‘That I ded was ayenste my wylle’: Sexual Violence and the Vulnerability of Malory’s Launcelot

If Launcelot is the closest comparison to single people who reject love, it is striking how often his experiences involve coercion and violence, both from negative characters like the four queens and Hallewes and from more neutral or positive characters like Elaine of Corbyn.5 Kristina Hildebrand also notes the frequency with which Launcelot is threatened with sexual violence: see ‘“I love nat to be constreyned to love”: Launcelot and Coerced Sex’, Arthurian Literature,6 37 (2022), 175–92. Hallewes and the four queens are directly associated with violent sexual threats and abuses of power: the queens tell Launcelot that he must love one of them ‘other ellys to dye in this preson’ (p. 194), while Hallewes wishes ‘to have thy body dede. Than wolde I have bawmed hit and sered hit, and so to have kepte hit my lyve dayes’ (p. 216). Hallewes’s necrophilic desire is an addition of Malory’s own, as Adam Bryant Marshall notes: in the Perlesvaus, Malory’s source for this episode, the lady wishes to show Lancelot the tomb she has made for him, but she does not voice sexual desire for his dead body.7 Adam Bryant Marshall, ‘Sir Lancelot at the Chapel Perelus: Malory’s Adaptation of the Perlesvaus’, Arthuriana, 25.3 (2015), 33–48 (p. 42). See Le Haut Livre du Graal: Perlesvaus, ed. by William A. Nitze and T. Atkinson Jenkins, 2 vols (New York: Phaeton, 1932; repr. 1972), i, 344–5; trans. in The High Book of the Grail: A translation of the thirteenth century romance of Perlesvaus, trans. by Nigel Bryant (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1978), pp. 221–2. The threats posed by these women in Malory’s Morte can be read as attempts to coerce Launcelot into a relationship with them and simultaneously as punishments for his refusal to love them. While the four queens ostensibly give Launcelot the choice of loving one of them, they also declare that because ‘we know well there can no lady have thy love but one, and that is Quene Gwenyvere, now thou shalt hir love lose for ever, and she thyne’ (p. 194), positioning the acceptance of their love more as a punishment than a choice. Hallewes’s plot also arises because Launcelot’s love for Guenevere means that ‘I myght nat rejoyse the nother to have thy body on lyve’ (p. 216). Both groups of women therefore acknowledge that Launcelot cannot love them of his free will, recognising his inevitable rejection while at the same time trying to punish him for this. The female jailor in ‘The Knight of the Cart’ also attempts to coerce Launcelot in the same breath as she acknowledges Guenevere, telling him ‘ye may never oute of this preson but if ye have my helpe. And also youre lady Quene Gwenyvere shall be brente in youre defaute onles that ye be there’ (p. 856). Malory makes this figure much more coercive than his sources: at this point in the prose Lancelot and Chrétien de Troyes’s Chevalier de la Charrete,8 P. J. C. Field argues that while it is not possible to be sure which of these sources Malory used, ‘the prose Lancelot is the more likely candidate’: Le Morte Darthur: Apparatus, Commentary, Glossary, and Index of Names, 2 vols (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), ii, 687. See also Ralph Norris, Malory’s Library: The Sources of the ‘Morte Darthur’ (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 119–20, 131. Meleagant’s sister frees Lancelot without asking for anything in return.9 See Lancelot: Roman en prose du XIIIe siècle, ed. by Alexandre Micha, Textes littéraires français, 249, 9 vols (Geneva: Droz, 1978–83), ii (1978), 103–5 (42. 