Womanhood and the Female Adulteress: Representations of Queen Guinevere in the Victorian Era

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Womanhood and the Female

Adulteress

Representations of Queen Guinevere in the

Victorian Era

Emma Kat (10571280) Thesis rMA Literary Studies Supervisor Rudolph Glitz

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Introduction

“Thou has spoilt the purpose of my life” (Tennyson, “Guinevere” line 450) These are the most reproachful words the great King Arthur speaks to his wife Queen Guinevere while she is lying at his feet. Guinevere is guilty of the crime he accuses her of: she has had an adulterous affair with Sir Lancelot, the most accomplished of Arthur’s knights. The story of King Arthur is centuries old, but still well-known nowadays. There are numerous versions of the myth, and therefore as many variations of the character of Queen Guinevere. It is the diachronic working of the Arthurian myth that makes it interesting to see how Guinevere is depicted in different versions of the story, since representations of the Queen can tell us something about the thoughts on womanhood in a certain time. Though Victorian writers based their adaptations of the Arthurian myth on Medieval versions of the story, their portrayal of the queen is less positive. They condemned Queen Guinevere in a more serious manner because their sexual moral was stricter than in the Middle Ages.

It was exactly the negative way in which many Victorian writers portray the queen that struck my interest. Though these writers mostly based their poems on Thomas Malory’s version of the story from 1485, they have oftentimes purposely altered the story in such a way that King Arthur is affirmed as a hero and his wife becomes a villain. According to Mark Girouard, there were two attitudes towards the Arthurian story in the Victorian Era, one moralist and the other romantic (180). Where the moralist conception saw Arthur and his knights as virtuous examples that could be followed by the Victorians, the romantics liked the story because it was exciting, they were moved by the quests, fights and colours from the medieval story. Girouard only speaks of Arthurian men as examples when he explains the stance of the moralists, but this thesis investigates Guinevere, an Arthurian woman. It will establish what kind of values the moralists thought Arthurian women had to embody and then argue that Guinevere’s depiction is often more ambiguous than Girouard’s distinction implies.

This thesis investigates if the characterization of Queen Guinevere can indeed be divided into a moralist and a romantic conception. The aim of this thesis is to show that the character of Guinevere, just as the Victorian Age itself, is deeply ambiguous. The character of Guinevere as she is depicted in the poems for this analysis, discloses that the division between poets that took a more traditional take on the story and poets that were more unorthodox is not clear cut. In moralist poems in which the author means to present her as a false women that made a Kingdom fall, Guinevere is still humanised, while the more romantic poems in which she is

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supposed to be presented as a more feminist lady, attribute virtues to her that traditionally belonged to “true” Victorian women. Instead of there being a battle between different authors, one group that uses the Arthurian myth to advocate a certain morality and another one that holds on to a more progressive morality and likes how dramatic the Arthurian myth was, I argue that this battle takes place within the Guinevere poems. The poets seem to be at a battle with their own time, and therefore communicate antithetical messages in their poems.

The different chapters from this thesis will analyse poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Morris, Violet Fane, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Edmund Gosse and Edward Bulwer-Lytton. It will show that the poems that seem to convey a moralist message at first sight, namely those by Tennyson, Gosse and Fane, contain romantic elements and moralist elements can indeed be detected in the romantic poems by Morris, Bulwer-Lytton and Braddon. By showing how all poems both confirm and undermine traditional and untraditional ideas of Victorian womanhood, I will not call the idea that the Victorian Era was one of clashing value systems into question, but argue that this conflict is taking place in different poems internally. Therefore, though Girouard’s distinction is useful, I maintain that it is not as clear cut as it may seem and is more suitable as a heuristic instrument for analysis within texts than as a categorization of different authors or poems. The character of Guinevere reflects the struggle of different moral systems that was happening within the Victorian Era. This thesis shows that both more progressive and more traditional ideas about womanhood are united in one character, not just differently voiced by different authors, but also present in the same poems.

The first chapter “Guinevere and Medievalism in Victorian Society” introduces Guinevere as a character. It presents some alterations to the original story that were made by all the authors and make Guinevere seem more guilty for the fall of Camelot. This chapter established the framework for this thesis. It illustrates the role of medievalism and the Arthurian myth in the Victorian Era and explains the two attitudes towards the Arthurian myth that Girouard attributes to different authors. Furthermore, it presents the authors and the content of the poems that I will use for my analysis.

The second chapter “The Tasks of Women” investigates how the moralists would view the ideal Victorian woman. Girouard’s focus is on the Victorian man, but the way in which moralists presented women correspond to views of influential traditionalists such as John Ruskin, Sarah Stickney-Ellis and Reverend Charles Spurgeon. It examines the views of these writers and thereby establishes what the moralist conception on women was. Through this

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information, it determines which poems at first sight would be seen as moralist by Girouard and which he would deem romantic.

The third chapter is called “Moralist Female Virtues.” Where the second chapter presented the tasks of women according to the moralist conception, this chapter focusses on the virtues traditionalist Victorians believed a woman should embody in order to fulfil these tasks. The chapter explores which versions from Guinevere share these virtues and which do not. It will start to question Girouard’s view by showing that poems that he would deem moralist are ambiguous about moralist virtues while romantic poems promote these virtues.

The fourth chapter “The Fallen Adulteress” uses the context of the Victorian law on divorce to lay bare some of the traditionalist thoughts about so called “fallen” women. It shows how some “romantic” poems present her as a “false” woman that is guilty and has to be sequestered from society, while there are “moralist” poems that portray her more positively and show that an adulteress can have good qualities as well.

The fifth chapter “The False Feminist” determines the more progressive moral ideas the Romantic poets posed. It reveals that some of the moralist poems lay bare certain problems in the inequality of Victorian marriage, but also that the romantic poets do not always support the idea of women in male occupations. Lastly, it demonstrates that the romantic aesthetic ideal is present in some of the moralist poems as well.

Due to the length of this thesis, I was unable to use all the poems that were written on Queen Guinevere during the Victorian Era for my analysis. Because the focus is on Great Britain in the Victorian period, I chose not to use poems that were published before Victoria’s reign commenced in 1837 or after it ended in 1901. Because the moralists saw the Arthurian characters as an example for Victorians and tried to set them as an example for English men and women, I also chose texts that were not based on foreign texts. The focus on the link between literature and society led me to choose poems that were written by well-known writers and therefore would have been at least somewhat influential during this period. Sometimes this was difficult to determine, since sales figures are hard to find.

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1. Guinevere and Medievalism in Victorian Society

1.1 Introduction

If there is one word most fit to describe the Victorian Era, it would be “change.” The Victorians lived in a time of great turmoil; their agricultural society was changing into an industrial society and the population was growing in an explosive pace. As a consequence of all these changes the old value system was under attack. This first chapter shows how these changes led to a new and often conflicted appreciation of the Middle Ages. On the one hand, they were admired because of the exciting contrast they formed with the Victorian Era, on the other hand they were seen as a time with more stable values that could be an example. This variation in thoughts on the Middle Ages also led to differences in the way in which Arthurian characters such as Guinevere were portrayed. The chapter gives an introduction to the character of Guinevere and illustrates some changes that all the Victorian poets that I analyse made to her story.

