Finished: 2/3/2025
These five books, however, do not tell an entirely original story. They are a retelling of the Arthurian legend that came into physical being in the 15th century in a giant book of Middle English prose called Le Mort d'Arthur (The Death of Arthur) by Sir Thomas Malory. Le Mort d'Arthur is a long series of tales of knights, chivalry, magic and love; but, like the title suggests, the biggest plot point is about fate: how Arthur's horrible death is foretold and unavoidable.
In the shortest way possible I can tell the basis of the Arthurian legend: Arthur, a young man in the medieval period, becomes the king of Camelot by fulfilling a prophecy and pulling a sword out of a stone. That sword is Excalibur, which gives Arthur super powers in battle. He becomes a righteous king that works to unite what is now the United Kingdom. Since this is medieval England, Arthur's whole quest is to bring peace between the Gaels, Saxons and Normans, which is not an easy task. Through magic, accident, or whatever the case, Arthur has a son with his own half sister, the illegitimate son is named Mordred. Mordred grows up and even becomes a knight of the round table, but always resents Arthur and kills him the end. -But there's a promise that this is not Arthur's true end, he will return when the UK needs him most. Hence the engraving on Arthur's gravestone, and the title of the series collection: The Once and Future King.
I think how I'll order this report is that I'll go in chronological order of my critiques of specific books and then give my overarching critiques to themes, patterns, and tropes that crossed between books. First off, I'll start with my review of the first and second book: The Sword in the Stone and The Queen of Air and Darkness; I find these books really similar because they both seemed to be written for a child audience. The Sword in the Stone is about Arthur as a child and The Queen of Air and Darkness are about Gawaine and his brothers growing up. This beginning really disappointed me because I was hoping that this series would be much more serious and more "adult oriented," but I didn't see that in these first two books.
I remember watching the 1963 movie The Sword in the Stone as a kid as was surprised to realize that it was a very close animated adaptation of this first book. That movie is a G rated movie, which is what the book would be too if books had age ratings. There was so much more of a focus on "silliness" and "lightness" than I just wasn't hoping for in these books. I think my favorite part of these two books was the beginning of The Queen of Air and Darkness where Arthur and Merlin started their convoluted conversation about "Might vs Right" that was referenced throughout the next three books. Around that conversation, Arthur was debriefing the battle he was just in as England's new king, and was talking about how exciting and enthralling it was. Merlyn thankfully retorts with something along the lines of "why is killing people fun for you? should it be?" I think in that moment the juxtaposition of Arthur's youth and his early adulthood became very clear. As a kid, he always had a focus on kindness and appreciation for the little joys in life: like birds. But here as a young adult, he has seemed to have lost all of that and let the power get to his head, but it's just for a moment.
I have also paired up the third and fourth book, The Ill-Made Knight and The Candle in the Wind, for his next part because the main focus of those two is Lancelot. Something I really appreciated from the start was the reversal of the literary motif that "beautiful equals good." Lancelot, in White's version, is very ugly, yet he's still the strongest and most moral knight in Europe, and later the Middle East. Although T.H. White follows a lot of older literary rules of the "sanitization of heroes" (which I'll get into later), Lancelot's unfortunate appearance was a nice, more modern touch.
Next I want to talk about Lancelot's relationship with women and homoerotic relationship with Arthur. Lancelot's failed and unhappy relationships take a lot of inspiration from the Celtic legend of Tristan and Isolde; Tristan is actually referenced quite a bit in this series, and always as a sort of mirror to Lancelot. First off, Lancelot's relationship with Guenever is very toxic by modern day standards. I don't know how White wanted their relationship to come off when he was writing these books, but it seems like their relationship doesn't have any redeeming qualities, it doesn't even seem loving. They are always fighting and can never be open about their real feelings for each other, they are breaking up every other chapter so Lancelot can go on various adventures alone, or find God, or whatever, and then they always end up getting back together! Reading it, it's just annoying. I know that it's supposed to be this representation of the idea of "true love," and that Guenever and Lancelot were made to be with each other and they always find their way back to each other, but no part of their relationship seems romantic.
