The Maid as Catharsis

What drove Morris to write The Wood Beyond the World?  He is mostly known as a successful textile designer and artist, but his self-proclaimed "simple" medieval romance-fantasies became incredibly influential to some of the most well-known fantasy writers of the 20th Century. He was an ardent socialist, but expressed countless times that his works of fiction were not written to reflect his political ideologies in any sense.

So why were they written? To me, they do not seem to be complicated allegories or deep subliminal discussions of modern politics. His work almost seems more of a cathartic release in light of his frustrating domestic situation.

From the very beginning of The Wood Beyond the World, Walter, the protagonist, laments his struggles with his unfaithful wife. They are cited as the chief reasons of his wishing to go to sea, and his desire to go deeper into the secondary world.  He mentions before he leaves that he often wished his wife would be sweet to him and fulfill his sexual desires for her. The rest of the story, once Walter meets and devotes himself to the Maid, shows the comfort of a lovely woman's sweetness towards him and their ultimate sexual fulfillment. From the start, she is devoted to Walter and does not stray from that devotion, even when pressured by the King's Son. And to be sure, Walter himself really plays no part in liberating the woman from the Lady and spiriting her away to safety; she's the one who frees herself and ensures the death of the Lady, thereby freeing Walter as well. Indeed, the whole of the plot centers around Walter's ever-present, passionate desire for the Maid. What matters most, in the end, is not that they stay in the Wood, or that he get to reign as king, but that they are together.

The Maid in the novel really is the ultimate personification of a virtuous, sweet, and faithful woman. One that both Walter, and Morris himself, given his wife's long-term affair with Dante Rossetti, would've longed for.