Glamour Girls:
Explorations of Women, Magic and Sexual Power
in Yvain and Le Morte D'Arthur
1,2,3,4
Part the Second: Stones, Scabbards and Sorceresses, or, Battle of the Ladies of the Lake - Contests for Power in Book IV of Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur
In Yvain, we see mortal women resorting to magical means in order to retain their status in the world. In Book IV of Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, however, we find two sorceresses vying for power and love in a series of magical battles and feats of one-upmanship. No longer the sole province of Morgan or her various designs, magic and sorcery infuse the escapades of several ladies in their quests for authority and supremacy in the Arthurian world. The most prominent and significant lady, however, is Nimuë, and it is she who faces down Morgan and her attempts to torment, even kill, her own brother, but not without first fulfilling her own personal requirements for power.
Book IV begins with the disappearance from the world of Merlin, Arthur's friend, teacher and chief adviser. He becomes infatuated with a Damosel of the Lake called Nimuë (who may or may not be somehow related to the Lady who gave Arthur Excalibur, on which more in a moment). Nimuë promises Merlin he may have his will of her, and proceeds to extract information and schooling from him; she "learn[s] of him all manner thing that she desire[s]" - presumably of a sorcerous nature - elicits an oath from Merlin that he will never work magic upon her, and then spends every moment with him, even following him on a visit of state, until such time as she can enchant him and place him in a marvelous site in a rock under a great stone. We do not hear from the Lady of the Lake again until Chapter 9, when she appears out of "love for King Arthur" during his combat with Accolon.
In the ensuing chapters between Nimuë's vanquishing of Merlin and Arthur's fight with Accolon, Morgan Le Fay, again a queen and Arthur's sister and dubbed by Malory "a great clerk of necromancy", contrives a situation in which Arthur must fight for his life. She connives to take Excalibur and its scabbard from Arthur, gives them to her current partner in adultery, Sir Accolon - whom she seduces with equal parts magic and sex appeal - and then dupes both men into fighting one another to the death. The battle goes badly for Arthur until the reappearance of "the Damosel of the Lake", who, knowing "how Morgan Le Fay had so ordained that King Arthur should have been slain that day", causes the fight to go Arthur's way by making the sword jump from Accolon's hand by magic. The reader never knows how the Damosel (whom Malory himself identifies as Nimuë: "came the damosel of the lake into the field, that put Merlin under the stone") obtained this information, or what the outcome of the battle would have been had it just been knight against knight, with no help from sorceresses and no magical swords; in this fight, Arthur and Accolon are instruments in the war between the two women's magics.
Morgan escapes after Accolon's death, and manages to steal into the abbey where Arthur is sleeping and seize the scabbard to Excalibur - which Merlin had claimed was "worth ten of the swords" for its ability to save its owner from loss of blood in battle - and later eludes Arthur by changing herself and her company into stones. After he leaves, she throws the scabbard into the lake (we do not know if this is Nimuë's lake or another one). Soon after she sends a damosel bearing a rich mantle to Arthur as a gesture of reconciliation, but again the Damosel of the Lake appears and advises Arthur of its true nature. The false damosel is made to wear the mantle and is burned to coals (a fitting fate for witches and other false women), as Arthur would have been if not for Nimuë's intervention. By the end of the book, Nimuë has found herself a lover in Sir Pelleas; she marries him, and becomes his protector in all battles except those against Launcelot de Lake.
At this time in Arthurian legend, the king's sister and her magical and sexual proclivities are well known, although the nature of her magic evolves from benevolent to innocuous to malevolent over the years. The role of the Lady, or Damosel, of the Lake, however, has grown considerably, as has her political influence. Is it a title, an office, or is it a designation given to many different women - a lady of the lake being the same idea as a Fay, or a maid or damosel? This is unclear, but we do know, from the events in Books I and II, that the woman who gave Arthur Excalibur was called "the" Lady of the Lake (not "one of the ladies of the lake" as Nimuë will be called), that she comes from a wondrous place, "as fair a place as any on earth, and richly beseen," within a rock which is hidden under a lake (sounding conspicuously like the place in which Nimuë would later confine Merlin), and that she is slain by Balin in a strange power dispute involving revenge, honor and another false damosel with another baneful sword.
