Character Clues

Character Analysis

Direct Characterization

We learn about characters in Idylls of the King both from direct characterization and from what other characters say about them (which we could maybe call indirect characterization). Elaine, for example, is “Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable” (“Lancelot and Elaine,” 1), a description Arthur echoes when he tells Lancelot that Elaine seems made to be loved by him, “shaped / by God for thee alone” (1356). Lancelot calls Elaine “good” and “true” (1283).

These characterizations seem accurate to us, but in a story in which truth is a product of an individual’s belief about human nature, we have to be careful whom we trust for characterizations.

Vivien, for example, calls Arthur’s knights “full-fed liars” (“Merlin and Vivien,” 690), but her perception of them is driven by her belief that no human being can possibly be pure. Likewise, when Arthur praises Lancelot as the knight most worthy of his trust, we know that this perception is colored by his optimism about human beings’ basic honesty. What characters say about others, then, tells us just as much about the character of the speaker as the spoken-of.

Sex and Love

Arthur idealizes the monogamous love of a man for a woman as a bond that can “keep down the base in man,” and “teach high thought, and amiable words / And courtliness, and the desire of fame, and love of truth, and all that makes a man” (“Guinevere,” 478-480). For this reason, a character’s successful participation in a monogamous relationship is a pretty good indication in the Idylls that he’s a great guy.

Geraint’s marriage to Enid, for example, is fairly successful when all is said and done. Accordingly, Geraint is so good that he inspires a wayward knight, Edyrn, to give up his violent ways and join Arthur’s Order. By contrast, Gawain is a terrible womanizer, and he also turns out to be irresponsible and unprincipled.

Physical Appearances

A character’s appearance tells us a great deal about him in this poem. The Idylls associate light with moral perfection. Arthur, for example, as the poem’s ideal man, is bright, shiny, and fair, whereas Lancelot has a touch of color. (See “Light and Color” for more on this.)

Another way the poem characterizes through physical appearance is by describing people as animals. Vivien becomes a serpent coiled around Merlin’s neck; Mordred looks like a sly fox. This animal association is highly meaningful in a poem that portrays Arthur as the tamer of mankind’s bestial nature. The characters who look like animals are also the ones who rebel against Arthur’s attempts to tame the beast in men.