This first chapter lays the groundwork for the argument I make in my thesis. It introduces the two schools Girouard sees in the Victorian depiction of the Arthurian history, namely the moral and the romantic. Though my thesis shows it is possible to distinguish moralist and romantic elements in the poems, it nuances his view and contradicts Girouard’s thesis that writers or poems can be classified as either moralist or romantic. Lastly, the chapter presents the poems and writers to be used in this analysis.

1.2 Guinevere

Until this day, Guinevere is one of the best-known Arthurian characters. Though the spelling of her name may differ, she is King Arthur’s wife in all of the Victorian adaptations used for this thesis as well as in the ‘original’ story as it is presented by Thomas Malory.1_{Though she}

has a husband, she falls in love with another man. The affair between her and Arthur’s knight Lancelot commences shortly after their marriage and leads to many episodes of doubt, because the couple lives in constant fear of being found out. As the story progresses, the whole Kingdom seems to know about the affair, save for the cuckholded King himself. When Arthur finds out

1_{The authors featured in this thesis use different spellings of the names. I chose to use “Guinevere” and}

“Lancelot” when I speak about the story in general terms. When the thesis is about specific poems, I use the spelling the poet uses.

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Guinevere and Lancelot are lovers, he is forced to take up arms against Lancelot and while they fight, his enemy Mordred usurps the thrown and causes Arthur’s Kingdom Camelot to fall.

In her Women Writers and Nineteenth-Century Medievalism Clare Broom Saunders describes how the character of Guinevere has recurred in European literature. Because she has appeared in many different forms throughout history, from chaste wife to adulterous lover, she is an interesting character to look at as a means to determine the popular attitudes towards women (133). In the nineteenth century Arthur and his knights were often presented as heroes, but Arthurian women had a different role. In a chapter about women in the legend of King Arthur, Barczewski states that Guinevere and her peers were hardly ever depicted in a positive manner by Victorian writers. In the best cases, the ladies distract the knights of the Round Table from what is really important, in the worst case they actively plot the downfall of Camelot (Barczewski 165). Though Guinevere does not do it on purpose, Barczewski makes clear that the majority of Victorian authors saw the medieval queen as a sinner who is directly responsible for the downfall of Camelot (182).

The most influential source on the Arthurian story in the Victorian Era was Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, that was published in 1485. Though it is difficult to trace the origins of the Arthurian myth through history because it stems from the time of oral narration, Malory’s book is known to be the first elaborate English version of the myth. In Malory’s version of the myth, King Arthur is a Christian King that fights off the heathens in Great Britain. He has a company of knights, who all make out a part of his Round Table and counter injustice within the Kingdom. Their quests are ones of honour, often to free ladies from peril and danger, but also to look for the Holy Grail. Through his good works, King Arthur manages to establish peace and prosperity in his Kingdom Camelot, or at least manages to do so until sin finds its way in.

There are some remarkable alterations made to Malory’s story in all of the Guinevere poems that are discussed in this thesis. Most importantly, none of the poems make clear that Mordred, the knight who seizes Camelot, is King Arthur’s illegitimate son. Malory describes how the wife of King Lot came to Arthur’s court and how she “was a passing fair lady, therefore the king cast great love unto her, and desired to lie by her; so they were agreed, and he begat upon her Mordred, and she was his sister, on his mother’s side” (volume I, book I, Chapter XIX). King Arthur’s own affair is not just adulterous, but incestuous as well. He does not know that the lady he sleeps with is his sister, but learns this in the next chapter when Merlin tells him how he has “done a thing late that God is displeased with” (Malory, Volume I, Book I,

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Chapter XX). Though Arthur’s adulterous encounter with a married lady takes place before he marries Guinevere, he still had a premarital affair that none of the Victorian writers allude to.

By denying King Arthur’s own faults, Victorian writers distribute the blame for the downfall of Camelot in a more uneven manner. It is only Queen Guinevere who is at fault, she starts an affair while her husband is a perfect man. This amplifies a certain motive that Barczewski sees emerging in nineteenth century literature, namely that of women being a distraction for men. The behaviour of women took on a more explicit sexual nature in the second half of the nineteenth century when some Victorians began to see sex as a dangerous activity that could have another purpose than reproduction (Barczewski 167-168). Not only does Guinevere distract Lancelot, their affair leads to a war and therefore distracts King Arthur of his goal of keeping peace. Though Guinevere does not mean for Camelot to fall, she opens Pandora’s box and is the cause of sin entering the Kingdom of Camelot, a motive that is strengthened by acquitting King Arthur from his own sins.

Another difference that puts Guinevere’s guilt in perspective, is an event that precedes her marriage to Arthur in the Morte D’Arthur. When the King asks Merlin whether she will be a good wife for him, Malory describes how “Merlin warned the king covertly that Guenever was not wholesome for him to take to wife, for he warned him that Launcelot should love her, and she him again” (volume I, book III, chapter I). Though this does not reduce the guilt of Lancelot and Guinevere for their affair, it does make Arthur a kind of accomplice. By leaving this part out, the Victorian adaptations exonerate Arthur from influence in the adulterous affair of his wife, thereby making Guinevere seem more guilty and him more tragic. It is a woman that singlehandedly brought sin into Camelot and has thereby distracted her husband and the other knights. Though these general changes imply that the Victorians made Guinevere into a scapegoat, this thesis will prove that the poems used in this analysis have both more progressive as more conservative views.

1.3 Anxiety and Medievalism

Both our current age and the Victorian Era are subject to the insecurities that come with a rapidly changing world. In his Victorian Frame of Mind Walter Houghton describes how as the nineteenth century progressed, it became more clear that the feudal order of the past was being replaced by a democratic society. Even more striking than the development of democracy, was the fast pace of industrial development that made a great expansion of commerce possible. Capitalism was beginning to take shape and the principles of laissez-faire economy were

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formed (Houghton 4-7). Another thing that was vastly expanding, was knowledge. There was an increase of publications that made books available for nearly everyone and led to a spread in education (Houghton 11).

New knowledge about the principles of nature led to religious doubt (Houghton 11). Tennyson articulates it very beautifully in his poem In Memoriam when he asks “Are God and Nature then at strife / That Nature lends such evil dreams? / So careful of the type she seems / So careless of the single life” (stanza LV). These lines uncover uncertainties about the incompatibility of evolution theory and the existence of God. People were trying to find alternative systems of belief: one prophet after another claimed to have the answers. According to Houghton, the Victorians were very aware that the traditional frameworks were breaking down, they felt as if they were living in between two worlds: an old one that was slowly breaking down and a new one that was not completely established yet (8-12). This thesis navigates between these two worlds: it will show that the moralists are on the side of tradition and anxiously held on to the old values, while the more progressive romantics tried to break free from some of the old conventions.

