Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

Teaching English Language and Literature for

Secondary Schools

Zdeňka Dvořáková

C. S. Lewis’s and T. H. White’s Appropriation of the Arthurian Legend Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Filip Krajník, Ph. D.

2017

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..

Author’s signature

I would like to thank my family and friends for their patience and encouragement.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ...... 5

2. C. S. Lewis–– ...... 9

2.1. General Introduction to Author’s Life and Work ...... 9

2.2. Lewis’s Arthurian Bibliography and Sources ...... 16

2.3. Christianity, Celtic Elements, and the Characters of That Hideous Strength ...... 21

2.4. Social Criticism in the Space Trilogy ...... 33

3. T. H. White–The Once and Future King ...... 45

3.1. General Introduction to the Author’s Life and Work ...... 45

3.2. T. H. White’s Autobiographical Features in The Once and Future King ...... 49

3.3. Social Criticism in The Once and Future King ...... 59

4. Comparison of the Novels ...... 69

5. Conclusion ...... 74

Works Cited ...... 78

Resumé (English) ...... 80

Resumé (Czech) ...... 81

1. Introduction

The Arthurian subject matter has for centuries been in focus of literary critics and scholars as a legendary material which has been revisited numerous times by different authors, be it via poems, drama, or novels. Even though there might had been a real person on whom the legend was based, historical importance of his deeds had been transformed to a literary version of which is nowadays generally known.

Since the first literary explorers of the topic can be traced back to the sixth century, and the area has not yet been exhausted, a vast variety of sources and approaches to the legend has appeared throughout the ages. A development can be discerned from works written to please members of royal families in the middle ages, through works supporting political ideals, for example of the Tudors, up to modern appropriations where the main aim is to please the readers in general. As Stephen Dunn notes that

“Among the recurring myths of western man, adapted by each succeeding age to its own needs and tastes, one of the most persistent is the Arthurian cycle” (365). Not all modern adaptations of the Arthurian legend are merely fictitious pieces of art without any further purpose. Such modern appropriations, whose authors dare to critically comment on the affairs of the twentieth century and combine the real world with the

Arthurian legend, shall be discussed in this thesis.

Apart from the oldest appearances of King Arthur, for example in the Welsh tale called Culhwch and Olwen, there had been many other literary works that influenced modern Arthurian writers. The base of the version of the legend that is widely known nowadays comes from Geoffrey of Monmouth, who included the character of legendary

King Arthur in his Historia Regum Britanniae in the twelfth century. Even Geoffrey of

Monmouth had been part of the tradition of appropriating the legend for political

5 purposes since he wrote such a pseudohistorical account of British history to which his

Anglo-Norman audience could relay. The popularity of King Arthur can be seen also in other works by authors of the twelfth century; like Wace (Roman de Brut) or the French

Chrétien de Troyes, who in his Lancelot, le Chavalier de la Charrette (Lancelot, the

Knight of the Cart) invented the Arthurian plot as we know it nowadays. Later, in the fifteenth century, Sir Thomas Malory brought together the English and French traditions, with his Le Morte d’Arthur, which was first published in 1485. Malory’s compilation of the existing stories and his own added material has become an important source of inspiration for many authors, without the exception of the authors this thesis focuses on.

The list of modern Arthurian literature is overly extensive to be included in a thesis. It was, therefore, necessary to define a limited corpus of works. It is possible to find an example of an appropriation of the Arthurian legend in almost every literary genre nowadays, although the legend had traditionally been adapted mostly in dramatic works or poems. However, the renown of the legend has differed through centuries. The majority of literary critics and historians have focused on the first literary versions of the legend and the Middle Ages; therefore, modern adaptations of the Arthurian theme allow more space for further exploration. No sooner than by the end of the nineteenth century, had the prevalence of Arthurian drama declined and novels became the new focus of modern writers of the Arthurian subject matter (Lupack xxxiii). Elizabeth

Brewer has observed that “the impact of World War II increased a general interest in myths developed by various scholars and writers,” including the Arthurian legend (19).

Because of the increasing popularity of novels and the incredible amount of works with

Arthurian motifs published, the twentieth century was selected as the time frame of focus for this thesis.

6

As has already been suggested, novels, in which the Arthurian motifs were used by the authors to comment on their current social or political surroundings, are the subject of this thesis; namely works by Clive Staples Lewis and Terence Hanbury

White. The aim is to carefully examine the texts and provide examples of the social commentary that the authors probably wanted to share with their readers; furthermore, autobiographical features included in the novels shall be analysed, since the author’s personal engagement might have influenced the appropriation of the legend.

Specifically, the discussed novels are That Hideous Strength (1945), by C. S. Lewis, which is the final part of his Space Trilogy; and The Once and Future King (1958) by T.

H. White. The Once and Future King is a compilation of four novels of which the first three had at first been published separately; however, White decided to revise the first three and publish them together with the fourth novel in one book. In addition, White intended to publish The Book of Merlyn (published posthumously in 1977) which is generally referred to as the concluding part of The Once and Future King. The novel contains a commentary on World War II, however, since the final published version was not revised by T. H. White, The Book of Merlyn is not discussed in this thesis in such detail as The Once and Future King.

On the other hand, Lewis and White differ in the approach to the actual employment of the material of the legend. Lewis sets his story in modern settings and, even though the character of Merlin is essential for the plot, there are not many other

Arthurian characters present in the story. Then again, by this approach, Lewis represents a certain way in which the legend was appropriated in the twentieth century—instead of re-writing the legend, he works with the connotations that his readers would recognize.

In other words, Lewis works with a concept that Martin Moynihan calls the “idea of

Arthur” (1). Nonetheless, the novel is part of Lewis’s Arthurian bibliography and, apart

7 from Christian apologetics, contains significant amount of cultural criticism, as shall be analysed in the subsequent chapters. In contrast, T. H. White took the story of the legend and set in Gramarye—a fictitious country resembling Britain—yet with British kings alluded to as mythical or legendary. White directly concentrates on King Arthur’s story which is in his novels inextricably tied to the author’s contemporary surroundings mainly by Merlin’s remarks.

The thesis is divided into three parts, each of the first two sections focuses on one of the authors mentioned above, C. S. Lewis and T. H. White. Their life and other work that had a certain impact on the novels in question are provided as background information and other subchapters are focused on the cultural criticism in the novels.

The aim of the thesis is to provide evidence that some authors of the twentieth century follow the tradition of appropriating the legend in order to comment on the current social situation. Further, the paper attempts to answer the following research questions:

Are there any changes that the authors made in comparison with their predecessors or sources? What techniques do the authors use to transmit their ideas about the current affairs?

8

2. C. S. Lewis–the Space Trilogy–That Hideous Strength

2.1. General Introduction to Author’s Life and Work

C. S. Lewis is one of the most famous British authors of the twentieth century.

Even though he is mainly known as the author of (1950-1956) among the general public, he is of a higher importance to scholars as an erudite literary critic and Christian apologist. There are many reports about his life, since he himself used pieces of his past and personality to construct characters of his books, as can be seen for example in his partial autobiography : The Shape of My Early life (1955), where he calls himself Jack and outlines his reconversion to Christianity that took place around 1930. “He finally submitted himself to God, the most ‘dejected and reluctant convert’ in all England. This belief in God happened in 1929, but it was not until 1931 that he surrendered himself to Christ” (Art). Just seven years later, Lewis wrote the first part of his Space Trilogy – (1938). Since

Christianity plays a major role in the whole trilogy, and mainly in the last part That

Hideous Strength (1945), his reconversion is quite essential. Lewis not only reacted to past and contemporary events and literary works of art, but also inspired his successors in the field. Raymond H. Thompson, in his study of Arthurian literature, The Return from Avalon (1985), mentions as an example Sanders Anne Laubenthal, who borrowed the idea of hereditary “pendragonship” from That Hideous Strength in her own novel

Excalibur (1973), where a descendant of King Arthur has to find the legendary sword

(176).

Even though the trio of novels Out of the Silent Planet, , and That

Hideous Strength, is called the Space Trilogy, which calls for the label of genre science- fiction, the distinction is not so clear. Lewis does not attempt to scientifically clarify or

9 explain how does the space travel work; therefore, the novels do not really pertain to the genre of science-fiction. Lewis rather uses the scientific elements to express Weston’s arrogant nature when Ransom asks him about the space travel: “As to how we do it—I suppose you mean how the space-ship works—there’s no good your asking that. Unless you were one of the four or five real physicists now living you couldn’t understand: and if there were any chance of your understanding you certainly wouldn’t be told” (Out of the Silent Planet IV).1 Also, the description of the planets Ransom journeys to— and Venus—is probably far from reality. Thompson analyses various forms of fantasy in his study and places Lewis’s Space Trilogy in one of the groups of high fantasy—the

Mythopoeic fantasy (Return from Avalon 94). The mythopoeic fantasy is described as

“the most interesting and thoughtful [group, where] the struggle between good and evil is waged between powers. What we witness in these novels is but one often minor skirmish in an eternal conflict, though to its human participants it takes on great importance” (Thompson, Return from Avalon 93-4). The eternal conflict is in Lewis’s case good vs. evil, or rather the fate of mankind with God or with the devil. There are human participants on both sides and all of great importance. In addition, David C.

Downing lists a variety of genre labels that were ascribed to the trilogy: “utopian fiction, dystopian fiction, , and “anti­science fiction” (5). That Hideous

Strength truly might be considered an anti-science fiction, as the grand finale of the novel ends with almost all scientists dead and the scientific centre blown up.

On the other hand, Fiona Tolhurst notes that the trilogy is one of the very first examples of fantasy or science fiction and that C. S. Lewis had his own category for the trilogy, as he called it scientifiction (155). Apart from that, he names the last book a fairy-tale in the preface to mislead some readers: “I have called this a fairy-tale in the

1 Textual reference for the Space Trilogy does not consist of page numbers, since they are not available in the source material. The roman numerals refer to chapters and subchapters (where available). 10 hope that no one who dislikes fantasy may be misled by the first two chapters into reading further, and then complain of his disappointment” (That Hideous Strength preface). In addition to scientifiction and a fairy-tale for grown-ups, one more Lewis’s term is significant considering the style description, as the main character undergoes a certain spiritual voyage, Lewis called this narrative technique “theologised science fiction” and it was based on David Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus – Lewis “saw in

Lindsay new possibilities for using the popular genres of science fiction and fantasy to explore psychological and spiritual theme” (Downing 101).

C. S. Lewis’s novel That Hideous Strength is the third part of the trilogy and, unfortunately, the only one with Arthurian elements presented explicitly. Beginning with Out of the Silent Planet, which Lewis wrote as part of an agreement with J. R. R.

Tolkien when they realized that there were not enough stories that they liked published

(Downing 35). Out of the Silent Planet is a story of an English philologist Doctor Elwin

Ransom, who is unwillingly taken to Mars by two scientists, Doctor Weston and Doctor

Devine. Even though Lewis did not believe that the novel could be successful–he was scared that it was “rubbish before it was published” (Tolhurst 140)–he did not cease in writing the second book Perelandra (1943). Even though now the three books “are widely praised for their evident erudition, and even unfavorable reviewers of the trilogy have remarked on the clarity and polish of the author’s prose style,” (Downing 4), after reading the reviews of Out of the Silent Planet, Lewis claimed that the novel was unanimously condemned (Tolhurst 161). However, it was not the reviewers’ disapproval what he did not like the most, rather he was disappointed that just two out of sixty reviewers recognized his splendid supplementation of Christian motifs in the novel (Downing 36).

11

The Bent One is one of the holy figures that Ransom gets acquainted with on

Mars and he is told that the Bent One was banished to planet Earth and, together with bent Eldils (eldils are creatures resembling angels by description; therefore, the bent eldils following the Bent One resemble creatures from hell), is plotting against humanity. Lewis used right the first book to criticise social issues, namely

Evolutionism, further discussed in chapter 2.4. (Downing 36).

In the second book, Perelandra, the character of Ransom again travels through the universe, this time to Venus. However, this time he is not forced but willingly undergoes the transport. No one could doubt the Christian apologetics in this book since

Ransom openly compares what happens on Venus to the biblical story of Adam, Eve and the first sin. Doctor Weston appears in this book, too, but as the Un-man, representing the Devil, who is trying to persuade the Lady (Venus’ Eve) to disobey

Maleldil (Lewis’s form of God in the trilogy). The climax of the book is an image of what could have happened if Biblical Eve had not followed the snake’s suggestion.

In case someone would still doubt the Christian symbolism of the trilogy, Lewis took care of directly stating in the preface to That Hideous Strength that the book deals with concerns of angels and devils. Despite this statement, Christian symbolism is less evident in the book than it was in Perelandra. In this book, Lewis skilfully combines the age-long tradition that the Arthurian legend has been connected with Christianity with his own views and principles. Even though he does not use the typical elements like for example the quest of the Holy Grail, the central ideology of the novel is, that everything can be solved, if people redirect their thinking backward, towards the middle ages and Christianity.

One of the most untypical features of the book, considering the Arthurian legend, is the fact that there is no King Arthur. The main protagonist of the previous

12 two books, however, is present here, too, and he embodies the mythical Pendragon and the (Tolhurst 157). Nonetheless, the most important character that appears in That Hideous Strength and whose origins are in the legend is Merlin. Characters of the novel are divided into two groups. One working on creating a new world order, based on science and selection of the better and stronger individuals; the other one is a small group concentrated around Ransom, who guides and protects them and shares the knowledge of Logres which refers to ancient Britain – i.e., the Britain as it should be, deprived of evil. Both groups are searching for Merlin’s body, hoping to bring him back to life, as he is said to be the force which would help them achieve their goal. “It is evident that Lewis in emphasizing the eternal war between Logres, the Arthurian ideal, and Britain, the secular reality, is attempting to develop a symbol which will parallel roughly the war between good and evil forces, fallen and unfallen angels, on Earth, the silent planet” (Moorman 403).

The storyline revolves around a recently married couple, Mark and Jane, who

“should between them have begotten a child by whom the enemies should have been put out of Logres for a thousand years” (Lewis, That Hideous Strength XIII.III).

However, they are going separate ways at the beginning of the book, Mark towards the

N.I.C.E company (the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments) and Jane towards

Ransom and Logres. Nonetheless, it is slowly revealed that Jane is of a greater importance to both sides, as she dreams realities, has visions. Who gets her, has a better chance of getting Merlin, since her visions might lead to him. The importance of dreams is another sign of going back to medieval times, as back then, dreams were considered to have a meaning, or could be understood as visions of the future (Bitel 53).

