Examining Sinister Impulses behind the Debasement of Queen Guinevere in her Nineteenth-Century British Cultural Afterlife

Scholars in Arthurian studies have outlined the intersection of the demonization of Guinevere with nineteenth-century conceptions of sexual and social mores for women. These studies, however, neglect to examine a certain feature of Guinevere’s depiction, a feature that speaks to a sinister impetus of British culture of the time: a discernible undercurrent of misogyny, violence, and eroticism in depictions of Guinevere’s debasement, humiliation, and punishment. Though existing scholarship has examined the vilification of Guinevere in her nineteenth-century afterlife, attention has not been extended to studying the troubling misogynistic, violent, and sadomasochistic impulses that sometimes imbued this denigration of her.