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Analytical Psychology Approach to the Love-Hate

Relationship between King Arthur and Morgan le Fay

in Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur

Danielle Gurevitch

“For love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave; the flashes thereof are
flashes of fire, a very flame of the Lord.”
(Song of Songs, 8:6)

Introduction

Accompanied by many fair ladies all in black hoods, Morgan le Fay appears
on a little barge on the lake, into which, minutes before, the mortally
wounded King Arthur had returned his sword. While the ladies receive him
with great mourning, Morgan, Arthur’s half-sister, cries: “Ah, dear brother,
why have ye tarried so long from me? Alas, this wound on your head hath
caught over-much cold”.1
The emotional reaction of the enchantress in Thomas Malory’s famous
narrative from c. 1470 is both surprising and problematic. Morgan seems to
express sincere sorrow upon seeing her mortally wounded half-brother, a
behavior that stands in complete opposition to her political determination to
sabotage Arthur’s kingship, as well as to the regicidal and fratricidal
character she is most identified with in the course of this narrative.
The reference to Morgan’s feelings, presumably even love, for Arthur is
unique: Malory is the only medieval author setting the necessary conditions
for the emotional union we find in the above-mentioned episode. Yet,
despite Morgan’s clearly expressed feelings, only few studies have
entertained the possibility of love between the two. Likewise, the love-hate
motif is rarely discussed in studies of Medieval Arthurian fiction. Moreover,
some scholars doubt such a union could ever exist: Lucy Allan Paton, for
example, suggests that the Fay who summoned Arthur to the other world is

1 Malory, Sir Thomas, Le Morte DʹArthur, United States: Penguin Classics, 1969, p. 517.
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not necessarily the fairy who won his love, but rather one of Morgan’s
enchantress, named Annowre.2 Raymond Thompson, on the other hand,
does attempt to examine the complex relationship between Morgan and
Arthur as well as the possibility of love relationship between them.3 Amid
the many modern variations of the story portraying the problematic love
motif, Thompson finds six novels that took “the final step of focusing upon
the love between Morgan le Fay and Arthur”, five of the six written in the
1980s.4 Using different examples, Thompson emphasizes the fact that in
most of the novels he examined, the spiritual union in the end is reinforced
by a physical union between the lovers in their youthful form, thereby
creating an unbreakable bond between them – a bond which culture,
tradition and taboo cannot sever. This “Childhood bond” as Thompson
terms it, causes the lovers to fall in love almost without realizing it.
Thompson’s study attributes the recent popularity of this new trend within
the Arthurian tradition to several reasons: First, sympathy for Arthur who is
betrayed by his wife and best friend; second, the growing interest among
contemporary scholars in the occult and in pagan religions; third, the force
of the medieval image depicting the king’s last journey, “his head resting on
the lap of Morgan le Fay”; and fourth, the fact that most of the modern
Arthurian novel writers are woman who are, according to Thompson,
particularly interested in the love story of Morgan and Arthur.5 Thompson
does not explain what is it exactly that those modern female writers have
intuitively grasped in between the lines of the Arthurian saga.
I believe that the reasons for the recent popularity of this love story are
deeply rooted in the long story told in Malory’s Morte D’Arthur.6 My aim in
the present paper is first, to closely examine the meaning of the emotional
change presented in this final episode, and second, to provide a plausible

2 Paton, Lucy Allan, Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance, New York: Burt
Franklin, 1960, p. 21.
3 Thompson, Raymond H., “The First and Last Love: Morgan le Fay and Arthur,” in: The

Arthurian Revival: Essays on Form, Tradition, and Transformation, ed. Debra N. Mancoff, New
York: Garland, 1992, pp. 230–247.
4 Thompson, “The First and Last Love”, p. 232,

5 Thompson, “The First and Last Love”, p. 241–242.

6 The Arthur and Morgan of the genres under consideration here are based primarily on her

account and actions in Maloryʹs Morte DʹArthur. Scholars regard Maloryʹs narrative as a
“masterpiece”, an acknowledged source, and a most self consciously “authentic” of popular
culture’s Arthuriana. Loomis, R. S., The Development Of Arthurian Romance, New York: The
Norton Library, 1963, p. 92; Skaler, Elizabeth S., “Thoroughly Modern Morgan: Morgan le Fay
Twentieth-Century Popular Arthuriana,” in: Popular Arthurian Traditions, ed. Sally K. Slocum,
Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1992, p. 25.
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explanation for the puzzling ending of Arthur’s long reign in the Malorean
saga, where Morgan le Fay, the King’s most bitter rival, is the one chosen to
be his companion for eternity. My reading provides what to a modern
audience is a psychological explanation of Morgan’s ambiguous words to
her deadly wounded brother. I would like to argue that the emotional
turning point on the barge is but the tip of the iceberg, for a closer reading
could reveal many preliminary signs preparing the reader for the possible
union between these two extremely different characters. In fact, I would like
to argue that in context, the scene creates both a conscious and unconscious
link between love and death in a way that transcends the realm of popular
fiction and enters the sphere of the collective subconscious and the ethics of
the real, pertaining to the field of psychoanalytical study.