The concept of Pendragonship is introduced after Merlin’s character appears in the novel. When the great druid Merlin comes back to life, he intentionally finds

13

Ransom at his own will, and before sharing any knowledge, asks him questions that only a Pendragon, an heir to the legendary King Arthur, can answer. Even though

Merlin’s power is great, he is not allowed to use it on his own, as the nature of Britain has changed, but he has to use the power provided by the Oyéresu (plural of Oyarsa).

Even though Merlin has for long been one of the Celtic remnants in the legend, as a great druid and magician, in That Hideous Strengths, he is a Christian, yet with the power to control nature.

The book ends in the victory of Logres when Merlin destroys the headquarters of the N.I.C.E., together with the servants of evil, Jane subjects herself to Maleldil / Christ, and is subsequently reunited with Mark to fulfill her duties of a wife, and Ransom is supposed to be taken back to Perelandra, where his wound shall be healed. The central idea of getting back to Christianity and medieval values is apparent and it is again part of Lewis’s personal philosophy, as Downing notes that: “one must simply turn and go back—to recover what has been lost, to reclaim ‘the truth in old books,’ sometimes even to repent” (22), and later concludes that for Lewis, “the need to look back, or to go back, took many forms: a return to the classics and neglected authors, to objective moral values, to a traditional Christian understanding of the universe and our place in it” (23).

However, his traditionalism has earned him critics (for example by Margaret Hannay) that claim his work being misogynistic.

In conclusion, this chapter has introduced the novel for the purposes of further analysis in succeeding chapters. It can be assumed that one cannot look at Lewis’s books without considering the author’s life and people around him, as his characters bear meaning in connection with some people by whom Lewis has been influenced.

Since it was made clear that Lewis used his characters to comment on modern issues and the story of That Hideous Strength is set “vaguely ‘after the war’” (preface), the

14 criticism of evolutionism, , and shall be analysed in the further sub-chapters. Another focus of the present analysis is the portrayal of women and the question of Lewis being a misogynist.

15

2.2. Lewis’s Arthurian Bibliography and Sources

Apart from the novel That Hideous Strength, C. S. Lewis wrote other works that count into the Arthurian literature in general. He had intended to become a famous poet and started writing poetry with Arthurian motifs before he changed his focus to novels.

However, some of his earlier works were not published, and critics have approached them only through preserved letters from Lewis to his friends. When considering the question of the source of Lewis’s Arthurian literary work, writers like Thomas Malory,

Alfred Tennyson, or Mark Twain appear. Lewis’s first Arthurian attempts are discussed in this subchapter, together with the works and the people that influenced his work.

Speaking of Lewis’s previous work, Fiona Tolhurst in her essay calls Lewis a

‘closet Arthurian’ and analyses Arthurian motifs in his work. Apart from That Hideous

Strength, he wrote several poems with Arthurian symbols, from which one was lost

(about Merlin and Nimue) and one remained unfinished—Lancelot (Tolhurst 140).

There was also an unpublished romance The Quest of Bleheris. Yet, Lewis’s Arthurian inspiration does not lie just in those works, as characteristics of some characters of the

Arthurian legend can also be found in The Chronicles of Narnia, mainly in The Voyage of the Dawn Trader (1978). Fiona Tolhurst has further added that “Margaret Blount had noted that [the last two chapters of the] Dawn Trader had a ‘strong Arthurian odour’”

(158) and then she examines the main characters: “Aslan’s role as a constant guide and intermediary parallels God’s role of protecting and guiding in the medieval legend.

Lewis’ novel also replicates the medieval story’s focus on the successful questers

Perceval, Bors, and Galahad” (159).

Critics, such as Fiona Tolhurst and David C. Downing, argue that Lewis derived inspiration mainly from Thomas Malory. However, he had certainly read more works

16 than just by the author of Le Morte d’Arthur. As a child, he read Twain’s A Connecticut

Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, which “was an Arthurian text that sparked Lewis’ romantic sensibilities when he was about eight” (Tolhurst 141). From this childhood experience that left in him the ideal of medieval chivalry, Lewis proceeded to Thomas

Malory, whom he read “at the age of sixteen, […] for the first time, and it had an immediate and lasting impact on him” (Tolhurst 142). In his later work, Lewis used the knowledge about the legend gained from the abovementioned authors and “his approach to creating Arthurian literature was to blend medieval Arthurian characters with modern issues” (Tolhurst 143).

Lewis also wrote another unpublished Arthurian prose romance called The Quest of Bleheris. A significant point about this piece of writing is, that “the protagonist himself as well as the protagonist’s adventures and ladylove is decidedly modern and anti-Christian” (Tolhurst 143). The fact that the work is anti-Christian sounds somewhat striking considering Lewis’s reputation of Christian apologetic. Even though it should be taken into consideration that Lewis was working on The Quest of Bleheris around 1916, thus before his reconversion to Christianity, still it refers to Malory, and it represents a significant step towards his later Arthurian prose, That Hideous Strength, as

Fiona Tolhurst has noted that this piece of prose “is noteworthy because through it

Lewis attempted to write a medieval romance from a modern perspective” (147). It can be suggested that the style of the text shaped Lewis’s further tendency to use Malory and other Arthurian writers just as inspiration, not really sources. Since he is moving away from the chivalric romance, as “the text debunks chivalric deeds as well as the idea of seeking adventure by traveling through the wilderness. […] Lewis’ knight can neither compose a ballad nor fight for noble reasons, for thinking of his lady Alice makes him feel ‘sick at heart’” (Tolhurst 147). Not only Malory is reflected in The

17

Quest of Bleheris, but also Twain’s work is of a significant importance, even though

Lewis claimed to keep from the reading of Twain just “the ‘romantic elements’ od the novel rather than any aspect of what he later called Twain’s ‘vulgar ridicule directed against’ the chivalric ideals of the Middle Ages” (Tolhurst 141). Such atmosphere in combination with an influence of Alfred Tennyson might have resulted in creating a

“nightmarish Arthurian world similar to that in Tennyson’s Quest sequence in The

Idylls of the King” (Tolhurst 147). Nonetheless, he seems to have abandoned Twain’s interpretation of the legend but “admired Malory’s Morte Darthur more and more passionately as he got older” (sic. Tolhurst 152).

Just as other pieces of C. S. Lewis’s work can be found in his letters, another lies in his literary criticism and mainly in the commentary of his friend’s (Charles Williams) unfinished Arthurian poem. “The motivation for this elaborate defense of an unfinished

Arthuriad was, perhaps, Lewis’ desire to save the reputation of a friend in a field –

Arthurian poetry –in which he himself had failed” (Tolhurst 151). Apart from that,

Williams, together with J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, had a great impact on Lewis considering religion and faith. Lewis noted that his friend’s Arthuriad “is both ‘wholly modern’ and ‘has grown spontaneously out of Malory’, thereby ‘penetrating more deeply’ into Christian truth than its medieval sourced could” (Tolhurst 152). Williams’s appropriation of the legend influenced Lewis, as the insight and understanding of

Christian truth is one of the central themes of That Hideous Strength. One of Lewis’s intents, was to persuade future readers, that there are certain truths and good values in the Arthurian legend, which are similar to his own (Tolhurst 152).

Yet one cannot stop only within points and authors of inspiration among the

Arthurian material. David C. Downing tracks traces of authors even further than to

Malory when he notices that Ransom’s journey resembles the one of Dante in Inferno

18 and one of the characters of That Hideous Strength (Curry) seems like Virgil (94-5).

Interestingly, Curry is the only person connected with N.I.C.E., apart from Mark, who does not die within the destruction of Belbury, which suggests that he is not pure evil as the others. For this and his role as Mark’s guide towards the inner circle or Belbury, he may be connected with Virgil. Nonetheless, in addition to literary inspiration, Downing finds in That Hideous Strength characters that have roots in Lewis’s friends or other people that were important to him. Even though one could suggest that the main protagonist, Ransom, is the one who represents the author himself, as he passes down the author’s values through all three books, the inspiration for this character came from elsewhere and is most apparent in That Hideous Strength. “On the whole, however, the

Ransom of That Hideous Strength does not resemble the author so much as he does

Lewis’s good friend Charles Williams” (Downing 119). One of Downing’s arguments is that Lewis would not put himself to such a holy position as Ransom has, on the other hand, Charles Williams was by his contemporaries described as “a living saint” (133).

Downing also describes other characters who echo Lewis himself and finds him in Jane,

Mark, Dr. Dimble, Hingest, and Denniston (119). Downing remarks that Jane feels so well when thinking about embrace of a nurse because she expresses the same feeling that Lewis had in such memory: “Throughout the diverse books of the Lewis oeuvre, the words nurse and nursery virtually always connote that which is simple, but also that which is true and good” (14). And Jane’s feeling goes: “now, for the moment, she was back in those forgotten, yet not infrequent, times when fear or misery induced a willing surrender and surrender brought comfort” (I.V). Apart from Charles Williams in

Ransom, there is Lewis’s childhood teacher William Kirkpatrick reappearing in the character of MacPhee (Downing 19).

19

In conclusion, the novel That Hideous Strength was not Lewis’s first attempt to contribute to Arthurian literature, even though it was the first successful one. His inkling towards the legend was formed already in childhood and derived from various authors. He got to writing a successful Arthurian novel through starting with poems and criticism. The path from atheism towards Christianity is visible in this branch of his work as well as inspiration in his friends, whose personalities can be seen in the characters.

20

2.3. Christianity, Celtic Elements, and the Characters of That Hideous

Strength

Even though the Arthurian motifs are not usually apparent in Lewis’s work at first sight, Fiona Tolhurst calls him a “Closet Arthurian” (140). For the majority of readers, he is known as one of the most influential Christian apologists. Therefore, it is not surprising that these two aspects of this creative mind merged in producing the novel That Hideous Strength. Combining Christian elements with the Arthurian legend is not a novelty. The form of the legend has been developing with Christian aspects, and king Arthur has been on the side of Christianity for a long time. The earlier Celtic components have existed side by side with the later Christian motifs and interpretations.

However, Lewis’s appropriation of the legend is quite different in this sense. Of course, he acknowledges that these two sides of the legend have to stay undivided, yet he works with them in a slightly different way than his predecessors. While concentrating on presenting his Christian ideals in the first two books, Lewis realized that maybe it is no longer possible, or effective enough, to work with the presentation of faith as such.

Therefore, he searches for a new technique for the concluding final novel of the trilogy.

Charles Moorman concludes that “Lewis, using the literary methodology of the science- fiction writer, is attempting […] to justify the ways of God to sceptical man by presenting the core of the Faith” (402-3). Lewis’s search for new means of presenting the Faith ends with the application of the Arthurian legend, “he presents orthodox

Christianity by means of non-Christian terms, but in his novel shifts his emphasis away from the silent planet myth developed in the first two novels […] He thus introduces another myth to take place of the cosmic adventure story—the Arthurian” (Moorman

403).

21

Merlin is usually one of the most prevailing Celtic aspects in the Arthurian literature, representing a Celtic druid. Lewis, on the other hand, made him Christian, and even though magic is usually perceived in his work negatively, Merlin’s magical power is an exception (Downing 75). Merlin is the most important character from the

Arthurian legend in the novel. If the concept of Pendragonship is not taken into account, there is no King Arthur in That Hideous Strength. However, claiming that it is not an

Arthurian novel without King Arthur himself would be exaggerated. Nonetheless, the

King is not the only person of the classic Arthurian ensemble whom Lewis omitted.

Although he does not directly speak about the knights of the round table, nor does he tell the stories of Morgana La Fay or Mordred, some characters at least resemble those from the legend.

Lewis grew up in a religious background, and even though he believed that God existed, it took him some time to entrust himself fully to him (Downing 27). In

Surprised by Joy, Lewis described his first perception of God as follows:

I had approached God, or my idea of God, without love, without awe, even

without fear. He was, in my mental picture of this miracle, to appear neither as

Saviour nor as Judge, but merely as a magician; and when He had done what

was required of Him I supposed He would simply—well, go away. (qtd. in

Downing 27)

David C. Downing notes that it might have been Lewis’s unwillingness to be imposed on what prevented him from surrendering to God completely and then points out that Ransom undergoes a similar journey in Out of the Silent Plant and Jane in That

Hideous Strength (27). However, Ransom’s journey reaches far beyond Lewis’s after he surrenders completely to God in the first novel. David Downing elaborates that what happens to Ransom on Perelandra has got some similarities with Christ’s mission on

22

Earth even though with different circumstances (51-2). After this voyage to Perelandra, where he surpasses the devil and witnesses what might have happened if Earth’s Eve had not succumbed to the temptation, Ransom returns to our planet rather changed. One could perceive his change rather godlike. When he appears for the first time in That

Hideous Strength, he is presented as some creature of higher existence, embracing icons and important figures as the king of all kings, called the Director. Jane is full of scepticism and pride when she is being led to the Blue Room, where she is supposed to meet the Director. She has decided that she shall not be misled by the curtesy of the others and fall for any dissemblance. However, everything changes when she steps into the room and looks at him:

It came over her that this face was of no age at all. She had, or so she had

believed, disliked bearded faces except for old men. But that was because she

had long since forgotten the imagined Arthur of her childhood—and the

imagined Solomon too. Solomon… for the first time in many years the bright

solar blend of king and lover and magician which hangs about that name stole

back upon her mind. For the first time in all those years she tasted the word King

itself with all its linked associations of battle, marriage, priesthood, mercy, and

power. Next moment she was once more the ordinary social Jane, flushed and

confused to find that she had been staring rudely (at least she hoped that

rudeness would be the main impression) at a total stranger. But her world was

unmade. Anything might happen now. (XVII.I)

At first, Jane sees the Director’s power unbearable, and she is frightened. Lewis emphasizes that her world was unmade by repeating the phrase several times in the passage. She unsuccessfully searches for her will to resist, and she is frightened, even though she finds herself in the presence of her protector. Ransom is not even presented

23 in this passage as human, or as a person, as whom Jane approaches him at first since he is deliberately called IT and Jane suggests that he might be an all-knowing creature, with the right to ask/know everything.

“You must forgive me for not getting up, Mrs. Studdock,” it said. “My foot

is hurt.”

