A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
In A Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur’s Court, Morgan le Fay is characterized as an evil sociopath. She is
a queen who is sweet as can be to those who find favor in her eyes, yet
simultaneously she is a complete tyrant to those who displease her. For
example, even for the slight offense of accidentally losing his balance and
lightly touching her, the handsome page serving Morgan le Fay, is killed
instantly, by the queen herself.
The contrast is quite striking.
Morgan le Fay in the Magic Tree House is portrayed as this famous
librarian attempting to act righteously as she tries her best to save King
Arthur’s library. Yet, in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Morgan
le Fay is a crazed queen willing to hurt and kill whomever she wants. Due to
this stark distinction between portrayals of her character I decided to
research who Morgan le Fay really was with regards to the King Arthur legend. I
discovered that according to legend she was an extremely powerful magician and
sorceress (which does coincide with the Jack and Annie stories), yet she was not
on good terms (an understatement) with King Arthur. This is where legend and A
Connecticut
I read the Osborne series when I
was much younger and thus, in my mind, Morgan le Fay is a morally good
character. Osborne wrote a book directed towards children and therefore could
not design a character who killed others for entertainment. I find it extremely
interesting that she would use a character who did behave in such unscrupulous
ways as the basis for her good character, as opposed to using a more ethically
neutral individual. Perhaps it was her way of portraying the good in humanity—a
positive idea that is important to imbue in children in order to encourage
optimistic thoughts. Mark Twain, on the other hand, portrays Morgan le Fay with
her true colors—an evil sorceress who kills for pleasure. It appears to me that
Twain has written a sort of satire for human nature. He mocks the stupidity of
the nobility, perhaps insinuating that the wealthy and powerful personages are
in reality not as sophisticated as they seem as they are actually rather dimwitted
and driven by power and greed. He portrays the wickedness and selfishness of
humanity through this character of Morgan le Fay as she places individuals in
prison and kills whenever she feels like. She is the epitome of selfishness as
she hurts anyone who dares to irritate her or who appears as an obstacle to her
power.
Osborne, in writing a children’s book, could not possibly represent mankind
as legend would dictate-- in such a dark and morbid manner. As a result, the
very character that depicts pure malevolence in legend, is transformed into the
mysterious, beautiful and kindhearted Morgan le Fay of the Magic Tree House.
I'm wondering if, at least in part, Magic Tree House was modeled after A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, due to the similarities of time travel into a Arthurian Era and the prime focus around Morgan le Fay and then later Merlin (although in Twain's Connecticut Yankee it is in the opposite direction).
ReplyDeleteHowever, from my memories of the Magic Tree House series (although it has dulled in the many years since I last read one), I was always a little "creeped out" by Morgan Le Fay, even though she was supposedly good, she was creepy in her extreme power and difficult quests. Perhaps this was Osborne's nod to the traditional Morgan Le Fay while still maintaining the child-friendly story for her targeted audience
It's interesting (for me at least) to compare similarities between types of characters when they are put in similar settings. Hank and the kids don't really question their situations much they just sort of roll with it. This disorienting time traveling situation can only work so well because of the types of characters involved. Kids won't question because they won't think to. They don't know that time travel is unreasonable yet so why not go with the flow. And the only adult that could react so gracefully is a pragmatist - also relating to Lizzie's post about Hank. To a Yankee pragmatist it doesn't really matter how he got there or if it's an asylum, circus, the middle ages or just a Renaissance Fair. What matters to him isn't how or why, he is only concerned with the "where to from here".
DeleteWhat unifies pragmatists and kids is their adaptability.
It's neat that Twain and Osborn designed a story that worked with the characters so well. Any other way the characters would have been much less compliant to follow the story.
I agree with Shuli, I was actually wondering the same thing; combining Morgan le Fay and time travel makes me think that The Magic Tree House was, in a way, modeled after Connecticut Yankee.
