What reminded me of this scene was Zimmer's reference to "Le Chateau Merveil: a place full of frightening trials and amazing experiences...a veritable "isle of women" (81), thought to be a sort of netherworld where one may enter but never return. However, "the one who enters and survives the trials demonstrates himself to be the hero elect, effects the release of all the women from their spells of bondage, and becomes the lord consort of the queen" (82). Now of course on the surface, one could see how this challenge might be particularly appealing to knights, and to one such as Sir Gawain. For who wouldn't want to become the lord consort over a castle full of women? But Zimmer, and ourselves included, are too smart to take sexual pandering as an explanation for this situation. What is this story really trying to show us? Well, depending on which version is being told, Gawain may or may not return from this netherworld of maternal charm, and that seems to make all the difference.
In this first version, Gawain comes to the castle after his long, wearied journey where he finds some relief and "a solution of the riddle of life and death. And here he shall win the long-desired and withheld reply. His oracle shall be maternal womanhood, the unspoken intuitive wisdom of the life force which, by its living presence, shall make intelligible to him the mystery of its own repeated rebirth through transient generations" (83). This may sound like a pretty sweet deal but Le Chateau Merveil is as much "a region of certain bliss" (83) as it is an enchantment, an illusion, an isolation from life. "The women there, as well as their male consort, dwell in the melancholy mood of the dead. They yearn to be back in the world of man and common life, but can never leave the island" (83). It appears that in terms of romantic descent, our hero has reached the very bottom of the well, and discovered a wonder land of untold pleasures, revealed secrets, and answers to life's greatest questions. However, submission to this sort of desire comes at a heavy price. To return to, and remain in, the realm of truth will always require a permanent separation from the world of man, from reality, and from life. We have all the answers now, but are entirely isolated. It suggests that even when getting to the very bottom of the truth, there is no way to cheat the cycle of life and death, because that is the only kind of truth there really is. We may remain within the realm of truth, master it, know it, control it, but it requires a consignment of ourselves to an early death of self. Zimmer says that this quest to the bottom is fundamentally part of the only quest there really is for all the great heroes, and to an even greater extent, humanity. "[He] discovers then that he is bound (as all mankind is bound) to the maternal principle of Mother Earth, Mother Life, bound to the ever-revolving wheel of life-through-death; and he becomes enwrapped therewith in the heroic melancholy that was known to all...who descended into the abyss of the domain beyond" (84). The women in the castle represent a descent into, a return into, the source of life and death that we came from, and must eventually acknowledge.
However, there is no redemption in a permanent descent. There must be an ascent, a way out after discovering the truth. Which is why Zimmer includes the other version of this tale where Sir Gawain chooses not to submit himself, or fully immerse himself in the bottomless truth, but instead "[resists] the blandishments of this mistress of the realm of death...By refusing to become the lord consort of the dazzlingly beautiful shadow-queen...By not capitulating to the generating principle of the life that is bound with death, the hero disengages himself from the self-consuming cycle" (84-5). In another reference to the symbolic virginity, Gawain chooses not to remain in the maternal realm of truth and pleasure, which is as self-destructive as it is eternal, but instead retains a sense of chastity, and denies temptation, which allows his escape and eventual redemption from the horror of the evil life-and-death-consuming wheel. Once again, a return to chastity, virginity, and innocence are necessary as a catalyst for rebirth, and the hero's redemption and defeat of death (or at the very least a prolonging of it).
After reading Zimmer's commentary, and re-watching what I once thought was just a funny scene from a movie, I discovered that maybe the Monty Python comedy troupe might have more literary merit than I once thought. We see at the beginning of the scene an image of the grail hanging over the castle. As the object of pursuit in the movie, it comes to represent the sort of immortality that Zimmer talks about, the rebirth for ourselves that we all seek. And as the hero of this particular quest, it is only right that Sir Galahad descends into the walls of the castle in order to search for this immortality himself. Once inside he is greeted by the virginal women in white, who occupy a realm that is as much "in the melancholy mood of the dead" as it is "a region of certain bliss." Castle Anthrax, much like Le Chateau Merveil, is now an oxymoron, a place of false security. Our Galahad has fallen to the bottom of some deep waters and discovered that maternal source of life (which is equal parts desirous and fatal) and found the wheel upon which he is bound.
However, this isn't your typical medieval romance. This is Monty Python. The story still arrives at the same redemptive conclusion as Sir Gawain's; the defeat over Galahad's "great peril" is still there. But it arrives at this end in a strange, convoluted way that only Monty Python could pull off. Through a string of lecherous reasoning on the part of both parties, there is definitely plenty of descending going on when compared to his previous reputation as a chaste and pure knight. The seemingly noble character of Sir Galahad the Chaste (who really hasn't faced much temptation up to this point to earn that title, and whose "strong-minded virtues" quickly crumble at the sight of a single sexual temptation and opportunity), really isn't noble or chaste at all. In fact he actually becomes quite the opposite. After a little bit of persuasion on the side of the women, he is ready to throw all his values out the window in order to gratify himself and spend the rest of his life in the castle. With his agreement, the noble Sir Galahad is eventually reduced, morally, to the basest of creatures who is only driven by his sexual needs, and even rejects the idea that he was losing control of himself to begin with. In Northrop Frye's chapter on descent, he seems to have this one pinned down perfectly. He says that "in romance the paradisal is frequently a deceitful illusion that turns out to be demonic or a destructive vision...It is possible to get out of this lower world, and some may not even want to. For it may also assume the form of a false paradise" (98, 123). Galahad becomes so enraptured with these women, that he really doesn't care where he may end up, as long as he can remain there with them. In reference to one of this particular story's mythological sources, The Odyssey, Frye says that "Of those turned into animals by Circe, some might refuse to return to human shape" (123). In this sexual temptation, Galahad shows a similar metamorphosis by abandoning his redemptive innocence, and becoming a baser creature from which he does not wish to return.
The structure is still the same as the Sir Gawain story. Only the emphasis is on how the character manages to triumph in the most humorous and degenerate way possible (through the baseness of his character, and by way of Sir Lancelot who has to come in and drag him out by the collar), rather than in Sir Gawain's tale where triumph was attained through his own virtue. Galahad probably would have remained in his eternal descent, but thankfully through the help of friends, an eventual ascent was achieved. And even though the ascent of his personal journey wasn't put into action by his own motivation, Lancelot still served as the mechanism of recognition necessary for Galahad's escape. With the help of an external companion to achieve this ascent and break the spell, the Monty Python adaptation is able to integrate and contain both versions of the Sir Gawain tale: Galahad falls under the spell and wishes to remain there forever, which is the first version of the story. And Galahad is eventually rescued from his peril by the intervention of Lancelot, who represents the virtue needed to overcome the temptation, of which Sir Gawain would have possessed internally to overcome his own temptation in the second version of the story.
