: Dora Curtis, Morgan le Fay with Excalibur, illustration from “Stories of King Arthur and the Round Table” by Beatrice Clay, 1st edition, 1905. (Color lithograph) © The Stapleton Collection 7.1 Frederick Sandys, Morgan-le-Fay, 1864 167 7.2 Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Merlin and Nimuë, 1861 170 7.3 Sir Edward Burne-Jones, The Beguiling of Merlin, 1874 171 7.4 Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Wheel of Fortune, 1883 174 7.5 Julia Margaret Cameron, Vivien and Merlin, 1874 177 7.6 Sir Edward Burne-Jones, The Flower Book—Witch’s Tree, 1905 179 This page intentionally left blank PREFACE: NEVER DREAM OF REGRETTING
have a precise image in my mind of the first moment I truly discov- Iered Morgan la Fey. There I was—an insecure, chubby thirteen-year-old girl—spending an unhappy summer stuck at camp in Michigan. The girl whose bunk was opposite to mine whipped out a thick, turquoise-hued tome emblazoned with the image of a woman on a white horse carrying a silver sword. Immediately, I was captivated. Who was that woman? I wanted to know. So majestic, radiating self-possession, embodying inner strength. And, more importantly to me at the time: Could I be like her? The image to which I am referring is the iconic cover of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon. The sword, is of course, Excalibur and the regal, ethereal woman Morgan la Fey. The sister of King Arthur, Morgan has been called by many names: Sorceress. Kingmaker. Death-wielder. Mother. Lover. Goddess. The old adage that warns readers not to judge a book by its cover did not hold true in this particular case. What I found between them, in the mists, was a passion that would fuel my adolescence. Ask any woman who grew up in the late 1980s or early 1990s if she has read The Mists of Avalon and there is a good chance that she has. At academic medievalist confer- ences, the admission that you might have first developed a love for your subject from a fantasy novel is usually accompanied by a blush and a private smile. It is a guilty secret that many of us share. More influential than the engaging prose of this novel, however, is the icon whose myth it retells: Morgan la Fey. Written during the height of Second Wave Feminism, the tale is intended as a feminist reenvisioning of a long-maligned female protagonist. It is a restoration project that seeks to reinscribe Morgan in her rightful place at the center of the male-dominated Arthurian canon. Whether or not The Mists of Avalon is to a reader’s individual taste, it can- not be denied that Marion Zimmer Bradley succeeded in restoring Morgan la Fey to the heart of the medieval—and modern—narrative. For me, this recuperation and validation of Morgan la Fey spurred my thirteen-year-old xii PREFACE self to ask, which other powerful women might have been lost to the mists of time? The world of Morgan la Fey and Arthurian literature opened up new possibilities, new realities that were a far cry from the stuffy, humid cabin in which I was forced to cohabitate with twelve other prepubescent girls for eight weeks. I was no longer in the woods just outside the cherry capital of the world; I was in Avalon. Where I was unsure of myself, Morgan was strong. As I grew older, I learned that Morgan la Fey played this role for many women of my genera- tion. She still does, and she always has. A few years earlier, one rainy afternoon when my homeroom teacher needed a break, my class was treated to a screening of the cartoon version of T. H. White’s classic, The Sword in the Stone. White’s retelling of Merlin’s training of the young Wart (Arthur) in preparation for his eventual king- ship exemplifies the Hero’s Journey. This hero is, of course, always invari- ably male. I remember an early indignation when Merlin easily foiled the schemes and machinations of Madam Mim, a stereotypical witch replete with hairy moles and a bulbous nose. She is power-hungry and conceited. More offen- sive than just her grotesque appearance and manner is the fact that Madam Mim is ultimately shown up as practicing magic incompetently. Where was Merlin’s female equivalent? A powerful, magical woman whom I could respect? She was noticeably missing from the narrative and I felt her absence. Only later would I come to realize that Madam Mim was in fact Morgan in disguise. The gap between Madam Mim and the Morgan la Fey found in The Mists of Avalon is a steep ravine with a sharp drop. It is in this space, however, that the origins and (d)evolution of Morgan la Fey within Arthurian narrative are to be found. By exploring the shifting portrayal of Morgan from Celtic Sovereignty Goddess to cartoon super- villain, we will find that real meanings and definitions are located in the place between two extremes. A passage from The Sword in Stone often quoted at high school com- mencement ceremonies is Merlin’s advice to Arthur:
“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake in the middle of the night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.”1 PREFACE xiii
But what of girls who want to learn and study magic? Arthurian tradition teaches us that Morgan la Fey and the Lady of the Lake (who are actually one and the same) “stole” Merlin’s learning and magic from him by offer- ing up something that he wanted even more: namely, themselves. Boys, it would seem, can acquire wisdom and knowledge of their own accord, but girls must trade sex for magic—or books. Nevertheless, in this volume, I will take Merlin’s advice. I will attempt to discover why the world wags and what wags it—how Morgan la Fey has wagged the world since time immemorial. My goal in writing this book is therefore twofold: to make an original contribution to the academic schol- arship surrounding this transformative character and to bring Morgan la Fey to a wider audience of Arthurian students and enthusiasts alike.2 And I will never dream of regretting. This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
organ la Fey has fascinated me since the tender age of thirteen Mand I am very grateful to everyone who has encouraged my pur- suit of this passion along the way. In particular, I am indebted to Professor Sarah Kay for her invaluable guidance during my PhD, which provided the basis for the present volume. I would also like to thank Dr. Geraldine Parsons, Dr. Michael Scott, and Dr. Nicola Jones for their assistance with Old Irish, Ancient Greek, and Medieval Italian translations, respectively. I am supremely grateful to my wonderful series editor, Professor Bonnie Wheeler, for steering this project so expertly, as well as Brigitte Shull and the entire team at Palgrave, including Rachel Taenzler, Ryan Jenkins and Deepa John. In addition, I am hugely appreciative of the support for my research that I have received over the years from Professor Bill Burgwinkle, Professor Christelle Taraud, Professor Sylvia Huot, Professor Derek Brewer, Professor Colin Wilcockson, and Professor Andy Orchard. And, last but not least, to my husband, Dr. John Henry Mozley, for everything else.