Secondly, Lancelot's relationship with Elaine makes me almost sick to my stomach. Elaine drugged and raped Lancelot for the purpose of getting pregnant with his child. Why Lancelot gives Elaine any sort of attention after she did that to him, is completely beyond me. Like I was saying with Guenever, his repeated attempts to try and be happy with Elaine are just illogical. I know that the cultural consciousness around men being raped and abused by women has matured significantly in the past one hundred years, and I have tried to see this from a older perspective, but why Lancelot keeps going back to Elaine doesn't make any sense.
Lastly, Lancelot's homoerotic relationship with Arthur was definitely on purpose and seems to be the only type of relationship in this series that is actually romantic. White himself was a gay man who, according to what google says, seemed to really struggle with his own sexuality and his inability to find a partner. I think that White wanted to be true to the story and write Lancelot as having an affair with Guenever, but if he was able to divert more for the norm, the affair would've been between Lancelot and Arthur.
On to The Book of Merlyn: this one really surprised me because it seemed to be a very "adult" book. Almost the whole thing is King Arthur, the night before his death, having a long conversation with Merlyn and some very wise animals. It's set in a way that some philosophy books are set, and I can see why it wasn't published. The anti-war message in this book is very timeless and asks a good question that stuck with me for a while: is war part of human nature, and if so, can we evolve out of it? There are no other species on the planet that have war like humans do, but every other species has their own forms of government, economics and philosophy to a degree.
One part of this book that I really liked was Merlyn talking about evolution and how all these species have had tens of thousands more years to evolve than humans have had. Are we in the modern age much different from medieval people with internet access? I think the comforting conclusion is: of course we are, but I think the unfortunate but true answer is: not really. Wars are still fought on the basis of religious differences, even though those differences are so slight. Stupid people still decide that one race is "better" than another, and kill people over it. People still fight, steal and die for access to food. If you boil down the reasons why wars happen, they aren't any different now than they were one thousand years ago.
The "adult-ness" and complicated topics of this last book made me realize something about the stylization that even though I didn't particularly like, I could appreciate. The books were written with the age of Arthur as the main focus. The first few are childish because Arthur is a child and then the intended audience gets older as Arthur ages. It finally ends with a philosophy-like book as Arthur's an old man and about to die.
Part of the fourth and fifth book that I didn't understand was how Mordred converted all the Thrashers over to his side? It's not really made clear what his policies ideas were or any sort of plans he had for the people following him. It also seemed to be pretty rare to be anti-Arthur, even among the Gaels. I know this was supposed to be a very clear representation of Nazi Germany, but I still wish that part of the story, and Mordred's resentment towards Arthur, was explained a little bit more. However, I do think that this is a good example of the break between older and modern media. In older media, "bad guys" were just bad, they didn't need any reason. In modern media, "bad guys" have this extensive backstory that the viewer or reader sympathizes with almost to a point where they agree with them. I'll talk a little more about this later in my section about "sanitization" in older literature.
My main points and takeaway from the series as a whole need to start with White's style of writing and his constant self-inserting. White's style of narration is very unique and something I just could not get used to. I felt it was anti-immersive and inaccessible to readers who didn't live in the UK in the early 1900s. First off, White wrote so much of the book in accents and dialects that are difficult to understand to an American like me, but this I'm not too upset about. Secondly, like I've said before, he was doing a lot of comparison to how great the medieval period was verses the "faults of modern times." He also cited Malory a lot. I feel like these last two things did not need to happen or be put in the book at all. The introjections didn't add anything to the book, they just took away the immersion. I don't want to read an old, out of touch, man complaining! -I don't think anybody does.
For the self-inserting, there's three major points I can think of where this happened. The first one was in the fake ending of of the fourth book that seemed quickly made after White was told The Book of Merlyn would not be published. On the night before Arthur's death, he calls his young page named "Tom" (T.H. White was called "Tim"), Arthur tells Tom to tell people about what a great person he was and how he always tried to be a righteous king. The page agrees and flees to his hometown so as to not die in the battle between Arthur and Mordred.
