The Mists of Avalon

I read The Mists of Avalon for the first time this week. I’m pretty sure that makes me a bad pagan, that it took me so long to get around to it. My mother owned it when I was in high school – it was on her shelf, I just never picked it up.

It may make me an even worse pagan that I didn’t really like it. Don’t get me wrong, there were things in the plot that I enjoyed. Morgaine’s analysis of the Guinevere/Lancelot relationship was one of the most cynical, biting things I’d ever seen. Lancelot and Arthur being implied totally gay for each other, and simply transposing it through Guinevere because it was the only acceptable way to express it, was also an interesting touch.

But the most sympathetic character, for me, in the whole book was Morgause, and she was evil as shit. Half the female characters spend all their time simply doing what they’re told and obeying some higher authority, be it their husband, lord, priestess, or priest. The other half get their stuff together and organize or pressure authority – and then spend most of their internal, quiet moments bemoaning the fact that they have to live under the stress of being in charge, and envying how much simpler it would be if they could just be like the first half. They daydream about how much more pleasant and enjoyable being under someone else’s thumb would be. If only they didn’t have to make all these pesky choices!

And then there’s Morgause, who makes decisions and lives with the consequences. Spends no time on self-pity. When she makes a mistake, she shrugs and makes the best of it, or fixes it, but spends almost no energy on whining about how circumstances made her make the mistake, and she’s got no way out. I don’t care if she practices black magick, I’d rather hang with her than anyone else. Yeah, I know, she’s basically a sociopath. It’s really f-ed up, that the only confident, grounded female character is psychotic.

Even Arthur, as he makes massive mistakes, owns his own problems. Everyone else, I just sort of want to take a bat to their head.

It’s the most anti-feminist ‘feminist’ book I’ve ever read, and I had some hard-core problems with the one feminist class I took in college. (For many of the same reasons. Defining an entire gender by supposedly shared weaknesses and traumas is just plain weird.)

Well, at least I read it.

Blessed Be,
Pennanti