Lady Merlin
A question for my fellow(ship of) Arthurians: is Lady Brusen just a female Merlin? And if so, is she negative or positive?
My initial reaction to her was negative. Deeply negative. She tricks Lancelot? This equated her with Morgan Le Fay and caused me to cast a doubtful eye over everything she did for the remainder of our reading. On a second look, however, I was forced to admit that she holds the same space in our story as Merlin. As an operator she gives people agency that they otherwise would be denied. She knows, via prophesy (prophesy people!), that Elaine and Lancelot’s child will be the greatest knight ever and immediately enacts a plan to bring that child into the world. More telling is the way she goes about it. Disguising one lover to appear as the real heart’s desire of another is emotionally disturbing, rationally insulting, and leads to all sorts of trouble… we’ve also seen it before. Amazingly enough, our beloved King Arthur was created in this very way.
Is Lady Brusen to Galahad as Merlin is to Arthur? Is she a testament for female agency (tricking the knight instead of the dame is fairly impressive) or is this just a bitchy woman who operates in the narrative as a tool to move the plot along? Ultimately, I find her to have a wisdom of magic and a sense of destiny that most characters seem to be missing. She is certainly “a smooth operator” if nothing else.
What do we make of this mysterious lady my fellows?
"Is Lady Brusen to Galahad as Merlin is to Arthur?"
ReplyDeleteWell dang, Hannah, I'd have to say "yes"--at least to a certain extent. Both of these magic-wielding characters do things that lead to the conceptions of important peoples by tricking parental peoples into thinking their sex partners are peoples they ain't. Pretty clear, right? However, I don't know if Lady Brusen truly gives agency to any of Malory's females (at least that we've seen). Arguably, she provides Elaine with the agency to lose her maidenhead and spawn Galahad; but, Elaine's ability to act and her subsequent success with Launcelot are entirely contingent on Lady Brusen's power. Elaine is not her own agent. She is not empowered to direct her own life, but operates under the whim of another. It seems, at least in this instance, that Lady Brusen is the only "agent."
Yet, I don't think she's simply a narrative tool. Nor do I think Merlin's a tool. They're dynamic characters who, with their prophecies and smug "sense of destiny," like to remind us of that pesky tension between free will and predetermination which plagues the Arthurian romances. These thoughts can lead me to a sour mood, where I say, "If everything is predetermined, then no one has agency." And when I get in these moods, I just go where I'm led and hope there's pizza.
I'm glad you don't think they're tools. I don't think they are either. In fact, I feel like the magically people that Malory moves in and out of the story like a misty morning are actually the core of the entire story. These magical people are the movers and shakers of the story and I love them best (there! I said it!).
ReplyDeleteLet's have lots of pizza, whenever we get wherever the story takes us all.
You'll get your pizza during the film screening after our final class, even if the magical characters are somewhat pilloried in _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_ (except, of course, for Tim the Enchanter, a very serious fellow).
ReplyDeleteWith respect to Elaine's agency, it may be worth considering that she manages to sleep with Lancelot *twice* with the aid of Brusen's ruses, and she exchanges some pretty tart words with Guenevere. (The only other person who really gets away with dressing the queen down like that is Sir Bors; of course, Guenevere's response to Elaine is immediately to banish her from court, so there you are.) Anyway, the point about Elaine's second night with Lancelot is that it doesn't fulfill any prophecies whatsoever: no one is engendered, and its chief result is to send Lancelot stark raving bonkers for two years.