Character Analysis
Oh Gwenny. What are we going to do with you?
Object of Everyone's Affection
For the first half of the Idylls, Guinevere is an idea more than a person. Not very flattering if you ask Shmoop. Arthur imagines his union with her as a means of having “power on this dark land to lighten it, / and power on this dark world to make it live” (“Coming,” 92-93). Without her, he says, “I cannot will my will or work my work” (87).
Sheesh, that’s one important marriage.
It makes a certain amount of sense though. See, Arthur’s authority is strangely connected to Guinevere. She's the force that turns his ideals into action and makes his dreams a reality. The strength of her union with Arthur is also tied to the strength of Arthur’s union with his knights, with the marriage bond coming to represent all other kinds of bonds in the Idylls.
To make matters even more objectifying, Guinevere is also an idealized figure upon whose goodness and purity Arthur’s knights build their own. She’s the poster child for good behavior. Everything she does is the very definition of all that is right with the world…
… Or not. When her affair with Lancelot reveals her true character, the revelation totally bums knights the out. Knights like Balin and Pelleas are suddenly unable or unwilling to suppress their own animal instincts. After all, if Guinevere can commit adultery, what's to prevent them all from going full on rebel-without-a-cause?
The Real Gwen
But who is Guinevere, really? We learn very little about her as a person until “Lancelot and Elaine,” in which she seems, frankly, petty and unable to make up her mind. First she reprimands Lancelot for his relationship with Elaine, then she gets mad at him for being unkind to Elaine once she’s died. Get it together, girl.
In “Guinevere,” however, we get to meet a more complex and real Guinevere. Married to a man she found “high, self-contain’d, and passionless” (403), she turned to the more relatable Lancelot. Which we can understand, even while we don't exactly approve of cheating on your husband-who's-also-a-king.
But hey, she's truly remorseful about what she has done, and Guinevere realizes too late that her inability to love Arthur was due to her lack of belief in her own goodness. Wow, let’s take a moment to let that sink in. Could it be that Guinevere didn’t feel like she deserved Arthur’s love or faith? Could it be that she didn’t believe in herself? What do you think? How do you think Tennyson feels about Guinevere? He certainly gives us lots of options.
Only when Arthur expresses continued faith in her, despite what she has done, is Guinevere finally able to believe in her own potential for perfection and to see and love Arthur fully. Is this a happy ending? Well, maybe.