And Jane heard her own voice saying “Yes, sir,” soft and chastened like

Miss Ironwood’s voice. She had meant to say, “Good morning, Mr. Fisher-

King,” in an easy tone that would have counteracted the absurdity of her

behaviour on first entering the room. […] She was shaken: she was even

shaking. She hoped intensely that she was not going to cry, or be unable to

speak, or do anything silly. For her world was unmade: anything might happen

now. If only the conversation were over so that she could get out of that room

without disgrace, and go away, not for good, but for a long time. […]

“And now,” thought Jane, “it’s coming—it’s coming—it’s coming now.” All

the most intolerable questions he might ask, all the most extravagant things he

might make her do, flashed through her mind in a fatuous medley. For all power

of resistance seemed to have been drained away from her and she was left

without protection. (my emphasis, XVII.I)

Only later does the reader realize that the Director is Doctor from the previous books. Ransom has returned from Perelandra with new knowledge and as a new person, since there had been no mentioning of Ransom being King Arthur’s kin before. Because the topic of the Arthurian legend has been mentioned at the beginning of the novel, the reader could suspect that Ransom’s reincarnation would be King

Arthur himself. Nonetheless, Lewis used a new concept considering the legend—he created the Pendragonship, providing King Arthur with a descendant living in the

24 modern world. Thusly, the character of Dr Ransom can newly in the novel embrace the

Christian symbolism which he has already possessed combined with the symbolism of

King Arthur and the Fisher King. Blending thus, the Christian myth and the legend of

King Arthur as Christ-like figure and Arthur at once.

As a Christian apologist, Lewis was not hiding his intentions with writing about faith and religion. He believed that audience is open to covert in text and it upset him when he found out that the idea of connecting the fallen Oyarsa with the

Devil was not understood by a majority of the reviewers.

Only 2 showed any knowledge that my idea of the fall of the Bent One was

anything but an invention of my own. But if there only was someone with a

richer talent and more leisure I think that this great ignorance might be a help to

the evangelisation of England; any amount of theology can now be smuggled

into people’s minds under cover of romance without their knowing it. (qtd. In

Downing 35-6)

It has been noted that the central idea of That Hideous Strength is, that “Britain can be redeemed if its people become ‘medieval’ again, embracing the Christian values that the Arthurian legend of the Middle Ages teaches” (Tolhurst 156). Such retracing is mainly represented in the character of Merlin, who is the key to victory for both sides of the novel. Both sides are searching for him in Bragdon Wood, where Merlin’s well lies and is said to be Merlin’s grave. However, no one anticipates that Merlin will find those who he wants to support on his own. As it was already mentioned, Merlin is usually a

Celtic druid in Arthurian literature, yet Lewis’s Merlin is a Christian. Actually, there are two Merlins in the novel. “Lewis’ creation of a double Merlin, probably inspired by the coexistence in Arthurian legend of both Merlin Celidonius (the wild man of the woods) and Merlin Ambrosius (the prophet), helps readers to see that not even the Fisher King

25 knows whether Merlin will choose the side of the good” (Tolhurst 156). However, the notion of dividing things into two opposites is mentioned even earlier in the novel than

Merlin appears, almost at the beginning when Jane listens to Dr. Dimble; and even there is Merlin said to be ‘something in between’:

You’ve noticed how there are two sets of characters? There’s Guinevere and

Launcelot and all those people in the centre: all very courtly and nothing

particularly British about them. But then in the background--on the other side of

Arthur, so to speak--there are all those dark people like Morgan and Morgawse,

who are very British indeed and usually more or less hostile though they are his

own relatives. Mixed up with magic. […] Merlin too, of course, is British,

though not hostile. […] Has it ever struck you what an odd creation Merlin is?

He’s not evil: yet he’s a magician. He is obviously a druid: yet he knows all

about the Grail. He’s ‘the devil’s son’: but then Layamon goes out of his way to

tell you that the kind of being who fathered Merlin needn’t have been bad after

all. You remember: ‘There dwell in the sky many kinds of wights. Some of them

are good, and some work evil.’ […] I often wonder […] whether Merlin doesn’t

represent the last trace of something the later tradition has quite forgotten about

[…]. (I.V)

The reader does not know yet, but Dr. Dimble knows Ransom and, therefore, he is probably acquainted with the presence of good and bad Eldils, suggesting thusly that the struggle between the two parties is not only current but eternal—noting that there were devils and angels even before Christianization of the isles and the legend. This is a part of the process of combining Christian and pagan motifs, or part of the

“remythologization” of the legend (Downing 155).

26

Usually, the notions of Christian and pagan / Celtic are perceived as opposites, yet for Lewis, there is rather a certain continuity between them than a straight dividing line. David Downing has noted that “pagan is another word that has a specialized meaning and private connotations in the Lewis lexicon. In common parlance, pagan and

Christian are practically antonyms […] Lewis saw no such antithesis; […] For him, paganism was an anticipation, Christianity the fulfillment” (61). In That Hideous strength, Merlin (Merlinus Ambrosius) is an explanatory example of this theory of continuity. The readers probably have the character connected with the pagan motifs, then again, Merlin ensures Ransom that he was a Christian. However, Merlin can fulfil his destiny only after he receives power from the Oyéresu, who could be seen as

Christian saints. Therefore, it may be suggested that the salvation would not be possible if Merlin had not subjected himself to God / Maleldil completely. In contrast, the other

Merlin, captured by N.I.C.E., seems not to possess any special power, at all. Merlin’s magical power and Lewis’s approach to it shall be discussed in further detail in chapter

4 of this thesis.

In accordance with the theory, Merlin destroys the N.I.C.E. with Christian symbolism. Before letting the animals kill the scientists and destroy the institute, Merlin sets upon the members of the institute the course of Babel at dinner. Suddenly the members of the institute are not able to communicate, they do not understand each other’s utterances and therefore act chaotically, eventually ending up killing each other, in some cases, when trying to kill the animals controlled by Merlin. “N.I.C.E. is a new

Babel, another attempt to marshal human resources to clamber up to heaven, or to bring heaven to earth by main force. In the end, these new Nimrods experience another confusion of tongues and achieve only their own destruction” (Downing 99).

27

Merlin is not the only representation of the mingling of Christian and Celtic characters in the novel. Ransom, apart from being the Pendragon, is also called Mr.

Fisher-King. At first sight there is no connection between Ransom and the Fisher King from the legends, as it is said that he has this name because of his sister.

He had a married sister in India, a Mrs. Fisher-King. She has just died and left

him a large fortune on condition that he took the name. She was a remarkable

woman in her way; a friend of the great native Christian mystic whom you may

have heard of--the Sura. And that’s the point. The Sura had reason to believe, or

thought he had reason to believe, that a great danger was hanging over the

human race. And just before the end--just before he disappeared--he became

convinced that it would actually come to a head in this island. […] And Mrs.

Fisher-King more or less handed over the problem to her brother, to our chief.

That, in fact, was why she gave him the money. He was to collect a company

round him to watch for this danger, and to strike when it came. (V.III)

Even though Jane, the addressee of these words, does not know about the eternal conflict yet, it is evident that the Sura was right about the conflict. Ransom may not be

King Arthur’s direct descendant, but the importance of a passed knowledge is highlighted here. Also, the Fisher King has always been connected with a wound, unable to move by himself. Even though Ransom is able to walk, he is almost constantly in pain and has a wounded heel. The devil in body of Weston bit him during a fight on Perelandra. Therefore, he has to return back to the other planet so that his wound can be healed. In medieval stories, the Fisher King was a guardian of the Holy

Grail, forming a part of a Christian motive (Moorman 404). Moorman argues that “the identification of Ransom/Fisher-king with the Pendragon can also be said to extend the implications of Lewis’s theme” (404). He also notes that “Lewis thinks of Arthurian

28

Britain as the ideal secular civilization awaiting a reconciliation with its religious counterpart [and] is thus able to join the Grail (Mr. Fisher-King) with the ideal kingdom

(the Pendragon) with Deep Heaven (Ransom the voyager)” (404).

Lewis connects directly just the male characters, Merlin, King Arthur, and the

Fisher King; but he does not mention (apart from Dr. Dimble’s remarks) any of the female characters like Morgan le Fay or Queen Guinevere. However, some critics have found characteristics of Morgan le Fay in Miss Hardcastle (Thompson, Return from

Avalon 95). Thompson assumes that her “name and personality recall Morgan le Fay”

(Return from Avalon 95), yet the assumption about the name is based just on incomplete knowledge of her name. Her full name never occurs in the book, she is always referred to as Miss Hardcastle, Major Hardcastle, or Fairy Hardcastle. The only apparent resemblance with Morgan le Fay might be the agnomen fairy which seems to be ironical, since it first occurs in inverted commas (III.IV) and her description does not sound much fairy-like:

Mark found himself writhing from the stoker’s or carter’s hand-grip of a big

woman in a black, short-skirted uniform. Despite a bust that would have done

credit to a Victorian barmaid, she was rather thickly built than fat and her iron-

grey hair was cropped short. Her face was square, stern, and pale, and her voice

deep. A smudge of lip-stick laid on with violent inattention to the real shape of

her mouth was her only concession to fashion, and she rolled or chewed a long

black cheroot, unlit, between her teeth. (III.II)

Even though it might be objected that Morgan le Fay may not always seem fairylike either, there is a certain magical aura around Miss Hardcastle thanks to the agnomen. Therefore, Fairy Hardcastle may be linked with the Arthurian witch Morgan le Fay in the reader’s mind. The two characters have similar intentions when it comes to

29 personality. Both are on the opposite side than the Pendragon and strive to foil his struggle. Later in his analysis, Thompson notes that, not only in Lewis’s work, “evil uses a persuasive and disarming exterior to beguile the unwary” (Return from Avalon

111). Even though her appearance evokes mainly fear, Fairy Hardcastle uses her presence to influence Mark Studdock, which may be similar as Morgan le Fay’s deception of Arthur.

More significant than Miss Hardcastle and Morgan le Fay is the connection between Jane Studdock and, surprisingly, one of the legendary knights – Percival.

Percival is a knight-errant who appears side by side with the Fisher King. And the character of the Fisher King it is, who links Jane with Percival. Ellen Rawson came with this idea, as David Downing summarizes, that “when Jane first visits Ransom, his chamber seems to her like a throne room, and she finds him reclining in front of a fire with a painful wound, just as the fisher-king appeared to Percival” (77). The central motif of Jane’s journey in the novel is her attitude towards religion and everything mystical. At first, she is sceptical, similarly as the author had been before his reconversion, she is careful not to be fooled and dragged into some mischief. “Jane is perhaps as realist as any modern reader of the novel might be, her own credulity likely mirroring the reader’s” (Martin 69). It is easier for Lewis’s target audience to identify with Jane when she is highly sceptical too, especially in contrast with Ransom in the first books. As an example can serve her reaction to Mss Ironwood’s words, when she tells her that her dreams are visions of great importance to the company at St. Anne’s:

“she had almost been believing what she heard. Then suddenly all her repugnance came over her again--all her wounded vanity, her resentment of the meaningless complication in which she seemed to be caught, and her general dislike of the mysterious and the unfamiliar” (III.III). Yet, Jane cannot run away from her dreams and she is forced to

30 come to see the people at St. Anne’s again. Before they persuade her to meet Ransom, her inner scepticism is still in the lead: “She liked these people, but her habitual inner prompter was whispering, ‘Take care. Don’t get drawn in. Don't commit yourself to anything. You’ve got your own life to live’” (V.III).

Nonetheless, she cannot help admiring Ransom when she sees him for the first time. Even though she realizes that maybe there is something true about his faith at that moment, she tries to resist. Her resistance, though, does not last long. After few meetings with Ransom, she admits that “apparently there was a God” (XIV.VI) and proceeds to realization that those are no longer just words.

Then, at one particular corner of the gooseberry patch, the change came.

What awaited her there was serious to the degree of sorrow and beyond.

There was no form nor sound. The mould under the bushes, the moss on the

path, and the little brick border, were not visibly changed. But they were

changed. A boundary had been crossed. She had come into a world, or into a

Person, or into the presence of a Person. Something expectant, patient,

inexorable, met her with no veil or protection between. (XIV.VI)

Ransom, as Mr. Fisher-King, leads Jane to God, therefore performs the same role as the Fisher King does in relation to Percival. As D. Downing concludes that

“Percival became a Christian because of his encounter with the fisher­king, who is a

Christ­figure in most versions of the grail legend” (78).

In conclusion, the Christian and pagan motifs are inextricably tied together in the novel, as can be seen in the characters of Merlin and Ransom. Merlin has been changed from a Celtic druid into a Christian priest who still possesses his nature controlling abilities, but his power is extended by submitting to God. Even though one of the key characters of the legend, King Arthur, is not part of the plot, Lewis added his own

31 content to the legendary material and created the concept of Pendragonship. Therefore,

Ransom embodies symbolism of three characters at once in the novel – his Christian symbolism from the previous novels, King Arthur and his ideals, and the Fisher King.

Jane is another example of the way Lewis uses the motifs of the legend without working with the legend directly. Her journey towards faith is not only an autobiographical feature, but also the sceptical readers, whom Lewis addressed, can relate to her. Her conversion is enforced by the legend, since her journey resembles the one of Percival, who is lead to Christianity by the Fisher King in the legend, same as Jane is guided by the Fisher King’s personification in the novel – Ransom. The central idea of the novel has been suggested as well. The moral of the novel is that going back to medieval times and Christian values would solve modern problems, because something old has been lost by humanity.

32

2.4. Social Criticism in the Space Trilogy

As it was already mentioned, C. S. Lewis used characters in his novels to comment on modern issues. The subject of this subchapter is to identify the issues that he commented in That Hideous Strength and to provide examples from the book. The novel was published in 1945, roughly at the time which Lewis chose for the story itself.

Lewis was, like many other authors, highly influenced by war, not only because of his own experience with the front of World War I, but also in general by the development of social realities and science. Science, in particular, was something special for Lewis; he seemed to have an “aversion for science and scientists” (Downing 144). That aspect can be easily tracked through That Hideous Strength since all scientists, and their ideology that appear in the novel are evil and predestined to die a horrible death.

Nonetheless, Lewis’s animosity towards science may be a bit exaggerated by many critics (Downing 146). Lewis used the characters of the evil side in the novel to criticise mainly totalitarianism, evolutionism, and Nazism. Apart from criticising the ideologies,

Lewis has also tackled the question of women’s role in society. These topics shall be discussed in this sub-chapter.

