Guinevere's Evolution Synthesis Essay

Guinevere’s Evolution Synthesis Essay

Queen Guinevere’s affair with Sir Lancelot is not true love, it is a way to escape her reality as queen, which is filled with duties, expectations and responsibilities. When Lancelot and Guinevere first meet, she is enchanted by his chivalry and bravery; she lets her feelings fly because it is an opportunity to have control over something in her life. In the legends, Guinevere feels trapped and useless until she meets Lancelot. The earlier Arthurian legends she appears in were most likely written by men, and consequently, that lead to giving female characters, such as Guinevere, less power and importance. On the other hand, in the legends which were written after the nineteenth century, Guinevere is given more power and control; the lust is lost and her relationship with Lancelot becomes less sentimental over time.

The

medieval text “The Knight of the Cart,” written by Chrétien De Troyes, stands out from other legends because it is the first in which Guinevere has an affair with Sir Lancelot. In this text, the author makes Guinevere dependent of a man. This story is similar to others because it is the root of the legend; consequently, as in many other versions of the legend, Guinevere is described as being trapped and powerless until the moment she and Lancelot meet. She has been sentenced to death by King Arthur due to her adulterous behaviour and Lancelot is on his journey to rescue the queen. This text was written during the Middle Ages, when women were objectified; even if they possessed power, they would not be given the credit for it. In the text, De Troyes says “as [Lancelot] passed through the window / [Lancelot] bowed and crossed himself, / As if acknowledging / An altar” which suggests that Lancelot perceives Guinevere as an object which must be worshiped, not as a person who must be loved (De Troyes). The story is written this way because it is what people at the time were expecting to find in writing, a story where the gender roles were reflected.
In the modernist version of the legend “The Once And Future Queen,” by Katheen Herbert, the dark side of the story is revealed; Guinevere’s husband, king Arthur, unlike in many others where Arthur’s feelings are unobserved, shows rancor and rage towards the love affair his wife had with one of his knights. The author says “[Lancelot] saw her as his noble-hearted mistress, generously taking the decent course, sacrificing her own love and her lifetime's happiness for the sake of a man’s reputation and his military career”; in this version, Lancelot sees Guinevere more as a person than an object, which may be due to the fact that this text was written by a woman (Herbert). This modernist story describes Guinevere’s reaction when she is accused with detail; it differs from earlier versions, because ordinarily Guinevere accepts the accusation and submit to her punishment in silence. Herbert shows through Guinevere the remarkable evolution of the human mentality; she demonstrates this evolution when Guinevere says “I’ll be the woman who was never truly worthy of [Arthur] as wife or queen. I’ll be treated quite kindly, because I was beautiful and good-humoured [...] because I repented”; this statement informs the reader that Guinevere is able to demonstrate she is a strong woman who is conscious what she did is wrong and admits it is blasphemy, instead of directly submitting to her punishment (Herbert). As a reader, one can clearly perceive that the legend of Guinevere has remarkably evolved from being a lustful story full of sins, to being a tale of freedom and rebellion.
According to the article "Listening To Guinevere: Female Agency And The Politics Of Chivalry In Tennyson's Idylls" by Stephen Ahren, Guinevere acts and sins because she feels objectified, and she is attempting to find her identity; she rejects the image of queen and sets herself “free from the symbolic function Arthur imposes on her” when she has the affair with Sir Lancelot (Ahren). Guinevere feels accepted by Lancelot for who she is, while her husband Arthur has greater and much different expectations from her.
After analysing two versions of Guinevere’s legend from two distinct time periods (one written in the Middle Ages and one in the twenty first century), one could say the way the authors portray Guinevere is related to the way women were treated and credited at the time.

Guinevere’s relationship with Lancelot changed through the centuries in the stories, because now in today’s society, love is valued in a different way. Moreover, women’s expectations have exceedingly changed since the first legend of Guinevere was written in the Middle Ages, and female characters have evolved as well because “in medieval literature, the principal system of controlling masculinity is chivalry” (McClain). Women were oppressed and controlled by men; however, now they do not have to follow any standards. The legend of Guinevere has changed through time because society has changed, and writers reflect society’s behaviour into their writing. One recognizes the dramatic, as well as subtle, evolutions in Guinevere as time everlastingly shapes society; thus molding traditional ideas of literature into the current literature of a

time.