MULTIPLICITY AND GENDERING THE HOLY

GRAIL IN THE DA VINCI CODE AND

THE MISTS OF AVALON

A Thesis
Presented to the
Faculty of
California State University,
San Bernardino

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

in

English Composition

by

Victoria Anne Villasenor-Oldham

September 2007

MULTIPLICITY AND GENDERING THE HOLY

GRAIL IN THE DA VINCI CODE AND

THE MISTS OF AVALON

A Thesis
Presented to the
Faculty of
California State University,
San Bernardino

by

Victoria Anne Villasenor-Oldham

September 2007

Approved by:

_________________________________        07/2007_

Julie Paegle, Chair, English               Date

Kim Costino

Ron Chen  

© 2007 Victoria Anne Villasenor-Oldham

ABSTRACT

Both The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (1983) and The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (2003) famously attempt to reinvent gender roles. While the texts’ popular appeal may support the success of the attempts, some compelling criticism has also shown the ways in which these novels re-inscribe the very gender roles they attempt to reinvent. However, even this criticism has not focused on one particularly problematic, and uniquely gendered, trope shared by both novels: the holy grail. This thesis will explore how both texts write femininity onto the holy grail in seemingly problematic ways, and the ways in which women’s voices, through the feminization of the grail, are often silenced. Three postmodern theorists, Deleuze, Guattari, and Irigaray, contribute theoretical lenses that illuminate the complicated relationship between the grail, silence, the maternal, and indeed, the grail of gender. That is, reading these theorists alongside these novels illuminates gender not as (to use Delueze and Guattari’s terminology) a “root,” but rather, a “rhizome.” The rhizome suggests that gender within these texts cannot be placed into a dichotomous binary (male/female), but rather occupies several categories at once, a “multiplicity.”  This less rigid conception allows the rhizome of gender representations to explode in new directions, providing larger possibilities for change. Further, as both novels seek to rewrite, reinterpret and revalue the gender roles of mythological women, (Morgan le Fey and Mary Magdalene) an intertextual analysis allows a deeper understanding of the implications of gender roles within two popular texts in the contemporary literary cannon.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my chair, Julie Paegle, for all of her time, patience, and brilliant insight, and for her amazing ability to get out of me the words and ideas I could not articulate myself. I would also like to thank my second reader, Kim Costino, for her patience, phenomenal sense of humor and writing advice. Thank you both for your encouragement and for sharing your genius. I am humbled to have learned from you.

To Sam

You are my muse.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    v

CHAPTER ONE: ORIGINS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    1

CHAPTER TWO: FADING INTO THE MISTS. . . . . . . . .    28

 The Silence of the Feminine Holy Grail . . . .     30

     The Silent and Eternal Grail of the

 Maternal and the Rhizome. . . . . . . . . . . .     45

 The Living Grail of Gender. . . . . . . . . . .     52

 Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     63

CHAPTER THREE: CODES WRAPPED IN SILENCE. . . . . . .   66

• A Web of Literary Shoots. . . . . . . . . . . .    68
• The Grail of Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    81
• The Matrilineal Nature of Multiplicity and
• the Rhizome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    91

 Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     96

CHAPTER FOUR: IN THE END IS THE BEGINNING. . . . . . . 98

REFERENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

CHAPTER ONE

ORIGINS

• And only the limiting effect of time can make us stop speaking to each other.
• --Irigaray, This Sex 217

This thesis will explore how both texts write femininity onto the Holy grail in problematic ways, and I will argue that while these texts attempt revisionist gender roles, instead, through the use of the themes of silence and matrilineage, they end up reinscribing “normative” gender roles, problematizing the actual revisionist ideals intended by the authors, while at the same time allowing the complex “voice” of matrilineage and a feminine grail to survive through the theme of silence.  Two postmodern theories, the rhizome theory of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and Luce Irigaray’s feminist concepts of multiplicity and silence, contribute lenses that illuminate the complicated relationship between the grail and gender and indeed, the grail of gender. That is, reading these theorists alongside these novels illuminates gender not as (to use Delueze and Guattari’s famous terminology) a “root,” but rather a “rhizome.” The rhizome suggests that gender within these texts cannot be placed into a dichotomous binary (male/female), but rather occupies several categories at once.  This less rigid conception allows the rhizome of gender representations to explode in new directions, providing larger possibilities for change. Likewise, Irigaray posits the idea that binaries of gender create misunderstanding and chaos, while the understanding of a multiplicity, of both genders relating through language and neither submitting to the other, could propagate healthier relationships among humans, regardless of gender. Therefore, theories of the rhizome and gender multiplicity work in conjunction to explain new possibilities within complex gender functions. and, as both The Mists and The Code seek to rewrite, reinterpret and revalue the gender roles of mythological women, (primarily Mary Magdalene and Morgan Le Fey), an intertextual analysis of gender representation using these theories enables a deeper understanding of the production and consumption of gender roles within two phenomenally popular texts in the contemporary literary canon.

 Brief summaries of the texts as well as the scholarship dedicated to them reveal their shared revisionist goals and facilitate the development of the vocabulary of silence and matrilineage useful for my analysis. I will start with the older novel, The Mists of Avalon (hereafter Mists) as it was one of the first texts to use a reinterpretation of gender roles to develop new possibilities of women’s voice within the Arthurian myth.

The Mists is a revisionist story of the legend of Avalon and Camelot, told from the female characters’ perspectives. The premise is that Avalon is beginning to recede from the world due to a lack of believers/followers of the matriarchal, goddess-worshiping faith they follow on the island. In order to prevent this from happening, the Lady of Avalon, Viviane, bestows on King Arthur the Sword of the Holy Regalia, in return for his vows to rule beside, not over, those people of Avalon. Surrounding the overlying issue of Arthurian rule is that of a newly emerging patriarchal religion, a matrilineal religion in decline, and the silencing of women that forms from the division. In ways that will become clear, these themes of matrilineage and silence ultimately “gender the grail.”

Bradley tells the story of Morgaine, (or Morgan Le Faye in Mallory’s version), and how she came to be the Priestess of Avalon who eventually feels it necessary to wrest control of the British kingdom from her half-brother, Arthur. Bradley’s Arthur has turned his back on the vows he made to the “ancient Isle of Avalon” upon being made king. Entwined in this narrative are the stories of Morgaine’s grandmother, (Viviane) mother, (Igraine) and aunt (Morgause). Viviane is the Lady of the Lake, the high priestess of Avalon who attempts to prevent the island from disappearing from the world. Igraine and Morgause, sisters, find that their primary tie to Avalon over the years becomes Morgaine, who leaves the island after being manipulated by Viviane into sleeping with her half brother. The women are constantly attempting to connect with one another through stilted communication, but are increasingly unheard in an increasingly patriarchal realm. Issues of matrilineage are vital in this text, as the movement from a matriarchal, goddess worshipping culture transitions to a patriarchal, Christian culture. This forces the characters to reevaluate their positions in the world and in relation to one another and often works to divide them.

