When Family and Politics Mix: Female Agency, Mixed Spaces, and Coercive Kinship in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Awntyrs off Arthure at Terne Wathelyne, and “The Deth of Arthur” from Le Morte Darthur

In this paper I will be examining the relationship and rivalry between Morgan and Guinevere, sisters by law, and the intricate combination of love, family loyalty, and political obedience they both elicit from their shared nephew, Gawain through the systemized use of coercive kinship. I will be arguing that Morgan and Guinevere are connected by a desire to exert control and influence on the masculine, chivalric world of Camelot. In order to do so, Guinevere accesses and utilizes the masculinized, political forms of influence available to her, while Morgan is dependent on the more traditionally female modes of access through family lineage and blood ties. Either way, Morgan and Guinevere, in an effort to establish or maintain their influence and power in Arthur's court must rely on their nephew's courtly obedience and loyalty owed to them as their nephew and, in a larger sense, as their knight. Gawain, who owes both women fealty and submission according to the rules of chivalry (as his lord's queen and his aunt and his blood relative and aunt) behaves as their witness and knight. He acts as test subject and participant in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , knightly escort, witness, and participant in The Awyntrs off Arthur at the Terne Wathelyne, and as loyal knight and nephew in Sir Thomas Malory's “The Deth of Arthur.” In each of these texts, Gawain acts as an example of the chivalric code, but does so within a distinctly female-manipulated courtly space.