ReplyDeletePersonally when i read TMTH, I suspected Morgan le Fay of hiding evil plots under a kindly librarian facade. (I didn’t trust her for at least 15 books.)
She's usually depicted as an evil character, conspiring against Arthur. However, some googling dug up mentions of older stories, pre-Mallory, which interestingly enough presented Morgan as a healer. This interpretation falls closer to how Osborne writes her, though it does add complexity to her significance in the legends. Even in the original Arthurian legends, she is presented as a powerful and scheming sorceress, who poses a real threat to Arthur and the Knights of Camelot.
Thinking about it now, the Morgan le Fay of ACYiKAC, despite her sadistic traits and fake magic, holds a lot of power in the book. All the other noblewomen mentioned in the story, including Sandy, are trophies of knightly quests or contrivances for adventures, damsels in distress. Morgan, on the other hand, has more power than her husband or son, and has a reputation equivalent to that of Merlin.
Although I have never read the MAGIC TREE HOUSE series, I think you describe Morgan Le Fay accurately enough to be able to comment on the discrepancies as well as the similarities as to how she is portrayed by both authors. The biggest differences can be accounted to a tale for children versus a tale for adults.
ReplyDeleteTwain's Hank does not believe in magic or sorcery. Automatically, pretending to be a sorceress takes away something from her possibly good character. As a children's tale, possessing magic is almost integral to get the story to seem feasible. In children's stories characters are rarely human. What I mean is that they are very black or white. Either good or bad. There is rarely confusion as to whom the child is to root for. Twain does make her out for a villain but she is not entirely evil since she does try to protect the prisoner's soul.
Another question one might ask to identify who had the more accurate portrayal of Morgan Le Fay, is the degree to which the authors intended the character to resemble the actual Morgan Le Fay. Is it that the authors borrowed her name and stuck loosely to the facts, or they intended her character to be her in truth. I think neither one means for the character to be an exact persona for the Morgan Le Fay that lived, but they use her for their needs. I will venture to say that in a children's book the needs are to be child friendly, and unwanted traits are deleted from her personality. That is why I feel Twain had a more description of her.
It is quite interesting to read stories where the same historic person is characterized in numerous and different ways. It was interesting to be made aware of this via your insightful post.
The fact that the TMTH was written for children is a great way to explain why Morgana is portrayed in a good light. However it leaves me wondering why the author chose Morgana in the first place? why not a different character from ancient legend that she wouldn't have to change? Like Merlin. He's a nice fellow - assuming you don't believe that hes a fraud like in the Connecticut Yankee. I bet he would really like to save books as well.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the author doesn't believe the Mallory accounts of Morgana's evil nature and therefor had no qualms using her as a force for good in her books.
Or maybe evil is relative and she was never evil at all?
DeleteHappens to be I'm pretty sure she's evil, but their are more questionable portrayals of these characters. The BBC show Merlin (at least the part that I reached) makes Morgana sympathetic and Merlin legitimate. Then again the BBC's Merlin would be less inclined to poke fun at British flaws than Twain.
Unlike Twain who uses these famous mythological characters to show-case fraudulent government officials and cruel or incompetent rulers the BBC wants their viewers to love these characters. Maybe it's a form of propaganda of their own.
Comparing the same characters portrayed in different ways by different people is a great way to see what the author has in mind
I guess it is a bit of propaganda. I don't think I ever realized before how much Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are cultural icons. Besides for the BBC and The Magic Tree House, I can think of two other novels that use the figures. I wonder if Mark Twain started that trend as well, or if there are other 19th century portrayals. I think I'd favor the latter, since A Connecticut Yankee seems to assume we know about King Arthur already. But maybe Twain's readers were just more acquainted with original Arthurian legend.
DeleteHi Tamar,
ReplyDeleteI thought your blog post was fascinating! I loved that you researched who Morgan le Fay really was in terms of the King Arthur legend and found out the ‘facts.’ It is really interesting to think of why Osborne would use a character like Le Fay if she had to change the queen’s entire essence – that of her evilness. In addition to your speculations, maybe it was simply an attempt to provide an aspect of ‘legitimacy’ to her stories. Throwing in a famous name works wonders for credibility.