The issues of divisive or celebratory silence among the women of Bradley’s text are intricately intertwined with those complexities of the holy regalia and the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy. So much work has been done regarding the holy grail over time, however, that I will not augment it, except as it focuses on Bradley’s version of the holy grail. Intriguingly, little work has been done in relation to the many ways in which this text genders the grail, not only because Morgaine holds the chalice to the lips of the people in Arthur’s court, as an embodiment of the Goddess, but also because the grail itself arises from matriarchal Avalon. Thus, the grail constitutes a feminist revision of the traditional Christ’s cup legend as it is conceived in Mallory’s Le Morte de Arthur which is considered the “original” story of Arthur and Avalon. Although Bradley’s reinterpretation of the grail does get mentioned periodically as a side note in a few essays, it has not been a primary topic of investigation. Brief literature reviews will follow the plot summaries of previous work, and help provide a context for the analysis developed in subsequent chapters of this work.   

One such article, written by feminist scholar Van Dyke, is “Revisioning Celtic Traditions: Starhawk, Priestess of the Goddess, and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon,” which, while examining primarily the underlying lesbian aspects of the novel, does glance at Bradley’s grail revision, explaining,

• In early Celtic myth, the Cauldron of the goddess restored slain warriors to life. It was stolen away to the underworld, and the heroes who warred for its return were the original of King Arthur and his knights, who quested for its later incarnation, the Holy grail. (80)

Other essays and articles examine the neo-pagan aspects of the text, as they posit that Bradley’s book brought about goddess worshiping into modern cultural practices. Women’s studies professor and author Cynthia Eller of the book The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory—Why an Invented Past Wont Give Women a Future claims that books like Bradley’s create false hope, and there is little, if any, scientific evidence suggesting any kind of matrilineal pre-history. She asserts,

• This theory about prehistory relies very heavily on tired, stereotypical understandings of woman’s nature, ones that I don’t think have served women well in the past. It’s a very reductive notion of femaleness. (Reiss interview, 1)

Two other articles explore the various permutations which Morgaine/Morgan Le Fey has gone through in time, and how those permutations speak to us as a culture. “Goddess Dethroned: The Evolution of Morgan Le Fay,” by Dax Carver, traces the personas of the “witch” through various Arthurian versions. In “Goddess Dethroned,” Carver states,  

• By unraveling Morgan’s transformation and the reasons for such change, it is revealed that medieval demonizing of old pagan deities was not limited to male deities. Instead, the most ancient deity of all, the Great Mother Goddess slowly became one of the most infamous characters in literature, Morgan le Fay.” (1)

• [. . .] we have granted that Morgan le Fay is the Grail Bearer. We have given her yet another role in the Arthurian cycle. She becomes the ideal goal of life. Indeed, what is a more appropriate role for the Great Mother?” (4)

What, indeed, is a better purpose than that of woman as quest; Woman as pursued, as lost, as needing to be saved? Indeed, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (hereafter Code) exemplifies woman as quest. In Brown’s novel, we meet symbologist Robert Langdon, who, upon being summoned to the gruesome death of the curator of the Louvre, meets Sophie Neveu, an intelligent cryptologist working with the French equivalent of the FBI, and also, as she soon reveals, the granddaughter of the dead curator. Together, they follow the clues left by Sophie’s murdered grandfather in order to solve the mystery of his death. Soon, they are fleeing an albino monk, with Langdon providing Sophie with the vast amount of material she needs to know about the “history” of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, as does the eccentric old historian, Leigh Teabing. Through various trials and tribulations, the reader comes to find out that the holy grail is not the “chalice” of grail legends, but rather a woman, Sophie herself, as one of two last living descendants of Mary Magdalene and Jesus.

The Code develops, much as does The Mists, the ideas of matrilineage, silence, and the gendering of the grail. The holy grail in this text is explained as the female descendant of Mary Magdalene rather than as the traditional cup of Christ. In this way, the novel traces the female, matrilineal line of the descendants of Jesus, tracing a hidden matriarchal line within a ruling patriarchal regime. The grail and its matrilineal nature are therefore inextricably intertwined in this text, and so the silence which forms around these two issues is crucial to understanding how gendering the grail, that is, focusing on its matrilineal nature – causes the primary female character, Sophie, into a submissive role. 

While there is a vast amount of controversy surrounding this text, little academic work has been done on The Code. Numerous websites focus on the “debunking” of the re-visioning of Jesus’ genealogy, as well as the concept of the grail as a human female which contributes in turn to the idea of a surviving matrilineal line. Web sites ranging from www.Opusdei.com to www.vatican.va allow web-surfers to find information on the “disturbing” allegations made by the fictional text (OpusDei.com). 

Articles such as “Breaking the Da Vinci Code” by Collin Hansen and “Dismantling the Da Vinci Code” by Sandra Miesel both investigate Brown’s reinterpretation of accepted biblical dogma and refute it by using other biblical concepts. Miesel states, “[. . .] his book is more than just the story of a quest for the Grail — he wholly reinterprets the Grail legend” (Crisis Magazine 2) and Hansen argues, “The Da Vinci Code proves that some misguided theories never entirely fade away. They just reappear periodically in a different disguise” (Christianity Today 2).

One recent academic argument, however, does examine The Code’s version of feminism. In her article “The Da Vinci Code as Myth” Diane Morris argues that, “The Da Vinci Code is a re-mythologizing of Christianity” (Stimulus 2). Her article postulates that the popularity of The Code arises from its use of myth, which resonates for the common person because of “the cry of mythical emotion.” She claims, “matriarchal prehistory and its violent overthrow have provided feminism with a myth of origins” (2), and it is these origins The Code itself makes possible (as does The Mists). But, as she also argues,

• It is fairly clear what the reduction of Mary Magdalene to a receptacle for the sacred sperm means for women in general. From my reading of The Code, the role of women in this brave new world of feminized religion doesn’t seem to have moved on from barefoot, pregnant, and horizontal.” (2)

Gender constructions in both novels are most clearly delimited in their feminizing of the holy grail. Silence and matrilineage, instead of being solely paragons of revisionist gender roles, become problematic in their ultimate reinscriptions of normative gender roles by silencing, through the matrilineage used by them, the women who are declared as voiceless. Avalon fades into The Mists, along with the women who acted as the voice of the matriarchal goddess. Sophie chooses silence behind convent walls with her grandmother, (much as the nuns do in The Mists), once again silencing women through the theme of the disappearance of the matriarchy. Therefore, the silence surrounding the feminizing of the holy grail, of the feminine as quest, becomes problematic, as it becomes clear that these enormously popular novels attempts at revising normative gender roles ultimately fail to fully actualize the women’s voices. In this way, they ultimately reinforce the very gender roles they seek to reinvent. Yet, while both texts fail at their ostensible revisionist goals, they succeed in more interesting and more fundamental ways. Understanding, indeed, even identifying, these complicated and qualified successes requires critical vocabularies—“multiplicity” and “the rhizome”—introduced by theorists Luce Irigaray, Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. 

Utilizing these terms can illuminate the work done in Bradley’s The Mists. Theorists Irigaray, Deleuze and Guattari have developed theories involving the breaking down of binaries, as well as how women’s voices are constructed through the ideas of multiplicities, which can be applied to an analysis of The Mists and The Code. I will begin by providing a background of Luce Irigaray’s theories of women and voice, as well as her conceptions of multiplicities.

