II
Among the major critics of Malory's work, Eugène Vinaver is well aware of the custom of the castle topos but tends to see it as part of the fantasy that Malory tried to eliminate. Critics have not turned their attention to the customs of the Weeping Castle or to similar episodes, of which there are many, for the custom of the castle was a favorite device of Malory's sources and one that he retained for the most part as he reduced his story into English.[20] Other examples include episodes involving Balin (MD 2.13), Percival's sister (MD 2.13 and 17.10), Castle Orgulous (MD 9.3),
and the Caste of Maidens (MD 13.15).[21] Only Larry Benson pays any real attention to the custom motif. He considers it as part of a pattern of tests for a hero.[22] But an interpretation that focuses strictly on male chivalry ignores the issue of social conformity, which affects everyone.
The first part of the episode, where Tristram and Isode are imprisoned, establishes the Weeping Castle as an image of the constraint of social customs. Today, we think of custom as modes of behavior accepted and practiced by a group, but not binding on outsiders.[23] Tristram arrives at the Weeping Caste "by fortune," and his indignant reaction to the local rules identifies him as one outside the pale of the castle's way. Yet Tristram never argues that the long arm of Breunor's law unfairly hales him into battle. Nor can he, for the storm that drives his ship ashore obscures his own responsibility for entering the jurisdiction willingly, where he seeks adventures in the French text and hospitality, or "good herborow" (harbor or haven) in the English. His situation is not that of one who seeks to avoid the unknown, but of someone who gradually learns, to his distress, what actions others expect of him. His social (as distinct from his judicial) position resembles that of a young person suddenly facing a social rite of initiation. Such ritual elements make Arnold Van Gennep's Rites of Passage a tempting key for reading romances. We might turn to Northrop Frye's cycles of nature in The Anatomy of Criticism or seek parallels between romances and the rituals of James Frazer's Golden Bough or "the dreams examined by Jung."[24] What matters, however, is that Tristram's participation turns what might otherwise be an image of local piracy or provincial banditry into an allegory of the constraints of social ideology. The episode mirrors the situation of anyone who must justify her conformity to a difficult custom.
Traditional practices are not explicitly stated as something that ought to be done. Obligations seem to reach out to ensnare the knight errant and his lady. They are not necessarily moral or immoral. They are not justified "in terms of the consequences of the action prescribed."[25] No practical reason is found for them other than "that's the way it's done."[26]
But as John Ladd points out, moral teachers do not try to justify the old ways by assuming that the old ways are good because they are old: "the authority of tradition is never employed as a ground for a moral prescription."[27] There must be another factor, such as the superior wisdom of those who lived before, or the sudden discovery that what seems old is recent, the responsibility not of nature but of a person. In Malory's romance, the custom is both old and not so old: "so this custom was used many winters" (MD 8.24), and much of Malory's stylistic genius is in that grim synecdoche for time which he added to his source.
When a nameless knight and a lady visit Tristram in prison, Tristram feels "distress" at his ill treatment:[28]
What is the cause the lord of this castle holdeth us in prison? It was never the custom of no place of worship that ever I came in, when a knight and a lady asked harbor, and they to receive them, and after to distress them that be his guests. (MD 8.25)
Hearing Tristram's tirade, the anonymous knight and lady explain to him the cause and function of his imprisonment. The knight suggests that the custom at stake is not confinement but what the local people call battle and judgment. Tristram reacts to what he believes is the purpose of the custom, to eliminate weak knights and plain ladies. He exclaims that "this is a foul custom and a shameful," but he is ready to conform to it, however much he dislikes the custom, as long as he can fight "on a fair field" (MD 8.25).
A certain mouvance , perhaps reflecting the variability of oral custom, allows the keeper of the custom to influence its procedure.[29] Where the anonymous knight says Tristram's duel will precede a beauty contest between Isode and Breunor's wife, Breunor announces that the beauty contest comes first:
For and thy lady be fairer than mine, with thy sword smite off my lady's head; and if my lady be fairer than thine, with my sword I must strike off her head. And if I may win thee, yet shall thy lady be mine, and thou shalt lose thy head. (MD 8.25)
It would seem that a chivalrous knight's task would be to defeat Sir Breunor and reform his castle, while sparing him and his lady. Tristram should eliminate the custom of judicial murder that obtains at the Weeping Castle, not necessarily kill the keepers of it. It is no small surprise, therefore, that after Breunor's wife loses the beauty contest, Tristram takes what the original text calls an "awke stroke" and smites off her head. Nor are we quite prepared for the end of Tristram's duel, when "anon Sir Tristram thrust Sir Breunor down grovelling, and then he unlaced his helm and struck off his head" (MD 8.26). To our shock, Tristram fully conforms to the castle's custom. Tristram follows what society requires. In this way he resembles the inhabitants of the castle, who conform to the conditions they announce.