The unconscious and the Arthurian romance

When analyzing a fictional, literary text, psychoanalysis is not necessarily

the first means of analysis which comes to mind. Surprisingly, however, the
reverse is more common: in their attempt to clarify theoretical models,
psychoanalysts often employ examples derived from culture and art. Freud,
for instance, suggests that art, particularly its rich, verbal expression in
literature and poetry, contain traces of the author’s life of the soul,
behavioral patterns and repressed personality traits. When analyzing
Jansen’s story Gradiva, Freud emphasizes this claim using an ancient Latin
saying: naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret [‘you may drive out nature
with a pitchfork, but she will always return’].7
Carl Jung, who searched for the universals in texts, describes this
matter using slightly different imagery, claiming that a poet’s work turns
into his destiny and determines his spiritual form. Literature, according to
Jung, is “a living substance, a super personal process, the great dream of
mundus archetypus [‘archetypal world’].”8 In other words, Jung suggests it is
not Goethe who creates Faustus, but Faustus who creates Goethe. Similarly,
Jacques Lacan, too, believes that through art one may learn about

7 Freud, Sigmund, Art and Literature: Jansenʹs Gradiva, Leonardo de Vinch and Other Works, transl.
James Strachey, London: Penguin, 1985, p. 60.
8 Jung C. G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections, transl. Richard and Clara Winston, London: Collins

and Routledge & Kagan Paul, 1963, p. 197.

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psychoanalysis, and claims that art, more than reflecting psychology, gives
rise to it. 9
For a psychoanalyst, the power of a literary work lies in its
communicative potential, which overrides cultural defense mechanisms and
allows for the exposure of repressed psychological layers, conveying them to
both the individual and collective consciousness. Psychoanalysis, known as
“the science of the unconscious” is a type of practical ethics dealing with the
individual’s desires (désir), resulting from a fundamental lack (manqué) in the
person’s neurotic structure. The psychological methods for treating mental
problems refer to the subject as the subject of desire, striving to fill in for
those parts of the patient’s personality repressed or blocked for various
reasons such as education, anxiety, tension, guilt, traumatic experience, lack
of emotional stability and so forth. The underlying assumption of this
analytical system is that a person is born into an existing language,
composed of a series of interlinked signifiers, creating the effect of meaning.
However, they generally do not describe the “Truth”, except in a limited,
often distorted way. The psychoanalyst, therefore, does not accept a person’s
verbal expression of feelings as a clear explanation for a certain behavior, but
perceives such an expression as an encrypted code which needs to be
decoded by uncovering the data and rearranging it. This complex process
results in a surprising discovery of the subjective truth which has been
repressed. In this manner, I find that the complex relationship between
Arthur and Morgan should be viewed as a code to be decrypted.
Three prominent psychoanalysts have dealt with the ambivalence and
complexity of the love-hate relationship: Freud, Lacan and Jung. Freud, the
father of psychoanalysis, defined love-hate relationship in terms of the
representation by the opposites (reversal). He first discussed this
phenomenon in his book The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) stressing that:
“The way in which dreams treat the category of contraries and
contradictories is highly remarkable. It is simply disregarded. ‘No’ seems
not to exist so far as dreams are concerned… Dreams feel themselves at
liberty, moreover, to represent any element by its wishful contrary, so that
there is no way of deciding at first glance whether any element by its
wishful contrary, and no way of deciding at a first glance whether any

9Lacan, Jacques, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Seminar XI, 1964), transl. Alan
Sheridan, London: Penguin, 1977.
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element that admits of a contrary is present in the dream- thoughts as a

positive or as a negative.”10
The Freudian subconscious is manifested through a failure of speech,
memory or action, when a person says one thing and means another – what
is known as a Freudian slip of the tongue. The deep, inner meaning, says
Freud, does exists in speech but only symbolically, and can be understood
only through the mediation of an interpreter. Jacques Lacan, who put these
psychoanalytical principles in Saussurian terms (langue/parole,
signifier/signified, metaphor/metonymy), stresses the semblance (semblant)
in love. Lacan, like Freud, claims that the love-hate dichotomy is not
considered a real contrast in psychoanalysis, because on the subconscious
level, it is only the intensity of the emotions that counts. Appropriately,
Lacan terms one, Lust Ich (the field of lust) and the other, Unlust Ich (the field
of un-lust). From a psychological point of view, it is not important whether
the result is intense love or intense hate.11
Thanks to his analytical experience, Carl Gustav Jung views the love-
hate contrast as part of a typological classification, defining different “types”
in terms of polarity. On one side, we find the introverts – people who
concentrate on themselves and direct their energy inwards, such as loners
and daydreamers. On the other, we find the extroverts who tend to react
towards the outside and value the outer world with the prestige and social
interaction it offers. The Jungian method is more useful than those of his
fellow psychoanalysts for it allows the reader to enter the symbolic sphere of
the language as well as providing the basis for the construction of metaphors
that may shed new light on the latent symbolism in Malory’s narrative.