French feminist theorist Luce Irigaray was a former student of Jacques Lacan, and much of her work responds to his statements “of woman,” as Lacan’s statements respond to those made by Freud regarding the development “of woman.” Both Freud and Lacan postulate various theories of “woman” in which woman is articulated as a lesser, penis envying, illogical and more emotional being than her male counterpart. Lacan himself states, “Women don’t know what they are saying, that’s the whole difference between them and me” (qtd. in Irigaray, This Sex 86). Lacan’s notion of the phallus is usually accorded to those in power, which in Western culture tends to be the men, and which Irigaray calls “phallocentrism.” While Freud found women lacking because of the lack of a penis, Lacan found them lacking because they often lacked the phallus, or the one with power.

 According to Irigaray, however, women are born not as one, but as more than one, a multiplicity of becomings with no end in sight. She asserts, “We haven’t been taught, nor allowed, to express multiplicity” (This Sex 210). And so, because women “haven’t been taught” they must find their voices, embrace the silence and lack which have been ascribed to women, and develop their own “language” and words to express their multiplicitous lives; “We must learn to speak to each other so that we can embrace from afar” (215). This is a direct response to Lacan’s statement,

• A man seeks a woman [. . .] owing to something that is located only in discourse, since, if what I am suggesting is true, namely that woman is not-all, there is always something in her that escapes discourse.” (Irigaray, This Sex 89)

• “I am trying [. . .] to go back through the masculine imaginary, to interpret the way it has reduced us to silence, to muteness or mimicry, and I am attempting, from that starting point and at the same time, to (re)discover a possible space for the feminine imaginary.” (This Sex 164)

• Even though everything is in place and operating as if there could be nothing but the desire for “sameness” why would there be no desire for “otherness”? No desire for a difference that would not be repeatedly and eternally co-opted and trapped within and economy of “sameness?” (130)

In response to Freud and Lacan’s ideas of woman, Irigaray argues,

• One might begin by being surprised, being suspicious, that it should be necessary to ‘become’ a woman — and a ‘normal woman to boot —and that this evolution should be “more difficult and more complicated” than becoming a man. . . this arises out of an economy of representation. (Speculum 22) 

At issue in The Mists and The Code are women’s voices. We see their voices used in different ways throughout as we meander through themes of silence, matrilineage and gendering of the grail. According to Irigaray, however, silence can be celebratory as well as destructive. Choosing silence allows a person to listen, whereas when speaking, he or she is unable to hear. Enforced silence, though, is destructive, as it takes away a person’s ability to vocalize needs and desires, as we see when Irigaray claims, “This accounts for the desire or the necessity of sexual non-integration: the dominant language is so powerful that women do not dare to speak (as) women outside the context of non-integration” (135). A woman can speak only to women, as the discourse of men has not allowed her a voice. But, “It is the difference between the sexes that I am trying to bring back into play, without subordinating one to the other” (146). How women’s voices in these texts are used is just as important as what they say, both to the men in their lives, as well as to the women in their matriarchal lines.

Matrilineal movements are important in Irigarian theory as well, as she states,

• We must add here that the woman’s happiness is complete only if the newborn child is a boy, bearer of the longed for penis. In this way the woman is compensated, through the child she brings into the world, for the narcissistic humiliation inevitably associated with the feminine condition. (This Sex 42)

The rhizome theory of Deleuze and Guattari correlates to the survival of these matrilineal ideologies and woman as quest, which in turn correlates to their ideas of multiplicities instead of binaries. Irigaray and Deleuze share a concern about binary natures. Both believe in the possibility of multiplicity, a spectrum of development allowing for a wide range of dynamic interactions. If looked at through the concepts of multiplicity or binary, if “man seeks her out, since he has inscribed her in discourse, but as lack, as fault or flaw,” (This Sex 89) then how do we connect Code and Mists and their gender implications, their “discourse” on women? One way to make such a connection is through Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome theory, articulated in their book, A Thousand Plateaus. This theory (henceforth “Deleuzian rhizome” or simply “rhizome”) postulates that there is no center. There is just an ever expanding network of intangible thoughts/theories/texts that work together throughout time and space, allowing new ideas to come forth from old ideas, but always with a trace of the old buried within it. An analogy would be lily pads: once they have begun to grow, there is no telling where the “original” plant began, or where the next shoot will come up. They are everywhere and in every direction.

Deleuze and Guattari state, “A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles” (7). The social struggles of gender roles and relations in The Code and Mists complicate the rhizomic theory in both texts, creating between them connections and a consistent “line of flight” or direction of thought as it moved down the rhizome. Although both Brown and Bradley attempted something “new” within the popular literary canon, so too did they use the thoughts of those who came before them, allowing for new “shoots” to develop after them. They suggest, “There is a rupture in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode into a line of flight, but the line of flight is part of the rhizome. These lines always tie back to one another” (9). Just as these tales of the gendered grail and matrilineage continually tie back to one another, so too do The Mists and The Code in their correlationally intertwined stories.

In this way, the lines of flight help us develop “multiplicities” or ways of thinking beyond simple binary ideas of mother/father, male/female, etc. Allowing a synergistic spectrum instead of concrete binaries allows for the possibilities of movement, of voicing things that perhaps were left unsaid or intentionally silenced in an “arborified” or “rooted” system where roles are fixed in stone. Multiplicity also allows for the possibility of “celebratory” silence instead of just destructive silence, and even for the possibility of both at once. “Multiplicities are rhizomatic, and expose arborescent pseudomultiplicities for what they are” (8). “Pseudomultiplicities” are those which suggest possibilities of a spectrum, but are rather problematically “rooted” so that there are no new directions possible, but rather nothing more than an arborified binary. In literature, we can see multiplicities within texts, even as binaries are often reinscribed in those same multiplicitous texts.

Irigaray, Deleuze and Guattari have all developed theories of multiplicity, both in gender and in the complex nature of the rhizome. These theories allow for an in depth examination of The Mists and The Code and their uses of silence, matrilineage, and the feminizing of the holy grail. These multiplicities of gender construction and of rhizomic movement between The Code and The Mists must be considered. How do we see silence being treated in both texts? Are all women in them lacking, or only ones who use their voices in particular ways? The gendered Grail has enormous implications when looked at through these theorists’ lenses, as the woman is consistently the quest, the one chased, sought, “saved” and captured, or doubting, silenced and fading away. Deleuze and Guattari contend, “The book imitates the world, as art imitates nature: by procedures specific to it that accomplish what nature cannot or can no longer do. The law of the book is the law of reflection, the One that becomes Two” (5). If the book is the law of reflection, what reflection are we looking at when we read these incredibly popular texts? Are we accepting an “arborified” version of gender that is linear, refusing to allow for new “shoots” or possibilities? Or, alternatively, are silence, matrilineage, and the gendering of the grail in some sense a celebratory multiplicity, connecting texts through time, and allowing for revision of women’s voices in mythology? 

The Deleuzian rhizome and Irigaray’s theories of silence and multiplicities operate together effortlessly in analyzing Brown’s and Bradley’s texts. Irigaray states,

• But you can’t anticipate it, foresee it, program it. Our all cannot be projected, or mastered. Our whole body is moved. No surface holds. No figure, line, or point remains. No ground subsists. But no abyss, either. Depth, for us, is not a chasm. Without a solid crust, there is no precipice. (This Sex 213)

• There is a rupture in the rhizome whenever segementary lines explode into a line of flight, but the line of flight is part of the rhizome. These lines always tie back to one another. That is why one can never posit a dualism or a dichotomy, even in the rudimentary form of the good and the bad (Plateaus 9).

