| The Lady of the Lake and other figures such as Morgan le Fay perform a crucial role in the training of the knight in medieval Arthurian literature. By adding her feminine understanding of the theoretical manifestations of chivalry to the martial training received from men, the Lady teaches Lancelot to excel above all other knights. To be such a mentor, only a surrogate mother has the perspective to properly guide a young man not only throughout childhood, but also through his adulthood. The Lady of the Lake and her literary sisters teach the young knights how to lead others and how to properly treat members of all levels of society. Lancelot's son Galahad also receives such training even in the more firmly Christian context of the Grail stories, from his mother, from the nuns who raise him, and from the virginal young maiden who accompanies him on his ultimate Grail adventure. Even Arthur receives Excalibur, his token of sovereignty, from the Lady of the Lake. Without this female influence, such knights would disappear into obscurity, because they would not be able to achieve the acclaim central to these stories. In the romances, these ladies sometimes teach their charges to achieve spiritual or supernatural goals and change the lives of entire kingdoms. Authors of the early Middle Ages created this image of female power from mythological material, especially Celtic, and the actual lives of high born ladies of the time. Although the roles of the real women changed by the later Middle Ages, the work of such authors as Geoffrey of Monmouth in Latin, and Chretien de Troyes and the writer of the prose Lancelot in French, transmitted the idea of a powerful female teacher to later writers. Continuing this motif in English in the fifteenth-century, Thomas Malory further embedded this image in the minds of readers of medieval romance, an image which still influences the Arthurian literature of today. |