Opposites strive for balance

According to Jung, there is a feminine element in every man’s consciousness

and conversely, a masculine element in every woman’s consciousness. In his
essay The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious Jung identifies the
feminine element as “anima”. It is associated with women and characterized
especially by sentimentality and emotionality. A man with a strong anima
element will be inclined to over-emotionality. The anima inspires self-
consciousness and contributes to the development of a “private life”, Jung’s

10 Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, transl. James Strachey, New York, Basic Books
inc, 1958, p. 318.
11 Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, p. 191.
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term for “intimacy”.12 The corresponding masculine element is called

“animus”, and is identified with a male character, i.e. with practicality and a
directness of approach. In his essay, Jung suggests that in order to maintain
a mental balance, people have unconsciously adopted characteristics taken
from both the anima and the animus, so that in every “normal” person (men
and women alike) there are both feminine and masculine elements.
Therefore, he claims, a personality in which one of those elements is
repressed might exhibit behavioral disorders in various levels of severity.13
In my view, the contradictory behavioral patterns demonstrated by King
Arthur and Morgan le Fay are actually characteristic, typical behavior
patterns, which may be understood not only as suppressed sexual tension,
but also as part of a symbolic structure of neurotic behavior, caused by
extreme typological malfunctions.
Morgan le Fay is not considered a major character in Middle English
literature, unlike the typical Arthurian characters such as Lancelot, Gawain
and Merlin. It was suggested that Morgan’s character received little
attention due to her ʺdeficiency in literary lineageʺ.14 Her name, points out
Elizabeth Skaler, is seldom mentioned: “she is a woman with a past (in both
senses of the word) but a woman without a history”.15 While in Sir Thomas
Malory’s Morte D’Arthur she appears relatively often, she is still mentioned
only fifteen times in a plot comprising 1,000 pages – including references in
which only her name is mentioned but she is not physically present.
Nevertheless, her character traits and behavior towards Arthur and his men
– especially the fear from her ability to wreak havoc on the patriarchal-social
order – have made her the main enchantress of the narrative, and therefore
play an important thematic role as a whole.
Malory’s tale recounts how, immediately after marrying Igraine, King
Uther Pendragon hurries to find alternative dwellings for Igraine’s
daughters from her previous marriage to the Duke of Cornwall. He manages
to find suitable husbands for the older daughters, but young Morgan is sent
to live in a monastery, where she is surrounded only by women until she
comes of age and marries King Uriens. She is deprived of a Father figure, of
balance, and of male support and protection; a situation that, according to

12 Jung, Carl Gustav, “The Relations Between The Ego and the Unconscious,” in: Two Essays on
Analytical Psychology, transl. R. F. C. Hull, New York: Princeton University Press, 1977, p. 193.
Compare with the architypical Mother figure in Robert Graves’ The white Goddess: A historical
grammar of Poetic myth, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux [1948] 1982, pp. 383-408.
13 Jung, “The Relations Between The Ego and the Unconscious”, pp. 188–211.

14 Skaler, “Thoroughly Modern Morgan”, p. 24.

15 Skaler, “Thoroughly Modern Morgan”, p. 30.

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Jung, might lead to the development of a personality suffering from

“neglected persona”.16 The “persona” is a mask, an artificial personality that
an individual adopts by extroverting certain character traits for the purpose
of creating a certain impression. In order to please society, a person hides his
or her individual nature and takes on a role – a “game” ruled by the
collective soul, creating what Jung see as “a mask of the collective psyche“.17
Jung explains that people who suffer from neglected persona are blind to the
world, and especially: “[...] if they are women, spectral Cassandras, dreaded
for their tactlessness, externally misunderstood, never knowing what they
are about, always taking forgiveness for granted”. 18
Elizabeth Skaler provides a most succinct description of Morgan’s
Malorean prototype, identifying her as the empowered female antitype:
“Malory’s Morgan represents all that is structurally subversive within
Arthurian society as a whole. The quintessential anarchist… enabled
through her possession of supernatural powers to violate ʺnaturalʺ gender-
boundaries and constraints… a thoroughly bad egg, a composite of all the
patriarchal nightmare-woman of literary tradition.”19
Malory’s Morgan sets an example of how collective concessions can be
misused. She has developed an aggressive and impulsive “social image”
based on selfishness and egotism. Although she possesses supernatural
traits, she is far from being divine, as she is able neither to restrain her
destructive impulses nor to suppress her compulsive need for revenge. In
one of her main appearances, Morgan lures her husband King Uriens, her
lover Accolon of Gaul and King Arthur into boarding an enchanted ship lit
with torches. After a magical night, all three awake to find themselves in the
enchantress’ trap: she had magically transferred her husband to his bed,
where she awaits, knife in hand, ready to cut off his head. At the same time,
she sends her lover to fight King Arthur, after making sure the latter
unknowingly uses a fake Excalibur.
The Malorean version, while collecting many of the medieval Round
Table tales and legends, depicts the image of the Arthurian society as a
whole, and is influenced by the feudal-patriarchal order. Thus, it is hardly a
coincidence to find that one of the most bitter rivals to the monarchy, the
chosen structural antagonist violating order, is an ambitious and deceitful
feminine figure.