When change happens, people tend to get scared. As a reaction to their rapidly changing world, many Victorians chose to flee to a past that felt safe. Barczewski describes how the Victorian Era was dominated by a fascination with the past, particularly that of the Middle Ages. Though for some the return to the Middle Ages meant a protest to modernity by escaping to a more gentle, romanticized world, others turned to the Middle Ages to find solutions for contemporary dilemmas. The values of the Middle Ages were used to create a national identity that was based on the values of medieval predecessors, such as sincerity, honesty and courage (Barczewski 26-28). Since the values of the French Revolution were founded on Greek and Roman models, the Middle Ages were a good alternative that could not easily be linked to revolution. The medieval past showed the continuity of the British institutions, that proved to be a product of experience and not of wild dreams or abstract theoretical reasoning (Barczewski 33).

In his The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman Mark Girouard describes how the fascination with the Middle Ages in the Victorian Era also led to a reappraisal of the chivalric moral code. The way in which a true gentleman lived and died in the nineteenth century was partly determined by the way in which the Victorians believed knights had lived and died (7). Victorian chivalry produced its own world of myth and legend, in which the inspiring images were sometimes out of touch with reality (Girouard 14). Victorians deemed

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the true knight to be “brave, loyal, true to his word, courteous, generous and merciful” (Girouard 16). In its purest form, the courtly love that was implied in these stories was not about sexual relationships per se, though these had a way of creeping in. Girouard focusses on what this chivalric code meant for the English gentleman, but one can deduce what it meant for his female counterpart. While the knights fought battles in their honour, the ladies remained safely at home.

1.4 The Function of Arthurian characters

When the beautiful Elaine dies in Tennyson’s “Lancelot and Elaine,” Lancelot tells Arthur “Fair she was, my King, / Pure, as you ever wish your knights to be” (lines 1363-1364). Lancelot highlights that Elaine was an example for Arthur’s knights. The Victorians were particularly fascinated by the heroes of their past, who they worshipped and saw as models that could be imitated (Houghton 305-306). This is confirmed in the work of Thomas Carlyle, who gave a lecture series on heroes in 1840. Carlyle describes how the hero can serve as an example for the common Victorian, stating that “we cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining something from him” (21). As a woman whose adulterous relationship made a kingdom fall, Guinevere did not serve as an example, but she was often presented as a counterexample of good behaviour.

Stephanie Barczewski describes how King Arthur became some sort of national hero in the nineteenth century. He was seen as a man who exemplified some of the best characteristics of the English nation (Barczewski 12-13). The epic King already emerged as a hero in the eighteenth century, when he was invoked as a warrior who embodied warlike virtues, but it took some time for the Victorians to feel at ease with certain parts of the Arthurian myth (Barczewski 30-32). Girouard describes how medieval history was accepted much sooner than medieval romance, and it was not until Queen Victoria herself ordered Arthurian paintings for her Robing Room that the true revival of the myth commenced (178-179). According to Girouard, the 1850s were “studded with Arthurian projects” (180).

Girouard states that attitudes towards the Arthurian story in the nineteenth century can roughly be divided into two groups. First, there are the romantics, who had a Pre-Raphaelite conception and were moved and excited by Malory’s vivid stories of love, quests, fighting and marvels. Second, there were the moralists, who “saw Arthur and his knights as epitomizing (at their best) virtues which were still valid as a source of moral lessons for contemporary life” (Giroaurd 180). Girouard defines this second school as “Tennysonian,” while William Morris

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belonged to the circle of the Pre-Raphaelites. The moralists had some problems with the depiction of the Arthurian story: some of the characters, such as Guinevere, behaved in a way that would not be accepted by more traditionalist Victorians. Though Girouard attaches Tennyson’s name to the moralist school, he contends that the approach in Tennyson’s first four Arthurian poems, that were written before the poems of the Idylls of the King, was largely a romantic one. Girouard classifies the later Arthurian poems of the Idylls as moralist.

Though some writers employ the same categories as Girouard, there is also critique on his division. In her review of the book, Debra Mancoff states that Girouard’s discussion of the Arthurian myth is “weakened by his desire to simplify and categorize” (216). She argues that it is too easy to claim that the moralists turned to Tennyson and the romantics to Malory, because there were romantic painters who were inspired by Tennyson and artists with a moralist view that turned to Malory. Mancoff may speak too soon: though Girouard denotes the moralists as Tennysonian, nowhere does he claim that Tennyson is their inspiration, nor does he say that the romantics are solely inspired by Malory. Still, she rightly shows that his division is made too quickly and ignores the fact that Tennyson was seen as an example by the Pre-Raphaelites (I. Armstrong 20). This thesis demonstrates that the Guinevere poems all contain elements from both groups and therefore claims that none of these poems can be convincingly categorised as exclusively “moralistic” or “romantic.”

Another critique on Girouard’s distinction comes from Maike Oergel, who in her The

Return of King Arthur and the Nibelungen states that though Girouard’s observations are

correct, “they do not penetrate to the heart of the attractiveness of chivalry and the medieval time” (201). Though chivalry was both an escapist fashion and a moral allegory, Oergel maintains that it was part and product of an intellectual movement that sought revelation in history, and especially in historical origins, in order to fill the void left by an invalidated metaphysical tradition (201). Though Oergel does not support this claim with arguments, she may be right to assume that both the romantic and the moralist position come from the need to fill the void. However, that they stem from the same needdoes not disprove that both stances existed. The stance defended in this thesis is that there exist moralistic and romantic elements, but they are usually mixed.

1.5 The writers and poems

The following paragraph gives a short summary of the poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Morris, Violet Fane, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Edmund

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Gosse that are used for the literary analysis of this thesis. Because this thesis researches how these poems interact with moral views within Victorian society, I included poets that were influential. Lord Alfred Tennyson was the most obvious choice within this criterion, because he was a famous poet in his time and Poet Laureate from 1850 until 1892. Though the Idylls of

the King was not his most well-known work, it was his magnum opus and was read and

reviewed by some of the most prominent literary critics of Tennyson’s time, for instance by Charles Swinburne. “Lancelot and Guinevere” was part of the first series of Idylls that was published in 1859.

Though William Morris’ volume The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems is his best-known work today, it was not met with immediate recognition when he published it in 1858. Though there were some favourable responses, critics were mainly hostile about Morris’ first volume of poetry, the biggest critique being Morris’ alliance with Pre-Raphaelitism (Kirchhoff 40). The unpopularity of the poem is one of the reasons it is included in the analysis of this thesis. Though Morris himself was quite well-known in his time, not just as a poet, but also for his wallpaper and fabric design, his Guenevere was unpopular because she actively defied some traditionalist values (Kirchhoff 9).

Violet Fane is the pseudonym of Mary Montgomerie Lamb (1843-1905), who used an alias because her family disapproved of her literary ambitions. Her poem “Lancelot and Guinevere” was published in her first poetry collection From Dawn to Noon in 1872. According to Markovits, the work was a “succès de scandale” because it hinted at the unhappy love affair that forced Fane to marry a much older man (Markovits 635). During her life Fane published seven collections of poetry, three novels, one play and a collection of essays.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon published her first novel in 1860. Her “Queen Guinevere” was part of her first volume of poems Garibaldi and Other Poems that she published in 1861. Braddon was a diligent worker, when she died in 1915 she had published over 80 novels, most of them in the genre of sensationalist literature (Mullin).