1–6); trans. in Lancelot Parts III and IV, trans. by Samuel N. Rosenberg and Roberta L. Krueger, Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, 10 vols (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), iv, 242–3. Chrétien de Troyes, Les Romans de Chrétien de Troyes: III. Le Chevalier de la Charrete, ed. by Mario Roques, Classiques français du moyen âge, 86 (Paris: Champion, 1983), lines 6374–6706; trans. in Chrétien de Troyes, ‘The Knight of the Cart (Lancelot)’, in Chrétien de Troyes: Arthurian Romances, ed. & trans. by William W. Kibler (London: Penguin, 1991), pp. 207–94 (pp. 285–9). Although Malory seems to be combining this episode with the immediately preceding narrative of the seneschal’s wife who frees Lancelot to attend the tournament at Pomeglai, Lancelot agrees only to grant this lady his love and indeed only ‘ce que je puis fere sans contredit’ [‘what I can without lying’]; in Chrétien’s version, she recognises that Lancelot effectively grants her nothing.10 See Lancelot, ed. by Micha, ii, 95–6 (41. 1–4, quotation at p. 96, 41. 3); trans. by Rosenberg and Krueger, p. 239; Le Chevalier de la Charrete, lines 5439–94 (5485); trans. by Kibler, pp. 274–5. In contrast, the female jailor in Malory specifically propositions Launcelot for sex (as do other ladies elsewhere in the prose Lancelot and Chrétien’s Chevalier de la Charrete), and the leverage she holds because Launcelot wishes to save Guenevere may also exacerbate her coercion of him. She does not position accepting her love as a punishment, however, as the four queens and Hallewes do. As with the stories of accused queens, punishment for rejecting love that would be unfaithful to a prior relationship is associated with the most negative characters in the Morte, in contrast to the more accepted punishment of romantic a(nti)pathy discussed in the first two chapters of this book.

In Malory’s Morte these two variations upon the motif of resisting love occur side by side, albeit within different sections of this romance. The episodes involving Hallewes, the two Elaines, and Ettarde indeed share a common narrative trajectory, as they all end in the death of the female protagonist.11 Catherine La Farge notes the similarity between Elaine of Astolat and Hallewes: La Farge, ‘Launcelot in Compromising Positions: Fabliau in Malory’s “Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake”’, in Blood, Sex, Malory: Essays on the ‘Morte Darthur’, ed. by David Clark and Kate McClune (= Arthurian Literature, 28 (2011)), pp. 181–97 (p. 195). This common feature opens up further possibilities for comparison, indicating some suggestive similarities and differences between the representation of Hallewes and Ettarde in particular. Although Hallewes threatens Launcelot, ultimately she is the one who dies in this episode, as Ettarde does in her narrative, positioning death as a punishment for sexual transgression. As Tison Pugh argues, ‘normative sexuality kills in medieval romance’; death ‘frequently codes characters as heroes and as villains’.12 Tison Pugh, Sexuality and its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 118–19. Although death also has other functions in romance, including, as Batt notes, as a common outcome for victims of rape in the Morte, the deaths of Hallewes and Ettarde do seem to align with the punishment of sexual transgression. See Catherine Batt, ‘Malory and Rape’, Arthuriana, 7.3 (1997), 78–99 (p. 89). However, Hallewes’s and Ettarde’s sexual transgressions are strikingly different: Hallewes’s death acts as a punishment for and refutation of her desire for Launcelot, while Ettarde is punished for refusing to love Pelleas. There are reasons for this difference: Hallewes’s necrophilic murder plot portrays her very differently from Pelleas, and Launcelot’s prior relationship with Guenevere contrasts with Ettarde’s single status. However, these examples still depict one woman being punished for her unrequited desire, while the other is punished for not requiting desire, highlighting the wide spectrum of behaviour that could be seen as sexually transgressive in women. Yet the potential connections between these episodes, as well as with the much more sympathetic portrayal of Elaine of Astolat, also open them up to critical readings that pause to ask why the women are treated similarly, enabling divergent and resistant approaches to the punitive treatment of romantic a(nti)pathy.