From this information, we can determine that that woman is not Nimuë; Nimuë, however, has apparently succeeded the murdered Lady of the Lake as the protector of Excalibur and the ensnared Merlin as advisor to Arthur. The Lady of the Lake (presumably the same one who is murdered in Book II) also acted as Launcelot's foster mother and gave him a fairy ring to protect him against harm; Nimuë continues in that capacity, at least in this portion of the story, by refusing to set her chosen warrior Pelleas against Launcelot in battle, doubtless because of the conflict of interest that would cause her in her new role.
So what does Nimuë expect to gain in engaging in power conflicts with Morgan, and thwarting that woman's malfeasance? One way to view her actions, at least in the course of Books I-IV, is as a series of attempts toward political ascendancy. If we posit that Nimuë has somehow superseded the Lady of the Lake who originally gave Excalibur to Arthur, and to whom Arthur was beholden, we can see her as someone who has direct influence over the throne, and concomitantly over the man upon it. Nimuë rescues Arthur from harm on more than one occasion, stepping in to protect him from the malignant workings of his sister and gaining his confidence. More importantly, due to the slaying of the former Lady, the wondrous place under the lake is empty, and it provides Nimuë with the perfect prison for Merlin once she has learned his secrets. She takes advantage of Merlin's desire for her to cozen him into teaching her his arts and allowing her to observe him in the performance of his office as Arthur's advisor, and then literally seduces him into a position of weakness so that she can take his social and political place, while he takes the physical place of the former Lady of the Lake under the stone. It is the kind of enterprise and manipulation of which Morgan herself could be proud.
The death of the Lady at Balin's hand, combined with the opportunity to be rid of Merlin, vacates a place for an enchanter at Arthur's side - a place Nimuë wastes no time stepping into for the rest of Book IV. This puts her in direct opposition to Morgan, a queen who is always negotiating for more power on her own behalf, and who until this time was trusted by her brother the king. After learning of her treachery through Accolon, Arthur is surprised, for:
"I have loved her and worshipped her more than all my kin, and more have I trusted her than my own wife and all my kin after."
What better opportunity is there for Nimuë to insinuate herself into power within Arthur's court? Just like Morgan, Nimuë sees an opening and seizes it, turning it to her own advantage and arguably having more success in her endeavors than her foe. (Nimuë even finds contentment in love with Pelleas, something that eludes Morgan even more than political supremacy.) Yet it is not a clear-cut case of good versus evil; Nimuë's magic can be viewed as just as much in her own self-interest as Morgan's is in hers. Nimuë has simply sided with the winning faction - perhaps more in one's self-interest than continually fighting against it as Morgan insists upon doing.
Nimuë, like Merlin, is a transient presence in Arthur's life; after this period of struggle with Morgan the two are not seen together (or rather simultaneously) again until the end of Malory's text in Book XXI, if indeed it is Nimuë who extends her hand to accept Excalibur when it is returned to the lake. Morgan, who has plagued Arthur throughout his reign, appears after the final battle with Mordred to retrieve her brother and take him to Avalon, and the Lady of the Lake appears to retrieve her sword. Curiously, of the two it is Morgan, not Nimuë, who expresses compassion for Arthur's fate as he is set into the barge that will bear him to Avalon:
And there received him three queens with great mourning[...]. [...]and in one of their laps King Arthur lay his head. And then that queen said, "Ah, dear brother, why have ye tarried so long from me? Alas, this wound on your head hath caught over-much cold."
Nimuë, if we are to believe it is she who takes the sword from the air through which Bedevere casts it, does not even show her face:
[...] and there came an arm and a hand above the water and met it, and caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished, then vanished away the hand with the sword in the water.
It is possible that Nimuë is a supernatural balance to Morgan's increasing humanity through the texts, for in the end it is a human queen who needs power more than an otherworldly damosel, and a human sister who would come for her brother while a fairy guardian would lift an imperious arm to take back the symbol of kingship bestowed from her domain. She may be an example of how women can turn their magical power for good, i.e., for the ends of men instead of their own unfeminine cravings for political authority. Either way, in Book IV of Malory, it is clearly the sorceresses who dictate the outcome for Arthur and his kingdom - not the knights, not the king, and not a certain male enchanter - and their success is as much due to the use of their sexual charm as their magical prowess.
Next... Conclusion: Sex, Spells, and Politics
1,2,3,4
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