After
the #MeToo campaign, I found it interesting to read Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. The knights of the
Round Table are often seen as the example of nobility and chivalry, but are
they really as good role models as we think?
These noble and gentlemanly knights were supposed to fight for and
protect women. The damsels in distress. And while they did that to some degree,
they also preyed upon them. Let’s take King Pellinore as an example. He rapes a
woman, and when he years later learns that the woman got a child with him, he
is applauded for having gotten such a strong and good son, and the woman is
told to be proud. She is told to be proud of having been raped.
Then there’s Sir Pelleas, who stalks the woman he says he loves and
won’t take no for an answer. Merlin, the sorcerer, exhibits similar behaviour
while courting Nenive, and is generally creepy towards her. In the end, she has
to trap him under a stone by sorcery to get rid of him.
At last, but not least, there’s the noblest of them all, Sir Lancelot
and King Arthur. Lancelot sleeps with the king’s wife and lies about it. King
Arthur sleeps with his own sister and get’s a child with her.
“But people don’t act like this anymore,” I can hear you shouting from
the back of the room. “Not all men!” No, but enough people, enough men, think
this is ok behaviour since they made a guy, who said he could grab women by the
pussy because he’s famous, the most powerful man in the world.
These are the “noble” knights of the Round Table. Is this really the
behaviour we want to see in our role models? Or maybe we should put the time of
knights and swordfights behind us and start looking forward to a time when men
treat women as equals and stop treating this behaviour as ok.