Even more strikingly, while the four queens and Hallewes are resoundingly negative figures, coercion is also a prominent issue in Launcelot’s relationship with Elaine of Corbyn, where their sexual encounters are framed to some extent as rape, as Catherine Batt, David Grubbs, and Kristina Hildebrand have noted.13 Batt, ‘Malory and Rape’; David Grubbs, ‘The Knight Coerced: Two Cases of Raped Men in Chivalric Romance’, in Teaching Rape in the Medieval Literature Classroom: Approaches to Difficult Texts, ed. by Alison Gulley (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2018), pp. 164–82; Hildebrand, ‘Launcelot and Coerced Sex’. Although Elaine of Corbyn is a more sympathetic figure in Malory than in his sources,14 Cherewatuk, Marriage, Adultery, and Inheritance, p. 69; Siobhán M. Wyatt, Women of Words in ‘Le Morte Darthur’: The Autonomy of Speech in Malory’s Female Characters (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 117–18, 135. her role necessitates her coercion of Launcelot, so that they can conceive a son while not destroying the spirit of Launcelot’s fidelity to Guenevere.15 See Larrington, ‘Gender/Queer Studies’, in Handbook of Arthurian Romance: King Arthur’s Court in Medieval European Literature, ed. by Leah Tether and Johnny McFadyen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017), pp. 259–72 (p. 260). Malory and his sources do not shy away from the coercive aspects of this encounter but instead explore several different aspects of coercion at work in their relationship, which exceed and problematise medieval definitions of raptus to draw attention to extra-legal forms of coercion that may have impacted men as victim-survivors as well as perpetrators.

Elaine’s coercion of Launcelot is acknowledged through the language Malory uses to describe their encounters. Launcelot insists to Guenevere ‘that I ded was ayenste my wylle’ (p. 631) and subsequently says to Elaine that he lay with her ‘magry myne hede’ (p. 651). These phrases are associated with the rape and violation of women in Middle English romance: Havelok condemns those who ‘dide maydne shame’, ‘bute it were by hire wille’ (my emphasis); the fairy knight who rapes the Princess in Sir Degaré ‘dide his wille, what he wolde’; Heurodis in Sir Orfeo says that the Fairy King abducts her (performing raptus) ‘wold ich, nold ich’; the demon disguised as the Duchess’s husband in Sir Gowther ‘with hur is wyll he wroghtth’, revealing himself as a demon ‘when he had is wylle all don’.16 Havelok, ed. by G. V. Smithers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), lines 83–5; ‘Sir Degaré’, in The Middle English Breton Lays, ed. by Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury, TEAMS (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995), pp. 101–29 (line 112); ‘Sir Orfeo’, in The Middle English Breton Lays, pp. 26–41 (line 154); ‘Sir Gowther’, in The Middle English Breton Lays, pp. 274–95 (lines 72–3). Launcelot’s insistence ‘that I ded was ayenste my wylle’ (p. 631) may imply, then, a link with the violated women who are raped in accordance with men’s wills in other Middle English romances. This phrase is used in the prose Lancelot, the ultimate source behind Malory’s work here, but rather than in a direct exchange with Guinevere, Lancelot tells Bors ‘en nule manniere […] je ne voldroie que ma dame seust ceste chose, car ele ne cuideroit mie que je l’eusse fet outre mon gré’ [‘on no account do I want my lady to know of this […] for she wouldn’t believe I did it against my will’].17 Lancelot, ed. by Micha, vi (1980), 59 (101. 13); Lancelot Parts V and VI, trans. by William W. Kibler and Carleton W. Carroll, Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, 10 vols (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), v, 348. This phrase does not appear in the Tristan en prose, Malory’s immediate source, so far as I have been able to find, but I cannot rule out the possibility that it occurs in some manuscript versions. In contrast, Malory invokes no such disbelief and thus places greater emphasis on Launcelot’s direct perception of what he has experienced as ‘ayenste my wylle’, expressing this simply as his truth.

