Vision and Gender in Malory’s Morte Darthur by Molly Martin (review)

Molly Martin’s Vision and Gender in Malory’s “Morte Darthur” argues that the gaze, “seeing and being seen,” is important to Malory’s portrayal of the masculinity of his knights. With the exception of the Grail knights, particularly important to that portrayal is seeing and being seen by a woman and being seen by members of the court in battles and tournament. The book devotes two chapters to successful examples of masculinity (one to Gareth and one to Launcelot and Trystram); one to knights whose masculinity is inadequate, largely because their success has not been shared with a woman (Dynadyn, Alysaundir le Orphelyne, Gawayne, and the Saracen Palomydes); one to the knights on the Grail Quest (where the Grail replaces women as object of the gaze); and one to the female gaze, which focuses on Elayne of Corbyn (Galahad’s mother), Elayne of Ascolot, and Percivale’s sister. Gwenyver is discussed throughout the book, and Martin devotes some attention to Arthur’s gazes, notably in the “Book of Trystram” when he becomes entranced by the beauty of Isode (p. 53).

Martin’s book is, on the whole, a good study that alerts the reader to important issues of gender and vision in Malory’s book. The importance of the latter is somewhat surprising in light of the relatively few descriptive details in a work written in the tradition of writers who, like the Biblical authors who mention Esau’s hairy hands or Zacchaeus’s short stature, generally give only those details that are important to the story. Moreover, much of Martin’s book focuses on parts of Malory’s work (the later parts of the first tale, the Trystram story in the fifth) that studies of Morte Darthur often slight. Her chapter on the Grail Quest is particularly good in bringing to the reader’s attention differences between Malory’s account and his French source, particularly ways in which Malory shifts the story to emphasize secular chivalric ideals. Although earlier scholars have noted some of these changes, Martin has found additional ones. The chapter on women offers exemplary studies of similarities and differences between the two Elaynes and Percivale’s sister. Martin has read the relevant scholarly material and builds substantially upon what others have written about gender in Morte Darthur.

A question that this study raises, however, is the extent to which Martin (and others) at times impose modern conceptions of masculinity on medieval works. A case in point concerns the way a reader might react to a man who is weeping. According to Martin, the fact that Gareth “wallowed and writhed for the love of the lady” shows “decidedly unmanly lovesickness” and his “de-masculinization” (pp. 40–42). Similarly, Launcelot’s “gender identity” is challenged by his being “brought to weeping” (p. 60) as is Palomydes’s because he “wayled and wepte oute of mesure” for Isode (p. 114). Weeping, however, was part of conventional male courtly behavior that medieval readers might not have seen as unmanly. Christ was often cited as a model for some chivalric ideals, but at the funeral of Lazarus, “Jesus wept” publically (Jn. 11:35). Was this unmanly? In the introduction to her translation The Song of Roland (1957), Dorothy Sayers, commenting on the weeping and swooning of Charlemagne and his men at the news of Roland’s death, writes: “There are fashions in sensibility as in everything else. The idea that a strong man should react to great personal and national calamities by a slight compression of the lips and by silently throwing his cigarette into the fireplace is of very recent origin. By the standards of feudal epic, Charlemagne’s behavior is perfectly correct. Fainting, weeping, and lamenting is what the situation calls for” (p. 15). Although fashions have changed since Sayers’s day (cigarettes are out; a man’s tears are again becoming acceptable), what she says about appropriate masculine behavior in feudal epic is applicable to medieval romance. Men...