16 Jung, “The Relations Between The Ego and the Unconscious”, p. 199.
17 Jung, “The Relations Between The Ego and the Unconscious”, p. 157.
18 Jung, “The Relations Between The Ego and the Unconscious”, pp. 198–199.

19 Skaler, “Thoroughly Modern Morgan”, p. 26, 28.

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In the course of the narrative, she is consistently depicted as aggressive

in both appearance and behavior. Driven by uncontrollable urges, Morgan’s
characteristics are an embodiment of society’s structurally imposed
perception of her gender as chaotic and threatening to social order, a
perception that was highly widespread throughout the Middle Ages.
Women were accused of capricious behavior and unwanted action, leading
them to perform astonishing acts that they cannot take responsibility for.
Medieval scholars, such as Thomas Aquinas, believed that since women do
not possess enough reason or by rationalism to balance their animalistic and
bodily urges, their means of defense cannot be explained through reason
either: “woman is naturally subject to man, because in man the discernment
of reason predominates”.20 When Sir Gawain asks Sir Marius why he hates
women so, Marius replies: “For they may be sorceresses and enchantress
many of them, and a knight ever so good of his body and full of prowess as
man may be, they will make him a stark coward to have the better of him.”21
Though unaware of Freud’s notion of the vagina dentata (the vagina as a
teethed, harmful animal), Sir Marius’ conventional view of the woman as a
devilish Medea – as well as most of Malory’s feminine representations – are
the visual embodiments of the patriarchal ideal epitomizing a misogynistic
concept of femininity. Sir Marius is not an exception; Malory even summons
the wise King Solomon and his knowledge for this purpose: the King who
“knew all the virtues of stones and trees…where through he weened that
there had been no good woman”.22
Descriptions of female conduct through a comparison to beasts and
wild animal appear in various medieval writing. Pierre De Beauvais, the
author of Bestiaire, the pseudo-zoological animal guide, describes the
devilish animal characteristics of the wolf and explains that the word loup –
meaning “taking power away” – is the source for louves, a word used to
describe the actions of women who destroy the virtues of men who fall in
love with them by “taking away their power”.23
It should be noticed, though, that the anarchic and obsessive
characteristics of the fairy, presenting a devastating combination of sexuality
and sorcery, do not appear in most of the earlier Arthurian tales. In twelfth-
century French prose romances such as Chrétien de Troyes’ Erec et Enide (vv.

20 Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologica, in: Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton C.
Pegis, New York: Random House, 1944, pp. 880 – 881.
21
Malory, Sir Thomas, Le Morte DʹArthur, vol. I, p. 146.
22
Malory, Sir Thomas, Le Morte DʹArthur, vol. II, p. 338.
23 De Beauvais, Pierre, “Bestiaire,” in: Bestiaires du Moyen Age, ed. Babriel Bianciotto, Paris:

Stock+Moyen Age, 1980, p. 63.

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1904–8, 2357–66, 4193–202) and Le Chevalier au Lion (vv. 2948–51), as well as