It is not unusual in Arthurian romance for the keeper of the castle to tell the story of the custom's origin, or oversee its operation, or participate in it himself. This literary technique is a form of what anthropologists call "descriptive ethics." In chivalric romances, the keeper may explain the custom, or he may justify the custom by appealing to its antiquity or the tradition of his father.[30]
In the French story the inhabitants of the Castle of Tears maintain the custom because it was formerly established years before by Dialetes to ensure that they would always have the best knight and most beautiful lady to rule them. They force Sir Brunor, who comes from Ireland, to maintain it. In contrast, Malory's Breunor seems to be the source of the foul custom. His death, combined with the way others differ in their conception of how the custom operates, raises the question of how various people and groups maintain their local practice.
Anthropologists investigate the extent to which individuals conform to the moral code they announce as well as the function of their social practices. In England, even private courts of the manor were open to spectators, however biased their local loyalties. Sir Breunor's reference to a "judgment" leads Tristram to fear that the local population may not reward Isode's beauty.[31] He instantly seizes on the fact that the verdict in the judgment will be given by the "estates and commons" who have
gathered, and he worries that they will be biased: "'Nay, I will not so,' said Sir Tristram, 'for here is none that will give righteous judgement'" (MD 8.25).
The all-embracing power of social usage implicates Sir Tristram even as he protests against the foul custom he faces. Malory's use of what Mark Lambert calls the "collective voice" emphasizes the relationship between a person or group's own statement of its ideology, or moral code, and its practice.[32] By means of verbal ambiguities and confusions, the stiff conversations of Malory's informants create a felt need for a transcendent power to resolve the constraints people impose on themselves in the name of order.[33]
Although Tristram threatens harm to anyone who votes against Isode, Sir Breunor and everyone else can see that Isode is the fairer lady. When, as a result of the verdict, Tristram cuts off the head of Sir Breunor's lady, Tristram himself becomes a keeper of the castle's custom. He conforms to local practice despite repeatedly exclaiming against it. Pressured by the presence of spectators he cannot control, Tristram fulfills the conditions of the foul custom of the Weeping Castle, which ensure the dominance of the best knight and most beautiful lady. Similarly, when Tristram defeats Sir Breunor and cuts off his head, he is not unfair or callous, but punctilious in honoring the local code.
At once all the people who belong to the castle ask Tristram to "abide there still a little while to fordo that foul custom." And "Sir Tristram granted thereto." But why is there need to "fordo" (eliminate) the local practice if Sir Tristram loathes it, Sir Breunor is dead, and the people of the castle who do "homage and fealty" to Tristram want it ended? Sir Breunor's son Galahalt, who appears in the third section of the episode, has left home rather than support what he calls "a shameful custom and usage" (MD 8.27). No one wants it, yet the foul custom continues to exist.
If the premise of the Weeping Castle is the conforming power of public attitudes, the moral and artistic problem raised by this romance convention is how to ameliorate a custom of the castle that perpetuates
itself, since according to the custom, any knight strong enough to survive is forced to continue the local practice. Tristram unwillingly defends what he despises. He does so until Breunor's son Galahalt provides a solution to the moral perplexity of his imprisonment in the third section of the episode.
Malory fails to identify Galahalt adequately, in keeping with his practice of minimizing the influence of the prose Lancelot . He says only that Galahalt is dwelling in Sorelois with Lancelot when Tristram kills his parents. In the French story, Galehaut's sister, named Delice, brings him the news of this tragedy. Galehaut vows to return to his estate to avenge his parents. He insists that his vengeance requires a single combat, despite the objection of the King with the Hundred Knights that such a duel is too risky for one on whom the safety of his realm depends. Gale-haut ignores him and forces his sailors to take him to the Far Away Islands against their will (T 472.25-26). When he lands Galehaut says he will not be a prisoner, since he is ready to follow the custom of the caste by facing Tristan: "I am prepared to engage the custom of the caste!" ("car je sui prez de faire la costume de cest chastel!" T 473.6).
A further comparison with the French text shows that Malory deepened the prose Tristan's analogy between chivalric loyalty and custom. Tristan and Galehaut maintain the ritual of combat until Galehaut, severely wounded, tells Tristan that his men, led by the King of the Hundred Knights, will kill him to complete Galehaut's revenge: "Tristan, now you are dead! You see my men have arrived! You killed my father; if I do not achieve vengeance, I am shamed" ("Tristanz, fait il, or iés tu morz! Voiz la roes homes qui la vienent! Tu oceïs mon pere; se je ne m'en venge a cest point, dont sui je honiz," T 479.7-10).
