Pérez,
Kristina, The Myth of
Morgan la Fey. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. 262.
Reviewed
by Kristi J. Castleberry (kristi.castleberry@gmail.com)
Morgan
la Fey is a slippery, shadowy figure. She hurts Arthur and she heals
Arthur; she is the enemy of the Round Table and she is the only hope
that it may return. She is beautiful and powerful and terrifying.
Kristina Pérez's The
Myth of Morgan la Fey
takes on the ambitious project of grappling with Morgan in myth and
text and film and popular culture, easily moving between ancient and
medieval and modern sources in the process. Pérez states in her
preface that, "[b]y exploring the shifting portrayal of Morgan
from Celtic Sovereignty Goddess to cartoon super-villain, we will
find that real meanings and definitions are located in the place
between two extremes," and she does keep well to this purpose
throughout the book (xii). The historical breadth of the project
renders it particularly appropriate to the topic of medievalism,
since it gives such a thorough account of both the medieval stories
and how those sources have been reimagined by later periods.
The
preface features a strong authorial voice. Pérez discusses her first
encounter with Morgan la Fey when she was an insecure
thirteen-year-old who discovered Marion Zimmer Bradley's The
Mists of Avalon. She
mentions that, as a medievalist, "the admission that you might
have first developed a love for your subject from a fantasy novel ...
is a guilty secret that many of us share" (xi). By sharing that
secret with us, Pérez creates a personalized tone that is rare in
scholarly monographs. This breakdown between the professional and
personal seems particularly appropriate for a work that concerns the
limiting binaries forced upon Morgan and other female figures. She
explains that her goal is "to make an original contribution to
the academic scholarship surrounding this transformative character
and to bring Morgan la Fey to a wider audience of Arthurian students
and enthusiasts alike" (xiii). She thus frames the book for an
audience both within and outside of academia. Because the sense of
Pérez herself is so strong in the preface, I was surprised that the
"I" didn't continue in the rest of the book. The tone
becomes, from the introduction until the end, much more formal and
distanced, shifting to the third person and plural first person. The
preface creates such a strong sense of who the author is that I
missed that personal voice as I continued reading.
The
book's introduction begins with the end of the story—Camelot has
fallen and "Morgan la Fay is the last one standing" (1).
Whether or not she is described as an enemy to Arthur and the Round
Table, Morgan is still a figure of healing and hope in the end. Pérez
traces this complicated characterization back to the figure of the
Celtic Sovereignty Goddess whose "dual function as kingmaker and
death-dealer" the rest of the book explores (2). The
introduction does a nice job of laying out a complex history of both
Morgan specifically and the sovereignty goddess more generally, and
the deft way with which Pérez moves between a wide range of material
is impressive. The introduction also sets up the psychoanalytical
framework that will be the primary lens of the book. She explains
that "[i]n the same way as pioneering psychoanalysts such as
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung turned to myth to inform their
understanding of interpersonal relationships, we will use
psychoanalysis to understand myth itself" (9). This statement
seems a bit cyclical, and I found myself wanting more explanation
about why this methodology is useful. What can psychoanalysis offer
myth in particular? The first two chapters attempt to answer this
question.
The
first chapter convincingly argues that the split between Morgan la
Fey and the Dame du Lac comes from the inability to reconcile the
different aspects of the Morgan figure (mother and lover, healer and
destroyer). The chapter introduces psychoanalyst Melanie Klein's
concept of the "Oresteian Position," which becomes a
central idea for the remainder of the text. As Pérez explains,
"[a]ttempts by our heroes to contain their Oresteian Mothers
result in either perversion (a defense against her), or psychosis
(the full negative impact of the Oresteian Position)" (16). In
some ways the book becomes more about the masculine anxieties about
women than about Morgan herself, but perhaps that is what makes the
subject so relevant.
The
second chapter introduces Slavoj Žižek's concept of "courtly
masochism," which "attempts to compensate for the reduction
of Woman to phantasy" (35). Pérez argues that Sovereignty
Goddesses and Fairy Mistresses from Celtic and Breton sources
complicate this notion because in these cases "the Woman
literally is
a phantasy figure" (36). This chapter, like the first, is more
focused on setting up the book’s psychoanalytic framework than on
Morgan herself, but it does define the terms with which the book will
discuss Morgan.
With
chapter three the book begins to delve more directly into medieval
materials. This chapter discusses Morgan as a monstrous mother and
connects her to the Mélusine tradition, since Mélusine "remains
the image of monstrous motherhood par
excellence, and
because she and Morgan share common Celtic origins" (55). Pérez
shows us how Mélusine transforms back and forth between two
different forms, while Morgan "is cut into two separate
personages" (59). The examples of these figures in the chapter
show how tensions between the roles of mother and lover result in
literal splitting. Instead of recognizing more complex possibilities
for identity that allow for women to be both mothers and lovers, the
traditions of both Morgan and Mélusine attempt to reassert the
desired split categories.
