Mists Of Avalon Sparknotes

Introduction

First introduced by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Vita Merlini (c.1150), Morgan le Fay occupies an ambivalent position within the Arthurian legend, where she contradictorily acts both as Arthur’s nemesis and caretaker. Yet, she largely disappears from the interim texts until she is “rediscovered” in the late twentieth century, where she becomes “the Morgan of fantasy fiction”. This rediscovery of Morgan le Fay is in accordance with a general trend in contemporary fiction to re-establish women at the centre of Arthuriana. One of the most successful and influential of these retellings is Marion Zimmer Bradley’s fantasy novel The Mists of Avalon (1982), which according to Fries gives “voice to those females who have so long remained mute in Arthurian legend”. Written during the height of Second Wave Feminism, The Mists of Avalon intends to ‘reshape’ and ‘restore’ Morgan back to her rightful place in the Arthurian legend. At the same time it endeavours to create an iconic feminine figure, which Morgan has never been. This leads me to wonder:
Is she really constructed as a subversive figure marking the re-appropriation of Arthurian legend by women?
In this essay, I will first study how Bradley uses the freedom provided by the fantasy genre to reinterpret Morgan le Fey in Arthuriana (I); though I will argue in a second part that this feminist retelling remains very much constrained by androcentric stereotypes