The phrase ‘magry myne hede’ (p. 651), which so far as I have been able to find does not occur in Malory’s source, the Tristan en prose, or its source, the prose Lancelot, also develops this connection between Launcelot and victim-survivors of rape in medieval romance.18 In the prose Tristan and Lancelot, Lancelot tells Pelles’ daughter that ‘vous m’avés tolu tous les biens et toutes les joies que je soloie avoir el roiaume de Logres’ [you have deprived me of all the goods and all the pleasures that I once enjoyed in the kingdom of Logres], but does not specifically refer to how ‘ye and Dame Brusen made me to lye be you magry myne hede’, as he does in Malory (p. 651). Le Roman de Tristan en prose, ed. by Emmanuèle Baumgartner and Michèle Szkilnik, 9 vols (Geneva: Droz, 1993), vi, 205 (10. 75). My translation. The Lancelot expresses this very similarly to the Tristan: Lancelot, ed. by Micha, vi, 231 (107. 43); trans. by Kibler and Carroll, p. 430. Within the Morte, it is used to refer to raptus in the form of abduction, when Meliot de Logrus says that he heard Nyneve ‘complayne that she was with [Outelake] magré hir hede’ (p. 93). Elsewhere, in The Wife of Bath’s Tale, for instance, it refers specifically to rape, when the knight ‘maugree hir heed […] rafte hire maydenhed’.19 Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’, in The Riverside Chaucer, pp. 116–22 (lines 887–8). Grubbs and Batt also quote the line ‘magry my hede’, but Grubbs emphasises its translation as ‘against my will’ rather than its association with rape, while Batt mentions it in general terms: Grubbs, ‘The Knight Coerced’, p. 173; Batt, ‘Malory and Rape’, p. 92. Malory uses language associated with the rape and raptus of women to construct Launcelot’s encounter with Elaine as comparable to these experiences.20 See further Batt, ‘Malory and Rape’, p. 84. I am not suggesting that Malory intends us to read Launcelot as a rape victim here: as discussed in the Introduction, raptus was considered a gender-specific crime in the Middle Ages (and rape still is to some extent in the modern world). However, the vocabulary Malory uses for Launcelot – to a greater extent than that of his sources – creates a conceptual link between the coercion of men and the violation of women, opening up the definitions of raptus and coercion to include male victim-survivors and female perpetrators and engaging with issues outside the framework of raptus law.

The episodes involving Launcelot and Elaine indeed portray a constellation of issues pertinent to medieval and modern understandings of rape and coercion. They seem to encompass what would now be referred to as deceptive sex or rape by fraud, ‘an action whereby a person obtains sexual consent and has sexual intercourse of any type by fraud, deception, misrepresentation, or impersonation’, as Launcelot is deceived into thinking that Elaine is Guenevere.21 Michael Mullen, ‘Rape by Fraud: Eluding Washington Rape Statutes’, Seattle University Law Review, 41.3 (2018), 1035–52 (p. 1035). I use this article because, unlike other approaches, it does not include transphobic arguments about rape by deception. For a direct argument against these transphobic appropriations of the law see Joseph J. Fischel, Screw Consent: A Better Politics of Sexual Justice (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019), pp. 94–116. This is a plot necessity rather than explicitly an issue of consent, but the focus on deception is clear in Malory and his sources: in the Morte, Launcelot ‘wente that mayden Elayne had bene Quene Gwenyvere’ (p. 623), and asks Elaine in the morning ‘what arte thou’ (p. 624)? During their second non-consensual encounter he is said to have ‘wende that he had had another in hys armys’ (p. 632). Launcelot therefore focuses upon the issue of her identity and his false impression of it, making this central to his anger and sense of violation. The issue of deceptive sex, mistaken identity, and raptus occurs prominently elsewhere in Arthurian literature, including in the conception of Arthur by Uther and Igrayne and, to some extent, in the conception of Mordred by Arthur and Morgause. But deception for sex also features as a prominent device in the fabliaux, a contrasting context that illuminates the much more serious and sobering reflections upon deception facilitated by romance’s focus on love and fidelity.