Edward Bulwer-Lytton gained so much success as an author of novels that he earned the title “baron” (Encyclopedia of World Biography 87-88). The two Arthurian poems by him that are used in this thesis, come from the volume Clytemnestra, The Earl's Return and Other

Poems that Bulwer-Lytton brought out in 1855. Morris and other pre-Raphaelites were inspired

by Bulwer-Lytton’s poems, Florence Boos even argues that Morris based his “King Arthur’s Tomb” on Bulwer-Lytton’s poem (Boos 35).

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Sir Edmund Gosse enjoyed a considerable reputation as a poet and a critic of art and wrote numerous critiques on literary works as well (Stocker). His poem “Guenevere” was part of the volume On Viol and Flute from 1873 that explores the relation between love and religion. The volume is divided in the three parts “Allegro,” “Andante” and “Adagio,” the poem about Guenevere belongs to the end of the “Andante” section.

Because Girouard describes that it was precisely the adulterous relationship that caused a fuss for some Victorians, I chose poems that highlight this part of the story. One would expect the moralists to have more problems with it than the romantic writers. Bulwer-Lytton’s “Queen Guenevere” does not hint at the adultery of the Queen, but the poem shows something about the power and danger of female beauty. All other poems include the adulterous affair, though they accentuate different parts of the story. In the chronological order of Malory’s Le Morte

D’Arthur, Bulwer-Lytton’s “The Parting of Launcelot and Guenevere” takes place first. This

poem tells the story of Guenevere forcing Launcelot to not tarry behind with her at Camelot, but instead join Arthur at the Tournament in Astolat. Launcelot obeys her request and joins Arthur at Astolat, where the beautiful dame Elaine falls in love with him.

Morris’ “The Defence of Guenevere” takes place after the episode at Astolat, when Guenevere is accused of treason. Since she stands at trial twice in the Malory’s story and Morris makes quite a few alterations to these trials, it is unclear which trial Morris is writing about. Tennyson’s “Guinevere” is set at the Monastery of Almesbury, where the reader encounters Queen Guinevere after she has fled Camelot. In the beginning of the poem, the Queen reminisces about how she fled to the cloister after Mordred caught her in the act of making love with Lancelot. When Arthur comes to visit her, the queen falls on the ground in shock. A long monologue in which Arthur forgives Guinevere for her sins follows. Immediately after his visit Guinevere realises that she should have loved Arthur and dedicates the rest of her life to penance. Morris’ “King Arthur’s Tomb” describes the last conversation between Launcelot and Guenevere at their former Lord’s tomb, in which Launcelot tries to get close to Guenevere once more while she keeps him at a distance. The poem ends with Guenevere running away, leaving Launcelot to his sorrow.

The poems of Braddon and Gosse are difficult to place in a chronological order. Braddon’s poem is a dramatic monologue by the Queen, in which she speaks of her guilty love for Lancelot. Guinevere prays to be dead, since she believes it is only in death that she will be able to forget her love for Lancelot. Gosse’s “Guenevere” describes a meeting of Lancelot and

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Guenevere in a beautiful garden, observed by Gawaine. His poem hints to the decay to which their affair will eventually lead.

Violet Fane’s “Lancelot and Guinevere” differs from the other poems because Guinevere does not play the leading part in the story. The poem tells the story of a husband that reads his wife “Lancelot and Elaine” from Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. It becomes clear that the wife is on the side of Lancelot, thinking how she would have loved him too “were he my knight, were I his queen” (Fane line 28). She praises the loyalty of Lancelot and Queen Guinevere to each other and the reader eventually finds out that she is in an adulterous relationship herself (Fane line 86). Though she seems to repent for a short while, this changes when he hears the sound of her lover coming and forgets about “reader and book alike” (Fane line 111).

1.6 Conclusion

This chapter introduced the two attitudes that Girouard detects towards the Arthurian myth in the mid-nineteenth century. On the one side, the moralists saw the Arthurian characters as examples to be followed and believed Victorian gentlemen should exhibit the same kind of knightly values of loyalty, generosity and mercifulness. On the other side, there were the romantics, who liked the Arthurian stories because they were exciting, with fights, courtly romance and courageous knights rescuing damsels. Though Girouard only speaks of the examples set by Arthurian men, the following chapters will show that these two stances can be detected in poems about Guinevere as well. They will prove that the two attitudes are not mutually exclusive: moralist and romantic elements can be found in all of the Guinevere poems. This thesis argues that Girouard’s distinction can be used to distinguish different elements within one poem, and not to classify a whole poem or even an author.

This chapter also gave an introduction of both the character of Guinevere as of the authors and poems that are used in this analysis. It has shown that there are two significant events in Malory’s story which are not included by the Victorian authors and enlarge Guinevere’s moral defect. By leaving out Arthur’s own adulterous relationship and the fact that he knew Guinevere would betray him before he married her, the guilt rests solely on the Queen’s shoulders.

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2. The Tasks of Women

When Girouard describes the moralist conception of the Arthurian myth, he speaks of artists that saw “Arthur and his knights as epitomizing (at their best) virtues which were still valid as a source of moral lessons for contemporary life” (180). A true Victorian gentleman had to embody to the same kind of values as a medieval knight, such as loyalty and braveness (16). Girouard neglects to address the function of Arthurian women and their meaning for the moralists, but they had the same function as Arthurian men. The first series of Idylls that Tennyson published came out in 1859 and featured four women from the Arthurian story, namely Enid, Guinevere, Vivien and Elaine. Tennyson called the collection Enid and Nimue:

The True and the False. The title of the collection speaks volumes: it exposes Tennyson’s aim

to show true women that he deems worthy to imitate and false women who can function as warnings for the consequences of bad behaviour. Though the title denominates only Enid as true and Nimue (who later became “Vivien”) as false, Elaine and Guinevere are implicitly assigned the same attributes in the body of the text, the former as true and the latter as false.

If the moralist writers thought a true Victorian gentleman needed to manifest knightly values, they wanted a Victorian woman to have the qualities that were professed by true medieval ladies. This chapter uses “Guinevere” from Tennyson’s Idylls, that Girouard classifies as a moralist work, as a starting point to investigate how moralist Victorian writers saw the ideal woman. It shows that Tennyson’s work represents a view on womanhood that corresponds to the view of some of the better-read traditionalist sources on behaviour within Victorian society. Some of the traditionalist views on womanhood are explained, such as the way in which woman was seen as the negation of man and meant to act in her own sphere where she could better the moral wealth of the nation by exerting her influence. This chapter uses the poems of Tennyson and Morris as well as traditionalist sources to determine which poems Girouard would classify as “moralist” and which as “romantic.” The following chapters complicate this view by stating that the poems can only be divided within this dichotomy at first sight. Both this chapter and the third use traditionalist sources on Victorian womanhood to determine the kind of morality that the moralist underwrote.

