Womens Influence on Literature

'To what extent, and why, do you agree with Krueger's argument that, in the Charrete, the depiction of Love as it affects Guinevere and Lancelot is based on the premise that 'Woman's "power" is a fiction of the male subject who needs her to resist so that he can desire her'?'

A profound transformation, concerning the representation of women in terms of their involvement and roles in formulation of literature during the 12th Century, had set in. Women, with aristocratic lineages and considerable wealth, had been commissioning authors to influence literary compositions in compliance to their desideratum. This aspect has been reflected within the increasing significance provided to the complex female protagonists by writers in the medieval romances so as to accord greater representation to the lives of such women within the concurrent cultural ambience as both bystanders to patriarchal social norms and as centre of attention around which the dimensions of socio-cultural interactions revolved. Chrétien de Troyes dedicates The Knight of the Cart to his patroness Marie de Champagne: ‘since my Lady of Champagne wishes me to begin a romance’, acknowledging the accordance of the source of patronage and the literary initiative to her.

This could be identified to be the primary reason that such literary compositions demonstrate aggressive and compelling women through their intensive manipulation and bargain with the knights for the purpose of accomplishment of their personal objectives. Such personal dynamics prove to be the catalysts for the literary plots to progress from invocation to rising action till the denouement. Arguably, the most memorable of such instances has been the adulterous queen Guinevere, the portrayal of whom in The Knight of the Cart has been inconsistent at best. This observation could be illustrated from the perspectives of Elspeth Kennedy and Bart Besamusca that it is primarily a problematic process to incorporate the ambiguous characters of Lancelot and Guinevere within the existing narrative cycles. The rationale could be explained that the phenomenon of narrative cycle formation specifically implies the attempt of integration of different parts of the story

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1. Roberta L. Krueger, ‘ Questions of gender in Old French courtly Romance’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. by Roberta Krueger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 132-149 (p.136).
2. Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, trans. by William Kibler and Carleton W. Carroll (New York: Penguin, 1991), p.207. Further references are given after quotations in the text.

within a specific literary framework despite the fact that individual segments of the story could be in diverging juxtaposition to each other. Thus, such divergence in the pre-existing portrayal of Guinevere and Lancelot contributes to the representation of literary characters who imbue inconsistencies over the entire narrative cycle.

In this context, Chrétien has revealed dual aspects of the character of Guinevere in the form of addressing the conduct of adultery by the female protagonist which is a novel thematic construct since other romances composed by him do not exhibit such trends. Robert Krueger has argued that the paradoxical representation of love within the relationship in between Guinevere and Lancelot has extensive strands of inequality in terms of ascendency of engagement. The rationale has been pointed out that women’s power is a fiction of male imagination which requires the female to resist so that male desire could be instigated.

However, it could be argued that differential representation of love between adulterous lovers could be due to acknowledgement of Guinevere of the consequences of their relationship. This leads ultimately to the portrayal of her as indifferent. The French scholar Gaston Paris had identified courtly love in Chrétien’s The Knight of the Cart as ‘illegitimate, therefore necessarily secretive’ in nature. This involves the element of consummate physical surrender.However, such characteristics are only exhibited by Lancelot since the punishment of adultery for noblewoman had been death.

The emphasis is on ‘courtly love’ which has been popularised the most by C.S. Lewis in his treatment of ‘courtly love’ during the 12th century poetry encompassing the Southern Troubadours and Northern trouvére Chrétien de Troyes. There are four marks which have been identified by Lewis as the Religion of Love, Courtesy, Adultery and Humility which underscore the relationship between Guinevere and Lancelot. However, Lewis had acknowledged the dichotomy in his observation in the manner that through courtly love required adultery, adultery does not require courtly love. The ambiguity captured through this phraseology, actually outline the division of feelings concerning disapproval and desire which could further characterise the Troubadour poetic fundamentals. To this effect, Chrétien’s The

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3. For more information on adultery amongst noblewomen see Peggy McCracken, The Romance of Adultery: Queenship and Sexual Transgression in Old French Literature (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2011).
4. Roberta Krueger, Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p.61.
5. Cited in Joachim Bumke, Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p.360.
6. Bumke, p.392.

Knight of the Cart and other decorous poems involving tormented sublimations of desire, had been spawned on the basis of the fulfilment of such desire through manifestations of opportunities with abject disregard of the ramifications of the same.

Peter Noble has argued, in “The character of Guinevere in the Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de Troyes”, that Chrétien had formulated the character of Guinevere not on the basis of concurrently available sources. The evidence could be outlined that apart from the Conte du Graal, all of the other romances of Chrétien portray Guinevere as a sympathetic character through depiction of a warm-hearted and material approach in the person, exhibited towards courtiers of King Arthur. In Perceval¸though she is depicted as a colourless characters, her conduct remains irreproachable. This reduction of role has been attributed by Noble to the fact that Chrétien was not writing any longer for courts which were dominated or governed by intelligent patronesses. Noble has concluded that Marie de Champagne had influenced Chrétien to depict Guinevere as an indifferent adulteress for the purpose of illustration of ‘courtly love’. Chrétien had emphasised on the depiction of the Queen as a passionate woman with determination of exerting control over the actions of her lover in accordance to the prescribed courtly behaviour related rules.

The initial encounters of Lancelot and Guinevere had established the setting of diverging narrative portrayals. The persuasion of Kay to stay in the court by Arthur is accomplished at behest of the Queen which outlines the absence of self-autonomy on part of Guinevere who has to conform to the wishes of her husband. This brings forth the significance of Chrétien’s language as she begs Kay: ‘then the queen, in all her majesty, fell down at his feet’ (p.209). Through the narrative technique, her social status is highlighted in spite of her kneeling for a seneschal and it specifies the complicated portrayal of female subjectivity with the apparent dichotomy between the privileged attention accorded to marginalised and controlled women.