David C. Downing notes that one of Lewis’s reactions to other authors considering ideologies was the critique of Evolutionism, and he notes that “H. G. Wells was probably the most articulate and widely read proponent of this philosophy, so

Lewis set out to create a Wellsian fantasy with a counter-Wellsian theme” (36).

However, the ideology could be found in other authors’ works as well. The counter-

Wellsian theme is actually the philosophy of one of the characters mainly presented in the two preceding books–Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra–Doctor Weston.

Doctor Weston believes that there is something more, that humans can achieve, than life

33 on Earth. According to him, it lies knowledge gained from traveling to other planets and letting the stronger individuals develop into some greater species than the weaker ones.

A hint of criticism of Nazism appears here. A slight shaping of the ideology is revealed by Weston in Out of the Silent Planet when he tells Ransom that:

small claims must give way to great. As far as we know, we are doing what has

never been done in the history of man, perhaps never in the history of the

universe. We have learned how to jump off the speck of matter on which our

species began; infinity, and therefore perhaps eternity, is being put into the

hands of the human race. (IV)

Weston’s description in Perelandra is not yet so harsh, but later Lewis realised that some authors take the ideas of Evolutionism earnestly, as he noted in one of his letters: “both of them seemed to take the idea of such travel seriously and to have the desperately immoral outlook which I try to pillory in Weston. I like the whole inter­planetary idea as a mythology and simply wished to conquer for my own

(Christian) point of view what has hitherto been used by the opposite side” (cited in

Downing 36-7). Therefore, he had to emphasize it in the third novel that it deals with devilry and that he does not agree with the Evolutionist ideas: “one of the central ideas of this tale came into my head from conversations I had with a scientific colleague, sometime before I met a rather similar suggestion in the works of Mr. .

[…] I admire his invention (though not his philosophy) so much that I should feel no shame to borrow” (preface). Olaf Stapledon was an influential science fiction author of the nineteenth century, and the ideas in his books belong to the early form of transhumanism, which is a similar ideology to evolutionism. Downing calls the ideology in That Hideous Strength “Westonism” linking it to one of the main characters of the preceding books, Dr. Weston, emphasizing the fact that it the criticism of the

34 ideology is present through the whole trilogy (53). Even though it already was in the story, Lewis emphasizes the contradicting ideological background in the preface and his critique can be then tracked through actions of the company of scientists in the novel as shall be analysed further.

The whole novel is based on a binary opposition between Ransom, and his supporters on the side of Christianity, and scientists of N.I.C.E on the other side. The portrayal of evil characters was the most criticised aspect of Lewis’s work (Downing

84). Almost all characters that appear in the novel in direct connection with the

N.I.C.E., barring Mark Studdock, are complete evil. From the point of view of narratology, they do not undergo any development of character and, Downing elaborates, could be described by one or two-word statements: “Weston is a ruthless visionary; Devine is a cynical opportunist; […] Hardcastle is a pitiless sadist” (84). In contrast with such invariability, there are characters of the good side, surrounding

Ransom. Gathered as the company at St. Anne’s on the Hill. Apart from Ransom and

Jane who were discussed in the subchapter dealing with Christianity, there are Mr. and

Mrs. Dimble, Miss Ironwood, the Dennistons, Ivy Maggs and Andrew MacPhee. Most of them could also be criticised for insufficient personal development; however, that is shadowed by Jane’s progress.

The ideas corresponding with those of the Nazi movement are stated directly by

Feverstone, one of the scientists: “Man has got to take charge of man. That means, remember, that some men have got to take charge of the rest--which is another reason for cashing in on it as soon as one can. You and I want to be the people who do the taking charge, not the ones who are taken charge of” (That Hideous Strength II.I).

Thusly Feverstone clarifies for Mark the higher intentions of the N.I.C.E. when Mark enquires further, Feverstone lists more procedures:

35

Quite simple and obvious things, at first--sterilisation of the unfit, liquidation of

backward races (we don’t want any dead weights), selective breeding. Then real

education, including pre-natal education. By real education I mean one that has

no ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ nonsense. A real education makes the patient what it

wants infallibly: whatever he or his parents try to do about it. Of course, it’ll

have to be mainly psychological at first. But we’ll get on to biochemical

conditioning in the end and direct manipulation of the brain. (That Hideous

Strength II.I)

As radical as Feverstone may seem, there are even more ambitious claims among

N.I.C.E. members. For instance, Filostrato tells Mark about the “pure race.” Such race, according to Filostrato, consists of people who: “retain their intelligence: they can keep it artificially alive after the organic body has been dispensed with--a miracle of applied biochemistry. They do not need organic food. […] They are almost free of Nature”

(VIII.III). Filostrato is one of the first scientists who manage to create such a life form:

“Our Head is the first of the New Men--the first that lives beyond animal life. As far as

Nature is concerned, he is already dead: if Nature had her way his brain would now be mouldering in the grave. But he will speak to you within this hour, and--a word in your ear, my friend--you will obey his orders” (VIII.III). Filostrato emphasizes the complete opposite of the novel’s central message that people should think back and go back to their roots in Nature. Moreover, there is Straik, who suggests an ineffable heresy,

“offering [Mark] the unspeakable glory of being present at the creation of God

Almighty” (VIII.III). Judging from the preface, where Lewis addresses the readers, he was writing the novel with his audience in mind, and he knew that readers would understand the negative side to be criticism. Downing remarks that “the parallels

36 between the animating ideas of N.I.C.E. and those of Nazism would certainly not be lost on the novel’s original readers in 1945” (54).

These were ideological similarities between Nazism and philosophy of the

N.I.C.E. The storyline, however, contains apart from those also other aspects that were present also in reality. There is a special police force lead by Fairy Hardcastle, called the Institutional Police, in the N.I.C.E., which overtakes the town Edgestow and is said to be more powerful than normal police forces. Mark is surprised when he is told that they are manipulating the riot in Edgestow: “without having trouble. I mean there’d have been trouble anyway. As it turns out, I don’t believe my boys needed to do anything. […] / “You mean you’ve engineered the disturbances?” said Mark. To do him justice, his mind was reeling from this new revelation” (VI.III, original emphasis). The institute’s special police force is not only more powerful than the normal state police, it also arrests people at will and creates false trials. One of the people of the company at

St. Anne’s was imprisoned and when he is supposed to be set free, his wife learns that:

“The sentence is over but they haven’t released him. He’s been sent on to Belbury for remedial treatment. Under some new regulation. Apparently it does not require a sentence from a court” (XIV.V). Jane Studdock is likewise arrested when she is trying to get home as an innocent person and then questioned and tortured by Fairy Hardcastle.

They caught her. And that was how she found herself being taken into a lighted

room and questioned […]. The room was in disorder--as if a private house had

been suddenly and roughly converted into a temporary police station. […] Then

suddenly Miss Hardcastle leant forward and, after very carefully turning down

the edge of Jane’s dress, thrust the lighted end of the cheroot against her

shoulder. (VII.IV)

37

Mark finds out about these practices when he is threatened with being accused of murder:

“I’m an innocent man. I think I’d better go to the police--the real police, I

mean--at once.”

“If you want to be tried for your life,” said the Fairy, “that’s another matter.”

“I want to be vindicated,” said Mark. “The charge would fall to pieces at

once. There was no conceivable motive. And I have an alibi. Everyone knows I

slept here that night.” […]

“There’s always a motive, you know,” said she, “for anyone murdering

anyone. The police are only human. When the machinery’s started they naturally

want a conviction.” (X.I)

During this conversation Mark realizes that there is nowhere to run since he is at the core of the Institute and that the best thing to do to stay alive is simply to do as they say.

Next thing that is manipulated by the N.I.C.E. is the press. Similarly, as the press was under the control of the Nazis, the N.I.C.E. has special articles printed in various newspapers. Those special articles are designed to serve the purposes of the institute and manipulate peoples’ minds. For example, when they are planning the main event of the riot, there is a set time when Mark has to have an article for the press prepared:

“And the stuff must be all ready to appear in the papers the very day after the riot,” said

Miss Hardcastle. “That means it must be handed in to the D.D. by six to-morrow morning at latest” (VI.III). Explicit is also manipulation with people’s opinions and minds when the N.I.C.E. is planning to rehabilitate formerly despised and guillotined radiologist Alcasan; Mark is given the following instructions by Miss Hardcastle:

You begin with a quiet little article--not questioning his guilt, not at first, but

just hinting that of course he was a member of their quisling government, and

38

there was a prejudice against him. Say you don’t doubt the verdict was just, but

it’s disquieting to realise that it would almost certainly have been the same even

if he’d been innocent. Then you follow it up in a day or two with an article of

quite a different kind. Popular account of the value of his work. You can mug up

the facts--enough for that kind of article--in an afternoon. Then a letter, rather

indignant, to the paper that printed the first article, and going much further. The

execution was a miscarriage of justice. (V.I, original emphasis)

Since writing false articles for the press is the only job he is given, he starts doing it because he is driven by the obsession to became one of the inner circle, to know whatever is there to be known.

By being told to write fake articles, Mark also learns another truth about the

Institute that can be compared to what the Nazi movement did. Miss Hardcastle tells him that “the N.I.C.E. wanted powers to experiment on criminals […] Odd thing it is-- the word ‘experiment’ is unpopular, but not the word ‘experimental.’ You mustn’t experiment on children: but offer the dear little kiddies free education in an experimental school attached to the N.I.C.E. and it’s all correct!” (II.I). Even aforementioned Alcasan’s rehabilitation seemed important because they wanted to bring him back to life. However, later the reader learns that it were the evil forces, not

Alcasan himself, speaking through the head. Alcasan was just one of the prisoners who were used for experimentation.

The reality that Mark has been ascribed a job without being allowed to choose it himself suggests, that the N.I.C.E. is under a totalitarian regime. It is led by an authority that is surrounded by an inner circle of people from whom just a few know everything.

They believe that individuals should surrender to the purpose of achieving a higher goal set by the absolute leader. Thompson notes that the actions of the Institute are leading

39

“towards a dehumanised and totalitarian word order” (Return from Avalon 95), yet one can suggest that the organization already works on the principles of a totalitarian regime, and thus, Lewis is able to criticize such word order by the gradual destruction of the Institute. Besides being finally physically destroyed in the end, there are suggestions that the inner hierarchy and system does not work as it should. As it is not yet a world order, the critique of individuals seeking such triumph may be pointed out here. Lewis wrote that “he intended the trilogy as a cautionary tale against totalitarians who use

“scientific planning” as their catchphrase to attract popular support” (Downing 144).

The N.I.C.E. is built by such totalitarians who together express another underlying theme of the novel, Lewis’s warning that: “under modern conditions any effective invitation to hell will certainly appear in the guise of scientific planning—as Hitler’s regime in fact did” (Downing 144). J. B. S. Haldane, one of the scientists who criticised

Lewis for not knowing science well enough, has reached a surprisingly paradoxical conclusion, when he reacted to That Hideous Strength, claiming that “the real salvation of humanity comes not from Christianity but from Communism” (Downing 140-1).

Like this suggesting that it will be just a different branch of totalitarian world order that will get everything back on the right track.

Lewis has not been criticised only for the simplicity of his evil characters, but some critics (for example Margaret Hannay) also blame him for being a misogynist. At first sight, it may seem justified when one looks at the development of Jane Studdock’s character. At the beginning of the novel, she is a sophisticated young woman with a dream of an academic career, working on her doctoral thesis, who then gets married and is somehow forced to give up her dreams. “She had always intended to continue her own career as a scholar after she was married: that was one of the reasons why they were to have no children, at any rate for a long time yet” (I.I). However, she never sets

40 to start working on the paper, and the narrator even accuses her of not being capable of coming up with any original ideas (I.I). She also appears to become hypocritical after the wedding, as she “had before now expressed some contempt for the kind of woman who buys hats, as a man buys drinks, for a stimulant and a consolation. It did not occur to her that she was doing so herself on this occasion” (I.V). Later she is described as frightened and fragile, and even though she is an essential part of the salvation of humanity, she has to be guided by a man – Ransom. When Merlin sees her for the first time, he suggests executing her, because she failed to give birth to the child she was supposed to have: “It would be great charity,” said Merlin, “if you gave order that her head should be cut from her shoulders; for it is a weariness to look at her” (XIII.III).

Thanks to Ransom she survives but just to be converted to Christianity by him and in the end, she follows Ransoms advice that as a true Christian woman, she should obey and respect her husband. Such is the first impression that one gets when reading the novel without knowing some other circumstances as shall be discussed below.

At first one should have a look at the development of feminism and feminist ideas around the time the novel was published. For nowadays reader it is not impossible to imagine Jane thinking about choosing her career over getting married, however, it probably would not be considered until the 1950s, when it was perceived as a radical idea, therefore Lewis’s female readers looked at it a bit differently (Smith 167). In the

1950s also “all expressed hope to rebuild traditional family” (Smith 178), following thus the atmosphere of the 1940s when motherhood was commonly perceived as important for the sake of race and educated women did not need to give up work over to marriage (Smith 168).

Margaret Hannay was one of the strictest critics of Lewis’s attitude towards women in his work. “She argues that all of Lewis’s books written before his fifties,

41 when he met and married , are misogynist” (Downing 147). In accordance with the possible first impression described above, she concludes that Jane is “ridiculed for her attempted scholarship and berated for not having conceived a child”

(qtd. in Downing 147). However, also in this case, it is important to take under consideration Lewis’s other comments and opinions. David Downing correlates those with the seeming misogyny of That Hideous Strength and one finds out that Lewis was commenting on variety of other things than only the concept of femininity. First of all,

“Lewis did not like the idea of doctoral theses. […] So for Jane to be working on Donne suggests that she too has been caught up in the whirligig of modernist fashion. But these are gibes at the state of contemporary academia in general, not specific disparagements of Jane as a female” (148). Describing Jane as unoriginal does not have to mean that she is not intelligent enough to produce such ideas, since “Lewis felt that the cult of originality was another modern aberration, so what seems like a slighting reference here may actually be a backhanded compliment” (Downing 148). Therefore, the issue should rather be approached as criticism of modern academia than femininity.