the anonymous Le Lai de Tyolet (v. 630) and Renaut de Beaujeu’s Le Bel
Innconnu (v. 4349), Morgan le Fay is mentioned for her healing powers; the
stories give no hint of the malicious side of her character, which materialized
in later versions.
Following Jung’s analytical approach, we may suggest that Malory’s
Morgan takes on the persona (the “mask”) of a woman’s collective conscious
in the eyes of medieval men. Her anima – her inner world – is highly
developed, yet composed of excessive feminine consciousness causing her to
act aggressively and selfishly at the expense of exhibiting social sensitivity.
Her character is depicted as that of an introvert.
Malory’s King Arthur, on the other hand, is the embodiment of the
benevolent king. His very name stands for nobility, decency, justice and
respect for his subjects in general and to his knights in particular. At the
beginning of the narrative, the reader is told that Uther Pendragon fulfilled
his promise to Merlin and let him raise Arthur. Thus, since birth, Arthur
grew up with his adoptive father Sir Hector; his brother Kay and his mentor
Merlin. As a result, Arthur’s childhood, like that of Morgan le Fay, is
deficient. While Morgan lacks a primary father figure, Arthur suffers from
the lack of a primary female/mother figure, a situation that leads to his own
character flaw.
Jung explains that men’s unconscious features an inherent collective
image of a woman, through which men grasp the meaning of women. This
ancient, inherent image is the imago (or the archetype) and is an important
factor in shaping the femininity of the soul. The imago is a portrait of an
image created in infancy and holding a significant emotional burden. Since
the imago is created from the relationship between a child’s individual
personality and the behavioral patterns of the child’s parents, it is only
natural that the mother is the first one to carry the image of the soul.
Subsequently, the anima, in the form of the mother-imago is transferred to the
woman, the wife. Young Arthur grows up without a primary feminine
model (anima-imago), in the absence of which, according to Jung, a man
cannot obtain a balanced inner world.24
As a result, despite having a positive father figure, King Arthur’s
childhood lack of a mother figure causes a personality disorder Jung calls
“brilliant persona”.25 The ʺbrilliant personaʺ stands in complete opposition to

24 Jung, “The Relations Between The Ego and the Unconscious”, p. 197. Compare with Lacanʹs
ʺmirror stageʺ in Foundemental Concepts, p. 279.
25
Jung, “The Relations Between The Ego and the Unconscious”, p. 199.
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the “neglected persona” and is characterized by blindness to the existence of

inner realities (thus classifying the person as extrovert). The political
situation and social constraints have displaced the private self in King
Arthur’s personality, allowing the collective self to take over entirely.26
In the symbolic cultural system, the father figure stands for law and
culture, and its presence in the child’s life prevents the world from falling
apart – unlike the mother, who represents nature and “mother earth”. The
masculine metaphor here is clear – Arthur grew up with only a male role
model to identify with, thus developing high awareness of law and social
order.
According to Malory, Arthur was crowned at a young age, without
having a say in the matter. This reality was imposed on him by an external
authority: Merlin, one of the child’s two prime father figures, destined
Arthur to be king even before he was born. After he was chosen, Arthur’s
consciousness was dominated by the need to live up to the expectations of
his father-figure. Pulling the sword out of the rock, he proves to himself – as
well as to those around him – that kingship is indeed his destiny. In order to
fulfill these expectations, the King develops those sides of his personality
that fit the needs of society: he becomes the “spotless” man of honor and
public benefactor. In effect, these are the same character traits that most
psychoanalytic scholars associated with the male aspect of one’s personality.
And so, because of the importance he assigns to social recognition Arthur
relinquishes his individual self for this social position.
The ideal social standards of feudal society, especially the “proper
behavior” expected of royalty (nobilis), impede individual freedom. In the
strict feudal demand for conformity, the King was expected to relinquish his
personal, private needs for the sake of the collective; this was perceived as a
both social obligation and a virtue.27
Given that feudal society rewards personalities with collective
characteristics, Arthur becomes a beloved and revered King, due to his
demonstration of appropriate cultural leadership skills - which in turn, help
him form and maintain a utopian Kingdom. However, collective needs often
stand in opposition to the needs and interests of the individual, or as Seneca
puts it in Thyestes (vv. 388–389) “Rex est qui metuit nihil/Rex est qui cupiet
nihil” [‘A King fears nothing; a King desires nothing’]. The disregard of

26 Compare with Thompson: ʺafter an all to brief period of happiness together the lovers
[Morgan and Arthur] are seperated, either because of concern over incest, or because of the
conflicting demends of dutyʺ (Thompson, “The First and Last Love”, p. 239).
27 See, for example, Bloch, Marc, Feodal Society, transl. L. A. Manyon, London: Routledge &

Kegan Paul, [1961] 1965, pp. 79–80.

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personal needs is defined in psychoanalytic terminology as repression. It is a

