‘An arm clothed in white samite’: Twentieth-Century Women Writers and the Arthurian Legends (Mary Stewart, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Jane Yolen)

Abstract

Mary Stewart’s Arthurian novels, which consist of the Merlin Trilogy (The Crystal Cave, 1970; The Hollow Hills, 1973; and The Last Enchantment, 1979) and a book on Mordred. The Wicked Day, 1993, are some of the most popular twentieth-century versions of the legends.¹ Her combination of a traditional idealisation, a detailed and seemingly accurate historical setting, and a vivid form of characterisation have made the books international bestsellers as well as providing suitable material for a television series.² As such Mary Stewart is one of the most important women writers to address herself to the stories of Arthur, and she certainly deserves to be considered in this final chapter; but it would be a mistake to cast her as a ‘feminist’ author. Indeed, the first novel was composed in the 1960s before late twentieth-century feminism, either in its political or critical sense, became a recognised concept. Neither does she talk from a woman’s point of view or even concentrate upon the female figures of the legends, as, for example, Lady Charlotte Guest had done. Instead, Stewart focuses on the first person narrative of Merlin, Arthur’s magician, and makes no question about the anti-hero status of her narrator, asserting his unconventional role in the Prologue to The Crystal Cave: ‘I am an old man now ... This is what happened ... I saw it, and it is a true tale’ (CC, pp. 11–12).³ Moreover, in addition to the basic lack of appeal with which she introduces Merlin, the magician’s inheritance from the traditional myth has him as the least sympathetic to women of all the Arthurian characters. Unlike the knights who vow to serve their ladies, the ideal Lancelot or the courtly Gawain, Merlin is notorious for avoiding or disparaging women, and he is punished for this by being trapped into a living-death by the Lady of the Lake’s magic spells (Stewart reworks this part of the tale in The Last Enchantment). Merlin is, therefore, a somewhat strange figure for a woman novelist to adopt as her primary narrator, but Stewart’s choice is surprisingly successful since, although Merlin might be depicted as misogynistic and/or nervous of women, he is at the same time always cast as an outsider. The autobiographical voice within The Crystal Cave situates itself on the margins of Arthur’s court and the male value systems of battle and bravado. In this Merlin reflects Stewart whose authorial voice must, by virtue of its female gender, necessarily be excluded from the predominantly male authorial versions of the Arthurian myth. However, I intend to return to the question of the gendered voice at the end of this section and, at present, concentrate on the gradual development of Merlin’s character and his function within the text’s thematic allegiances.