On the other hand, there are some issues that many nowadays feminists would not agree with. A significant aspect of Jane’s complete surrender to God is, that she experiences the presence after she realizes that her idea of her own importance is completely wrong:

Supposing one were a thing after all--a thing designed and invented by Someone

Else and valued for qualities quite different from what one had decided to regard

as one’s true self? Supposing all those people who, from the bachelor uncles

down to Mark and Mother Dimble, had infuriatingly found her sweet and fresh

when she wanted them to find her also interesting and important, had all along

been simply right and perceived the sort of thing she was? Supposing Maleldil

42

on this subject agreed with them and not with her? For one moment she had a

ridiculous and scorching vision of a world in which God Himself would never

understand, never take her with full seriousness. (XIV.VI)

Apart from having to accept that she is just a thing, Ransom also persuades her to go back to her husband and be an obedient wife. However, Lewis does not suggest that she should become completely subordinate, since there are other examples of married couples at St. Anne’s and, even though those show a certain degree of hierarchy, there is also equality. There live both men and women in the house and there are no servants, thus they all share the work. The idea behind it is that they would quarrel all the time.

“The cardinal difficulty,” said MacPhee, “in collaboration between the sexes is

that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work

one will say to the other, ‘Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you’ll find

on the top shelf of the green cupboard.’ The female for this is ‘Put that in the

other one in there.’ And then if you ask them ‘in where?’ they say ‘in there of

course.’ There is consequently a phatic hiatus.” (VIII.II)

David Downing concludes that Lewis’s views were probably not misogynist and that he did not hold such presumptions against women in his real life. However, he suggests that some comments are not overly exaggerated as there are a few comments, possibly unconsciously remarked, in Lewis’s fiction that suggest he had a complicated relationship with women. The idea is based on Lewis’s friend’s comment about the difference between Lewis’s behaviour in real life and the comments in his fiction (150-

1).

In conclusion Lewis’s main focus of social criticism lies in the representation of the N.I.C.E., where examples of evolutionism, totalitarianism and Nazism can be found.

43

On of the main scientists of the institute pursues the idea that people should evolve into a stronger species, speaking thus in favour of evolutionism. The whole institute lead by a supreme authority resembles a totalitarian regime and it is trying to establish the same regime for whole England, followed by the whole world. Practices of the institute can be perceived as those of the Nazis, who also had their own police, experimented on prisoners, and part of their ideology was creating a supreme race by eliminating weak individuals. Even though Lewis has been accused of being a misogynist, the accusations were partly disproved in this chapter by suggesting that Lewis was rather than criticising women’s role in society, focusing on the modern academia. The fact that Jane in the end follows her husband should be taken into consideration rather from the point of view of Christian aspects of the novel rather than as a subject of social criticism.

44

3. T. H. White–The Once and Future King

3.1. General Introduction to the Author’s Life and Work

T. H. White was an English writer born in Bombay in 1906. He did not have a happy childhood apart from a short period of time which he spent with his grandparents

(Worthington 99). After his parents’ separation, he got his education from Cheltenham

College and later from the University of Cambridge. Before devoting himself to the career of a novelist, he had taught at Stowe School, Buckinghamshire; yet, otherwise he preferred a solitary life of a hermit. His interest in the Arthurian legend has its roots in his university studies, since he wrote a thesis on Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory.

White’s life and literary work have been highly influenced by his mother, Malory’s chivalric romance, and the World Wars. Andrew Hadfield concludes that “White’s

Arthurian tetralogy demands to be read as an essay on the origins of war as much as an exercise in autobiographical fiction” (208).

T. H. White is best-known for his set of Arthurian novels The Sword in the Stone

(1938), The Witch in the Wood (1939), The Ill Made Knight (1940), and The Candle in the Wind (1958). The four novels were collected, revised, and published again in 1958 under the general title The Once and Future King. Not all of them underwent extensive changes; however, the title of the second novel, The Witch in the Wood, was changed to

The Queen of Air and Darkness and its content was changed notably. Had it not been for the war, a concluding part would have been published right away. Due to the war shortages and change of tone and atmosphere of the book, the publisher rejected

White’s fifth Arthurian novel The Book of Merlyn (Warner 189-90). Nonetheless, it was published posthumously in 1977. Raymond Thompson, in his book Return from Avalon, claims that White’s novels are “probably the best-known and best-loved modern version

45 of the Arthurian legend” (126). White represents a distinctly different approach to the legend than C. S. Lewis. Even though he chose to comment on the contemporary development of events around him, and as well as Lewis adds some autobiographical features to the novels, he is much more focused on the legend and its characters itself than Lewis in That Hideous Strength. Both authors want to prove or put some ideas through to their readers; however, both use the opportunity differently.

The whole cycle is inspired by Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, even though White changed some motivations of the characters, sometimes made them even contradictory. One of the most striking shifts occurs in the character of Lancelot.

Lancelot is Malory’s best knight, noble and handsome; however, White’s Lancelot is the ill made knight which suggests that he is either sick or wrong in other direction. It is said that Lancelot loved Arthur. Based on White’s attempt to cure his own homosexuality with psychoanalysis, one may say that Lancelot’s feelings for Arthur are the reason he is the ill made knight (Worthington 100). White furthermore changes the reason of the fall of the Round Table. In Malory it was the act of incest itself that partially caused the destruction, however, White manages to excuse his characters from this sin and blames Arthur’s political reaction and actions for the inevitable disintegration.

Malory’s construction of characters and settings allowed White to use them for his own purposes and modernize them, thus give them renewed meanings that would be recognizable by his twentieth century’s audience. White sets the story roughly in medieval times, in a country called Gramarye, as White makes clear at the beginning of the first book: “She is not any common earth / Water or wood or air / But Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye / Where you and I will fare” (8, original emphasis). Even though the name is different, it is without a doubt old Britain whose mythical kings become alive and,

46 vice versa, the kings of reality are referred to as mythical and legendary: “Leave your father King Lot outside the question for the moment, and look at literature. Look at the

Norman myths about legendary figures like the Angevin kings. From William the

Conqueror to Henry the Third” (235).

Even though White works partially with settings suggested by Malory, his novels differ widely in tone from Malory’s chivalric romance. White started writing his

Arthurian prose with a children’s book. In contrast with C. S. Lewis, who tried to disguise That Hideous Strength as a fairy tale (even though for adults), T. H. white openly aims the focus of the first novel on Arthur’s childhood. Although the atmosphere of the book is quite relaxed, even comical, it still touches crucial social issues that

White wanted to comment on. When The Sword in the Stone was published for the first time, it was generally accepted and praised for its anachronistic humour. Later on, as

Arthur comes of age and the focus of the narrative changes, the atmosphere modifies likewise, and White uses the space to comment on current social and political affairs.

Although it was the author’s intention and the development fit the series, some publishers had not been of the same opinion and publishing of the revised version and the last part became difficult for White, which is one of the reasons for the postponed publishing of The Book of Merlyn (Warner 189).

The plot of The Sword in the Stone revolves around young Arthur (nicknamed in the novel the Wart) and his master Merlin. Some of White’s autobiographical features of the book can be seen in Merlin’s approach to the Wart’s education and the ideas or opinions Merlin shares with the boys. Merlin is a special tutor mainly because of his knowledge of the future, yet he is no ordinary prophet, but White’s Merlin lives his life backwards. That is why he can prepare the Wart for his future role of the king. Mostly, learning occurs when the Wart is by Merlin changed into various animals. Through

47 these animals, or groups of animals, Merlin/White expresses his political ideas that could be lost in a children’s book, but form an element of an inseparable complex of developing thoughts through the whole collection of novels. However, not all notions proposed by Merlin should be taken for granted, as his/author’s opinions change through time.

Another autobiographical element occurs in the subsequent novels, mainly in

The Queen of Air and Darkness. Some critics (usually based on Sylvia Townsend’s biography of T. H. White), such as Heather Wortington, Florence Sandler, or Raymond

H. Thompson, conclude that White had a complicated relation towards women and his whole life was influenced by his neglecting mother. Relationship between children and their parents is mostly significant in the picture of Morgause and her four sons –

Gawain, Agravaine, Gaheris, and Gareth. White was interested in Freud’s psychoanalysis, for personal reasons, therefore some of the principles may be applied here, where the Oedipus complex is present together with various stages with the development of an ego. One of the reasons why the Wart’s has so happy childhood is that his real parents, especially mother, are not present.

In conclusion, White used a different approach than Lewis and adapts the legend directly. Autobiographical features shall be presented in the following subchapter since

White was heavily influenced by his mother and their relationship had an impact on

Whites appropriation of the legend. Various social issues that White commented on shall be discussed further on. Some of them are projected in the form of animal groups and their behaviour, others in people’s thoughts or Merlin’s advice. White has written in his diary that that he believed that his books could influence the way people thought about war (Warner 190).

48

3.2. T. H. White’s Autobiographical Features in The Once and Future

King

Andrew Hadfield has noted in his article about T. H. White’s approach to pacifism and violence that “White frequently uses his fiction autobiographically, apparently trying to explain himself to himself and to anyone else who was prepared to read it” (207). Not only Hadfield’s selective area of focus about White’s autobiographical features can be traced through The Once and Future King. Heather

Worthington, Florence Field Sandler and partly Raymond Thompson searched for sings of White’s childhood and family relationships. The relationship with his mother has shown to be of most significance. However, he was also influenced by the housemaster in Cheltenham, whom he described as “a sadistic, homosexual, middle-aged bachelor with a gloomy, suffused face” (qtd. in Sprauge 153). Based on these two figures of his life and his inspiration in Malory, White concentrates on a masculinized world and explores the influence that mothers can have on their children. White’s relationship with his mother was something that haunted him through his life an “he hoped to lay his demons to rest through fiction” (Sandler 73). Education is one of the most prominent aspects of The Sword in the Stone, where Merlin shares his knowledge with the Wart and his foster brother Kay. However, it is present also in the later novels, together with family relationship of Morgause and her sons, and their education. The aim of this subchapter is to elaborate on the autobiographical features in the novels and demonstrate them on examples from the texts, in order to see to what extent White’s own life changed the motifs of the legend.

The concept of Arthur’s origin and childhood is one of the subjects in which

White differs from Malory. Malory focused on Arthur’s mythical origin and omitted

49 details of his childhood. However, White sets the origin aside and concentrates on the was Arthur’s identity was formed. White’s strategies can be discussed from the point of view of psychoanalysis, as Heather Worthington approaches the novel. She links

Freud’s study with White thanks to White’s own experience with the method, since

“White himself underwent psychoanalysis in an attempt to ‘cure’ his homosexuality, an experience which left him with some knowledge of Freudian methodology and which probably colored his perspective on women, particularly his mother” (sic. 100). White described Arthur’s childhood as something that he himself would have wanted his childhood to be, as he confesses in one of his letter to L. J. Pott: “it seems impossible to determine whether it is for grown-ups or children. It is more or less a kind of wish- fulfilment of the things I should like to have happened to me when I was a boy” (qtd. in

Warner 98).

The most specific detail about Arthur’s childhood that makes it so ideal is that he was parentless. He knew nothing of his father nor mother; instead there was only

Kay’s mocking that he is superior because he has got a legitimate father, as the reader learns at the beginning of The Sword in the Stone. “[I]t was different not having a father and mother, and Kay had taught him that being different was wrong” (14). The reader does not find out about Arthur’s mother until the moment when Arthur explains his connections with the Orkney’s: “Well, my dears, I was taken away from my mother the moment I was born, and she never knew where I was taken. Nor did I know who my mother was. The only people who knew the relationship were Uther Pendragon and

Merlyn” (547). Thus, White disencumbers Arthur from the influence of a female mother figure which might spoil his life, as White’s mother did to him. Even though Heather

Worthington concludes that his feelings about his mother and women in general were ambiguous, it might be suggested that mainly the negative aspects of this part of his life

50 have been portrayed in The Once and Future King (98). Even though Kay is a legitimate son of Sir Ector, there is no sign of Sir Ector’s wife, therefore boys both grow up without mothers.

Encounters of the Wart and women in The Sword in the Stone occur mainly when Merlin’s enchantment is active, so the Wart is in the animal realm. Even though

Arthur learns something from the encounters, the female characters do not seem to be of a particular importance in his real life. Worthington infers that when “women are encountered, they are marginalized, masculinized or demonized” (101), and in addition she notes that at first sight “beauty functions as a mask concealing the negative aspect of the female” (101). The scariest demon of them all is Madame Mim, whom the Wart encountered in the unrevised version of the first novel. According to Worthington,

“there are sexual and sadistic overtones in her treatment of the boys; she pinches Kay to check his plumpness and strips the Wart naked as she ‘prepare[s] to have her will of him’” (101). She further notes that “Merlyn’s subsequent rescue of the children offers the first direct portrayal of the male/female conflict recurrent through the four volumes of the text” (101). In the end the ongoing conflict results in a disaster of a greater importance than a symbolic wizards’ duel. However, after White revised this episode, the event is not present in the second version of the novel. The omission perhaps represents one of the author’s opinion changes, as he no longer wanted to be associated with such sadism against women. At least for the part of the children’s book.

Even though White provided the Wart and Kay with such a background, where the Oedipus complex can be avoided, and created an ideal masculinized world basically without a female element, Worthington still remarks that there exists a mother figure for the boys. She ascribes that role to Merlin, who “conflates the roles of authoritative father figure and caring mother figure with his educative function” (100). Therefore, it

51 can be said that the boys do not grow up completely without the concept / feeling of having a mother, yet the role is adapted and idealized for the masculinized world.

Perhaps, it should be mentioned that the masculinization of the story is not White’s idea, but part of his inspiration in Malory, whose chivalric romance concentrated also mainly on knights and their ventures in masculine surroundings. Even though there were some women present as objects of the courtly love, their textual importance was not as high as the one of the male knights.

In contrast with the lack of female human mother figure in the first novel, there is a significant character occupying this position in the second book, The Queen of Air and Darkness. Specifically, Queen Morgause of Lothian and Orkney, mother of

Agravaine, Gaheris, Gareth, Gawain, and most importantly Mordred. Although the novel suffered a vast reconstruction, apart from changed title, it lost almost half of its pages and the main content was thoroughly rewritten (Worthington 98), strikingly, the character of Morgause still embraces a lot of evil even in the revised version. Raymond

Thompson has noted that “nowhere in medieval literature does one find Morgause among the villains” (“Morgause of Orkney” 1); therefore, one can assume that White has certain reasons to follow the more recent trend notwithstanding his inspiration in

Malory. The reason may be one of the autobiographical features, as there is a certain connection between White’s own mother and Morgause. The book portrays again a version of childhood, but this time not as ideal as Arthur’s, as the Orkney boys were not deprived of their mother.