In addition to deception, the Elaine of Corbyn episode encompasses a concern with intoxication and consent, as Brusen gives Launcelot a cup of wine in his first encounter with Elaine, which makes him ‘asoted and madde’ (p. 623). In Malory, the effects of the wine are causally connected to his mistaken impression that he is in bed with Guenevere: ‘And so he wente that mayden Elayne had bene Quene Gwenyvere’ (p. 623, my italics). The correlation is less direct in his sources, but they indicate that the potion means ‘il porra legierement estre deceüs’ [he could easily be deceived].22 Tristan en prose, ed. by Baumgartner and Szkilnik, vi, 122 (3. 34), my translation. It is described very similarly in the prose Lancelot, ed. Micha, iv, 209 (78. 56); trans. by Kibler and Carroll, p. 103. In all three accounts, the drink makes Launcelot vulnerable to deception and violation, but it does not seem to ‘function as preemptive consent’ in the manner Harris argues alcohol does in The Reeve’s Tale.23 Harris, Obscene Pedagogies, p. 57. Grubbs discusses inebriation in Elaine’s deception of Launcelot: ‘The Knight Coerced’, pp. 170–1. This may support the ‘misogynist double standards governing drinking’ that Harris identifies, insofar as a man is not blamed for consuming alcohol but this is not explicitly used to question perceptions of women drinking.24 Harris, Obscene Pedagogies, p. 56. However, the episode does separate the consumption of an intoxicant from culpability for sexual assault, perhaps enabling women to query any such treatment of their own experiences. All three accounts of this scene make clear that Launcelot is tricked because of the drink, but none of them suggest that he is to blame for consuming it in the first place. Malory focuses entirely on Brusen, who ‘brought Sir Launcelot a kuppe full of wyne’ (p. 623). In the French prose accounts, Launcelot asks for some wine, but they do not attribute culpability to him for this. Another small shift in Malory’s account also portrays inebriation slightly differently: here, we are not told what the drink contains, whether it is a kind of spell that prevents Launcelot from recognising that Elaine is not Guenevere, an aphrodisiac, or a strong cup of wine to make Launcelot drunk, whereas in the prose Tristan and Launcelot it is a ‘puison’ [potion].25 Both refer to it at first as a ‘boire’ [drink], but then as ‘le puison’: Tristan en prose, ed. by Baumgartner and Szkilnik, vi, 121 (3. 33), 121 (3. 34); see also Lancelot, ed. by Micha, iv, 207 (78. 53), 209 (78. 55). The greater ambiguity in Malory may point to (or allow a reader to perceive) the irrelevance of such details in situations of assault. All three accounts, however, offer important testimonies to the complexity and sensitivity with which coercive experiences, including those involving inebriation, could be treated in the Middle Ages.

If Launcelot’s consumption of the wine/potion does not reduce the extent to which he is seen as a victim of assault, neither is he described as granting ‘retroactive consent’ through his treatment of Elaine the following morning.26 On retroactive consent and problematic readings of it in medieval literature, see Schwebel, ‘Retroactive Consent’, 337–45. Retroactive consent was built into medieval English raptus law: in the Second Statute of Westminster (1285), raptus is defined as a crime where a woman ‘ne se est assentue ne avaunt ne apres’ [‘did not consent neither before nor after’] or where she ‘se assente apres […] si il seit ateint a la suite le Rei’ [‘consent[s] after […] if he be convicted at the king’s suit’].27 Dunn, Stolen Women, p. 197. Retroactive consent was thus clearly considered a possibility within medieval English law, but this is not a framework invoked for Launcelot. Initially furious with Elaine, Malory’s Launcelot forgives her when he knows who she is, Malory commenting ‘for she was as fayre a lady, and therto lusty and yonge and wyse, as ony was that tyme lyvynge’ (p. 624).28 Hildebrand argues Launcelot forgives Elaine in part because he considers her less culpable than her father and Brusen: ‘Launcelot and Coerced Sex’, p. 185. Lancelot’s fury is more extensive in the prose Tristan and Lancelot, and Lancelot and Pelles’ daughter part on worse terms here, Lancelot asserting ‘je m’en irai si vaincu et si recreans’ [I leave you as a man vanquished and defeated].29 Tristan en prose, ed. by Baumgartner and Szkilnik, vi, 127 (4. 36), my translation. See also Lancelot, ed. by Micha, iv, 213 (79. 3); trans. by Kibler and Carroll, p. 105. Yet Launcelot’s forgiveness of Elaine, in Malory and his sources, is not seen as retroactive consent, as he continues to assert that what occurred was against his will. Accounts of Launcelot’s experiences with Elaine do not shy away from the complexities of non-consensual sex, again challenging the perception that rape occurs ‘only when there is no ambiguity in the words or actions of the victim’; instead, they acknowledge nuance while insisting on Launcelot’s non-consent.30 Schwebel, ‘Retroactive Consent’, p. 344. The care with which Launcelot’s experiences are recounted may reflect how the medieval privileging of men’s experiences allows Launcelot greater empathy than female victim-survivors – though this in itself is noteworthy, given the lack of empathy with which male victim-survivors are often confronted in the modern world – but Launcelot’s gender is also important in reframing our understanding of who might experience sexual and romantic coercion in medieval romance.31 On this lack of empathy see, for example, Mhishi, Sons and Others, pp. 2, 4–5, 33–8. For a discussion of the problematic gender stereotypes associated with rape in the modern world, see Mithu Sanyal, Rape: From Lucretia to #MeToo (London: Verso, 2019), pp. 4–8.