• The rhizome, on the other hand, is a liberation of sexuality not only from reproduction but also from genitality. Here in the West, the tree has implanted itself in our bodies, rigidifying and stratifying even the sexes. We have lost the rhizome, or the grass. (Plateaus 18)

• Irigaray insists on the receptivity to the divine of a living subject in continual contact with embodied other in a sensual world; Deleuze and Guattari lay out approaches to the virtual that may provide new perspectives on such living. (19)

In analyzing this movement, I will begin with The Mists, developing themes of silence and matrilineage through the themes of gender roles and depictions, matrilineal lines of flight, the gendered Grail, and archetypes as they contribute to the female characters’ silence in both celebratory and destructive ways, while being both relegated to the periphery and brought to the forefront, existing in tension together. I will examine Morgaine and her actions involving the Grail, and in relation to Kevin the Merlin, as well as her relationships with Igraine, Viviane, Morgause and her son Mordred.

I will then proceed to The Code, analyzing the rhizomic movements so blatant in the text, as well as the lack of voice and action in the character of Sophie. I will apply Irigarian theories of silence, matrilineage, and multiplicity to this text as we see Sophie and the “sacred feminine” relegated to progenitors of the race and not much more, but I will also research whether there can be any kind of “celebratory” silence involved in Sophie’s choices and actions in throughout the text. Once again, there exists a tension between celebratory and destructive silence; although Sophie is problematically silenced and infantilized through much of the text, I posit that, in fact, the female voice survives in part because of Sophie’s silence (and her matrilineal grandmother’s), allowing the eternal quest for the ethereal grail, thereby maintaining the feminine voice in the world.

Finally, I will link the The Mists and The Code together, using their themes of silence, matrilineage, and the gendering of the grail to analyze them simultaneously through the rhizome and Irigarian theory. I believe that both texts are problematic in their depictions of women’s voices and silences, as well as their occasional “Eve-like” lack of usefulness to a society that considers marketability as all important. Deleuze and Guattari state, “In other cases, on the contrary, one will bolster oneself directly on a line of flight enabling one to blow apart strata, cut roots, and make new connections” (15) and I intend to show that new connections along the lines of flight of gender construction are not only possible, but necessary when looked at through the lens of a possibly “arborified” societal gender construction. 

CHAPTER TWO

FADING INTO THE MISTS

• But let us say that in the beginning was the end of her story, and that from now on she will have one dictated to her: by the man-father
• --Irigaray, Speculum 43

• Strike the pose or follow the axis, genetic stage or structural destiny — one way or the other, your rhizome will be broken. You will be allowed to live and speak, but only after every outlet has been obstructed. Once a rhizome has been obstructed, arborified, it’s all over, no desire stirs; for it is always by rhizome that desire moves and produces. (Plateaus 14)

 Beginning with the theme of the gendered holy grail, by which I mean the Grail of legend as it is feminized by the women of Avalon and the dichotomous frictions of matriarchal/patriarchal structures in Bradley’s novel, I will analyze just how the grail is re-conceptualized as a feminine religious device, and how this reflects a thematic division involving silence while also focusing on gender binaries. How these binaries are depicted ultimately effects how the text is read, as we see women silenced even in a revisionist novel. Next, my investigation will focus on the different maternal aspects of the text as exemplified by Morgaine (synechdotal for Avalon) and Gwen (synechdotal for a Christian Court) and how both of them signify in their separate worlds silence, matrilineage, and gender division developed in Avalonian and Arthurian societies. The movement from circular, cyclical relationships between nature and the female characters (a rhizome) turns to a linear, rooted form, in Arthur’s court, denying any other shoots, which in turn “arborifies” the relations between the genders, and the ways in which they both can “properly” conduct themselves in relation to one another.  

The Silence of the Feminine Holy Grail

Bradley develops the Holy Regalia, (including the Grail) as originating on the Isle of Avalon, made by and for the pagan goddess worshiping culture. It includes the sword, Excalibur, as well as the sacred chalice. The scabbard, too, becomes intertwined with the destiny of the sacred items, made by a female hand. In this way, Bradley’s chalice and other regalia is moved from “historically” patriarchal use (Jesus and his twelve disciples, who are listed primarily as men) to that of a matriarchal, goddess worshiping culture, (Avalon) asserting the grail itself an aspect of femininity. It is, ultimately, the holy regalia which creates the chaos that ensues at the end of the text, leading to the defeat of Avalon.

This revision of the grail myth is an excellent example of the Deleuzian rhizome. The tale itself has been told many times, in many ways, and in many different places. It is a rhizomic text, and Bradley’s revision of it is yet another shoot of that text. According to Carl Jung in his book, Psychological Types,

• These [mythical narratives] are archaic forms of expression which become symbols, and these appear in their turn as equivalents of the devalued objects. This process is as old as mankind, for symbols may be found among the relics of prehistoric man as well as among the most primitive human types living today. (238)

Jung also says of the grail, “it began, it seems to me with the worship of woman, which strengthened the man’s soul very considerably as a psychological factor, since the worship of woman meant worship of her soul” (221). The holy regalia, and specifically the chalice that comes to represent the ultimate “soul” of the divine, begins with woman as the Chalice of Avalon, into which the priestesses gaze to penetrate the psychic realms. Arthur’s Christian court, too, attempt to find the chalice in order to drink from it once again, but find only madness, despair, or, perhaps worse, nothing at all. They fail to see that woman is the quest, and they have relegated her to the background, demanding silence from her. Sadly, this twisted worship of the feminine leads to destruction, a rhizomic shoot that was unforeseen. 

In an incredible scene of destructive silencing and maternal loss, Viviane approaches Arthur to demand the Holy Regalia be returned to the women of Avalon since he has broken his pledge to rule under the symbol of Avalon. The Lady of Avalon is murdered by the foster brother, Balan, of her own (fostered) son, Balin, whose mother she had helped pass out of the suffering of life and into death. In front of the king’s throne, Viviane, matriarch of Avalon, is forever silenced in a bloody massacre. The woman lies at the man’s feet, slain in her attempt to voice her demands. Her words were left unsaid, literally cut off the moment she began to speak. This calls to mind Irigaray’s explanation that, “At last, she has been authorized to remain silent, hidden from prying eyes in the intimacy of this exchange where she sees what she will be unable to express. Where she sees nothing and where she sees everything” (Speculum 200). Viviane can now “remain silent” as she moves into the ethereal realms, where she is voiceless in the world of men. She is the mother of several women in the text, and the symbol of the divine mother of them all, and yet is left forever silent, unable to demand the regalia made my female hands be returned to those female hands.

Morgaine feels it is her duty to carry out the unspoken demands of Viviane, to return the holy regalia to Avalon and punish those associated with its introduction to Arthur’s increasingly Christian court. Morgaine’s mourning for Viviane fuels a revenge narrative that belies Morgaine’s ostensible reasons for punishing both Kevin and Arthur. Upon Viviane’s death, Morgaine screams at Kevin, “Your allegiance is not to Arthur nor to Britain, but only to the Goddess and to your vows!” (505) to which Kevin angrily replies, “Woman, you do not command me! You who have renounced Avalon, by what right do you presume to give order to the Merlin? Rather you should kneel before me!” (505).