It is made clear in the novel that the boys love their mother immeasurably and right at the beginning of the novel the reader is told by the narrator that there was a certain deal of inequality in their relationship. “They adored her dumbly and uncritically, because her character was stronger than theirs. […] It was more as if she

52 had brought them up—perhaps through indifference or through laziness or even through some kind of possessive cruelty—with an imperfect sense of right and wrong” (213-4).

The indifference of Morgause to her children is expressed at various instances, sometimes just as a comment of the narrator, as for example “it was their mother’s favourite story, on the rare occasions when she troubled to tell them one” (my emphasis, White 2016); and other times with a highlighted contrast to a highly emotional experience of the kids as in the story of the unicorn that shall be discussed further. The notion of possessive cruelty can be found in White’s descriptions of his own mother, when he wrote about her into his diary.

I adored her passionately until I was about eighteen, except for the time when I

forgot all about her because she was in India and I was with my grandparents. I

didn’t get much security out of her. Either there were the dreadful parental

quarrels and spankings of me when I was tiny or there were excessive scenes of

affection during which she wooed me to love her – not her to love me. I was my

love that she extracted, not hers that she gave. (qtd. in Warner 28)

Based on the comparison between White’s description of his mother and the boys’ description and feelings about their mother, it can be assumed that White took a lot of inspiration in his own mother when developing the character of Morgause. If it was so, there is another little detail about White’s feelings in the book. It can be seen in the concluding narrator’s sentence, when the Orkney boys finish retelling the story of the beginning of hatred between the two families:

“And we must keep the feud living forever,” […]

“Because our Mammy is the most beautiful woman in the […] world.”

“And because we love her.”

53

Indeed, they did love her. Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts

uncritically-to those who hardly think about us in return. (219)

Based on White’s interest in psychoanalysis, the Oedipus complex can be traced in the sons’ affection for their mother. During her life, Morgause attracts attention of many men and has many love affairs after the death of her husband. Those affairs combined with the love of her son’s cause her death in the end. “She made them love her too much, but she only loved herself” (White 450). The boys were jealous of their mother’s affairs even when they were little. The way their jealousy differed from one another’s is illustrated for example in the episode with unicorn which they decided to capture to please their mother. However, instead of capturing it, Agravaine loses his temper and brutally slays the beautiful creature because “his head was in [their] mother’s lap” (White 258). Heather Worthington ascribes Agravaine’s rage to the loss of innocence: “the symbolism is obvious, although understated: the death of the unicorn represents the loss of childhood innocence that follows the acquisition of sexual knowledge” (104). However, one may beg to differ that her reading of the episode is overly Freudian. The boys lose their childhood innocence simply because of witnessing the butchering of the unicorn, not because they gain some sexual knowledge.

The episode of the unicorn is an omen of what is going to happen in The Ill- made Knight, where Agravaine kills Morgause when he finds her in bed with Sir

Lamorak who is afterwards hunted and stabbed to the back by Mordred. “Agravaine cut off her head, […] like the unicorn. […] He killed our mother in her blood” (White 429).

Even though it might be suggested that the boy was just overprotective, it is explained that “the murder of Queen Morgause had not been done on purpose. Agravaine had done it on the spur of the moment—in his outraged passion, he said—but they knew by instinct that it was from jealousy” (White 430). Although her murder is not described

54 directly, one can trace the brutality of it by Gareth’s numerous remarks about the unicorn that had been slain by Agravaine. Perhaps, it is White’s possible strangled sadistic feelings towards his mother that dart to surface in the described episodes.

Though the murder is horrible, Arthur in a way excuses them because it was essentially her own fault and Guenever later concludes that Morgause “must have had a terrible effect on her sons, if one of them could have felt so fiercely about her that he killed her”

(608-9). Heather Worthington interprets the terrible effect as a result of “Morgause’s irrational alteration between suffocating love and cold indifference for her children [that led to distorting] their future involvement with women” (104), of which her own murder is an example. Based on White’s relationships, described in Sylvia Warner’s biography, it can be assumed that his mother had also had a negative effect on his relationship towards women.

Based on the fact that Malory could not have been acquainted with Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, it could be suggested that the elements influenced by psychoanalysis are part of the new motifs that White contributed to the Arthurian material. However, further research should be done to see whether there were other

Arthurian authors as heavily influenced by psychoanalysis as T. H. White.

Morgause as a mother figure does not attract only her own sons in the Oedipal tradition, but also Arthur himself. Florence Sandler elaborates that “Arthur cannot resist

Morgause because White presents her as the quintessential mother: beautiful, twice his age, and surrounded by her sons” (76). Arthur never met his own mother and Merlin as a caring mother figure suggested earlier does not count here. However, it is possible to oppose that Sandler’s conclusion is not the only one possible. Even though White suggests it in the book, he devotes more effort to a “magical” explanation based on an

55 ancient piseog (a tape of human flesh called the Spancel) which is part of Morgaus’s plotting to seduce Arthur and make him fall in love with her at the first sight.

It is impossible to explain how these things happen. Perhaps the Spancel had a

strength in it. Perhaps it was because she was twice his age, so that she had

twice the power of his weapons. […] Perhaps it was because he had never

known a mother of his own, so that the role of mother love, as she stood with her

children behind her, took him between wind and water. (White 311)

On one hand, it is a question of the reader’s view of magic, since for those who believe in magic, the source of Arthur’s sudden love for Morgause is the Spancel.

However, for those acquainted with psychoanalysis and Freud whom White mentions a few pages before (305), the Oedipal complex is evident. Therefore, the source of

Arthur’s love may lay in seeing her as a mother figure, as Sandler suggests. Whatever the reason, Arthur says that he “fell in love with Morgause” (547). Interestingly no one even thinks of blaming Arthur for the incestuous relationship, they simply assume that it was Morgause who was guilty. As Lancelot defends his King that “it was the fault of

Morgause in any case. That woman was a devil” (547).

In The Sword in the Stone, White focused on Arthur’s childhood and, as it has been described above, he created a version of childhood that he would like to have had.

Merlin is an essential part of the Wart’s childhood, the model figure which the Wart can adore, yet he does not have to compete with him, since there is no mother figure that he would be jealous of. Inasmuch as Merlin expresses White’s own ideas, it can be suggested that Merlin, in addition, represents the ideal father figure that White would like to have access to in his own childhood. Even though Merlin embraces the author in his character, he also stands for an idealised model figure.

56

In contrast with Merlin on Arthur’s side, there appears the character of St.

Toirdealbhach in The Queen of Air and Darkness. Adderley claims that he “is to some extent White’s self-portrait, evident from such facts as the heavy drinking, [or] the priest’s being the source of innumerable anecdotes” (57-8). Even though he is a drunkard, the Orkney boys find in him the figure they can look up to. “They resorted to him like hungry puppies anxious for any kind of eatable, when their mother had cast them out. He had taught them to read and write” (White 251). Sprague directly calls him

“the bloody-minded Orkney version of Merlyn” (65). However, St. Toirdealbhach’s approach to the Orkney boys’ education was far from the sufficiency of Merlin’s treatment of Arthur. Kurth Sprague notes that St. Toirdealbhach “is ineffectual in weaning the Orkney boys from their mother’s wickedness, and is successful only in promulgating a superstitious and bloody-minded attitude toward life” (qtd. in Adderley

58). Since both, Merlin and St Toirdealbhach, are partly the author himself, it could be assumed that perhaps St. Toirdelbhach’s approach is a not idealised version of White as a tutor.

The concept of warfare is part of education on both sides. Merlin and Arthur come across the idea of war during Arthur’s transformations into animals, which will be discussed in the following chapter. Their perception of warfare is in overall negative.

On the other hand, the discussion of the Orkneys brings up more suggestions:

“I incline my agreement with Toirdealbhach,” said Gareth. “After all, what is

the good of killing poor kerns who do not know anything? It would be much

better for the people who are angry to fight each other themselves, knight against

knight.”

“But you could not have any wars at all, like that,” exclaimed Gaheris.

57

“It would be absurd,” said Gawaine. “You must have people, galore of

people in war.”

“Otherwise you could not kill them,” explained Agravaine. (240)

C.M. Adderley suggests that thanks to the different approach of Toirdealbhach to the boys’ education, “These comments say more about the individuals making them than about warfare as a subject for discussion. [And] the roles played by each of these characters later in the novel have their beginning in this conversation” (62). White thus insinuates what one can expect from each of the characters.

To sum it up, this sub-chapter has provided major features that can be perceived autobiographical in The Once and Future King. The most significant has shown to be the influence of White’s mother which is apparent in the whole series. However mainly in the concept of childhood, since Arthur’s childhood which lacks a mother figure is rather idyllic, and in contrast the sons of Morgause are negatively influenced by their mother and turn out to be sadistic and unable to confront women. One may dare to suggest that combining the Arthurian legend with elements of psychoanalysis is White’s unique contribution to the Arthurian collection of motifs. Furthermore, White communicates with the reader through the teachers in the novels.

58

3.3. Social Criticism in The Once and Future King

T. H. White used his fiction not only to write off his personal demons but also to comment on the current development of affairs in the world. In the same way as C. S.

Lewis, White had been influenced by the world war-conflicts and the isms that partly emerged from them or that somehow were their components. Stephen Dunne claims that

White shows “a profound distaste for the modern world, its values, preoccupations, and achievements” and that in White’s view, “the ideals [of our age] are all wrong” (363).

Arthur is partly educated on those ideals through transformations into animals, by which

Merlin instructs him about communism, Nazism, fascism, or totalitarianism, as shall be discussed in this subchapter. White has changed his own attitude towards fighting a war multiple times, as can be seen in his diary entries and in the biography by Sylvia T.

Warner. However, his generally negative attitude remained the same throughout his whole life and is reflected in the novels. Once he came to a conclusion that he was a bard and his place was not at the front, but his fight took place on the paper, as “he came to see his sequence of novels as a more valuable war effort” (Warner 123;

Hadfield 209). Therefore, Merlin educating his pupil Arthur can be perceived as White educating his readers.

Merlin is an ideal tutor, who never resorts to violence when teaching the Wart even though violence and sadism are otherwise present in the novels. That is one of the differences between Merlin seen as a flawless male figure and female (especially mother) figures as Morgause, who is connected with violent behaviour – either her own, or her sons’, as discussed in the previous sub-chapter. Hadfield notes that “White had obsessive and equivocal feelings about violence throughout his life” (207), which suggests that his autobiographical features in the novel do not lay only in the

59 representation of mother-son relationship. Whites mixed feelings about violence, perhaps, originated in the Cheltenham College housemaster, a “sadistic, homosexual, middle-aged bachelor with a gloomy, suffused face” (qtd in Adderley 55). Adderley further elaborates that White “set about trying to think of a way education could be accomplished painlessly” (56). The solution of White’s struggle took form of Merlin teaching young Wart – “The ideal relationship takes form of a very old man teaching a very young boy” (Adderley 56).

Even though the anti-war message of the novels is clear, White did not include only a final solution but lets the reader think about the development of author’s thoughts. Hadfield notes that White leaves some room for opposition, as he does not insist on Merlin’s rules to be true in general or perceived as true by everyone (210).

Moreover, Merlin makes it clear that his opinions may vary, as he does when Kay argues with him about the way of responding to and uncertain origin of aggression. At first Merlin is sure that “you can always spot the villain, if you keep a fair mind. In the last resort, it is ultimately the man who strikes the first blow” (233). However later he admits that his view had changed over the years: “I recollect that I was a pacifist once, in the Boer War, when my own country was the aggressor, and a young woman blew a squeaker at me on Mafeking Night” (234). Since the Boer War was a real war that

Britain fought, Merlin alludes to the future, therefore to White’s past, not the past of the

Arthurian context of the book. Thus, supporting the idea of White’s own of opinion (even though White himself could not have fought in either of the Boer Wars).

When White elaborated on his inspiration in Malory, he realized that the central idea of Malory’s masterpiece was searching for an antidote to war (Warner 186). In one of his letters to his friend David Garnett, White explicitly denotes that his novels are anti-Hitlerian:

60

Naturally I don’t want to leave here in order to be starved and blown up. But

unfortunately I have written an epic about war, one of whose morals is that

Hitler us the kind of chap one has to stop. I believe in my book, and, in order to

give it a fair start in life, I must show that I am ready to practise what I preach.

(qtd. in Warner 185)

The changed opinion from perceiving himself a bard whose task is to fight through fiction to willingness to go and fight in person is also apparent in the message.

The word Chap appears as well among the words which Merlin uses to refer indirectly to Hitler in The Queen of Air and Darkness: “There was just such a man when

I was young – an Austrian who invented a new way of life and convinced himself that he was the chap to make it work. He tried to impose his reformation by the sword, and plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos” (266). Certainly, such allusion would not be lost between lines for Whites readers even immediately after the revised versions of the novels were published in 1958. Mainly thanks to the fact that, as

Hadfield remarks, “White’s final revised text of 1958, The Once and Future King, […] made the anti-Nazi message of the work a great deal more explicit” (209).

Surprisingly, even here, in the connection with Hitler, both sides of perception of conflicts are presented by White. Merlin’s recollection of Hitler is evoked by Kay’s thoughts about reasons to start a war.

A good reason for starting a war is simply to have a good reason! For instance,

there might be a king who had discovered a new way of life for human beings –

you know, something which would be good for them. […] Well, if the human

beings were too wicked or too stupid to accept his way, he might have to force it

on them […] by the sword. (266)

61

Even though Merlin tries to persuade Kay that there is a difference between making ideas available to people to think about them and imposing them on the people,

Kay concludes that: “Arthur is fighting [this war] to impose his ideas on King Lot”

(267) making thusly a direct link between Arthur and Hitler.

Kay may have such thoughts about good reasons to start a war, because he had not received the same education from Merlin as Arthur had. “Merlin’s theories of education demand that the Wart learn to think for himself, so that he escapes the restrictions placed upon a child’s development by inadequacies of traditionalism as espoused by Sir Ector’s benevolent but flawed regime” (Hadfield 213). With the same idea as Merlin teaches Arthur to be an active thinker, White “had written ‘The Book of

Merlyn’ believing that it would influence the way people thought about war and induce them to make a new and more sensible kind of peace” (Warner 190). The Book of

Merlyn is built up on Arthur’s debate with Merlin about the knowledge he gained and his reign. The animals to which Arthur had been transformed appear again and remind the readers of their roles in The Sword in the Stone. Raymond Thompson describer the concluding books as “clouded by bitterness and political railing” (Return from Avalon

127).