The second instance is at the beginning of the fifth book when Merlyn starts listing off all the stories written about Arthur, or the stories that will be written. White, of course, name drops himself and Arthur's only follow up question is to ask about White. This made me roll my eyes. I think White wanted this to look cool and clever, but it just came off as self absorbed.
The third and biggest point is the character of Merlyn himself. Merlyn has this endless wisdom and knowledge of Arthur's life, yet he spend a lot of his time complaining about his youth in the late 1800s - early 1900s. Instead of complaining about things through narration, White just does it through Merlyn. Throughout the story, there's heavy importance placed on Merlyn to direct Arthur and progress the story. In my opinion, if Merlyn is a self-insert character, it's pretty egotistical on White's part.
The next topic is Guenever and feminism, -this wouldn't be one of my book reports if I didn't write several paragraphs on feminism. Arthur, Lancelot and Guenever are the three major characters in this series, but Guenever is the only one without a backstory. Other than her father's name and her maiden name, not much is known about her before her marriage to Arthur. Both Arthur and Lancelot's upbringing and childhood are important to their characters an shape the way they function in the rest of the story, but Guenever is not given any of that. The lack of backstory leads to reasoning and motivations that don't make any sense. Her strong emotions seem to come out of the ether, and all of them are brought on by the men in her life: she has a lack of agency.
An example of the randomness of Guenever's emotions is her bringing up being distraught over her lack of children, but she only brings it up sometimes. If this was something that was really important to her, it would be on her mind more and influence her decisions and sexual relationships, but instead most of the time when an insight to her thoughts is given, she's just thinking about Lancelot. Later into the series, I was wondering if any of these five books passed the Bechdel Test, if I had to guess I would say they probably don't. I don't think passing the Bechdel Test is the end-all-be-all for measuring great literature, but it is disheartening when one of the main characters is a woman and her character is so shallow.
Related to both White's writing style and feminism: I found myself comparing The Once and Future King to Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre was written almost a hundred years before The Once and Future King was, yet the timelessness of the morals and experiences of Jane Eyre far outweigh those of The Once and Future King. I've brought up "timelessness" a lot in this report so far because that's what the Arthurian legend is supposed to be about, but I don't think that this series accomplishes that. This is a bold claim that I'm willing to be proven wrong on: but classic books written by women are so much more relatable and transformative than classic books written by men. I think it is because living in a male-dominated world as a woman is such a relatable experience that spans centuries, whereas the troubles that men face alter as world progresses.
Lastly, I want to talk about the sanitization of heroes in older literature and how The Once and Future King plays into this literary trope. Previously, I've read Tristan and Isolde and Der Nibelungen Lied (The Song of the Nibelungs), in both of these stories the way heroes and knights are portrayed are so annoyingly, mind-numbing perfect. The heroes do everything without fault, they're loyal, they're beautiful, they're strong, they're religious, they are the envy, or love interest, of every other character. If they dare to have an Achilles heel, it's always their downfall in the end. I find this so annoying because any type of humanity is completely stripped from their person, they are basically a demi-god. -Which is why I say that they're "sanitized;" they are not allowed negative qualities. I see this especially in Lancelot, but also somewhat in Arthur.
I feel like character sanitization is such a childish thing while paradoxically also being an old and outdated trope. In the time we live in now, with people trying to censor and ban certain books in schools that deal with complicated themes and characters, I see character sanitization unfortunately being pushed and promoted back into public consciousness. Learning that people, relationships, experiences, anything else that happens in life is complicated and not black and white, is a huge part of growing up, and I think that should be reflected in literature instead of ignored.
Character sanitization is a trope that should stay in the past. If there is another retelling of the Arthurian legend in the future, which I'm sure there will be, I really hope that characters are given faults and flaws. I hope the author explores how characters can be loved despite, but also, because of their shortcomings; it's so much more honest and impactful that way.
I got this series as a birthday gift, and even though I didn't always enjoy reading it, I'm glad I did. I'm going to be reading through some more birthday gifts in the coming reports. Anyways, thank you for reading!
Comments
Post a Comment