What Are Pelleas, Cruelty Or Reality?

Pelleas, however, cannot distinguish between his idealized version of Ettarre and her actual cruelty. He first encounters her when he is in a “half-awake” (IX. 40) state and considers her a “vision hovering on a sea of fire” (IX. 50), failing to “dissociate the dream from reality” (Poston 202) after that initial meeting. Rather, he creates an idealized version of Ettarre in which he regards “the beauty of her flesh/ as tho’ it were the beauty of her soul” (IX. 74-75). King Arthur himself encourages this dream, withholding “his older and mightier [knights] from the [tournament]/ that Pelleas might obtain his lady’s love” (IX. 153-154). Pelleas’ false perception of Ettarre follows the deliberate dismissal of “the haunts of scorn” (IX. 71) in her eyes, which he manages to observe before he becomes enraptured by her beauty. At this point, Ettarre and “her ladies laugh’d along with her” (IX. 128) as Ettarre mocks him.
Pelleas, before encountering Ettarre, has had few interactions with women besides his sisters, and so considers her insults and physical attacks to “be the ways of ladies” (IX. 202), meant to serve as a “trial of faith” (IX. 203) for all potential suitors. These cultural assumptions about love
593) when they will be forced to separate. When they make plans to meet for the last time, “Vivien, lurking, heard/ [and] told Sir Mordred” (XI. 97-98), once again employing subterfuge to dismantle the kingdom. After they are discovered by Mordred, Lancelot offers to protect Guinevere at his castle, but she instead decides to “draw me into sanctuary/ and bide [her] doom” (XI. 119-120), an act which both claims responsibility for her actions and asserts her independence. By escaping to a church with only a “little maid” (XI. 3), despite the fact that she has other options, Guinevere makes a deliberate choice, exerting her agency as a being separate from both Arthur and