However, political content appears already in The Sword in the Stone even during the very first animal transformations into a perch. The tutor and his pupil meet the King of the Moat – Mr. P., whom Merlin introduces addressing the Wart: “You will see what it is to be a king” (51). Hadfield suggests that Mr. P. is a representation of a

Nazi war criminal and allusion to American recruitment posters (214). The American allusion is indeed explicit in the text and certainly meant just for the reader who could connect the image with the intention: “There he hung or hoved, his vast ironic mouth permanently drawn downward in a kind of melancholy, his lean clean-shaven chops

62 giving him an American expression, like that of Uncle Sam” (51-2). Mr. P. is described as a fierce ruler who suggest that the most important thing is power and that Might is

Right (52). Hadfield further suggests that Mr. P. stands for the idea “that White saw no absolute and easy separation between the violence and corruption of power on the allied side and that of the Axis forces” (214, original emphasis). Even though Mr. P. answers the pupil’s questions, he then warns him that he might be eaten so he should flee as fast as he can, but Arthur cannot move at first. “The Wart had found himself almost hypnotized by the big words, and hardly noticed that the tight mouth was coming closer to him. […] it was only in the last second that he was able to regain his own will” (52-

3). Hadfield notes that “it is not entirely clear what this first lesson teaches the Wart”

(213), however, it one may propose that it is not the Wart who is being taught something in this sequence, but the main pupil is the reader. The Wart’s paralysis caused by the big words is an example of White’s message to the reader, which has been mentioned in the previous paragraph. Arthur is at the beginning of the book described as “a born follower” and “hero-worshipper” (14) which needs to be changed in order for him to become the king, therefor he has to learn to think for himself. Arthur gets almost captured by the big thoughts of the King and he would have blindly

“followed” them towards his death inside the monster, if he had not recollected his own thinking. This experience is an allusion to one of White’s intentions, as Sylvia

Townsend describes that in 1938 he “had in mind [a book which] was intended for survivors of those civilians who would by their sheepishness, mental laziness, and good feeling had allowed themselves to be bossed into a war by their governments. Such survivors must learn to think for themselves” (100-1).

The most prominent of these political animal groups are ants, geese, and then the

Wart’s conversation about the nature of man with the badger. There are several things

63 that strike the Wart when he meets the ants. There are no individuals, no originality, everyone is just given a code instead of a name and there are strictly assigned positions within the community. The nest is a system based on routine, where everyone except the leader is equal. However, they are not as equal so that it could be connected with freedom, there is no such word in the ant language. “There were no words for happiness, for freedom, for liking, nor were there any words for their opposites. […]

The nearest he could get to Right or Wrong, even, was to say Done or Not Done” (124).

The Wart was surprised by the ants’ conversations which go in loops of the same sentences just with minor changes:

‘I dew think our beloved Leader is wonderful, don’t yew? […] / ‘Wasn’t it

hawful about 310099/WD! Of course e was hexecured at once, by special order

of ar beloved Leader.’/ ‘Oh Ark! Ear comes that Mammy—mammy—

mammy—mammy song again. I dew think …’” (sic 126-7)

One of the crucial parts of the Wart’s education during these transformations was asking questions. However, it was impossible to inquire about the ants’ beliefs and

“it was dangerous to ask questions at all. A question was a sign of insanity to them.

Their life was not questionable: it was dictated” (127-8). A totalitarian regime can be tracked through the description of the ant’s form of society. Admiring one leader who dictates the others’ lives via a wireless broadcast, inability to choose anything on their free will, and suppressing the individual in general, all fit the totalitarian regime. The leaders and the nest are the most important things and the leaders exist to command their subjects and to lead them to war. White even included a certain kind of war propaganda which everyone accepts as logical despite its obvious illogicality. As apparent from the following example, it resembles the state of soviet Russia, where people were starving under the communist rule of Stalin and Lenin. Therefore, it could

64 be understood as a satirical criticism of the only nation which was suffering from a severe famine under a totalitarian regime before and during the 1940’s.

A. We are so numerous that we are starving.

B. Therefore we must encourage still larger families so as to become yet

more numerous and starving.

C. When we are so numerous and starving as all that, obviously we shall

have a right to take other people’s stores of seed. Besides, we shall by then have

a numerous and starving army. (128)

According to Dunne, another example of propaganda is the Grail Quest, which can be seen as “a device invented by Arthur to hold his Round Table together and keep it functioning at a time when its original objective, the establishment of an order of temporal justice, had already been achieved, and the energies of its members were finding no adequate outlet and turning sour as a result” (366). Thompson concludes that

“The comparison of mankind to the mindless ant is particularly odious, for White uses it to attack totalitarianism” (Return from Avalon 144), and Hadfield describes the ants as

“explicitly Nazi” (212).

In contrast to the ants, who are furious about the boundaries of their nests and little realms, there are wild geese. The geese do not even understand the concept of war between groups of the same species: “Will you stop about it at once! What a horrible mind you must have! You have no right to say such things. […] what creature could be so low as to go about in bands, to murder others of its own blood?” (170). There are no boundaries in the geese world, thanks to the ability to fly, and because of that, their leaders, the admirals, exist and emerge naturally to lead the groups to their destinations.

Young Arthur sees a solution for war conflicts in the inexistence of boundaries, as he reflects at the end of The Candle in the Wind:

65

He saw the problem before him as plain as a map. The fantastic thing about war

was that it was fought about nothing—literary nothing. Frontiers were imaginary

lines. There was no visible line between Scotland and England, although

Flodden and Bannockburn had been fought about it. It was geography which

was the cause—political geography. […] Nations did not need to have the same

kind of civilization, nor the same kind of leader […] They could keep their own

civilizations, […] if they would give each other freedom of trade and free

passage and access to the world. Countries would have to become counties—but

counties which could keep their own culture and laws. (638-9)

Hadfield infers that the theory “has the author’s approval and is not yet another passage which demands an ironic reading” (221). However, he argues that possibly the reader would not be satisfied, as Sylvia Townsend was not, with such easy conclusion of the complex problem of the four novels (221). Hadfield deduces that “Throughout the four novels, White uses the matter of Britain to show how difficult government over disparate peoples is because they are competing for occupation of the same territory”

(222). If one agrees with Hadfield’s deduction, then it may be assumed that Arthur came up with a satisfying conclusion. Moreover, from the point of view of today’s reader, the concept of world without visible boundaries which Arthur describes is more or less the same as the principle of the modern Schengen Area. White was timeless with suggesting this concept, even though some similar ideas already existed, as for example the federation of the United States. However, they did not have separate leaders and were united under one president. By the time The Once and Future King was published, the predecessor of the Schengen Area had existed a few years – the European Coal and

Steel Community, presented in The Schuman Declaration on 9 May 1950. The main similarity of the Declaration and Arthur’s theory is, that both are intended as war-

66 preventing measures. Be it war in general, or War between France and Germany

(Europa.eu). However, the Declaration included just arrangements about coal and steel, and did not include people, who are the main subject of Arthur’s theory. It is possible that White knew about these proceedings which were taking place in Europe, yet it can be suggested that he was not necessarily influenced by them and therefore his conclusion is visionary.

Another significant characteristic of the geese is, that they do not own any property. They just eat what they find, similarly as the ants, they feed from something public; be it a shared stomach, or shared ground. Elizabeth Brewer notes that White propounds “the idea that it is ‘communal property’ rather than ownership of private property that leads to war” (155) linking thusly the gees as well as the ants to communism.

The fall of Arthur is generally connected with war, as the King dies in the final battle with Mordred in many retellings of the legend. C.M. Adderley elaborates that war in The Once and Future King is something ancestral. “White attributes the ultimate downfall of Arthur, in part at least, to the ancestral wrongs suffered by the

Cornwall/Orkney faction: Arthur’s attempt on Mordred’s life, the rape of Igraine by

Uther Pendragon, the conquest of the Gaels in remote history” (57). On the last pages of the book, Artur feels the sorrow and that “everything was rooted in the past! Actions of any sort in one generation might have incalculable consequences in another” (631).

However, he realizes that even if he cannot change the past, he can at least let someone know about the faults of the past and let them learn from it. Thusly the circle of an old man teaching a youngster completes, when the one who occupied the position of the youngster turns into an old man tutoring another youngling. Nearly thirteen years old

Sir Thomas of Warwick carries the idea of King Arthur and passes it on to others. The

67 image of the boy is also important because he symbolises innocence that Arthur had lost and White laments that even “the wisdom gained cannot compensate for the loss of innocence” (Thompson, Return from Avalon 135).

In conclusion, this chapter has analysed instances of political allusions in The

Once and Future King. It has discussed the Nazi / totalitarian ants, the communist geese, and the image of absolute power of Mr. P; additionally, providing evidence that the novels are anti-Hitlerian. One of the most prominent ideas which T. H. White indulged into the novels is, that people should learn to think for themselves, not only blindly follow their leaders. This idea can be traced in Merlin’s teaching. Also Whites timelessness has been suggested, since one of Arthur’s theories resembles the current

Schengen Area.

68

4. Comparison of the Novels

Even though C. S. Lewis and T. H. White approached the material of the

Arthurian legend in their own way, as has been analysed in the previous chapters, there are some similarities and differences worth of further comparison. The main similarities that have already been discussed are the autobiographical features, especially the fact that both authors’ voices are present in the books as has been proven, and other aforementioned examples of people who influenced the authors and are, thus, present in the novels as well. Moreover, both authors criticised the social affairs of their time, namely communism, totalitarianism, and Nazism. However, there are also other issues that are worth a deeper analysis. Most significant is the issue of a certain feeling that something had been lost to humanity, which forms an important aspect in both novels, although each novel tackles the issue differently. Furthermore, there is the question of magic and religion which have been critical elements of the legend since its first re- writings.

Since C. S. Lewis is well-known for his Christian apologetics, the importance of religion in That Hideous Strength is not surprising. One of the main characters,

Ransom, is a Christian figure who interlinks the modern settings of the novel with the legend by embodying also the Pendragon and the Fisher King. As the Fisher King converts Percival to Christianity, Ransom leads Jane in the same way (for details see chapter 2.3). However, what is surprising, is Lewis’s approach to magic. Merlin is usually connected with remnant Celtic elements and he represents a Celtic druid, or, a mighty magician. Merlin’s magical power might cause a problem for an author who dislikes certain kind of magic. “Lewis identifies magic not with the Middle Ages but with the humanists who came afterward, [Magicians in Lewis’s work] are generally

69 depicted as those who abrogate moral laws in order to gain illicit power over nature and over others” (Downing 75). That resembles the devil’s side of the novel, where the scientists are trying to gain power over mankind, therefore Lewis had to make a specific distinction in this case and change Merlin’s magical power to his tastes. Even though

Merlin has a certain power over nature in That Hideous Strength, Lewis distinguishes between the power of magicians in Renaissance and the one of Merlin:

“What common measure is there,” [Dr. Dimble] would ask, “between

ceremonial occultists like Faustus and Prospero and Archimago with their

midnight studies, their forbidden books, their attendant fiends or elementals, and

a figure like Merlin who seems to produce his results simply by being Merlin?”

And Ransom agreed. He thought that Merlin’s art was the last survival of

something older and different […]. It had probably differed from Renaissance

Magic profoundly. It had possibly (though this was doubtful) been less guilty: it

had certainly been more effective. (IX.V)

Merlin’s power is therefore distinguished from a modern understanding of magic. It is rather connected with something antient, natural, forgotten in this age. In a way, it could be seen as a complete denial of magic, it might be said that, in the end, there is no magic at all, since all Merlin’s power comes from his religion.

In contrast, T. H. White handles the issue of Merlin’s magic differently in The

Once and Future King. Merlin’s magical power is not transformed into anything else than magic, which is accepted by everyone in the novel. Same as the particularity about his backward aging. White makes magic an essential element mainly in The Sword in the Stone, where it is part of Arthur’s education, even though he does not teach the future king any magic, but through magic. When Merlin transforms little Arthur into a fish for the first time, Arthur is not surprised at all, he just accepts it as something

70 natural. “He knew that he was turning into a fish,” and the only element of surprise was, that he “found it difficult to be a new kind of creature” (46). Even in the second novel,

Queen of Air and Darkness, magic is accepted, yet it is starting to disappear from the story.

On the other hand, it is the holy power and interference of figures like the

Oyéresu, that is considered normal in That Hideous Strength. The reason for Merlin’s ability to join the good side lies in the old energy that he carries inside him. The question of the villains waiting for Merlin is dealt with in the form of a second Merlin, who is captured by the other party but has no power at all. Merlinus Ambrosius is not allowed by Ransom to use his power over nature until he receives the power from the

Oyéresu. Ransom describes the Oyéresu as neutral creatures: “I don’t mean, of course, that anything can be a real neutral. A conscious being is either obeying God or disobeying Him. But there might be things neutral in relation to us” (original emphasis,

XII.IV). Later he specifies that they are not to be mistaken with the eldils. He also suggests that there had always been creatures like them in our world, making the myth more believable:

Even the Oyéresu aren’t exactly angels in the same sense as our guardian angels

are. Technically, they are Intelligences. The point is that while it may be true at

the end of the world to describe every eldil either as an angel or a devil, and may

even be true now, it was much less true in Merlin’s time. There used to be things

on this earth pursuing their own business, so to speak. […] And if you go back

further . . . all the gods, elves, dwarfs, water-people, fate, longaevi. You and I

know too much to think they are just illusions. (XIII.IV, original emphasis)

Some of the creatures Ransom mentions, could considered magical, and even in accordance with Lewis’s perception of magic. Since he mentions them as creatures that

71 walked the Earth a long time ago, their magic had not been corrupted. The old form of magic is part of the central idea of the novel, that something has been lost to humanity and if redeemed, many problems could be solved (discussed in chapter 2.1).

A similar notion of something lost hangs around magic in The Once and Future

King as well. Even though Lewis would probably consider White’s Merlin’s magic occultists and Renaissance-like, it is a natural thing during Arthur’s childhood.

However, magic diminishes together with Merlin, as Adderley notes that “[l]ater, when the Wart has become King Arthur, the magic has disappeared with his childhood” (61).

Worthington puts the disappearance of magic together with the adult approach to religion: “With Merlin’s departure, the magic of the first two books of The Once and

Future King is lost, to be replaced by the which are the adult version of magic, a magic converted into and legitimated by religion” (108).