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2.2 Woman as the Negation of Man

The role that women must fulfil in Camelot is spelled out in Tennyson’s “Guinevere.” When King Arthur comes to visit his wife in the monastery, he tells her about the influence he had wanted the women in Camelot to have on his companionship of knights:

“For indeed I knew

Of no more subtle master under heaven Then is the maiden passion for a maid, Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thought, and amiable words, And courtliness, and the desire of fame,

And love of truth, and all that makes a man” (Tennyson, “Guinevere” lines 474-480) This speech makes clear that men are in need of a kind of guidance that only women can give. By speaking of “the base” that is in man, King Arthur implies that there is some sort of carnal force within each man that needs to be contained. While his knights go out to fight heathens, slaughter their evil peers and defend the honour of ladies in combat, the women need to make men forget about all this peril when they return to their homes.

Sharon Marcus writes how the belief that women and men were different in kind rather than in degree took hold of almost every class within Victorian society. Women were viewed “as either inherently domestic, maternal and self-restrained, or susceptible to training in how to be so” (Marcus 6). That traditionalist Victorians saw man and woman as inherently different becomes clear in one of the sermons of Reverend Frederick Robertson from Brighton. Robertson makes a distinction between the glory of woman and the glory of man, stating that “they are the two opposite poles of the sphere of humanity” (383-384). Both these opposite poles of character were in perfect balance within the character of Jesus Christ, all that was most manly and all that was most womanly were united in his person. Though Tennyson’s Arthur tells his wife that it was the task of her and her peers to soften the knights of his court, his speech discloses that the great King himself does not need this softening power. At times, his emotions get the better of him and when he tells Guinevere that he loves her still, he contends that he is “not made of so slight elements” (Tennyson, “Guinevere” line 507).

In general, the stories of the Arthurian myth present man as the one taking action and woman as a passive force. The knights of Arthur’s court ride out, often to save ladies that cannot take care of themselves, for instance in Tennyson’s “The Marriage of Geraint,” a story in which

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Geraint saves Enid and her family from destitution by fighting an evil knight. This aligns with the view that traditionalist Victorian scholar John Ruskin professed in his lecture “Of Queen’s Gardens” in which he states that man’s power is active. “He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender” (Ruskin 68). Man is the one that invents, the one that goes out to war or adventures and the one that conquests. Woman, on the other hand, has the power for rule and not for battle. Her intellect is made for “sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision” (Ruskin 68). Ruskin believes that men should envy women, because it is the female sex that is safe and protected. His presence in the outside world makes man the one that encounters trial and therefore makes him prone to failure and error. Woman is guarded from all peril because she is given the opportunity to stay inside her home where her husband defends her from danger, temptation and error (Ruskin 68).

Throughout Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, the women that stick to the traditional division of tasks are categorised as the guardians of society and the women that try to cross boundaries are the destroyers of peace (Barczewski 169-171). The chivalric values that the moralists deemed important were a breach with an earlier view on masculinity. Man was perceived in a more domesticated way, and for the first time needed to be modest, pure, tender and able to exercise self-restraint. This change led to the concern that man may become emasculated which in its turn had a consequence for the way in which women were seen. Because men were threatened by females closing in on their position in society, female strength was depicted as a danger more often. In Tennyson’s Idylls this can be seen in the way in which Elaine, who is one of the more traditional and softer women, nurses Lancelot back to health while a strong woman such as Vivien plays a big part in the fall of Camelot.

2.3 Of Power and Influence

If woman and man are seen as opposites, their tasks cannot be the same. None of the poems present Guinevere as the ruling party. Though Bulwer-Lytton places her on a black chair “mailed all about with sullen gems, and crusts” that resembles a throne, his Guenevere is an ornamental Queen, not a ruler. Her beauty is the only quality that is celebrated in the poem. Braddon also places her queen on a throne, but the significance of this fact, according to Broome-Saunders, lies in the way that the poem highlights the “impossibility for a queen to have both a public persona and a private life” (149). This was a topical subject: Queen Victoria had been widowed seven years before Braddon wrote her poem and she was criticised for leading a sequestered life after the death of her husband (Broome Saunders 149). Tennyson

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eludes to the tasks that Guinevere has as a King’s wife in his “Guinevere,” when he states that even the “trustful courtesies of household life, / became her bane” when she fears to be caught as an adulteress (line 85-86). The word “trustful” here implies that the household life is the kind of life that Guinevere was used to.

In her “Victorian Masculinity and the Angel in the House” Carol Christ claims that the emergence of the idea of an ideal Victorian woman was caused by the existing religious doubt and the pressure of the marketplace. Some Victorians writers relocated the traditional values that they saw were disappearing within society to the household. By ruling their home, women could create a “sanctuary both from the anxieties of modern life and for those values no longer confirmed by religious faith or relevant to modern business” (Christ 146). Where the husbands could not shield themselves from the perils of the outside world, women could be protected and in their turn needed to guard their households from the corrupting presence of the cruel public world by exerting their influence from the domestic sphere.

Sarah Lewis explains the difference between the power of men and the influence of women in her Woman’s Mission from 1839. According to her, influence is actually more powerful, because power is exerted in authority and only has a limited sphere of action. Where power can easily be resisted, influence can modify dispositions and alter character (Lewis 13-14). It is early influence that is the chief source for establishing good principles in an individual, and therefore the regenerating principle can also be found in influence. As the education of children is important for the making of new generations, mothers are important regenerators (Lewis, 19-20). Women are just as important as man; they are in fact the only ones who can exert their influence and thereby make mankind better. It is remarkable that Lewis links the utility of a woman to her role in the lives of men, calling her “the guardian angel of man’s infancy” (30). I have shown that Tennyson’s King Arthur saw this the same way, stating that it is women that “keep down the base in man” (“Guinevere” line 477). In the moralist conception the value of women’s tasks is not to be separated from the way in which they serve men.

Though the average Victorian wife had to make do with her influence, one might expect that Guinevere as a queen would have more power. It was quite normal that the queenly types in the Victorian Era were queens of home and not of empire (Auerbach 43). Rudolph Glitz writes that though there were many embodiments of the ideal housewife, Queen Victoria “provided arguably the most widely recognisable and perhaps even standard-setting mythical embodiment of nineteenth-century middle-class housewifery” (126). This is illustrated in Tennyson’s poem “To the Queen,” in which he writes about “A thousand claims to reverence

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closed / In her as Mother, Wife and Queen” (line 23-24). Tennyson sees the leader of his country as a wife first, a mother second, and a ruler last. Broome Saunders argues that Queen Victoria deliberately posited herself as a Queen of home, using medievalism to support and develop her own position (104). Though the chivalry of the Victorian Age may have been “a far cry from the Middle Ages,” the idea of a noble lady honoured above all others served Victoria’s propaganda (Broome Saunders 106).

