Chapter Four - Omitted and Minor Characters

Summary

There exists in TOAFK a number of minor female characters as well as a number of characters present in Malory omitted by White worthy of note, the majority of whom appear (or do not) in Sword, the book of Arthur's childhood. Since, however, the women other than Elaine who appear in later books of TOAFK must be considered major figures worthy of chapters in their own rights, I shall include my discussion of Elaine with those women who haunt the pages of Sword. This early book contains four minor characters that are women: the governess of the Castle Sauvage, who is introduced and then dropped from sight on the first page of Sword; the Old Nurse who is, like the Sergeant-at-Arms, a broadly humorous figure; Maid Marian, Robin Wood's wood-sprite wife and playmate; and Morgan Le Fay, the loathly chatelaine of the Castle Chariot. Providing a softer and more traditionally feminine note than any of these four women is Lyo-lyok, the Wart's gentle guide when Merlyn changes him into a grey goose.

Before discussing White's minor female characters in TOAFK, and their individual and aggregate contribution to the establishment of an atmosphere in the work, one might do well to examine three leads which Malory had given White in the small amount of material that he wrote covering the same period of Arthur's life as Sword, but which White for reasons of his own chose to ignore more or less completely. White could have used these leads to develop Malory's characters on his own much as he elaborated Sir Grummore Grummorsum, King Pellinore, and Sir Palomides, all triumphs of ornamentation; but he did not do so. The three women whom Malory uses in the story of the birth and upbringing of Arthur are Queen Igraine, Arthur's mother; Sir Ector's wife; and the hostess at the inn in London.

A. WOMEN IN MALORY WHOM WHITE OMITS

QUEEN IGRAINE

Malory, in his Book of Merlin in The Tale of King Arthur, White's major source for Sword, devotes little space to Arthur's childhood and upbringing at Sir Ector's. Indeed, from the time when Arthur is received by Merlin at the ‘pryvye posterne’ until he accompanies the newly knighted Kay as his squire to the tournament in London, the reader knows nothing of him from Malory except that he was christened at Sir Ector's and was given to Sir Ector's wife to nurse.