Eventually, after so many harsh and ugly words between them, (again, the destructive nature of not being silent —had Morgaine calmly argued with Kevin, perhaps some kind of consensus could have developed. Instead, however, there is only room for anger. In this sense, silence could have been celebratory and allowed for vastly different results.) Morgaine, as the new matriarch and high priestess of Avalon, sentences Kevin to death, and he is cursed with being a traitor and forever imprisoned in the sacred tree. Morgaine declares, “A hundred lifetimes shall you return, Kevin Harper, always seeking the Goddess and never finding her” (801). Kevin is silenced just as surely as the women usually are, by a woman who uses words to condemn his soul, the very soul “men worship.” This revision of the myth portrays Morgaine in a harsh light; she is unforgiving and vengeful. For a text touted as a highly feminist work, this remains problematic — how can we see the strong, powerful woman in a positive light when she becomes vengeful and destructive? Through the lens of multiplicity, Morgaine’s behavior is along a spectrum, and therefore not so unusual. People will behave according to the situation, and not necessarily always in a celebratory manner.

When Morgaine regains the chalice, the holy grail of legend and the symbol of the feminine divine, Bradley’s revision takes another interesting turn. In a scene laden with spiritual lyricism, Morgaine appears to the Knights of the roundtable as a divine being, holding a cup to their lips and encouraging them to drink from it, whispering, “Drink. This is the Holy Presence” (771). The moment Morgaine’s divine image disappears, they go on a “quest” to find the grail, the very grail held by a woman and offered as a blessing. But, from the Knights’ perspective, the grail disappears, to be quested after for all eternity. Morgaine muses, “The final irony was this: that her holiest of visions should inspire the most passionate legend of Christian worship” (810).

It is, paradoxically, the feminine aspect of the grail that disappears with Morgaine and Avalon into The Mists, even as the one character who celebrates silence, Raven, dies amidst the court as the grail forever leaves the world. Raven chose her silence, giving her voice to the goddess all her life. She breaks her silence to join Morgaine in retrieving the regalia for Avalon, and in doing so loses her life:

• [S]he had held firm, buoyed by the Great Magic, until the Grail had gone away to Avalon, all her own strength poured out selflessly to strengthen Morgaine in the work of the Goddess; and then, that strength withdrawn, her life had gone with it” (773).

The grail is gone, as is the sacred feminine in her “originary” form. But, as with any rhizomic entity, she remains, too, in the form of the Virgin Mary, whom the nuns worship at the convent of women. This convent is nothing but women’s voices and their meditations, a strange mirror image of Avalon. Those that seek shall find, and several women find comfort among the women who, as did the women of Avalon, keep to themselves and their own meditations, even though they remain also under the “guidance” of the priests. As Kevin the Merlin claims to Morgaine,

• “Avalon will always be there for all men to find if they can seek the way thither, throughout all the ages past the ages. If they cannot find the way to Avalon, it is a sign, perhaps, that they are not ready” (471).

Morgaine, as the living symbol of Bradley’s Avalon, develops strength from a spiritual and meditative silence in many ways; “All that day, in silence, [Morgaine] worked, gazing into the chalice, letting the images rise, now and then stopping to wait for inspiration in the meditative flow” (198). Morgaine creates the scabbard for the sword of the Holy Regalia, (Excaliber) weaving into it her own spells of safety. It is in a celebratory, meditative, and noticeably feminine, silence that Morgaine works with the Holy Regalia, which will keep Arthur safe from his enemies, and ultimately, leads to the total silencing of the mystical women of Avalon when Arthur breaks his vows to Avalon and the Pendragon, declaring Christianity as the only religion allowed in his realm. Avalon fades into The Mists as it is forgotten by the people of Camelot, silencing the goddess’ voice as it was heard by the people of Avalon. However, it lives on in its new guise, that of the Virgin Mary, and Morgaine keeps silent on the matter, allowing the goddesses voice, through Morgaine’s silence, to remain in the world. Once again, the expressions of silence and the ethereal feminine voice are multiple.

The ethereal female voice is “alien” to the patriarchal religion of Arthur’s court, and thus the love that could come from the equality of viewpoints suffers grievously once it is entrenched. Irigaray asks, “But what if the “object” started to speak?” (Speculum 135) Morgaine, too, wonders this in a conversation with a knight of the round table, hearing that “the Romans had made this the common law, that women were the chattels of their menfolk” (312). They become “objects” or commodities to be traded among men, from father to husband or brother. Silence and obedience were expected of the “chattel.” If they start to speak, however, and deny the “mutism” forced upon them as objects, then what are the consequences? If Gwen is considered as the reality, then the consequences of her voice are indeed destructive, at least to the women of Avalon.

 The “object” or “other” for Irigaray is the woman, whom she considers an often silent commodity among a patriarchal system. It is, in fact, when Gwenyvere, who was “given” to her husband, argues with Arthur about their not having conceived, and breaks her obligatory female silence as “object.” The world they have together created begins to crumble, as her own allegiance to the patriarchal religion overshadows Arthur’s allegiance to the matriarchal religion which he was pledged to follow. This paradox underscores Irigaray’s theory that silence can be celebratory, because when the silence is broken in an outpouring of anger and delusion, destruction can follow.

Arthur, in an attempt to create harmony between his wife and best friend, Lancelet, (who is in love with Gwen) erroneously breaks his own silence and orchestrates a romantic interlude between himself and both of them. In this way, the silence of Gwen’s and Lancelet’s feelings become voiced, and yet, the consequences of this development are far-reaching. In this erotic scene in which Gwenyvere, Arthur and Lancelot share a bed together, Gwen yells at Arthur,

• I saw it then, you touched him with more love than ever you have given the woman my father forced on you — when you led me into this sin, can you swear it was not your own sin, and all your fine talk no more than a cover for that very sin that brought down fire from Heaven on the city of Sodom? (Bradley 547)

 Gwen’s refusal to stay silent reflects that she is, in fact, connected to the women of Avalon, in that she doesn’t fully internalize the gender roles set before her. Irigaray explains “if the place is plowed over again in this way, it is always in search of the lost roots of sameness” (Speculum 228), which connects to the Deluezian concept of the rhizome, suggesting that within this reversal we find once again the “roots of sameness” between the female characters, even as they separate into binary belief systems. Unlike the relationships in Avalon, which often cross gender lines, such as the relationships between Morgaine and Raven, and Morgaine and the Fairy folk, the relationships in Arthur’s Christian court become injurious because of entrenched taboos. The love between Arthur and Lancelet is nothing like that between Gwen and her Arthur, but the suggestion is that love between them all is a complex web with no true “root,” which both Irigaray and Deleuze suggest as a positive concept rather than a negative one. The “roots of sameness” apply to human emotions regardless of gender. Deleuze and Guattari give a compelling articulation of this concept: “Knowing how to love does not mean remaining a man or a woman; it means extracting from one’s sex the particles, the speeds and slownesses,[sic] the flows, the n sexes that constitute the girl of that sexuality” (277). 

