English 83

I’m sure this will be torn up just as all the Mark Twain skepticism was, but I can’t help but feel there’s something decidedly Excaliburish about Mists of Avalon, at least the 530 pages I’ve read so far. My unorganized rambling appears within.

To be fair, I think Bradley is quite clever in dealing with the minor characters and details of Arthuriana and recasting them in more interesting lights. My favourite change is her dealing wit Balin and Balan. First, making them foster brothers is a brilliant echo of Castor and Pollux, while her explanation both for Balan’s inexplicable murder of the Lady of the Lake and their killing of each other is a vast improvement over Malory’s ill-conceived plot. The prophetic musing that Lancelot and Gareth will be dangerous to one another is quiet, and then teased out with Gareth tripping the horse (at which point those familiar with Arthuriana know to expect more). Viviane as Lancelot’s real mother explains the Du Lac. The young Elaine’s infatuation with Lancelot and the retelling of the Cart story (minus the Cart) are both witty nods to the canon.

I think reframing the story to be from the nearly invisible perspective of Albion’s women is an interesting move, but too often Bradley turns it into both an unabashed, even ranting feminist diatribe and cliched airport lit (a mildly contradictory set of results- rebuilding stereotypes as she claims to dismantle them). The Christian characters, particularly in the beginning of the story, are so intensely unlikable and cartoonish as to give the Black Legend competition. Physically and verbally abusive priests and contrived biblical debates were the least of the problems. I literally expected one of the various husbands to kick his feet up, call in his jesters (in the absence of Monday Night Football) and demand his wife get him a beer (mead?).

It’s not that the text criticizes Christianity for an often patriarchal legacy, as Bradley can and should do. It’s the fact that it appears that Christianity has literally no function except to serve as an excuse to hate women (and convince them to loathe themselves, in the case of Gwenhyfar). At best, as Morgaine says, it’s a simple faith for confused slaves, but I think it makes the religious conflict (one of my favourite parts of Arthuriana) far less interesting when there’s not really any conflict:  St. Patrick’s  He-Man Woman Hater’s Club doesn’t make a particularly compelling antagonist (unlike, say Morgan’s earthy paganism in Green Knight) . I must be missing something because I’ve read Bradley was a devout Episcopalian, but the hatchet job she does here seems odd.

As to the underlying project of restoring agency to the female characters- this has mixed results at best, and appears laughably forced at worst. Morgan’s antagonistic relationship with Lancelot is well served by the unrequited love angle and seems well-crafted. The absolution of Morgan after her “seduction” by Arthur in the Beltrane ritual is an interesting inversion of the traditional seductress model of these stories. However, the rest of the romantic relationships are incredibly problematic. Two stood out in particular. Igraine dropping Gorlois rather than being seduced by Uther sounds good on paper, but becomes laughably bad in the scene when the two run across each other in the forest and she instantly pines for domesticity (to say nothing of the hilariously cliched Lifetime original movie that plays out during that scene). Several near rolls in the hay (literally) between Lancelot and Gwen become almost self-parodying. The most contrived change, however, is the rather creepy recasting of that affair as commanded by Arthur, particularly the scene in which he watches them (and perhaps participates) in his bed, like some creepy fetishist. I would in fact argue that the older female characters, particularly Lunette and Enide, although appearing in fewer lines of text in the old stories, are far more dynamic than Bradley’s self-consciously empowered women. The occasional swoon seems far less troublesome than the Days of Our Lives plotting of much of this book.

In summary: unless Bradley is at some sort of meta level undercutting traditional gender roles by parodying them thus, the bizarrely quaint romantic drama in the story all but guts her ideological project, which was already a bit shaky as a result of cartoonish enemies.