As I was thinking about Le Fay’s character in general, I then began to compare and contrast her to her own brother, King Arthur. According to the novel, King Arthur isn’t necessarily portrayed as evil, per se. He is definitely not lauded or shone upon with a particularly favorable eye; he has his flaws as king, but Twain also reveals his strengths, objectively. From my own reading of the novel, I found him to be morally neutral, with a general penchant for doing good, but with a fear of change and breaking of tradition. In that regard, though he’s the king, he is the ‘everyman’ of that day. Twain may not be criticizing him so much for being tyrannical as he is for simply being ignorant of the possibilities of freedom. Even Hank views the king as somewhat of a friend, suggesting that he is not all that bad.
In contrast, Twain makes his position on Le Fay extremely clear, even mentioning at one point that Hank was planning to kill her one day for all of the evil she caused. In a sense, Arthur is representative of the general public – the unknowing, unchanging public; and Le Fay is representative of the power-holders and power-abusers, namely the aristocracy who took advantage of their status to commit atrocities. Allegorically, the two siblings go hand in hand in representing both aspects of the British culture that Hank ultimately tried to undermine.
Tamar, great blog post. It was well researched and lucidly written. After reading your post and Yael’s response it made me think of Hank. In my mind, he is similar to King Arthur, or at least Yael’s assessment of him, that he is “morally neutral with a general penchant for doing good”. Hank, while in the company of Morgan le Fay, had to tone down his personal desire for justice in order to stay in the good graces of society. He, as Yael said, was planning on killing le Fay one day but at this point he has to let her have her way so as to not upset the balance and lose her respect for him. I found it interesting to see Le Fay, who is the epitome of evil, contrasted by her brother, who is seen, at least this far into the novel, as a good man; he was superstitious like the rest of the nation but was still a good man. In between le Fay and her brother is Hank, who was approaching different situations with knowledge of thirteen hundred years and the morals that came with that knowledge. I thought it was very interesting to see how appalled he was by certain behaviors but had to play along with them anyway. For example, Hank freed most of the prisoners within a few pages of killing the entire band who played badly. I feel that seeing Hank in this light contrasted against the other major characters in the novel helps emphasize the change that comes later in the book in the tone of the novel. Later on, Hank kills thousands of knights using his technologies, seemingly without qualms about it. That says to me, besides for the fact that Twain was clearly in crisis mode, that Hank had assimilated fully into the culture which he was thrown into. The societal norms or the laws that permitted a queen to kill whomever whenever if she felt wronged that had so disgusted Hank were the same norms or allowances that he used when killing all the knights.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this post, however I am not so familiar with The Magic Tree House books. Therefore, just In terms of your comment about Twain mocking the stupidity of the nobility him portraying the wickedness and selfishness of humanity through the fact that Morgan le Fay kills whenever she feels like it, I actually believe that her stupidity was highlighted much more by other entertaining occurrences in the chapter than her uncontrollable violence. Hank, just like he does when he is riding with Sandy and he is irritated by the fact that she does not stop talking and uses the same monotonous language, attributes her faults to the fact that she was living in the sixth century and can't possibly know any better. Essentially, he is thereby somewhat excusing some of Morgan le Fay's behavior. For behavior to be so ridiculous that it can only be justified by blaming it on the times, so much so that Hank considers her intentions to pay for a page's life that she killed as a kind act, is perhaps stronger mockery than the queen's disregard for human life. It seems from instances like these that Twain focuses more on the stupidity of the nobility than he does on their capacity for evil, or more on the stupidity of the concept of nobility altogether rather than the pure wickedness of the individuals such as Morgan le Fay. Therefore, perhaps Twain's portrayal of the queen isn't so different from the Magic Tree House, especially taking into account that her character must have been censored in order to be a part of a children's book.
ReplyDelete