Glamour Girls:
Explorations of Women, Magic and Sexual Power
in Yvain and Le Morte D'Arthur
1,2,3,4
Conclusion
Although popular folklore would have it that the word glamour is derived from Glamorgan, a place name with loose connections to Morgan Le Fay, examination of the dictionary will show it as deriving from the Scots glamour, itself a spelling of the English gramayre, both of which owing their origins to the Greek Gramma - letter or letters - from the popular association of learnedness with occult practices. In modern parlance, it is defined as either "a magic spell" or "a romantic, exciting and often illusory attractiveness; esp.: alluring or fascinating personal attraction." In all uses, the word is almost exclusively associated with females, with female sexuality and with women's witchcraft.
The sexual and magical arts have long been associated with women and with each other, and the women in these two Arthurian texts are well aware of the powerful spell the combination can cast, and of the intense and heady results their users can reap on the physical, supernatural and political level. In a world where a woman's store of weapons is limited, and her survival is contingent on the erotic hold she has over a man, such a lesson might well be more than valuable - it might be the difference between wealth and poverty, shame and stature, power and subjection, or even life and death.
RESOURCES
De Troyes, Chrétien, translated and edited by D.D.R. Owen. Arthurian Romances. Everyman Classics, London, 1987, 1991.
Malory, Sir Thomas, with an introduction by John Lawlor and edited by Janet Cowen. Le Morte D'Arthur, Books I and II. Penguin Books, London, 1969, 1986.
Mills, Jane. Womanwords: A Dictionary of Words About Women. Henry Holt & Company, New York, 1989, 1993.
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