When religion interferes with Arthur’s ideal, everything seems to have been done for nothing. “For if there was such a thing as original sin, if man was on the whole a villain, if the bible was right in saying that the heart of men was deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, then the purpose of his life had been a vain one” (White

XXX 629). Even though Arthur struggles with these doubts in the end, the reader is told that Merlin had taught Arthur that “man was perfectible” and that “there was no such thing as original sin” (628). The original sin is another great difference between the authors, since Lewis does not deny the existence of original sin on planet Earth.

Even though White’s Merlin denies the original sin, Adderley claims that

White’s Arthur is a Christ-like figure. “Like Christ, Arthur will attempt to propagate the idea of humane decency; […] he will be sacrificed by his people, for his people, because of his adherence to this idea, […] he will live on afterwards […] as a pure idea, contained in the words set on paper” (Adderley 59). Unfortunately, there are no knights

72 of the Round Table that could be directly alluded to as apostles. However, one could suggest that White’s Arthur has one symbolic apostle, since there is the character of a boy, Thomas of Warwick, who is assigned the quest of spreading the word about King

Arthur, discussed in the previous chapter.

The disappearance of magic from Arthur’s life in The Once and Future King is connected with the loss of childhood innocence. That brings up another similarity between the two authors. Both central contexts of the novels are, that humanity has lost something, and people should retrace back to recover it. Lewis’s philosophy has been full of allusions to the past and going back (Downing 23), and White “enjoyed looking back to an imaginary golden age in the past” (Brewer 19). Even though the thing they lament as lost is different, be it childhood innocence in White and something rather unspecified, yet connected with Christian morals and ideals of the past, it could be suggested that both authors did not believe much in bright future of humanity.

In conclusion, both author’s search something in the past and believe that it would make the future better. They both tackle the question of magic and religion, even though both magical powers have different source. Lewis views magic as something that belongs to the past and religion as its fulfilment, White, in contrast, suggests that magic turns into religion in form of waiting for a miracle. The actual belief in magic vanished with the innocence of childhood, therefore, the power of Merlin in That

Hideous Strength is strengthened by Christianity, yet there is no place for Merlin’s magic in Arthur’s adulthood in The Once and Future King. The authors also differ in the perception of the original sin, since Lewis does not deny it, however White’s Merlin teaches the opposite, even though Arthur could be perceived as a Christ-like figure.

73

5. Conclusion

The aim of this thesis has been to analyse how the Arthurian legend was appropriated in the twentieth century. The analysis has been based on introducing two different perspectives and ways of appropriation of the Arthurian legend. A novel That

Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis has been selected as an example of the first approach, which is understood as creating a story in modern settings while using motifs of the

Arthurian legend indirectly. In contrast, The Once and Future King, a book by T. H.

White, has been selected to illustrate the second approach; alluding to the current affairs by setting the story directly in Arthurian background, working thus with the legend, its characters, and motifs, directly. Even though it is not a complete survey of ways in which writers approached the legend in the twentieth century, the thesis provided a partial insight into appropriating the Arthurian legend at the beginning of the century.

Both authors used the Arthurian motifs to comment on current social affairs and to strengthen their arguments by connotations that the Arthurian legend stands for in the readers’ minds.

One of the articulated research questions was about the techniques the authors’ used to express their concerns. Both Lewis and White included autobiographical features in the novels. In the case of Lewis, the main aspect was his perception of faith and his own journey towards reconversion to Christianity. One of his concerns was writing literature about religion for similar sceptics as he had been. Apart from the apologetics that is usual in his works, he made one of the main characters, Ransom, embody the symbolism of an Arthurian character – the Fisher King. Thus, Ransom leads another protagonist, Jane, towards faith in the same way as the Fisher King led one of the knights – Percival. However, due to his traditional beliefs, he received

74 negative reactions from some critics and has been accused of being a misogynist, as discussed in chapter 2.4. In comparison, White had been influenced by a negative experience with his mother, and he used his own family background to create two different versions of childhood in the book; both childhood versions were influenced by

Freud’s psychoanalysis. Arthur’s childhood is idyllic, since it is deprived of any mother figure, as white continued in the tradition set by Malory and created a highly masculinized world. In contrast with Arthur’s childhood, there are the Orkney boys, who are heavily affected by their mother, which has similar qualities (or rather faults) as

White’s own mother. She neglects her sons and makes them love her too much, thereafter they are unable to confront women. Discussed from the point of view of psychoanalysis, they are jealous of their mother because of the Oedipus complex, which ends up in Agravaine killing her when he finds her with a lover. Critics have also analysed portrayal of White’s sadistic inclination in the novel, since violence is often depicted in detail.

While Lewis expressed his opinions about religion through the characters of the novel, White, on the other hand, blended his own personality with the character of

Merlin, thus positioning himself as a tutor. Merlin teaches Arthur about governing the people, mainly through transforming the pupil into animals. White thusly communicates his ideas about the modern isms and war. Moreover, as Merlin teaches Arthur to think independently, White wants to teach his readers to think for themselves and not to blindly obey the governments. As showed in chapter 3.3., White this way criticises totalitarianism, Nazism, and communism. He illustrates the horrors of totalitarianism and communism on the example of ants, whose community resembles the one under a totalitarian regime and satirically corresponds to situation in Soviet Russia. Dangers of authoritarian ideals are shown in the encounter with the King of the Mole, who also

75 portrays the leader, whose ideas might kill those, who would follow him without thinking.

In contrast White puts the geese, who live in a world without boundaries and based on this experience, Arthur comes up with an idea of a perfect world, where people would be free to travel independently and therefore there would be no wars about geographical ownership. It could be suggested that the King’s ideal world without boundaries is similar to the current Schengen Area, considering the free movement of citizens.

Although Lewis criticizes the same ideologies as White, he combines them with the context of the eternal conflict between good and evil. Showing the practices of the isms on the side of evil, in the company of the N.I.C.E., an institute that is governed as a country under totalitarian regime. Its members pursue the idea of creating a new species through scientific development and elimination of the weak. There are also other practices of the institute that Lewis’s audience would connect with the reality, such as a special police force, experiments on prisoners, or creation of false trials.

Another question has been posed, whether the authors added some special element or new material to the database of Arthurian motifs created throughout the ages. One could suggest that in the case of C. S. Lewis it was the concept of

Pendragonship, the idea that there does not have to be King Arthur himself to save everything, but someone of his kin or someone with the knowledge of Logres. Ransom, apart from the Fisher King, also embodies this mythical Pendragon and is thus able to command Merlin. T. H. White remained relatively loyal to his inspiration in Malory, however, his Merlin ages backwards; allowing thus the author to make anachronistic comments about the situation of the twentieth century, even though the plot of the novel is set in the Middle Ages. Interestingly, Merlin’s reversed life is simply accepted by

76 everyone in the novel, in the same way as Merlin’s magic, which later diminishes with the withdrawal of Merlin from the story, as Arthur loses his childhood innocence and magic is negatively substituted by religion. Although there is a similar development of magical power in Lewis’s novel, it is perceived reversely. Lewis transformed the mighty magician, Celtic druid Merlin, into a Christian priest and his power, connected with nature, was strengthened by the power of God. Thus, Christianity, or submitting himself to God, works as fulfilment of Merlin’s journey.

It might also be suggested that combining psychoanalysis with the Arthurian legend is one of the elements that White added to the Arthurian motifs. It represents an essential part of The Once and Future King and is one of White’s autobiographical features that altered the appropriation of the legend significantly. However, further research should be done to see which Arthurian authors have also been influenced by

Freud.

Some further research could be also conducted on an anachronistic level –

Lewis’s and White’s approach of the current affairs could be compared with the way authors of the end of the twentieth century dealt with the topic retrospectively. On the other hand, since both authors tackled some issues concerning women in the novels, perception of female writers could also be analysed and contrasted.

77

Works Cited

Adderley, C. M. “The Best Thing for Being Sad: Education and Educators in T. H.

White’s ‘The Once and Future King.’” Quondam et Futurus, 2.1 (1992): 55-68.

JSTOR. PDF file.

Art, Lindsley. The Most Reluctant Convert: C. S. Lewis’s Journey to Faith. C. S. Lewis

Institute. N.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2017.

Bitel, Lisa M. “‘In Visu Noctis’: Dreams in European Hagiography and Histories, 450-

900.” History of Religions, 31.1 (1991): 39-59. JSTOR. PDF file.

Downing, David C. Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of C. S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy.

Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1992. EBSCOhost. eBook.

Dunn, Stephen P. “Mr. White, Mr. Williams, and the Matter of Britain.” The Kenyon

Review, 24.2 (1962): 363-371. JSTOR. PDF file.

Hadfield, Andrew. “T. H. White, Pacifism and Violonce: The Once and Future Nation.”

Connotations, 6.2 (1996/97): 207-226. PDF file.

Lewis, Clive Staples. Out of the Silent Planet. London: Bodley Head, 1938.

Gutenberg.ca. Web. 29 Nov. 2017.

---. Perelandra. London: Bodley Head, 1967. Gutenberg.ca. Web. 29 Nov. 2017.

---. That Hideous Strength. London: Bodley Head, 1965. Gutenberg.ca. Web. 29 Nov.

2017.

Lupack, Alan, ed. Arthurian Drama, an Anthology. Abingdon: Routledge, 2015. Google

Books. Web. 20 Nov. 2017

Martin, Thomas L. “Merlin, Magic, and the Meta-fantastic: The Matter of ‘That

Hideous Strength.’” Arthuriana, 21.1 (2011): 66-84. JSTOR. PDF file.

Moorman, Charles. “Space Ship and Grail: The Myths of C. S. Lewis.” College English

18.8 (1957): 401-5. JSTOR. PDF file.

78

Moynihan, Martin. “The Idea of Arthur: Has it a Meaning for today’s world?”

Quondam et Futurus, 5.1 (1984): 1-8. JSTOR. PDF file.

Sandler, Florence Field. “Family Romance in ‘The Once and Future King.’” Quondam

et Futurus, 2.2 (1992): 73-80. JSTOR. PDF file.

Smith, Harold L. British Feminism in the Twentieth Century. Aldershot: Edward Elgar,

1990. Print.

Sprague, Kurth. “The Troubled Hearth of T. H. White: Women and ‘The Once and

Future King.’” Arthuriana, 16.3. (2006): 1-33, 35-67, 69-105, 107-197. JSTOR.

PDF file.

“The Shuman Declaration – 9 May 1950.” Europa.eu. 26 Nov. 2017. Web.

Thompson, Raymond. “Morgause of Orkney Queen of Air and Darkness.” Quondam et

Futurus. 3.1. (1993): 1-13. JSTOR. PDF file.

---. The Return from Avalon: A Study of the Arthurian Legend in Modern Fiction.

Westport, Conn.: Greenwood P, 1985. Archive.org. Web. 28 Oct. 2017.

Tolhurst, Fiona. “Beyond the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis as Closet Arthurian.” Arthuriana,

22.4 (2012): 140–166. JSTOR. PDF file.

Warner, Sylvia Townsend. T. H. White; a Biography. New York: Viking P, 1968.

Archive.org. Web. 18 Nov. 2017.

White, Terence Hanbury. The Once and Future King. New York: Berkley Books, 1981.

Archive.org. Web. 18 Nov. 2017.

Worthington, Heather. “From Children’s Story to Adult Fiction: T. H. White’s ‘The

Once and Future King.’” Arthuriana, 12.2. (2002): 97-119. JSTOR. PDF file.

79

Resumé (English)

The subject of this thesis is appropriation of the Arthurian legend by C. S. Lewis and T. H. White. The aims were to find out which techniques the authors used to convey their opinions in the novels, and whether they added some new or special content to the

Arthurian collection of motifs. The paper is divided into three sections, first two dedicated to separate analysis of the authors, plus a final comparison. The authors’ background and autobiographical features which they included in the novels are described, and further it is analysed how the autobiographical content influenced their adaptation of the legend. Lewis’s Christian apologetics is included in the analysis, since his own reconversion affected the characters and his appropriation of the legend. On the other hand, White’s most prominent autobiographical feature would seem to be relationship he had with his mother. Therefore, his novels are analysed in connection with Freud’s psychoanalysis.

Each author was chosen for his specific approach to the legend. C. S. Lewis set the story of That Hideous Strength in modern settings and used the literary motifs of the

Arthurian legend indirectly, in order to convey meaning through connotation which are connected with the legend. In contrast, T. H. White’s The Once and Future King is directly a retelling of the story of King Arthur, and the author interlinked his ideas with the legend and presented his opinions to the audience through the characters of the legend. The authors commented on the current affairs of the twentieth century; both criticised totalitarianism, communism, and Nazism. Textual analysis of these elements in the books is presented in the thesis as the next stage, before the final comparison of the novels.

80

Resumé (Czech)

Předmětem této diplomové práce bylo analyzovat, jakým způsobem využili autoři C. S. Lewis a T. H. White legendu o Králi Artušovi. Cílem bylo zmapovat, jaké techniky autoři použili ke zprostředkování svých názorů a zdali přidali nový či zvláštní obsah do stávajícího artušovského souboru motivů. Práce je rozdělena do tří sekcí, z nichž první dvě byly věnovány každému autorovi zvlášť, s následným porovnáním.

Každá kapitola se věnuje popisu autobiografických prvků, které autoři zahrnuli ve svých knihách. Dále je pak analyzováno, jak jejich vlastní zkušenosti ovlivnily adaptaci legendy. V případě C. S. Lewise nebylo možné vynechat jeho vztah k víře a vlastní rekonverzi, která ovlivnila postavy knihy. U druhého autora naopak sehrála největší roli jeho matka, s níž měl velmi komplikovaný vztah, který ovlivnil i jeho přístup k legendě.

Psychoanalýza byla tedy tíž zahrnuta.

Každý z autorů byl zvolen pro svůj specifický přístup k legendě. Příběh

Lewisova románu That Hideous Strength se odehrává v moderním prostředí, přičemž autor používá motivy legendy nepřímo a využívá tak konotací, které v sobě postavy a motivy legendy ukrývají. T. H. White přesně naopak popsal prostředí legendy přímo, jeho The Once and Future King je příběhem krále Artuše a White promlouvá skrze postavy legendy. Oba autoři komentovali současné dění dvacátého století, oba kritizovali totalismus, komunismus a nacizmus. Rozbor autobiografických prvků tedy následuje analýza této kritiky obou autorů.

81