“And all thro’ thee!” is what Tennyson’s Arthur tells his spouse after he has talked of the sins of others, implying that Guinevere committed a kind of original sin that paved the way for other sinners (“Guinevere” line 490). In his lecture “Of Queen’s Gardens” John Ruskin confirms the idea that every woman can be a queen, as a wife and as a mother. He addresses all women, telling them “that highest dignity is open to you, if you will also accept that highest duty” (Ruskin 90). Queenly women, according to Ruskin, are responsible for the moral state of the world. They are to forbid men that are prone to go to war from that purpose. This means that “there is not a war in the world, no, nor an injustice, but you women are answerable for it; not in that you have provoked, but in that you have not hindered” (Ruskin 91). Broome Saunders thinks that Ruskin uses this principle to lay blame and make women answerable to all war and injustice in the world (119). This can be connected to what Tennyson does; when Arthur tells Guinevere, it is all through her, he blames her for the sins of others.

Of course, an important part of exerting influence, was to be an example for one’s children. As Sarah Lewis puts it “Good schoolmasters make good scholars, - good mothers make good men” (22). In his speech to Guinevere, Tennyson’s Arthur tells her “well it is that no child is born of thee” (“Guinevere” line 421). The only children that were born of her, according to the King are “sword and fire, / Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws” (“Guinevere” lines 422-423). These lines, even more painful because we know from “The Last Tournament” that Guinevere once mothered a foundling that died, make clear that it is not just her behaviour that is wrong, but something in her being. Not only did Guinevere fail to embody the right kind of influence, she also failed in providing the very people she should have affected with her exemplary behaviour.

2.4 Two spheres

After her affair has come to light, Tennyson’s Guinevere is yielded sanctuary at the “peaceful sisterhood” of the nuns in Almesbury. This is peculiar: even after she is free to go wherever she wants, the Queen chooses the household sphere. Most poets used in the current research place

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Guinevere in a homely environment. Though her home may consist of big empty palace halls, she is bound to a domestic environment and not to the external world. Once a woman was married, Victorians saw it as her duty to manage her own sphere, which mostly consisted of the household. Ruskin describes how the husband shields his wife from danger and thereby enables her to create a nice, safe home for him where he can rest from the perils he encounters. This home that the wife creates is above all “the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division” (Ruskin 68). Once it is penetrated by the hardships from public life, this protective function is lost. Ruskin emphasises that this does not mean that the wife is always supposed to stay at home. A true wife takes the safe homely place she has created with her wherever she goes (Ruskin 68).

Ruskin goes into the different duties that can be connected to the different spheres. He states that many Victorians are wrong to think that a man has public duties and a woman private ones. The man, as a member of the commonwealth, has to assist in the maintenance, advance and defence of the state, where a woman has to assist in the ordering, comforting and in the beautiful adornment of the state (Ruskin 86). Though Ruskin speaks of the national duty of women, he underlines that they are supposed to fulfil it from their domestic sphere. There is a reason women should not waiver from their own sphere. According to Robertson, the true glory of womanhood consists in being herself, a woman will not strive to be something that she is not. Therefore, “it is the false paradox and the three last centuries heresy of this present age to claim for her as a glory the right to leave her sphere” (Robertson 394-395). Though she does not rule, as a queen Guinevere may have had wider sphere of influence than the average Victorian woman had, because she could move with the court. Most of the Guinevere poems adhere to the distinctions between the spheres.

Tennyson’s version of the story presents a passive queen in a homely sphere. When King Arthur visits Guinevere in the convent, she falls to the ground and makes her face a darkness from her Lord. While her king rebukes her, Guinevere cannot speak in her own defence, later she muses that she was unable to speak, but should have answered her Lord’s farewell (Tennyson, “Guinevere” line 610). This is a world apart from Morris’ Guenevere, who does not need anyone to speak on her behalf, but instead takes up her own defence. This Guenevere is the most active version I could find in Victorian literature: not only does she speak, but she does so in the role of a barrister, an occupation that would only be open for Victorian men. By taking on this profession, the queen steps into a sphere that is not her own.

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“Gauwaine, I say, / See me hew down your proofs” is what Morris’ queen says to call out her opponent. (“The Defence” lines 166-167). Broome Saunders describes his Guenevere as “vibrant and compelling,” speaking in her own defence (144). Morris stays true to Thomas Malory and presents a Guenevere who can be both lover and queen. Her marriage with Arthur is an arrangement into which she was bought, and she keeps trying to focus her accusers’ attention to the fact that she fulfils the role of queen, whose right it is to demand a hearing. She not only has it in her to compel the men to listen to her defence, but she also shows that she once was the person that did rule.

2.5 Womanhood and nationality

The only company Tennyson’s Guinevere has in his poem, is a novice that cannot keep her mouth shot. Unknowingly of the true identity of her companion, the little girl tells the fallen Queen that “this is all woman’s grief, / that she is woman, whose disloyal life / Hath wrought confusion in the Table Round” (Tennyson, “Guinevere” line 216-218). When a woman fails at her tasks, the whole nation feels the repercussions and thereby all women in this nation are guilty of her failure. The Arthurian myth is a story about the downfall of a nation, caused by one disloyal woman. It is not hard to understand why this appealed to the Victorians. When woman’s morality is supposed to be the force behind the power and wellbeing of nation, woman’s immorality can cause disaster, as happens in the story of King Arthur. Girouard sees Tennyson’s Idylls as a sequence form a “powerful and extremely depressing account of the decay and defeat of an ideal” (182). Nonetheless, all is not lost: there is hope in the prospective return of the King.

Barczewski states that “the Victorian’s believed that their country’s international position depended upon a domestic base, a base whose stability was in turn a product of the moral purity of their society” (179). Because change was happening thus fast, the fear of losing this stability was very present in society. Since women were perceived as the guardians of this purity, a vice woman endangered the security of the whole nation (Barczewski 179). In his influential book on behaviour Self Help that sold almost a quarter million copies Samuel Smiles professes that “the nation comes from the nursery” (372). The fireside functions as a central spot in his ideas, from which “the human sympathies may extend in an ever-widening circle, until the world is embraced” (Smiles 372). By this fire side, man and wife teach their children certain matters by example, which Smiles finds the best way to learn (Smiles 371-372). Lewis summarises these thoughts when she states that “it is the aggregate of families that constitutes

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the nation” (38). This idea makes woman’s morality a necessity for the nation. The Arthurian myth shows how a whole Kingdom can fall because a woman cannot uphold a certain moral standard.

Gosse’s poem makes the relationship between a woman’s betrayal and decay of the land visible in a direct manner, and thereby confirming a moralist idea. He sets the scene of his poem in a beautiful garden on a warm autumn night and uses the imagery of fruit to represent the idea of decay. While he speaks of “peach and apple and apricot” in a line in the first stanza, before Guenevere sets off to meet her lover, these summer fruits have to make place for “nightshade, wormwood and agaric” in the last stanza, when Guenevere flees back home from the kiss she shared with Lancelot (Gosse line 2, line 20). The language in the poem immediately responds to the actions of Guenevere in quite a literal manner, just like Victorians thought the nation would respond to misbehaving women.

