Control, Power and Dominance of Womenin Arthurian Times
1
Lawson
Michele N. Lawson
English 105 – Professor Gayford
March 17, 2004
Control, Power and Dominance of Womenin Arthurian Times:
The Role of Merlin in the Rape of Igraine
The primary act, of all Arthurian tales, that laid the groundwork for the forthcoming struggle for control, power and dominance of women in these stories came with the rape of Igraine. Prior to this act, there were individual struggles for supremacy in the land, but through the rape of Igraine by Uther Pendragon, a hierarchalline and struggle for dominance in the land began that involved the women of this age must directly.
The one individual, who above all others was intimately involved in the rape of Igraine, was the sorcerer Merlin. Dan Butler seems to have captured Merlin perfectly and has been able to deconstruct the man from myth. The main point that Dan made is that “Merlin was the man behind everything” (Butler). How true this is. Without Merlin nothing along the course of history in Camelot or England would have happened. His hand was in everything good and bad and he manipulated individuals to his own means. Merlin had this “vision”, not prophetic, but his own internal desires. He was the Donald Trump, Bill Gates and Michael Eisner of his time. Like an exceptional CEO, he had his own agenda and he sought to control it all!
What if Merlin created the lineage of Arthur for his own means and used Uther’s rape of Igraine to facilitate his plan? There was a very strong possibility that the child could have been Gorlois’s and not Uther’s. Most of the stories rely on the word of Merlin that states that Arthur was Uther’s son, but what if he wasn’t. So let’s suppose this is a fact, that Arthur was not truly Uther’s son. What would have changed? Probably not much! As all great leaders have done throughout history, Merlin is able to take events and distort them for his own purposes; therefore, Merlin could have created his dream with any man. But the rape gave Merlin the means to create the illusion of possibility.
But he does not stop at the mere rape of Igraine; he then, to ensure that he will get this boy from the union of Uther and Igraine, goes as far to convince that Uther should marry Igraine to secure his throne. Merlin had to know that the odds were pretty good that Igraine would become pregnant and he had a 50/50 chance that the child would be male. So I do not believe that Merlin “prophesized” the birth of Arthur as he more than likely played the odds to his advantage. Should the child have been born female, I am sure that with this ability to manipulate situations and individuals, it would have been easy to assume that Merlin could have developed a whole new scenario to meet his needs. We see this ability in how he used the union of Morgause and Arthur to manipulate Arthur to gain further control over him.
I next choose to read Steven Daley’s paper which also discussed the rape of Igraine and Merlin’s direct involvement in it. Merlin, through his actions, is directly responsible for what happens to Igraine and all the future hardships that she, the baby Arthur and Igraine’s other children by the Duke endure. Through this rape and the subsequent marriage of Igraine to Uther, her other children are either abandoned to be raised by others as described in Springer’s I am Morgan le Fayand in Thomson’s The Dragon’s Son. So through his involvement Merlin has contributed to the destruction of an entire family and the lifelong trauma suffered by the women of this family and “the indignities that [are] faced by women at the times the stories take place” (Daley).
Upon analyzing the rape of Igraine, one can either view it as either a literary contribution to evoke hate, fear, distrust, etc. of Merlin/Uther or as an element of the story to provide a cultural think that both are true in this case. The story of rape in the Arthurian tales is not written as page filler but to create an emotional response that evokesspecific responses in how the reader will relate to the characters and the story that is being presented. Unlike many modern stories and/or movies, the depiction of a gratuitous sex scene usually has absolutely nothing to do with the storyline or is utilized to provide cohesiveness to the story? This is not the case in the Arthurian stories, as the rape: sets the stage for the variety of events that are to occur in the lives of these characters; provides an authentic representation of the role of women in this time period; and then allows the reader to emotionally respond to the characters and their development. Therefore, even as horrendous of the event is perceived in the tale, the rape of Igraine is a necessary component of the entire Arthurian legend and the whole premise of the stories would be completely changed without this essential portion of the tale.
But what make the story of the rape so relevant are the consequences of these actions in seeking such power and dominance over women. As I began to read Jon Bouchard’s I was intrigued by his thoughts on the moral consequences of actions and in particular, his declaration that, “the law of unintended consequences manifest itself in the living of our daily lives”. Ultimately, it is how the individuals in these tales respond to the consequences of their actions that determine what type of individual they truly are. It seems that in the Arthurian tales, the characters are unable to accept responsibility for their own actions and seek to burden others with the consequences of their deeds. Merlin is uniquely adept at blaming others or his “visions” for his deeds. As seen in Thomson’s storyThe Dragon’s Son, when Nimue confronts Myrddin about allowing Uther to rape Igraine, Myrddin’s reply is that “I must!...Their child is the one who must rule” (25). Merlin sees only the end results of the action and not the ultimate cost to Igraine in justifying his assistance in Uther carrying out this deed.
However, as learned in Culler, Aristotle stated “that a good story must have a beginning, middle, an end, and that they give pleasure because of the rhythm of their ordering” (Culler, 84). So if the true beginning of the Arthurian tales is the rape of Igraine and the middle is the story of Arthur, what is the end? The plot of the tales requires, as stated by Culler, “there must be an end relating back to the beginning…an end that indicates what has happened to the desire that led to the events the story narrates” (Culler, 84).
So the end of these tales is not what happens to Arthur, but what happens to Merlin, the ultimate catalyst for control, power and domination of women of the Arthurian times. We know from the stories that Merlin meets his end in a variety of forms based on the author’s perception, but the question is why did Merlin, the great manipulator allow himself to meet his end at the hands of a woman?
Perhaps, at the very end of this life, or at the cumulating of his dreams, Merlin felt he needed to be punished for his crimes and sought punishment from the one person he had loved. All the stories agree that Merlin found his end at the hands of Nimue, the one woman he had loved and/or desired at some point in his life. Whether she murdered him as Thomson described inThe Dragon’s Son, or as in Hoffman’s story, he was sealed in a magical circle around a Hawthorn tree, it would ultimately be a woman who brought down Merlin and punished him for his misdeeds in the world. So our story comes full circle, Merlin, having sought to control the destiny of others through the rape of one woman, ultimately allows his death to be controlled by another woman. Perhaps, in his eyes, this was the ultimate punishment!
Works Cited
Bouchard, Jon. Paper #1. 12 March 2004. <
Butler, Dan. Merlin: The Catalyst for Camelot 12 March 2004. <
Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.
Daley, Steven. Paper #1. 12 March 2004 <
Springer, Nancy. I am Morgan le Fay. New York: Penguin Group, 2001.
Steinbeck, John. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights. Canada: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd, 1976.
Thomson, Sarah. The Dragon’s Son. New York: Orchard Books, 2001.