Elaine of Ascolat cares for the shield of the brave knight Lancelot, tasked with protecting it while he fights in a tournament for the honour of another woman. When he is gravely injured, Elaine flees to find and nurse him back to health, but her love is still unrequited. She dies of love:
“Love, art thou sweet? Then bitter death must be:
(Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Lancelot and Elaine,” 1004-1006)
Love, thou art bitter; sweet is death to me.
O Love, if death be sweeter, let me die.”
The story of Lancelot and Elaine is drawn from a centuries-old tradition of Arthurian legends which tell of the various adventures of King Arthur and his Round Table. These stories are older than the Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066, carried through the Dark and Middle Ages by the songs of travelling Troubadour poets and the writings of medieval historians. Revived during the British Victorian period of the 19th century, Arthurian legends weigh on the cultural conscience of English speaking countries because of the ancient qualities which imbue them with such mystery: was King Arthur a real King, lost to us in the motion of the ever-turning wheel of history, or was he a figment of ancestral imagination, a symbol of dying nations and the men who fought to keep them alive?
Perhaps more fascinating than the real or invented birth of King Arthur and his knights are the women who they seek to love, and who at times trick, deceive, or betray them. Central to medieval Arthuriana is a tradition called courtly love, which dictates gender dynamics in the entire genre known as medieval romance. Courtly love is based on the chivalric code followed by knights and all good men, and it functions based off the premise that true love, specifically the pure love of a woman, is what makes men strong enough to conquer and succeed. Knights fight to impress women and win them over so that they may be the best possible version of themselves: without the love of a woman, the knight is incomplete.
To those of us familiar with modern feminism, this is a shocking reversal of gender roles, because it’s actually women who keep the keys to success in medieval romance. They are powerful figures with the ability to change the trajectory of nations, and often have supernatural qualities that make them dangerous, feared, and respected. Elaine of Ascolat, who rides off in search of her injured love, subverts what we know to be the “traditional” narrative of the knight in shining armor saving a princess: the princess, in this case, saves the knight. Appearing in Thomas Malory’s 1485 Morte D’Arthur and again in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s 1859 Idylls of the King, Elaine is a literary figure who troubles the modern feminist’s perception of a long and arduous history set against the agency of women. Where Elaine walks through the pages of our literary history, she creates pockets of hope for her contemporary counterparts: if the princess has had the ability to save the knight this entire time, why shouldn’t she do it again?
Some of Elaine of Ascolat’s female fellows include The Lady of the Lake, Morgan le Fay, and Queen Guinevere, who all play different yet equally powerful roles in their medieval and modern portrayals. The Lady of the Lake is responsible for both giving and taking away King Arthur’s sword, Excalibur. Excalibur is a major source of Arthur’s power and responsible for innumerable conquests. What, then, is the significance of this great power bestowed and withdrawn by a mysteriously powerful sorceress? In one possible reading, the Lady of the Lake actually controls the trajectory of the rise and fall of Arthur’s splendid Camelot with her gift. This is mirrored in the way that Morgan le Fay controls the narrative of another tale called “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.”
“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” originated in the 1400s, its author unknown, and tells a classic knightly adventure of Sir Gawain including beheadings, battles, and the pursuit of chivalric success. During his adventure, the Knight Gawain encounters a splendidly ugly woman who he immediately disregards; by the end of the story, we find out that this loathly lady is actually Morgan le Fay, who has put Gawain through injury and shame purely for her own purpose of scaring Queen Guinevere. Gawain is mistaken to ignore Morgan, who has dictated his entire story and controlled his actions for her own goals. Furthermore, this story shows that evaluating women solely on the basis of their physical appearance is a potentially deathly error: Morgan le Fay’s beauty has no bearing on her power.
Queen Guinevere of Camelot shines brightest in our collective memories of Arthurian legendary women, her enchanting beauty masking a complicated psychological interior. Though she has always appeared as Arthur’s regal Queen at the helm of his kingdom, she has also always engaged in a love affair with Arthur’s knight, Lancelot. This love triangle is partially to blame for the fall of Camelot but also comes with a plethora of questions concerning the nature of courtly love. Most importantly, it prompts us to consider the complexity of Guinevere’s identity and to understand that she is not at all the flat, silly character that we might assume her to be. William Morris revived her in an 1858 poem titled “Defense of Guinevere,” a dramatic monologue that expresses Guinevere’s interiority after her adultery is discovered and she is sentenced to death. Here, Guinevere is the epitome of tragedy as she describes her pure and good love for Lancelot that has become her condemnation, revealing herself as a character whose psychological complexity parallels and even rivals those of her male counterparts.
Looking back on a history that has treated women unfairly, the women of Arthuriana provide a strong basis for concluding that alternate perceptions of female agency have always existed. However, though queens, damsels, and witches reign supreme in our literature, their power was not necessarily mirrored in society. It’s important to remember that medieval romance and its courtly love was consumed by the upper class, these are stories rather than reality, and issues like women’s suffrage had good reasons to come about. What Elaine of Ascolat shows us, though, is that despite the princess’ unjust treatment, she always had the power to be the savior: it’s a matter of the societal conditions we create that do or do not allow that to emerge.
Though medieval literature can be inaccessible owing to the old language in which it is written, legends of Arthur have survived the test of time. This is because Arthur is a powerful symbol of hope in the context of nationhood, emblematic of the human ability to survive and conquer hardship. But this shouldn’t be the only reason we remember the Round Table legends, which are populated by a cast of beautiful, ugly, strong, weak, and complicated women. In the 21st century, it can be a disconsolate experience to look back on the past several centuries of female suffering at the hands of a society which seems to constantly subject and constrain them to predetermined roles. Look a few centuries further back, though, and find Elaine of Ascolat, who threw caution to the wind and rode off in search of her heart’s desire. However we may be portrayed, prescribed, or conditioned, we have always been the complex people with the ability to be exactly whatever it is we wish to be.
“Am I nat an erthely woman?… I do none offence, though I love an erthely man, unto God, for He fourmed me thereto, and all manner of good love cometh from God.”
(Elayne of Ascolat from Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur, Medieval Arthurian Literature 455)