protective mechanism through which emotions, memories, and urges that
cannot be reconciled with the social persona are held outside of
consciousness.
According to Stoic philosophy, a true ruler is not one who controls
external matters, but rather one who controls his spirit and desires and
overcomes his weaknesses. Weaknesses and desires are individual
expressions that are in contradiction to collective ideals. Malory’s King
Arthur – the extroverted prototype – lacks the necessary tools for dealing
with the feminine element, the anima (which Jung identifies as the element in
charge of intimacy, emotionalism and “private life”). Thus, this entire aspect
of his personality is pushed away into his unconscious, resulting in an
extreme imbalance between the male and the female elements of his
personality.
The circumstances in Arthur’s and Morgan’s lives are different, but the
end result is the same. In both cases, the anima and the animus have taken
over the protagonist’s and the antagonist’s personality respectively, and
become autonomous – thereby creating a radical, pathological imbalance
between the male and the female elements. Both Arthur and Morgan possess
a heightened sense of self-esteem resulting from their social-collective
positions, and the “part” they have adopted for themselves that has now
become synonymous with their personality. They are unaware of the fact
that they are suffering from what is known in professional jargon as
“autonomous complex” i.e., a neurotic personality disorder that lies at the very
basis of their soul and requires treatment.28
Jung believes that bringing the unconscious into the realm of
consciousness is the way to overcome neurosis. In order to correct the
situation and achieve a natural and balanced mental state, one must go
through a mental process in which he must bring forth from his unconscious
mind all the issues that have been, for years, suppressed by society,
circumstance and time. By confronting the full extent of personality, Jung
claims, people can achieve “self-realization”.29 It is a painful process that can
be reached in two ways: either through realizing the need for it (for example,
in our times when a person seeks psychological counseling); or – and this is
the more difficult way – when circumstances force a person to deal with his
flaws. In Malory’s romance we clearly see that King Arthur arrives at this

28
Jung, “The Relations Between The Ego and the Unconscious”, p. 227.
29
Jung, “The Relations Between The Ego and the Unconscious”, p. 173.
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process the latter way, when the utopian world he has created for his people
is beginning to show signs of collapse.
King Arthur’s knights inform the King three times that his wife was
unfaithful to him with his best friend. Each time Arthur chooses to ignore
the grave significance of these warnings. The king should have responded
strictly, since the warnings were not only signs for lack of discreetness on
part of the Queen and her lover, but a clear violation of taboo which is very
disruptive to the utopian social order identified with this specific king. In the
first time, Morgan sends Tristan to compete bearing a shield depicting the
story of the Queen’s infidelity. In the second time, King Mark sends Arthur a
letter revealing the Queen’s adultery with Sir Lancelot, and again King
Arthur chooses to ignore the warning. In the third time, when Sir Gawain
and his furious brothers insist on ambushing the two lovers, the King
reluctantly agrees, yet even when the two are caught in the act, the King is
willing to forgive Lancelot and take back his queen unconditionally. The
Malorean text clearly illustrates King Arthur’s unwillingness to deal with
the problems in his personal life.
Catching the Queen and Lancelot in the act exposes the decay of the
Kingdom, and especially the corruption of people who until then have been
the paragon of virtue. Not only is Arthur betrayed by his family and the
people closest to him, but the incident that leads to the unavoidable physical
clash between the King’s men makes him realize, with amazement, that the
hearts of his utopian knights are flooded with feelings of jealousy, enmity,
and revenge. Soon, these feelings develop into the rebellion led by Mordred,
the symbol of corruption and moral decay, and lead, in the course of the
narrative, to the final demise of Arthur’s kingdom symbolized by Camelot’s
collapse.
It is no coincidence that Malory chooses the single episode of Arthur’s
death to serve as the name of the whole story. Following the
psychoanalytical approach, the destruction of the utopian kingdom
facilitates and inspires yet another displacement. The tragic socio-political
developments force both the King and the fairy to deal for the very first time
with that aspect of their personality they have been neglecting: their
individual identity. This brings us back to the final scene described in the
beginning of this essay.
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The sword and sheath: The sign and the signifier

The final episode is described in much detail and in great length. In the last
battle, taking place in Salisbury according to Malory (Camlann according to
other versions), King Arthur is mortally wounded by Mordred. After years
of constant denial, an external event forces the King to confront his problem.
Psychologically speaking, the moment Mordred plunges his sword into
Arthur’s body is when – for the first time – Arthur is overtaken by his larger
consciousness. The process of revelation (the transit from unconsciousness
to consciousness) creates the meeting point between the fictional and the
symbolic. In any effort to grasp what is, in fact, at stake in the text, nothing is
more instructive than a glance at its organization: an apparently simple
scheme, in two parts. First, disavowal of collective responsibility and then
development of individual awareness.
Mortally wounded on the battlefield, Arthur asks Sir Bedivere to take
his enchanted sword and throw it into the water. Bedivere hesitates and tries
to avoid the task three times, as the sword is valuable and is embedded with
precious stones. Twice he goes to the river and returns with the sword, as if
reassuring that the King is willing to begin the painful process. Only on the
third time, when the King insists emphatically, does Bedivere comply with
his wishes throwing the sword into the water. He tells Arthur that a
mysterious hand came up from the water and took the sword. Arthur then
knows that the sword has been returned to its rightful owner, Vivian – the
Lady of the Lake. The repetition clearly symbolizes the passage to a mental
state in which a conscious development of the soul can take place. Arthur’s
resolve and determination reflect his emotional maturity, which enables him
to confront the core of his personality with all the difficulties and suffering
involved.
The discarding of Excalibur is a significant symbolic event, since it frees
the King from everything that burdens him. First, Arthur is freed from the
collective responsibility of a leader, legitimized in the eyes of his people
through the enchanted sword. Second, he is freed from the constant need to
prove himself, assert his masculinity and affirm his worthiness to be King –
The sword carrier. Indeed, in literary symbolism as well as in
psychoanalytical dream interpretation, swords and spears are associated
both with war (manhood and aggression) and sexual act (phallic symbol or
symbolic sexual prowess).30 By utterly relinquishing all the archetypal

Compare with Miranda Green, Celtic Goddesses: Warriors, Virgins and Mothers, London: British
30

Museum Press, 1995, p. 40.