 Gwen was “given” to her husband along with horses, just another piece of chattel, and she is also unable to receive “true” love (as she views it, silently) from either of the men she loves. As Irigaray suggests, “If commodities could speak, they might possibly give an opinion about their price, abut whether they consider their status just, or abut the dealings of their owners” (This Sex 118), and as a “commodity” we see Gwen speak. She is clearly feeling “lack” here, (or a sense that she is worth less than a woman who can bear children, illustrating the power of the maternal) and by not maintaining silence she casts shame and degradation on Arthur and Lancelet, a reversal because those traits are usually ascribed to the female gender. Paradoxically, she is silenced by the very religion in which she so willingly participates, and when she speaks, it is the words of patriarchy she uses, not those of equality (i.e. matriarchy) and shared passion belonging to those who celebrate the Beltane fires she wants destroyed.

Irigaray states, “history” has manipulated the desire of woman – who is forced to function as an object, or more rarely as a subject – so as to perpetuate the existence of God” (This Sex 231) and in The Mists we see that not only Morgaine, but Gwenyvere too, function as feminine “objects” through which the male characters attempt to get closer to god, even though they come from two different sides of the binary in their religious affiliations. After Morgaine manages to remove the grail from Arthur’s Christian court, she too leaves for Avalon. While neither woman remains silent throughout, Gwenyvere’s voice eventually wins out over Morgaine’s, even as Morgaine takes the Holy Regalia into The Mists with her, silenced forever, with mankind forever questing after the lack provided by her (its) disappearance, just as the Knights of the Round Table take oaths to follow the legend of the grail until their own demise. 

Paradoxically, in this way, it is also not silent. While Morgaine and Avalon recede into The Mists, their legend stays alive, as does the ideology behind the grail. This mythology has provided offshoots, a literary reproductive offspring that continues to tell the story of Morgaine, of the Grail, of Avalon and of the eternal maternal. So, while they may be quiet, perhaps they are not completely silent after all.

The Silent and Eternal Grail of the Maternal

and the Rhizome

Regardless of the female characters’ faults, the one issue Bradley’s women must contend with is that of motherhood and mother-relations. Often, the way in which the voice of women can be heard, at least minimally, is through their children. Viviane, Igraine, Morgaine, and Morgouse are all mothers. Each of them has a distinct and difficult relationship with their children. Morgaine, through her son Mordred, brings the kingdom of Camelot to destruction. This increasingly complex relationship between the women and their offspring develops, once again, a chasm of silence, as they feel so distanced from one another they can no longer hear one another. Mordred can not fathom his mothers position, and feels adrift because of their incomplete connection. According to Irigaray, “as mother, woman remains on the side of (re)productive nature and, because of this, man can never fully transcend his relation to the natural” (This Sex 185), and, clearly, Morgaine is the “reproductive nature” just as Mordred is unable to “fully transcend” his relationship to his parents.

The only female in the text that relates only to the maternal only in the negative is Gwen, who cannot have children, and predicates her entire worth on not being able to give Arthur an heir for the throne. This leads to her eventual wrath against both Arthur and Morgaine, especially when she finds out that they have had a child together. This relates to the Lacanian notion that woman is only truly inculcated into the feminine imaginary when she has a child—prior to that, or lacking that, she is “less than.”

 The complexity surrounding the maternal and feelings of “less than” are abundant in this text. For instance, Igraine sends her daughter Morgaine away so that she will not fall into the “black priest’s hands,” and also so that when her husband comes home all of her time and energy can be concentrated on him. Viviane, acting as Lady of the Lake, is at once mother to them all, and mother to none, cultivating relationships between the women so as to keep Avalon, and its faith, from fading into obscurity. Similarly, Morgaine is eventually duped into marrying the King of North Wales. He needs a “companion” and mother to his young children, and so asks Arthur to “give” him a woman for his household. Gwenyvere, angry with Morgaine, sets her up for an unhappy marriage to the elderly king by suggesting it to Arthur. But there is also an acceptance within the relationship between the old king and Morgaine that women are not property, and that they can manage to have their own standing in the community without having to be attached to a man (or god). Important as well is the fact that Morgaine, at her “advanced” age, will not be expected to have children “for” her new husband. She is exempt from Irigaray’s position that, “mothers, reproductive instruments marked with the name of the father and enclosed in his house, must be private property, excluded from exchange” (This Sex 185). Morgaine is expected to provide companionship to the elderly man, even as she takes a young lover and pagan consort in his son. She wonders about her own son, Mordred, but feels no particular kinship with him, since Morgause, in her plans for Queenship, made sure that Morgaine would feel little motherly instinct.  

The Lady of Avalon also exemplifies simultaneously both matrilineal views of egalitarian sensual/sexual relations and the lack of maternal relations within Avalon. She has various men in her bed throughout the years, and bears several children, but never is she forced to give up her independence to marriage or childrearing, which mirrors Lacan’s concept that in the period of the “real” there is no difference or inequality, just “need,” which in a matrilineal culture can be filled through relationships that do not attribute lack to one gender or the other, or require silence due to biology. “By her failure to be defined or predicated, she serves as in(de)finite basis for the ontological promotion of each living thing” (Speculum 162). And it is the “ontological promotion” that causes Viviane’s lack of maternal affection for her children, coming from the “duty-first” concept of ruling a faith based culture. While there is nothing shameful in fulfilling ones physical desires, there is also little time for children contained in the ultimate plans of the Lady of the Lake, although she too, like Arthur, must have an heir to continue the ways of Avalon. The lack of an heir eventually leads to total silencing of Avalon.  

In Bradley’s Camelot, there not only must be an hier to the throne, (hence Gwen’s despair), but the heir must be male. The male in patriarchal Arthurian court is the one with the Lacanian “phallic power,” and yet, we see that women in this text can also exert a type of this power. This is what Irigaray refers to as “phallic currency” and both Morgaine and Viviane use this currency in their attempt to keep their voices in the world, even as they are continually being silenced by the new regime, and failing to establish maternal relationships with the children in their lives, which in turn creates a type of silence and lack between all them. This developing silence and lack draws together the impossibility of healthy family relations, as each member must do as she feels is “right” according to the faith she believes in.

Viviane is, in Irigaray’s words, “the reserve of ‘sensuality’ for the elevation of intelligence, she is the matter used for the imprint of forms, the gage of possible” (Speculum 141). Viviane is the gage of what is possible, what can become of Avalon and Camelot both, and, ultimately, what pagan women are to Christian men. Young-Eisandreth says, “A beautiful woman is a metaphor, in our culture, for certain kinds of power, but that power also has other meanings and consequences” (8). The Lady of Avalon has power, and by the end of the book that power is taken over by the reigning patriarchal system, showing that a woman with matriarchal power and without maternal feelings, is unacceptable not only in our current “forward” thinking culture, but also within a fantastical literary framework as well.

