5 - The Female Gaze: Constructing Masculinity with and without Men

Summary

Thus far I have focused most attention on the way Malory's men maneuver within the romance matrix of gazes, the way they see and perceive, and the way they produce their masculinity by reversing the lines of sight, locating themselves within others’ viewing space and intentionally attracting the audience members’ eyes. Women have played an integral, if secondary role, in that discussion. They have thus far been shown to participate as (often objectified) images that initially disrupt masculine performance, but ultimately incite it. Moreover, their engagement in the construction of masculinity as onlookers, as members of that evaluating audience, has been shown to be crucial through both their presence and their absence. Lyones, Isode, and Gwenyver, for example, have motivate Gareth’s, Trystram’s, and Launcelot's displays of male gender identity and have been implicated in their respective knights’ cyclical quests for mutual visibility with the beloved lady. However, females in the Morte Darthur function on the visual plane in their own right as well, and in a manner that greatly affects gender construction. An examination of females’ use of their vision independent of specific masculine performance and visibility reveals a significant role in delineating both the feminine and the masculine. Indeed, a thorough understanding of vision and gender in the Morte is not possible without an investigation of key moments in which women look and ask to be looked upon. Throughout the text, women occupy the same technical positions of gazers and images that the males do, but with different results. Women's roles within the matrix of gazes prove effective measurements of femininity, as several ideals for female gender emerge, and contrapuntal definers of masculinity. Indeed the ways in which women see and are seen seems to comment upon and ultimately solidify the visual models of gender construction as they apply to females and especially to males, where the rules of gender production are far more rigid.

Just as the men do, Malory's women fall victim to intromissive vision. The two Elaynes – Elayne of Corbyn, the daughter of King Pelles and mother of Galahad, and Elayne le Blanke, known as the Fayre Maydyn off Ascolot – for example, experience a version of the collapsed gaze that so routinely undercuts masculinity.