2.6 Conclusion

This chapter has shown that the moralistic message if Tennyson aligns with the thoughts of traditionalist Victorians. The traditionalist idea of a Victorian woman improving the moral wealth of a nation through her influence is spelled out in Tennyson’s “Guinevere.” Tennyson, according to Girouard, was an example for writers that had a moralist view on the Arthurian myth that was manifested in his Idylls. King Arthur had meant for Guinevere and her peers to be exactly the kind of purifying influence that authors such as Lewis and Stickney-Ellis want the Victorian woman to be. Tennyson’s version of the myth underlines the dangers of women not fulfilling their tasks in the right manner: Guinevere’s female sexuality brings down a Kingdom. The dangers of female sexuality also play a big part in Gosse’s “Queen Guenevere.” The immediate response of the land on Guenevere’s adultery clearly conveys a moralist message.

Apart from the moralists, Girouard also distinguishes a group that he calls the “romantics” who according to him were pre-Raphaelites, a group to which William Morris was closely associated. Girouard does not contend that the romantics disagreed with the moralists’ view on the Arthurian myth; he just states their interest in the story was born from aestheticism and did not come from moralistic reasons. However, this chapter has shown that it is indeed Morris who mostly defies the ideas about womanhood of traditionalist Victorians. His Guenevere does not just have an affair, but steps into a sphere that according to most of the traditionalist writers does not even belong to her. She is depicted as a strong woman speaking

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in her own defence, an image not often seen in Victorian society. This differs from the view Bulwer-Lytton presents in is “Queen Guenevere,” which is aesthetic. His Guenevere has a purely ornamental function and thereby adheres to the aestheticism of the Romantics. This chapter has exhibited that the poems by Tennyson and Gosse at first sight have a moralist conception of the Arthurian myth and those by Bulwer-Lytton and Morris a romantic point of view.

The other chapters of this thesis will problematise this division and show that all these poems contain both moralistic and romantic elements. The poems by Braddon and Fane are, even at first side, less easy to assign to one of the groups. Because Fane’s poem is based on one of Tennyson’s Idylls and Broome Saunders states that Braddon aligns herself with Morris, I will assume that Girouard would classify the former as moralist and the latter as romantic.

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3. Moralist Female Virtues

“That simple maiden could but prove / The love she bore him by her death” is what the wife in Fane’s “Lancelot and Guinevere” exclaims after her husband reads her the story of the faithful Elaine’s death (lines 69-70). Though such faithfulness to one’s lover was seen as the pinnacle of knightly virtues by the moralists, this wife deems it more worthy to live for the one you love (Fane line 71). The previous chapter has shown that the task Tennyson’s Arthur has in mind for the women in Camelot conforms to the image more traditionalist Victorians had about womanhood. This chapter builds upon the general idea of a woman’s tasks that the second chapter gave and fills in the kind of virtues a Victorian woman ought to have in order to fulfil these tasks.

This chapter investigates the idea of the Victorian woman as “the angel in the house” that had to be a beacon of Christianity. Special attention is given to the virtue that Guinevere as a character mostly defies by having an affair, namely that of purity. This chapter focusses on the view traditionalist Victorians had on sex; the fifth chapter shall demonstrate this was not the only view. Just as the previous chapter, this chapter shows how some of the poems contain moralist elements, while other poems convey that these ladylike virtues are not important. The second chapter has argued that Girouard would probably classify the attitude Tennyson, Gosse and Fane have towards the Arthurian myth as moralist and that of Morris, Bulwer-Lytton and Braddon as romantic. This chapter begins to lay bare the inconsistency of Girouard’s division: many of the poems that would be deemed “romantic” contain moralist elements, while some moralistic values are contradicted in poems that Girouard would classify as moralist.

3.2 The Angel in the House

In his description of “Queen Guenevere” Bulwer-Lytton describes how Harmony “flowed warmly back / the bounteous outlines of a glowing grace / Nor yet outflowed sweet laws of loveliness” (lines 24-26). The kind of beauty described in this poem has a touch of the supernatural. Though the Queen’s chambers would be in England, a Falcon Peregrine “flown from far, athwart strange lands” has come to admire her beauty (Bulwer-Lytton, “Queen Guenevere” line 43). In The Angel in the House, a long poem that was published in instalments between 1854 and 1862, Coventry Patmore describes an ideal woman, who is indeed “not of

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the earth” (93). The beauty of this woman is of “a godly grace” that is “not of the flesh, though that was fair, / But a most pure and living light” (Patmore 86). Carol Christ writes about the way in which the idea of this “angel in the house” became closely associated with Victorian ideals of womanhood. According to her, “the angel brings a more than mortal purity to the home that she at once creates and sanctifies, for which her mate consequently regards her with a sentimental, essentially religious reverence” (Christ 146). Though the focus Bulwer-Lytton places on Guenevere’s beauty is romantic, it fits in the moralist conception to describe a woman’s looks as unearthly, only the moralists attribute the air that surrounds her to her pure morals.

The traditionalist thought that moral purity manifests itself in a kind of air that a certain woman carries with her because she is surrounded by goodness, is voiced by Samuel Smiles. He describes the influence of a particular woman entering the room, “immediately raising the tone of conversation, and as in purifying the moral atmosphere” (373). This kind of aura can be recognised in Tennyson’s Guinevere. His queen manages to convince even pure beings such as the nuns of Almesbury of her goodness. The queen’s “goodness, grace and power” work as a charm upon the pious nuns and compel them not to ask Guinevere’s name (Tennyson, “Guinevere” line 142). It is peculiar that Guinevere can summon this kind of goodness to surround her, since the reader knows her to be impure. According to the traditionalist conception, Guinevere would be unable to present herself as true because she is in fact a sinner. As a character, she therefore defies the moralistic idea that the pureness in her air should be connected to a purity of morals.

“Though hast not made life so sweet to me, / That I the King should greatly care to live / For thou has spoilt the purpose of my life” (Tennyson, “Guinevere” line 448-450). Tennyson’s King Arthur tells his wife that the march towards his doom does not make him sad because she has not made his life as happy as she should have made it. Instead of putting his needs above her own, his Queen has chosen to live for her own satisfaction. Sarah Lewis writes how the renunciation of self is the quality “on which woman’s value and influence depend” (50). It is fundamental that women live for others and subjugate their selfish feelings to the things they feel for others (Lewis 40). Women were expected to rejoice over this renunciation of their own feelings. Patmore speaks of woman’s “amiable and innocent (…) pleasure in her power to charm” (41).