• She remains outside the circularity of a thought that, in its telos, turns to his ends the cause of his desire: She is the unconscious basis of that attempt to find metaphor for an originary matrix in the sphere of intimacy within self, of nearness to self, of a “soul” or mind. (Irigaray, Speculum 240)

• [T]his was not her son; Uwaine, perhaps, was her son, but not Gwydion. This dark, handsome young man so like the Lancelet she had loved as a girl, he was not her son looking for the first time on the mother who had abandoned him before he was weaned; he was priest and she priestess of the Great Goddess, and if they were no more to each other than that, at least they were no less.(645)

Another connection between silence and matriarchal culture is revealed by Morgaine and her relationship with her son. Morgaine keeps silent about her own son, Mordred, by her half-brother Arthur, primarily because of the taboo the Christian court places on the concept of brother/sister relations. Morgaine’s silence on the matter contributes to the hatred the boy feels toward both of his parents, which produces further complexities around the issues of maternal gender functioning in this text. Other women, likewise, either keep silent when they should not, or voice emotions in anger/frustration when they should keep silent. The priestess Raven, who has taken a lifelong vow of silence, for instance, reflects, “I have been silent too long…I kept silence even when I feared this would come” (760). Raven chooses her lifetime of silence, giving her voice to the goddess, but breaks that vow when the Holy Regalia of Avalon would be lost to Arthur’s Christian court. Her voice, in the end, is also denied, as the vow she makes to the goddess claims her in death after she assists Morgaine with the removal of the Regalia from Arthur’s court.

The maternal dictates a woman’s place in the patriarchal world, and this develops yet another dichotomy within the text: if women in patriarchal Camelot do not have children, or have limited relationships with them, does that make them less “female” and, transversely, if the women of Avalon allow their children to be reared far from Avalon and by other women, does it make them unnatural? Bradley’s text raises complex issues surrounding the theme of the maternal, which are not easily answered.

The Living Grail of Gender

While the issues surrounding the maternal are abundant in this text, it is impossible to separate them from those of gender as a whole, or the “grail of gender,” by which I mean those normative codes of behavior ascribed to each gender. For instance, Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon reinterprets the shift from pre-Christian, goddess worshiping cultures into the patriarchal monotheistic culture of Arthurian legend.  From female, goddess worshiping, egalitarian concepts of balance, the move is made to male hierarchical, monotheistic, concepts of men as objective, and women subjective because of the “fall.” Christianity posits that the first woman, Eve, eats a forbidden apple, thereby forcing all of humanity to suffer until their return to God upon death. Bradley’s revision of the Arthurian legend of Morgaine, or Morgan le Fey, allows for the feminine voice of that legend to be heard, whereas it has been relegated to the periphery in older versions, such as Mallory’s. Morgaine has been a witch, a villain, a sorceress, always spoken of, but never speaking. At the same time, The Mists is also strongly emblematic of both the Deleuzian rhizome and Irigarian theories of gender binaries. The rhizome, as an ever expanding movement without a center, includes all stories that branch out from a similar story before it, just as The Mists takes previous accounts of Morgan le Fey and adds her own feminist revision in a rhizomic move. Likewise, Irigaray states, “Woman’s only relation to origin is one dictated by man’s” (Speculum 33). This novel gives women an “origin” separate from that of “man’s” even as we watch the relational chasm between the genders unfold.

In Bradley’s text we see the genders depicted as having possibilities beyond those of “arborified” stereotypical feminine/masculine roles; the women like Morgaine, Igraine, and Viviane are strong and independent, yet remain capable of healthy emotion and intellect with the men around them. Men like Arthur and Lancelet are strong, yet also remain open to emotion and discourse on feelings between them, as exampled during the conversation between Morgaine and Lancelet when he reveals to her that he wonders if his feelings for Gwen are only so strong because of his deeper love for Arthur. It is not just the characters at odds, nor the transitioning of landscapes as Avalon recedes and the Christian world becomes dominant, but of the relationship between the genders — what here, I will call the “grail of gender” — they represent. There is a rhizomic, mutually dependant movement existing between these two worlds as they relate specifically to gender; one recedes into silence, and the other dominates, even as both continue to exist in some manner. The silent world remains a latent, potent force, one to be awakened through the continual quest for the feminine and the maternal.  

These possibilities of gender construction do not make life any less complex for the characters. Rather, they underscore that relationships can be difficult to navigate in any time period, and especially when two competing ideologies, such as those of Arthurian and Avalonian cultures, find it necessary to merge. This concept is articulated well by Irigarian theories of gender dualities: “Everyone, in effect, is pulled up by the roots, deprived of the body’s first resources, of the endless possibilities of being in space” (Speculum 164). By dividing the genders and subjugating one to the other, both are deprived of “endless possibilities” of being. While the matriarchal culture of Avalon sees these possibilities as necessary to the balance of life, the Christian Arthurian court subjugates the women to the men, thereby creating an arborified culture which denies possibility.

The celebration of gender differences and of the balance both male and female bring to the world vanishes in the shift from Bradley’s matriarchal Avalon to Arthur’s patriarchal Christian court. Instead, in this text, women who find silence comforting and spiritual in the matrilineal Avalonian culture become forcibly silenced within a patriarchal Christian, Arthurian structure.

Two female characters in particular are emblematic of the destructive possibilities of voice and silence, both of which develop elements of lack. Bradley’s novel’s central implicit claim is that Avalon recedes into The Mists in direct proportion to Camelot’s departure from previously followed traditions of matrilineal/pagan/Goddess worship and embraces patriarchal Christianity in the Arthurian court. Morgaine, a synecdoche for Avalon, uses her voice in an attempt to prevent Avalon from fading into The Mists. Following the voice of her spiritual predecessor, Viviane, Morgaine argues vehemently with Arthur, his priests, and Gwen, who shift steadily toward a patriarchal culture of subjugation and arborified gender roles. Meanwhile, Gwen, a female synecdoche for Arthur’s Christian court, uses her voice to further push Arthur’s court toward a paradigm that paradoxically prefers the silence of women, as she consistently berates Arthur for his allowance of pagan rituals on pagan holidays. Gwen’s voice, as that closest to Arthur, eventually silences Morgaine’s voice, driving Avalon into The Mists even as Gwen’s voice too loses its persuasiveness within the patriarchal system she champions.

The Mists also illustrates that the genders are quite capable of handling themselves outside of relationships, even though those relationships are often the very reasons they make decisions which go against their better judgment. The use of judgment often follows the decision to be vocal or silent, active or passive. In this text, the women are often silent, and their silence depends on whether they are silent in order to achieve their own means, or they are being silenced by the patriarchal system around them, that this silence can be considered celebratory or destructive. For instance, Morgaine’s aunt Morgause keeps silent only when she can see possible personal benefit from doing so, just as she keeps the secret of Mordred’s parentage until the opportune moment. Morgaine, too, stays silent about the charm she gives Elaine in order to trap Lancelet into marriage. Although this is not personal gain for her in any way, she feels she does what she must in order to save Arthur’s kingdom. The characters complexity creates a dichotomy: a celebratory silence can have destructive consequences, just as devious silence can develop positive results. 

