THAIS E. MORGANbecause Arnold represents women as temptresses who destroy men? The
answer is both. Told by that "Sweet flower" (III. 325) of domestic
femininity, Iseult of Brittany, the tale of Merlin's downfall at the hands of a
seductress resonates with that of Tristram and Iseult of Ireland, becoming a
moral exemplum of "How this fool passion gulls men potently" (III. 134).
At the same time, Tristram represents a new kind of male heroism: he dies
not for king and country but for love and longing.
In the first group of Idylls of the King (1859), Tennyson focuses on four
female figures - "Enid," "Elaine," "Vivien," and "Guinevere" - by way of
problematizing the representation of heroic masculinity in relation to the
feminine. In "Enid" (divided into two parts in 1873, then retitled "The
Marriage of Geraint" and "Geraint and Enid" in 1886), Geraint embodies
a physical ideal of manhood: we admire his splendid body through Enid's
eyes: "The massive square of his heroic breast, / And arms on which the
standing muscle sloped" ("The Marriage of Geraint," AT 75-76). Never-
theless, his "mere uxoriousness" (60) puts into question his masculinity,
leading him to take Enid on a brutal test-quest in order to prove that he has
not descended into "mere effeminacy" through domestic bliss (107). Heroic
masculinity is also destabilized in "Elaine" (renamed "Lancelot and Elaine"
in 1870). Sir Lancelot is nearly unmanned by "melancholy" (323) and
displays a deheroicized male body when ill: "His battle-writhen arms and
mighty hands" (807) seem as useless as his legendary "name / Of greatest
knight" because he has failed to live up to the moral ideal of manhood
(1402-03). Compare this problematic representation of masculinity with
Tennyson's earlier idealizing treatment of Lancelot in "The Lady of
Shalott" (1832).
In "Vivien" (retitled "Vivien and Merlin" in 1870), an emasculating
combination of desire and melancholy overcomes the "gentle wizard"
Merlin (AT906). "[O]vertalk'd and overworn," he "Yield[s]" (963-64) his
secret knowledge, hence his power, to the wily enchantress, Vivien. Expres-
sing a traditional misogyny ("Too much I trusted when I told you that, /
And stirr'd this vice in you which ruined man / Thro' woman the first hour"
[359-61]), Merlin nonetheless gives in to a fascination with Vivien's
"lissome limbs" (221) and the "ease of heart" (891) which her blandish-
ments lend to his patriarchal notions. A central topic of their debate is
masculinity in general and King Arthur's in particular. Vivien questions the
very basis of the Round Table's manhood: the "utter purity" (26) cham-
pioned by Arthur, "blameless king and stainless man" (777), has put him in
the effeminized position of a cuckold: "Man! is he man at all, who knows
and winks?" (779). Through Vivien, Tennyson casts doubt on the efficacy
of male courtliness: perhaps if men were more manly in asserting their