MIRATOR LOKAKUU/OKTOBER/OCTOBER 2005 14

symbols characterizing his rule, Arthur is on the one hand freed from his
male ego and on the other, left exposed, defenseless and persona-less. At this
exact moment Morgan appears on a barge on the other side of the lake.31
Given that returning the sword to its owner might be understood as an
act of disarmament, Morgan’s touching appeal to the injured King Arthur
represents the fairy’s sincere intention and willingness to confront that
aspect of her unconscious she has been suppressing. The enchantress known
to the Logrian inhabitants as a “lady who did never good, but ill”32 now
relinquishes the obsessive desire to overpower the king, as well as her
craving to obtain Excalibur.
Interestingly enough, the single tale entirely revolving around Morgan
in Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, is the scene where she steals and subsequently
disposes of the sheath of Arthur’s sword, thereby causing the king to fight
her lover, Accolon of Gaul, with a fake Excalibur. The struggle over the
sword and sheath takes the reader from the fictional to the symbolic. For the
king, the sword is a sign of power and reign. For Morgan it signifies, first
and foremost, her primary concern for regal succession and aristocratic
inheritance rights. Her most concerted effort, recounted in the tale
mentioned above, is to place her lover, Accolon, on Arthur’s throne so that
she may become queen of Logres. ʺSwords and handsʺ, affirms Tovi Bibring
“are also associated with manly authority since they are used to produce
symbolical gestures during official, religious, and social ceremonies led and
directed by men”.33 In addition, the stolen sheath episode resembles many
other psychological stories that recount sexual tension between men and
women. Citing examples from medieval French lais and fabliaux, Bibring
claims that “any weapon is manipulated by the Hand which in itself registers
as phallic, as a result of its illustrative physics and of the use of the same
verbs such as ‘to take’”. On the other hand, she argues that “the ring…
stands for the vagina”. Therefore, the stolen sheath in our episode is to be
understood as designating the same feminine organ as all various

31 It could be suggested that the Lady of the Lake and Morgan le Fay are one and the same.
Harf-Lancer notices the dynamics between the two as well, and points out that: ʺCes deux
figures irréconciliables mais inséparables incarnent deux représentations de la féminité dans
l’imagianaire médiévaleʺ [Those two irreconcilable - yet inseparable figure embody the two
representations of femininity in the medieval imagination]. Laurence Harf-Lancer, Le Fées au
Moyen Âge – Morgane et Mélusine La naissance des fées Genéve: Slatkine 1984, p. 380
32 Malory, Sir Thomas, Le Morte DʹArthur, vol. I, p. 428.

33 Bibring, Tovi, “Of Swords and Rings: Genitals’ Representation as Defining Sexual Identity

and Sexual Liberation in Some Old French Fabliaux and Lais,” in: Genealogies of Identity:
Interdisciplinary Readings on Sex and Sexuality, ed. Margaret Breen & Fiona Peters. Rodopi:
Amsterdam, 2006 (forthcoming).
MIRATOR LOKAKUU/OKTOBER/OCTOBER 2005 15

metaphorical objects containing holes or entrances (such as well, bottle, ring

and enchanted ring).34
Thus, the episode with Accolon of Gaul may be understood as a
symbolic text dealing with the domination of female sexuality. When
Morgan steals the sheath from Arthur, she does not seek to transfer the
ownership over it to herself, but rather to her lover Accolon. Relying on the
model suggested by Bibring, the fact that the King received the sword and
sheath from the Lady of the Lake, and the history/genealogy of this character
as researchers formulate it, we may assume that the Lady of the Lake is the
embodiments of Morgan herself. King Arthur, discovering that “what was
his” has been “taken away” (in its double meaning), is furious.
The struggle, then, is not only over political reign but also a struggle
over the fairy’s sexuality. When left with no alternative, Morgan throws the
sheath into the water, a gesture signifying the throwing away of her
sexuality. Arthur’s throwing away of the sword – the corresponding phallic
element – when Morgan appears on the barge, is the parallel male gesture.
This assumption is supported by an additional observation by Roger
Sherman Loomis, who claims, based on several manuscripts, that Arthur,
like many other maimed Kings, might have been wounded in the thigh.35