The whole of the opposing religions have been gendered: matriarchal Avalon vs. patriarchal Camelot, male vs. female, hysteria vs. logic. While these binaries are not necessarily negative in their totality, according to Irigaray, they create destruction when one is subjugated to another. Intriguingly, both sets of religious advocates in this text, as they try to subjugate one another, can be fanatical in their own ways. The Christian priests of Arthur’s court are staunch advocates of their own patriarchal faith that condemns women, just as the female priestess’ of Avalon are holding fast to theirs, which does not deny women’s agency in the world. These dueling belief systems of Avalon and Camelot correlate to the Deleuzian rhizome:

• The same applies to the group map: show at what point in the rhizome there form phenomena of massification, bureaucracy, leadership, fascization, etc., which lines nevertheless survive, if only underground, continuing to make rhizome in the shadows. (15)

 In another example of this “massification” of patriarchal dogma, Morgaine’s mother Igraine argues with her husband, and prior to his death, Gorlois, Igraine’s first husband, tells her, “A holy man told me once that women bear the blood of their mothers, and so it has been since the days of Eve, that what is within women, who are filled with sin, cannot be overcome by a woman-child. . .” (86). Women exist in both worlds, but as the change comes in the form of religion, so the female characters must learn new ways of asserting themselves in a culture that deems them unworthy.

In response to this characterization of women as sinful, Igraine, on her own death bed, tells Gwen,

• I sent [Morgaine] from me because I felt it better, if it came to be a choice of evils, that she should be in Avalon and in the hands of the goddess, than in the hands of the black priests who would teach her to think that she was evil because she was a woman. (359)

The patrilineal belief system of Arthur’s court polarizes the genders into a hierarchy, whereas the matrilineal Avalon culture sees them as balancing one another. At issue is not necessarily that there are two different genders, but that the subordination of one to the other creates lack, not only in women, but between women and men, just as the genders fail in their communication with one anther in the shift from Avalon to Camelot. Irigaray states,

• By submitting women’s bodies to a general equivalent, to a transcendent, super-natural value, men have drawn the social structure into an ever greater process of abstraction, to the point where they themselves are produced in it as pure concepts (This Sex 190).

• She had thought, if ever she bore Arthur’s son, then he must give her place and show her great respect, not treat her still as that useless woman he had been forced to take a part of a dowry of horse! Yet, here she was, packed off into a corner again because he could not be rid of her. . . (390)

According to the Deluezian rhizome, these religious viewpoints are interconnected and interwoven as part of the rhizome of literature, and Irigaray asserts,

• As on so many other [occasions], particularly when it is a question of women, the text will have surreptitiously broken the thread of its reasoning, its logic. Striking off on another path that will no doubt intersect with the previous one, will in some way take up where it left off, but in a zigzag fashion that defies all resumption of a linear discourse.”(Speculum 17)

Conclusion

The Mists examines an originary attempt at rejecting an impending patriarchy through speech and silence. Eventually, Avalon’s women fade into legend, unable to successfully fight against the patriarchal culture that increasingly dominates Bradley’s Britain. However, as Morgaine discovers, the goddess survives as the image of the Virgin Mary. When Morgaine visits the Lady of the Lake in the Glastonbury Cemetery, a young nun approaches her and explains that she prefers to go to the “inner court” where they pray to the Virgin Mary, as the statue of the father god scares her. Morgaine realizes, “Exile her as they may, she will prevail. The Goddess will never withdraw herself from mankind” (875). Morgaine does not share her realization with the surrounding nuns, but rather remains (celebratorily) silent, realizing that she has not failed in her vows to keep the goddess alive in the world. Rather, the goddess exists in a different, rhizomic, form in the world of men.

Here, Morgaine’s silence suggests that rather than being arborescent, (or “rooted”) the rhizome of the goddess mutates so that what was once the “only” image of the goddess has now become another, but equally divine, image. Although Morgaine has lost the battle for Avalon, Avalon remains alive in the world even as it fades into The Mists. The rhizome of the “original” Avalon and its egalitarian views of women may be “in the shadows,” but it continues to exist nonetheless. Ultimately, for Bradley, silence is both destructive and celebratory, and lack is defined only by those who would undermine the egalitarian, contributory nature of the genders in relation to one another. In this way, Bradley portrays gender relations as they are; women as capable of both voice and silence, of good and evil, of demand and desire.

While Morgaine’s behavior seems problematic when she uses treachery to regain the regalia, it can be seen as well that she is trying to keep the female voice in the world through whatever means necessary. While she fails to prevent Avalon from receding, she also succeeds in keeping the goddess in the world, in the form of the Virgin Mary. Morgaine’s silence enables that image of the goddess to stay in the world. Perhaps, had Morgaine told the women of the convent just who they were praying to, they would have cast the image out entirely, thereby forcing the goddess as a whole into The Mists forever. But, in this way, the Virgin Mary remains rhizomically connected (albeit “in the shadows”) to Avalon forever, creating, also, a rhizome between women of both Avalon’s matriarchy and Camelot’s patriarchy.

CHAPTER THREE

CODES WRAPPED IN SILENCE

• Providing symbolic support for contemporary femininity would enable women as women to resist the role of feminine other and demand masculine subjects to acknowledge the constitutive aspect of the role played by feminine others.
• --Lorraine 136

Theoretically, this revisioning of the mythical story of Mary Magdalene allows a new “voice” to enter the legendary conversation, one that is female and rebels against the enforced silencing and perceived lack of women in history. In the Bible, Mary Magdalene is mentioned during the resurrection of Jesus, making her an important but peripheral voice. In Brown’s reinterpretation of the biblical story, Mary Magdalene has a much more important, and actually more active, role in history. According to Brown, she is Jesus’ wife and mother to his children. Brown, then, accords Magdalene a new “voice” or place in mythical history that allows the reader a vision of Magdalene as a real woman instead of just a peripheral figure.  

Bringing the matriarchal aspect of the Magdalene to the forefront creates an intriguing examination of women’s voice, a theme throughout Brown’s novel. The novel deals with silence and matrilineage by discussing the beneficial binary nature of relationships between men and women. Langdon refers to the “sacred marriage” practiced by modern followers of the goddess/god duality, in which woman and man enact a sexual ritual to give homage to the greater deities, creating a “balance” between the genders. The premise of Brown’s book is that women have been silenced throughout history by Christianity’s notion of “original sin.” Given that women’s silence and the need to recentralize women’s position in society is a primary issue of the book, the actual use of voice and silence in this text must be examined, researching the actual agency vs. the ideal agency of women’s roles Brown presents. Again, in a text expressing a reinterpretation of women’s voice, analysis shows that instead of reinventing positive gender multiplicities, Brown instead reinscribes normative and silent roles for women, thereby failing in a “true” revision.    

A Web of Literary Shoots

Examining how the rhizome and multiplicity function within this text helps illustrate the problematic interrelation between the holy grail, matrilineage, and silence. As Deleuze and Guattari posit, “A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles” (Plateaus 7). In this way, The Code is an exemplary model of the rhizome. While many texts fail to acknowledge the work that has come before, this text actually mentions several texts which have also researched the very concepts that Brown recreates, showing multiplicity not only in process, but also The Code itself as a work connected to many before it. The semiotic lines of flight, however, began long before The Code and the books it references were written, and long before the Bible was written as well, (another text deeply important to the premises of The Code).

Ancient writing from as early as 2^nd Century BCE tells stories of mythical characters following paths of destiny and fortune, pantheon given as well as mortal driven. In The Odyssey, Odysseus is on a “hero quest” but the pantheon has their own plans for him. In Oedipus Rex, no gods are involved, but human folly creates Oedipus’ destiny. Both of these stories lead to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which blends all the myths together in a perfectly textual web. And, just as the Deleuzian rhizome demonstrates