On the other hand, the first encounter with Lancelot the unknown night takes place when he becomes willing to climb onto the tumbril of shame to meet his lady love:Lancelot is ashamed momentarily to ride the cart since it utilised transport prisoners only and a knight riding such a transport vehicle could augur in shame and dishonour for his reputation. However, in spite of his hesitation, he ultimately climbs aboard so as to suffer the associated shame so as to tender his services to his Love:

Lancelot is ashamed momentarily to ride the cart since it utilised transport prisoners only and a knight riding such a transport vehicle could augur in shame and dishonour for his reputation. However, in spite of his hesitation, he ultimately climbs aboard so as to suffer the associated shame so as to tender his services to his Love:

The characters of Chrétien are influenced by both Reason and Love. Lancelot is demonstrated to be overwhelmed by Love to the extent of forgetting his surrounding as well as himself to be categorised as the ideal courtly lover and ignores warnings of Reason to suffer torments of Love and Desire since he ‘considers himself the servant of his lady’ . His

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7. Bumke, p.360.

delay ignites the displeasure of Guinevere leading to his berating for failure to immediately conform to promptings of his Love:

The ambiguous nature of love of Guinevere is outlined through absence of exposition of her love for Lancelot and through her hostility to him while receiving him after the battle with Meleagant through acting ‘as if she were angered’ (p.256). The two lovers are witnessed for the first time through their differential roles in their relationship with Lancelot, the ‘perfect lover’ (p.256), vying for affection from the Queen ‘Lancelot’s eyes and heart accompanied her to the entrance’ (p.256). Bademagu described the role of Guinevere in a disapproving manner ‘she should not now be reticent or refuse to listen to you, after all you have done for her’ (p.256) to categorise her actions and decisions as wrong. This makes it ironic to see her action categorised as wrong when it is revealed, later in the novel, that Guinevere is ruled by Reason:

The defiance of adulterous women of patriarchy is portrayed cruelly, in the similar measure of manipulation and control depicted in Guinevere, as Helen Fulton states. Peter

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8. Helen Fulton, ‘A Women’s Place: Guinevere in the Welsh and French Romances’, Quondam et Futurus 3(1993), pp.1-25 (p.1).

Noble highlighted Guinevere’s darker personality traits through her relationship. Krueger identifies Guinevere’s actions as depicting ‘a woman who shapes or opposes chivalric values’. Guinevere refrained from outrageous expression of grief although being pained and mournful and left ‘to give vent to her grief without being noticed or overheard’ (p.258) when she heard false rumoured about the death of her beloved. Chrétien has only depicted Guinevere regretting her actions and sin as: ‘I was cruel and deceitful’ (p.259) to identify her lament. The narrator also focuses on her futile considerations of suicide ‘nearly killed herself […] crazed with the thought of killing herself’ (p.258/9), thought continued living to suffer further pain is preferred by her. This could be contrasted with the acknowledgement of transparency of love of Lancelot through the address from the narrator that the readers ‘need not doubt that [Lancelot] was overcome with grief’ and through emphasis of Lancelot that his pain is from ‘the grief in [his] heart- an evil, fatal grief’ (p.260). The grief of his becomes apparent through attempts to bargain with and threaten Death by him, ‘I can force Lady Death to take me against her will’ (p.260) .

The characteristic of manipulation in Guinevere becomes apparent through her attempts to persuade Lancelot to express his love for her and become publicly humiliated by the tournament crowd. Her emphasis on making Lancelot to do his ‘worst’ to tarnish the praise being heaped upon Lancelot’s prowess by the crowd is ‘very willingly’ (p.276-7) replied to by him. The literary framework based on courtly code forced Chrétien to depict Guinevere as stereotypical ‘domineering, capricious lady’. Her pleasure in the praise of Lancelot remains concealed ‘though she kept it hidden’ (p.277). This establishes her increasing influence in restricting Lancelot’s prowess and undermining his honour which is a divergent theme from the passive wife she had been during the commencement of this narrative. The objective of her manipulation is to obtain satisfaction through his submission and this controlling Guinevere implies the opposition to concurrent chivalric values.

However, the patriarchal reality is observed to restrict exertion of control and power by Guinevere on Lancelot. This measure of her character is evident when her eagerness to know the response of Lancelot to her command to fight his ‘best’ prompts her to stand up

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9. For a more detailed analysis on the transformation of Guinevere’s character in Chrétien’s romances see Peter Noble, ‘The Character of Guinevere in the Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de Troyes’, The Modern Language Review 67(1972), pp. 524-535. (p.533).
10. Women Readers, p.61.
11. Noble, p.534.

‘..and moved forward’ to meet the girl carrying his message but ‘did not go down to her but waited at the top of the steps’ (p.280). This is the indication of Reason and Reality influencing her decision and outweighing her fickle actions.

It could be concluded that inequality pervades the relationship of Guinevere and Lancelot where the Queen is impassive and reluctant to express her love to Lancelot under the influence of social roles of hers. The cruel portrayal of her actions in The Knight of the Cart stems from this fear. The disdain and anger encountered by Lancelot while meeting with his love after his battle with the kidnapper are outcomes of her decisions which are considered unwarranted. The element of mourning also reflects diverging psychological conditions of the lovers as far as expressing their feelings are concerned. Chrétien has emphasised on regret and inanity of actions of Guinevere as representation of her role in the relationship of love, while, Lancelot is depicted to emphasise his grief regarding bargaining with Death and in challenging the same.

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