Walter's Sweet and Kind Women

          After our discussion on Wednesday, I decided to watch out for those author’s notes that pop up on almost every page. Some of them tell us what’s going on (e.g. “Walter goeth into the little dale” pg. 121) and some are more interpretive (e.g. “An evil creature” pg. 50). We have to be careful of such authorial intrusions and remain aware of how they might affect our reading. One that caught my attention is in the chapter “The Hunting of the Hart.” It describes the Lady saying, “Now she is kind again” (99). I immediately thought back to Walter’s wife in the first chapter. The narrator says that Walter “longed for her to be sweet and kind with him, and deemed that, might it be so, he should forget all the evil gone by” (2). When I first read this, my feminist mind cringed intensely. I immediately questioned Morris, the narrator, and Walter, and I didn’t have much hope for any of the female characters who might come along to be given much depth or interiority. Apparently, Walter doesn’t want to know her side of the story, nor does he want to know what’s going on in her life and mind (*gasp* she has her own life?! and MIND?!), neither of which do the reader get to see. He just wants her to be sweet and kind. Sound like Angel in the house, anyone?

            Throughout the book, I noticed that those two words, “sweet” and “kind,” appeared an annoying number of times. They are often used to describe nature, senses, emotions, and the Lady and the Maid. Walter cannot resist a sweet and kind woman, even if it’s all an act, as evidenced by his desire to have a sweet wife rather than work at a relationship. After the note that says, “Now she is kind again,” the narrator goes on to describe how “she was silent, and she clenched her hands and strained her limbs in the heat of her anger” (99). It takes a few more sentences for her to calm down and seem “kind and sweet” (100). Clearly the kindness that she exercises does not reflect what is going on in her head. But, yet again, we don’t get to see her inner mind, and Walter doesn’t care to.