After the chapter on monstrous
mothers, it makes sense that the fourth chapter concerns divine
mothers, and it explores the Dame du Lac and the Virgin Mary in
relation to Morgan. Since the Dame du Lac is a mother to Lancelot
without having given birth to him, she is allowed to be a mother
without having been compromised by sexuality and childbirth: "she
is whole, like the Virgin Mary" (75). The Dame du Lac is thus
the good mother to Morgan’s bad one. Since Morgan also heals Arthur
and the Dame du Lac also traps Merlin, I am unsure about the simple
dichotomy of Morgan and Dame du Lac as bad and good mother
respectively, but Pérez does acknowledge that depictions of the Dame
du Lac trapping Merlin ultimately complicate her role. I would have
liked to hear even more about the implications of the Dame du Lac
being a bad mother as well as a good one, but Pérez nonetheless
shows that the primary focus on each of these figures tends to
reinforce that splitting between bad and good mother.
The
fifth chapter shifts focus to examine Gawain and the perennial
question of what women want. The chapter begins with Mary's role as
intercessor, which connects back to the chapter on divine mothers and
leads nicely into a discussion of Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight.
The pull between the power of Mary and Morgan in the poem fits nicely
with the category of Oresteian Mother, and the chapter provides a new
understanding of the complex binary between Morgan and the Dame du
Lac as well, since even Mary's role is complicated in Gawain
and the Green Knight.
After all, Gawain's prayer for shelter reveals the very castle where
Morgan resides and plans to test him, and thus "they are both
agents of Gawain's testing" (115). Again I would like more
analysis of the contradictions, though I think that the sheer breadth
of material covered by the chapter (and the book) makes it inevitable
that some moments will leave readers wanting more.
Chapter
six takes on Morgan's role in the next major Arthurian text, Malory's
Morte D'Arthur,
where “Morgan la Fey reaches her zenith as a nefarious figure
determined to destroy Camelot" (137). Yet, as the chapter also
points out, Morgan remains the one to conduct Arthur to Avalon. Since
the mother/lover opposition has been important to Pérez's framework,
there could have been more explicit discussion of the dichotomy
between this healer aspect and Morgan's sexual assertiveness. The
chapter does a wonderful job of connecting both her sexual advances
toward men (and the way in which women give and take swords such as
Excalibur) back to the sovereignty goddesses discussed earlier. The
chapter also makes clear how Morgan and Nymue both function as part
of this tradition. Though they work against each other, they also
serve similar roles in the text. Pérez addresses in detail some of
my questions about the Dame du Lac from chapter four when she
discusses Nymue's imprisonment of Merlin. Nymue may be Morgan's
opponent, and she may work for Arthur more than against him, but she
and Morgan both hold similarly powerful positions in the text.
Chapter
seven, which discusses how the tradition developed in the Victorian
period, explains how Nymue became Vivien. Tennyson depicts Vivien's
entrapment of Merlin as an illustration of the dangerously sexualized
and educated woman. Pérez explains that there was not only a
dichotomy between good and bad women in Victorian society, but also
between the Fallen Woman, “depicted in Victorian society as a
passive victim,” and the femme
fatale, “an active
subject, a perpetrator” (163). The chapter argues that Vivien
“retains her origins as the femme
fatale: the
Sovereignty Goddess in her death guise” (164). The discussion of
Pre-Raphaelite artists, accompanied by helpful black-and-white
images, adds further complexity to the chapter. These artists often
chose working-class women and even prostitutes as models,
subsequently trying to educate and rehabilitate them. This background
gives us examples of male artists directly engaging with real women
as they worked through their troubled responses to the characters and
stories explored throughout the book.
Chapter
eight takes us up to modern culture and notes that "Morgan la
Fey has reappeared during the past two centuries at moments of
cultural change in the definition of Woman, female sexuality, or
motherhood—and their corresponding legal ramifications" (183).
This chapter brings the book full circle to the ways in which
contemporary anxieties shape modern depictions of Morgan, thus
reinforcing how vital the topic remains. The discussion of T.H.
White’s Once and
Future King works
particularly well within the book’s psychoanalytical framework.
Pérez discusses White’s problems with his own mother, Constance
White, whom he freely admitted was one of the inspirations for his
characterizations of Morgause (188). I had been wondering why the
book had not discussed Morgause’s role in the tradition earlier,
but it makes sense to bring her in here with analysis of White. A
mention that she would be discussed in more depth later would have
been useful, but this chapter does a good job looking at her
transformation in the literature from the Vulgate Cycle to Malory to
White. The chapter then gives a tour of modern literature, film,
theater, television, and comic books, concluding that “ambivalent
feelings toward maternal and feminine power (especially over men) are
as pertinent in cultural production today as a thousand years ago”
(206).
When
reading the first chapters of the book I was concerned that
statements about "the subjectivity of all men" seem to
universalize male anxieties and gender roles (55). But what becomes
increasingly clear as the book progresses is not that specific roles
or feelings remain unchanged, but rather that Morgan repeatedly
functions as a touchstone for anxieties about women. The book takes
on such a complex topic and deals with such a wide range of materials
that it’s inevitable that individual readers will crave more in
certain areas. And I would have loved signposting to let readers know
when something mentioned in passing would return for further
discussion later. Overall, though, Pérez brings together Celtic myth
and comic book with ease, showing us the ways in which Morgan herself
is a once and future queen. The wide scope of the book will make it
appealing to scholars of the medieval and medievalist alike. The
level of psychoanalytical theory might make it difficult at first for
the enthusiast, but the richness of Pérez’s study would reward
anyone interested in Arthurian literature, gender studies, or Morgan
la Fey.
Kristi
J. Castleberry
University
of Rochester