Tristan answers that he is certain that Galehaut would never use such villainy (vilenie ) as to rely on reinforcements during a single combat: "'Ah,' said Sir Tristan, 'you say that to scare me!'" ("Ha! dit Tristanz, tu le diz por moi espoenter!" T 479-10). Then, with a sense of discrimination if not casuistry typical of early prose romances, Tristan declares that he realizes that he himself will achieve no honor by killing Galehaut
now, since Galehaut is a good prince and badly wounded. To save Galehaut's honor, Tristan holds himself defeated and hands him his sword:
Now slay me if you wish; and if you wish, let me live. And as God is willing, I do not do this for fear of death, for I have never been afraid to die, for death is something, I know, that no one can escape. I do this to have your good will, if that may be.
Or m'oci, se tu veus; et se tu veus, lesse moi vivre. Et se Diex me conseut, je ne fais mie ceste chose por dotance de mort, que ja de mort n'avrai paor, que c'est une chose que je sai bien que je ne puis eschaper; roes je le te di por ta bone volenté avoir, s'il puet estre. (T 479.16-20)
Tristan's courteous offer follows a romance topos. Gawain and Yvain each claim to be defeated in Chrétien's Chevalier au lion in a scene of mutual deferral when the two knights serve as respective champions for the two daughters of the Lord of Noire Espine.[34] In the prose Lancelot Galehaut himself refuses to pursue his conquest of King Arthur, because the king has too few men, saying, "and if I conquered his land at this time I would not win honor, but shame."[35] The prose Tristan replays the theme by establishing Galehaut's admiration for Tristan, which mirrors his love for Lancelot. As the two knights become friends, Galehaut encourages Tristan to tour Grant Bretaigne as soon as he has delivered Iseult to King Mark, and he promises to give all the lands he has conquered to Lancelot and Tristan if only he can see them together.[36]
Malory seems to have missed the point: Tristram yields to his adversary not because he is embarrassed to fight a man so badly wounded that he cannot possibly win, but because Galahalt has more men ("I will rather yield me to you than die, for that is more for the might of your men than of your hands," MD 8.27). Yet Malory did not overlook the moment of courteous accord; he expanded it to involve a mutual exchange of promises between Tristram and Galahalt that also provides a unique means to eliminate the local custom.[37] For Tristram's surrender, which echoes his submission to the local custom, allows Galahalt to ex-
press magnanimity in language that constantly invokes the name of Lancelot. This honorable discourse occurs when Galahalt declares that he forgives Tristram because "he is the noblest man that beareth life, but if it were Sir Launcelot du Lake." Galahalt further explains that he will eliminate the customs of the castle if Tristram will promise to seek Lancelot and "accompany with him."
As Galahalt pronounces the end of the custom of the castle, Malory's syntax produces a powerful ambiguity that has no equivalent in the French source. Galahalt conjures a vision of a world where a knight and a lady can do as they wish, or, as Galahalt says, "Ye shall go where ye will, and your fair lady with you." This vision of freedom from the constraint of custom contrasts with the practice of the Weeping Castle. Paradoxically, this vision is also part of a logical proposition that the Weeping Castle contains, because only if the custom of the castle still obtains does Galahalt need to release Tristram from it. He offers to end its baleful shadow if Tristram promises to go not just anywhere, but "unto Sir Launcelot." The offer and release has a double gestalt. Even as Galahalt proclaims Tristram's freedom, he makes that freedom conditional on Tristram's accepting his bondage to Galahalt. For when Galahalt says "so ye will promise," the hidden threat is, if Tristram does not promise to live free, the custom of the castle will remain in force:
"And, Sir Tristram," said Sir Galahalt, the Haut Prince, "well be ye found in these marches, and so ye will promise rile to go unto Sir Launcelot du Lake, and accompany with him, ye shall go where ye will, and your fair lady with you; and I shall promise you never in all my days shall such customs be used in this castle as have been used." (MD 8.27)
By means of this verbal exchange Malory's promotion of chivalry makes the medley of formal contests for prowess and beauty at the Weeping Castle outward manifestations of a deeper cultural logic. Even foul customs have a good function insofar as they partake of the idea of a social contract. From Cicero to Locke, what Thomas Wilson in the
Renaissance called a "bargain" was recognized as the fundamental gesture of civilization. Based on the natural law notion that a promise must be kept, Malory makes an exemplary myth—a model of good conduct—of what in the French is an originary custom, founded on religious hatred and the problems of cultural transmission. What eliminates the evil custom in Malory's text is something higher than a judicial duel, or an invading army that burns the castle, or the arrival of a new generation ready to denounce their fathers. It is an exchange of promises familiar to the common law: an offer and counteroffer, a social bargain created by Tristram and Galahalt. By affirming a custom of fair dealing, it serves as a powerful alternative to the previous constraints of local law.