Gaze and Female Power: Sexual Politics in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal

• Main Authors: Alice Ya-chi Dang, 鄧雅薺
• Other Authors: Denise Ming-yueh Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/91083457090874530341

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 外國語文研究所 === 102 === This thesis is an attempt to study the female power of subversion in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal by means of Laura Mulvey’s film theory. In her influential article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey discusses male gaze, erotic desire of male, and the status of woman in film in light of psychoanalysis. The women in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal seem to challenge the romance literary convention. In Sir Launfal, women are not passive; they are not merely a sight. They display their bodies as commodities, however, they also use their bodies as baits to trap men, as objects to lure men, and as weapons to undermine men’s control. Chapter One begins with a brief discussion of the elements of the magic and supernatural in medieval romances, the second half brings around to see Launfal, the wretched steward in King Arthur’s court, wins people’s respect and regains his social status with the aid of his fairy lover Dame Tryamour. On the surface, it is about a wish-fulfillment story that both of Launfal’s male fantasy and male desire are satisfied; nonetheless, lurking behind the surface, Launfal gives into the protection of a powerful woman. In this sense, the voice of women is a means of subversion. In Chapter Two, I examine the way how the fairy mistress makes use of the male gaze and transforms the acts of looking and being looked at into a play by applying Laura Mulvey’s idea of gaze. I explore the working of female gaze or the return of the gaze in Sir Launfal so as to explain how the visual pleasure in the romance turns into a crisis of male power and how body and magic can be tools for women to rule out men. Chapter Three studies the fairy’s blinding the queen as a poetic justice. Sir Launfal starts with a male gaze and ends with a woman’s blindness. In this romance, males become marginalized, transparent, women, on the other hand, through the act of gaze and their speech, control male’s eyes and take the place of male’s status. Guinevere’s rash promise or blind promise shows her confidence of her authority and dominance in the court. The coming of Tryamour and her punishment for Guinevere take a step further proving feminine thorough dominance. In Sir Launfal women through their body performance not only dominate men’s gaze but also undermine the masculinity of King Arthur’s court, making the masculine world in this romance thoroughly womanly and otherworldly.