While Launcelot is coerced by Elaine of Corbyn, his experiences with Elaine of Astolat reflect on and challenge the logic of love as an obligation in representations of romantic a(nti)pathy. Cherewatuk observes that the Morte expresses an ‘incredible sense of waste in Elaine’s death, not only to Sir Barnarde and his sons, but to the larger society: as both Gawain and Bors recognize, Elaine could have served Launcelot as a fine wife’, indicating that Launcelot is encouraged to love Elaine.32 Cherewatuk, Marriage, Adultery, and Inheritance, p. 66. But Launcelot maintains that ‘I love nat to be constrayned to love, for love muste only aryse of the harte selff, and nat by none constraynte’ (p. 830), upholding his fidelity to Guenevere but also challenging the dominant assumption within romance that there is an obligation to return the love of a worthy partner. Launcelot’s defence is unique to Malory: in La Mort la roi Artu and the stanzaic Morte Arthur, Malory’s sources for this section, Launcelot is not present to voice his response to the discovery of the maid’s body and indeed is blamed for his role in her death by Arthur and Gawain, whereas the King and many knights affirm his response in Malory’s account.33 See Mort Artu: An Old French Prose Romance of the XIIIth Century, ed. by J. Douglas Bruce (Halle: Niemeyer, 1910), pp. 75–7. I use this edition because Norris argues that the manuscript on which it is based is ‘occasionally closer to Malory’s manuscript’: Malory’s Library, p. 119 n. 1. See also ‘Stanzaic Morte Arthur’, in King Arthur’s Death: The Middle English ‘Stanzaic Morte Arthur’ and ‘Alliterative Morte Arthure’, ed. by Larry D. Benson (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1986), pp. 1–111 (lines 984–1127). Names are taken from the ‘Stanzaic Morte’. Malory’s Launcelot puts forward a strikingly different perspective, and one that directly contrasts with the earlier episode of Pelleas and Ettarde, where Ettarde is ultimately ‘constrayned to love’ and even this is not sufficient to redeem her from a death that seems to function as punishment for her rejection of Pelleas. I suggested in relation to Ettarde that the issue was her refusal to love a worthy knight, but this scenario seems closely mirrored in that of Elaine and Launcelot, in which Elaine could be a worthy wife. Launcelot’s commitment to Guenevere does differentiate his resistance to Elaine from a rejection of the logic of love as obligatory, but his affirmation that love cannot be constrained operates in tension with romances in which romantic a(nti)pathy is resolved through constraint and coercion. That Launcelot rejects a socially acceptable relationship to uphold his commitment to the Queen may reflect his gendered and personal privileges, as one of the highest-ranking knights in the Arthurian court. But this episode may also enable us to question any gendered division, as the tendency to depoliticise love and treat it as some kind of universal ideal, after all, seems to position Launcelot’s maxim as a truth for everyone: love should only ever arise from the heart itself.