Eternal love – eternal death

Arthur and Morgan complement each other and need each other in order to
rise above their personal character flaws and the deficiencies in their lives.
This brings us back to the Freudian notion of identification. Freud regarded
identification as part of the ambivalent complicity “of the eternal struggle
between Eros and the instinct of destruction or death”.36 Identification, he
explains, is an early expression of an emotional relation to another
individual, and is ambivalent by nature. It may turn into an expression of
liking towards someone, or, at the same time, express the wish to remove

34 Compare with Peggy McCrackenʹs reading on the discovery episode in the fourteenth-century
Prose Lanselot, where Morgan announces with messengers the adoultrous love between
Guenevere and Lancelot by presenting the ring the queen gave her lover. McCracken, Peggy,
The Romance of Adultery: Queenship and sexual Transgression in Old French Literature, Philadelphia:
Penn, 1998, p. 103.
35 Loomis, Roger Sherman, Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance, London: Constable, [1926] 1993,

p. 193.
36 Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and Its Discontents, transl. James Strachy, New York: Norton &

Company, 1961, p. 79.

MIRATOR LOKAKUU/OKTOBER/OCTOBER 2005 16

this person and take their place. The relationship between the two seems to
adhere to the negative pattern seen throughout the tale, when Morgan
wishes to remove Arthur and take his place. But in the final scene that gives
the overall tale its name, the Freudian point of view is replaced by a neo-
platonic one, known to the modern reader as Jungian. Jung’s explanation
allows us to assume that this scene is the climax of a process depicting how
each of these two archetypical persons gradually became whole, or better
put – how they turned into the unique, whole individuals that each one of
them was meant to be. Jung explains, relying on the platonic dialogue
Timaeus:

There exists the primary opposition of male and female, but whereas fourness is a
symbol of wholeness, threenes is not. The latter, according to alchemy denotes
polarity- since one triad always presupposes another just as high presupposes
low, lightness darkness, good evil. In terms of energy, polarity means a potential
and wherever a potential exists there is the possibility of a current, a flow of
events, for the tension of opposites strives for balance.ʺ 37

Awareness of their archetypal roles allows the characters to start adjusting to

them – consciously, this time. The external reality here changes shape
according to the true individual personalities of the king and the fairy and
becomes a depiction of an internal experience. Awareness makes their souls
ready for the internal union between anima and animus.
Confronting and overcoming compulsive fixation brings about not only
a feeling of exultation, but a resemblance to God. Quoting from Goethe’s
Faust: “Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum” (v. 2047), Jung explains that
“resemblance to God” refers to one’s knowledge of both good and evil, of
things that were previously unseen.38
Once free from the external characterization of their previous roles
(personas), both heroes gain Freedom, a divine quality enabling them to feel
love and evoke love in others. Their personalities expand and allow them to
transcend the earthly sphere in which they function as demigods (a utopian,
flesh-and-blood King and a powerful fairy) and reach a higher plane of
existence as divine beings. Despite centuries of Christianization of the text,
Morgan is still referred to as “Morgan the Goddess” exactly as the
fourteenth-century author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight identified her.

37 Jung, Carl Gustav, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 9:II, transl. R. F. C. Hull, London:
Routledge & Kagan Paul, [1959] 1971, pp. 234–235.
38 Jung, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 9:II, pp. 140–141. Compare Goethe, Faust, part I,

New-York: Anchor Books, 1963.

MIRATOR LOKAKUU/OKTOBER/OCTOBER 2005 17

She seems to realize her originally Celtic divine status that was localized in
time.
The paradox of this vision, as we eventually learn, is that love and its
realization do infuse mental being with eternity, yet only on condition that
death is an integral part of being. In fact, death – in Jung’s terms – is an
essential part in the “archetype of wholeness” or the “unified wholeness of
the individual” since it is the element which points to a profound harmony
between all forms of existence.39
True love which is really “as strong as death” is part of the post-
conscious, all-embracing essence of mental wholeness, creating an inevitable
link between life and death. The King’s dying day is ultimately also a day of
joy, since through death he is able to realize the promise of defeating
mortality and ensuring eternity. This is the reason the name of tale focuses
on the scene of Arthur’s death, as the fairy is attracted to the dying King and
derives force and life from him. This climax enhances the paradox: turning
to the dead for reinforcement in life; life leads to death, and death is the
guarantee for the eternity of love. A unique, moving paradox well phrased
by Paul Celan 40:

Du warst mein Tod:

Dich konnte ich halten,
Wahrend mir alles entfiel.

[‘You were my death:

You I could hold
While everything slipped from me.’]

Danielle Gurevitch, Ph.D

Comparative Literature Department, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
danielle @ netvision.net.il

39
Jung, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 9:II, pp. 111, 195, 261, 388.
40Celan, Paul, Selected Poems and Prose, transl. John Felstiner, New York-London: W. W. Norton
2001, pp. 296–297.