The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

A few months ago, in my local coffee shop, I noticed that the woman sitting next to me at the counter seemed particularly absorbed in her book. Finally I managed to get a glimpse of the cover:

If you’re old enough to remember what it was like to laboriously rewind spewed-out cassette tape back onto its spools with a biro, you probably remember, if not this book, one very like it. The 1980s saw a plethora of chunksters, many with gold embossed covers, launched, like massive liners, into the seas of the women’s fiction market. Chances by Jackie Collins, Destiny by Sally Beauman, Pearls by Celia Brayfield, Old Sins by Penny Vincenzi, Lady of Hay by Barbara Erskine are just some of those I can recommend. The Mists of Avalon (1982), like them, was an international bestseller. But it’s taken me until now to get to it.

Why? Perhaps because it’s a classic of the fantasy genre and I don’t read a lot of fantasy. The Lord of the Rings is one of my favourite books, but if I read the cover description knowing nothing of the book (The young hobbit Frodo Baggins must leave his peaceful home in the Shire and make a perilous journey to the fabled Cracks of Doom in order to defeat the Dark Lord) I’d be most unlikely to pick it up. Which shows it’s a good thing to read outside your comfort zone from time to time.

In one sense, The Mists of Avalon was very much within my comfort zone. It is historical fantasy, with its basis in the Arthurian legends, but I found the sense of another place and time was beautifully evoked. The book opens with Igraine, Duchess of Cornwall, gazing out into the mists which swirl around her castle of Tintagel. It took me a little time to work out who was who and how they were all related, but by the end of chapter one, when Viviane, Igraine’s priestess half-sister, confronts her with the fact that it is her destiny to bear the king who will unite the warring British factions, I was hooked.

Unfortunately a book with a promising start got bogged down. In essence, The Mists of Avalon is about conflict: not just between Christianity and its alternatives, but about the transition from a matriarchal culture where the king is just the husband of the queen, to a patriarchal culture where the queen is just the husband of the king. I’m not a specialist in the Dark Ages, early Christianity or comparative religions, so I have no idea how accurate any of this might be. But I did find it disappointing that the debate was mostly expressed through repetitive bickering between the different characters. The one time Arthur does meet with the present and future Merlin (two characters hold this title in succession) to talk about Britain’s religious future, the discussion is just mentioned in passing.

Gwenhwyfar looked at the great sword Excalibur, where it hung over the edge of the bed in its magical scabbard covered with mystical symbols that seemed to shine with pale silver and mock at her. She put out the light and lay down beside Arthur, saying, ‘Our Lord Jesus would safeguard you better than any such wicked enchantments. You did not have to do with any of their vile Goddesses and sorcery before you were made King, did you? I know such things were done in Uther’s day, but this is a Christian land!’

Arthur shifted uneasily and said, ‘There are many folk in this land, the Old People who dwelt here long before Rome came to us – we cannot take their Gods from them. And – what befell before my crowning – well, that touches you not, my Gwenhwyfar.’

‘Men cannot serve two masters,’ said Gwenhwyfar, surprised at her own daring. ‘I would have you altogether a Christian king, my lord.’

‘I owe allegiance to all my people,’ said Arthur, ‘not those alone who follow Christ – ‘

‘It seems to me,’ said Gwenhwyfar, ‘that those are your enemies, not the Saxons. The true warfare for a Christian king is only against those who do not follow Christ.’

I’m not keen on the idea of a patriarchal God with a white beard sitting on a cloud using his priests to boss women about, but Druidism, as it is presented here, didn’t appeal to me either (except for the descriptions of Beltane rituals – Gwen threatens to “go to the fires” at one point, and I wish she had instead of what did happen!) Morgaine, niece and heiress of Viviane, Lady of Avalon, thinks of nuns as ‘housebound hens’ but is admiring when a fellow priestess, who has made a vow of silence to the Goddess, manages to keep silent when she accidentally scalds herself with hot oil. This seemed very close to the practice of mortification of the flesh to me. Then we’re told that:

It was rare for a man with any deformity to be allowed into the Druid teachings – it was felt that the Gods marked inner faults in this way.

Viviane can be ruthless, and although she believes she is doing the will of the Goddess, looking at the results of her actions it was hard to believe that they were any more divinely inspired than Arthur’s were. Merlin (the first of two Merlins) is presented as a man of great wisdom, who is in favour of religious tolerance. Gwenhwyfar is the main advocate for Christianising Britain. As depicted here, she has all the wit, courage, fire, spirit and political judgement of an angora rabbit.

Actually, comparing Gwen to a rabbit is an insult to rabbits, which can be quite vicious. I don’t mean to imply that she was badly drawn – her characterisation was excellent, but I just found her very irritating. Morgaine is the most important character and the one with whom I had most sympathy: she is portrayed as strong-willed but vulnerable and compassionate. Despite the great length of the book and the amount of repetition, her relationships with men are rather under-written – I kept getting confused about whether she still loved Lancelot or not. Morgause, the evil Queen of Lothian, is the most negatively depicted of all the women – and also the most sexually active. For a feminist book, that surprised me.

After all these negatives, this was still a four-star book for me. Why? Because it created a world and pulled me into it. Camelot and Avalon were both well evoked, but it was the Avalon scenes I read the book for: I felt as if I was there, sitting by a fire listening to the debate about Britain’s future while the rain poured down outside. About the halfway mark, there were a lot of Camelot scenes and the book began to pall for me, but I pushed through it and I’m so glad I did as the last two hundred pages were riveting. I finished the book in tears and felt I wanted to take a day or two to think about it before starting something new. That doesn’t happen often.

After this I definitely want to read more Arthurian fiction, so any and all recommendations are welcome!

Tags: king arthur, marion zimmer bradley, the mists of avalon