To a certain extent, Guinevere does renounce herself for the one that she loves. Though she tries to have it all, she lives in constant fear of losing her queenship as a result of her

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unfaithful love. Bulwer-Lytton’s Queen tells Launcelot how she is “lying whole hours awake in the dead nights” out of remorse for her sin and fear for her life (“Parting” line 60). Still, she loves Launcelot in spite of knowing it may cost her all. Of course, traditionalist writers maintain that the real self-renunciation would be to give up her love for Launcelot for her husband’s Kingdom. Braddon’s Guinevere voices this when she prays “A queen, aye, worse; oh, misery, a wife! / God give me self-control!” (line 39-40). The Queen has little faith that she could find the strength to control herself while her heart still beats. Instead, she prays for her own death, believing that only eternal distance will free her from her love for Lancelot. This queen shows that she knows what she ought to do according to the moralistic conception, but she is simply unable to do so.

In the monologue that is Morris’ Guenevere’s defence, she speaks of a lovely day in spring on which she dared not think, as she was wont to do, sometimes, upon her beauty (“Defence” line 119, 120). Because everything already seemed particularly beautiful that day, the Queen implies that her own beauty might have been too much for her. She invites the men of the jury to look at her beauty: “see my breast rise / Like waves of purple sea, as here I stand; / And how my arms are moved in wonderful wise” (Morris, “Defence” lines 217-219). Following from the principle of self-renunciation, Patmore calls modesty women’s “chiefest grace” (40). Since her purpose is to live for others, a woman can never be proud of her own achievements. Patmore speaks of “The lack of lovely pride, in her / Who strives to please” (28). Morris’ Guenevere defies this idea of a lack of pride in quite an extensive manner. Not only is she proud of her own looks, but she even asks others to admire her.

Morris describes how a “blight” had settled on Guenevere, and how her “eyes did lack / Half her old glory” (“King Arthur’s Tomb” lines 131-132). In Bulwer-Lytton’s “Parting” Launcelot also remarks “how changed her state, and all unlike to her” Guenevere looks (line 194). Eliza Lynn Linton puts an emphasis on the appearance of women, since she believes that “modesty of appearance and virtue indeed ought to be inseparable” (4). I already demonstrated that the moralist conception links good morals to a certain pure air. Morris and Bulwer-Lytton turn this idea around: immorality and sin are linked to degradation of the exterior in their poems. Braddon’s poem defies the idea of the inside showing on the outside, her Guinevere describes that the grandeur of the bright gems in her yellow hair hides how her “brain is racked with care” (Braddon, “Queen Guinevere” line 4). Thereby, Morris and Bulwer-Lytton show that, in line with the moralist idea, bad morality is coupled to one’s visage.

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Though Morris’ Guenevere can hardly be called an example of virtue, she accuses her prosecutor Gawaine of lying multiple times. She tells him how “Nevertheless you, O Sir Gauwaine, lie, / Whatever happened on through all those years, / God knows I speak truth, saying that you lie” (Morris, “Defence of Guenevere” lines 142-144). Morris has not included Gauwaine’s words in the poem (interestingly enough Lionel Stevenson’s work classifies this as an accident, caused by Morris’ mislaying the first page of his manuscript that contained expository narrative), so it is impossible to know the nature of his accusation (140). Stickney Ellis presents honesty as a quality that every female has to possess. She emphasises the necessity of an “open, honest, straightforward way of acting”: a woman stands alone when she lies “for there is no fellowship in falsehood” (Wives of England 42-43). Morris’ Guenevere shows affinity with moralist values and virtues: though she does not embody them herself, she knows which are important.

3.3 Womanhood and Christianity

In Tennyson’s “The Passing of Arthur” Sir Bedivere speaks the following words after the death of his beloved King: “"He passes to be King among the dead, / And after healing of his grievous wound / He comes again” (lines 449-451). These words turn Arthur into the messiah, who will return when England is in dire need of a saviour again. This idea is in line with other versions of the Arthurian myth; the idea that the Great King would return and Camelot would be once more for instance can be found in Le Morte D’Arthur, when Malory states that “men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the holy cross” (volume II, book XXI, chapter VII). The contrast between the King and the Queen is stark: even if Guinevere was not an adulteress, she would have never been able to be the Christian that her husband is.

The conduct books that tell Victorian middle-class women how to behave, display that the perfect woman must be imbued with the Christian faith. Lewis dedicates a whole chapter of her book to “The Missionary Spirit.” She calls for women to let men enjoy their intellectual kingdom and to rejoice over their own dominion, namely that of the moral world. This world is given to them by the indignation of God himself when he placed “in woman’s heart the only feeling (…) which affords the faintest representation of his most inextinguishable love to us” (Lewis 129). Since women were deemed morally superior to men, and Christianity was about guarding morality, this implied women must be the guardians of the true Christian faith. Though cheating on one’s husband may not be in line with the Bible, some versions of the Guinevere show a kind of piety. Guinevere prays in Braddon’s dramatic monologue. In the beginning of

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the poem, the Queen addresses Lancelot and God both, stating that “I pray to die, that thou mayst be forgot; If we forget in death” (Braddon lines 27-28). This is a strange thing to say for a true Christian missionary, who would believe there is life after death. Tennyson’s Guinevere disagrees with the ideas of her counterpart. While she also thinks of killing herself, she concludes “I cannot kill my sin, / If soul be soul” (lines 616-617).

One may wonder if King Arthur does not foreshadow the task of his wife as a Christian missionary. Though Guinevere can try to be the perfect example of Christian virtue, it is hard to beat a husband who is presented as a true saviour. By being the perfect specimen that he is, Arthur is always the ideal Christian influence, thereby taking over this task from his wife. According to Reverend Robertson, there is a difference between the way in which men and the way in which women practice Christianity. Where women practice the Christian faith by going to mass and praying, man’s prayer is active and consists of “struggling for principles, and contending for the truth” (558). Arthur’s prayer is quite literally active, as a Christian King he makes sure that the values of Christianity are upheld and he fights against heathens. He embodies both the impeccable Christian man as well as the impeccable Christian woman.

3.4 Purity

“In the flesh thou hast sinned; and mine own flesh, / Here looking down on thine polluted, cries / "I loathe thee:"” Tennyson’s Arthur cries out when he talks to Guinevere in the monastery (“Guinevere” lines 551-553). In his sermon “Marriage and Celibacy,” Reverend Robertson preaches that it is harder to stay close to God when one in married instead of when one leads a celibate life. Still, both are possible: “but and if thou marry, thou has not sinned: and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned” (Robertson 549). Though Robertson does not say that a man should not be a virgin when he marries, he only posits this as a necessity for the future wife. Stickney Ellis is vague about the sexual experience a man is allowed to have before his marriage, though she does give “instances of unfaithfulness too glaring to be overlooked” as a potential reason to break off an engagement (Stickney Ellis, Wives of England 8).

It is still a widespread belief nowadays that the Victorians were prude people. Joan Perkin describes that the Victorians saw sex as a marital duty instead of as a fun activity, but she underlines that this did not lead to a decline in sexual activity (51-52). The word “purity” was invoked by many conservatist Victorian writers who wanted to put forward a certain image of womanhood. The word was used in different manners, for instance it was deemed favourable when one was of pure morals, of pure mind and in general of pure life. Lewis talks about certain

Womanhood and the Female Adulteress: Representations of Queen Guinevere in the Victorian Era