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According to Britannica, a scold was "a woman who disrupted the quiet of her neighborhood with gossip and slander." In "The Tale of Gareth of Orkney," Lynet "scolds" Gareth for their entire journey. She constantly insists that he is a low-class kitchen knave, smelly, and generally not up to the tasks at hand.

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Lynet is a central figure in the "Tale of Gareth of Orkney." She travels outside of her homeland and out of the domestic space into the public realm of Arthur's court in order to find a knight who can aid her sister. In her travels, she also transgresses social boundaries as she insults, belittles, and reproves Gareth at every turn. This is an attempt to view her actions through a historical lens and assess how Gareth-- and the power structures within the narrative-- uphold or reject the social norms of Malory's day.

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"Middle English second person pronouns 'thou' and 'you' (T/V) are considered to be among the means employed by medieval speakers to express their attitudes toward one another... the use of these pronouns could indicate power relations or solidarity/distance between the interactants," (WIŚNIEWSKA-PRZYMUSIŃSKA1 139).

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Who was allowed to insult whom, and how?

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Who was allowed to insult whom, and how?

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Also known as "branks," the scold's bridle was a metal head-cage designed to hold the tongues of the women with metal pincers during public punishments for scolding. This image, which I found through the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, depicts a farmer leading a scold by this bridle. The Museum's earliest record of the scold's bridle is in a court record from 1547.

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Because Gareth is participating in the tradition of the Fair Unknown, it's helpful to take a look at how these stories typically play out. The Fair Unknown is a literary archetype where a person of high status goes incognito in a strange court that does not recognize them, and through a series of tests, they prove themselves to be worthy of their nobility which is later revealed.

According to Arnold Sanders's "Sir Gareth and the Unfair Unknown", the "chiding damsel" is a typical test of the Fair Unknown, which means that Lynet acts within the boundary of her archetpye in this regard. However, there are some instances in which this chiding works in Gareth's favor instead of against it

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Women in Arthuriana / Women in the World

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Women in Arthuriana / Women in the World

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At the time Malory was writing, there were societal expectations for women's presence and behavior in certain spaces. Lynet, however, ignores most of these societal rules and breaks the boundaries regarding the places in which women were welcome and safe and the proper behavior which ensured their continued welcome and safety within those spaces.

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In the tale of Gareth of Orkney, Lynet uses stronger magic than any woman in Malory's work; she uses her magic to raise and control a warrior to do her bidding. Morgan le Fay, Morgause, Nimue, and Malory's other magical women mostly just charm others into doing their bidding, and almost never is this done in the context of combat. Thus, it would seem that

Lynet is a breaker of the typical boundaries set for these magical women, and seems to be the most powerful of them.

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"Anthropologists have noticed taht women's access to the entire environment was restricted... when women went outside the house, they did so in the company of other women," (Hanawalt 19).

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Not only is she unusual for a magical woman in Malory's canon, but she also breaks the boundary surrounding gender as it pertains to combat. Because she uses her sorcery to engage a warrior into combat with Gareth, she is therefore engaging herself in combat, albeit indirectly, with Gareth's own body and will. This was uncommon in literature of Malory's day, and it is especially interesting in that there seems to be no repercussions for her use of sorcery or her use of force. Perhaps this is because she uses her sorcery in defense of her sister's chastity and reputation, but in any case, it certainly falls outside the norm for Malory's women

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"Women were insulted through their sexuality or sexual decency, men through their roles as carriers of public trust, or through their honesty, courage, and worth," (Dean 218-219).

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"Men and women had different powers over both words and bodies. When faced with a disturbance, a man among bystanders would challenge the source of the uproar. A young woman would direct her responding words of insult not at the man, but at his female companion," (Dean 217).

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The vast majority of Lynet's insults all attack Gareth's class status, and therefore his character. He is not a knight in whom great public trust is placed, but rather a low-class, low-worth person. Consider this insult:

"anone she sayd what dost thow here / thou stynkest al of the kechyn / thy clothes been bawdy of the greece and talowe that thou gaynest in kynge Arthur's kechyn... what art thou but a luske and a torner of broches and a ladyl wessher," (Caxton 218-219)

This is an example of how Lynet equates low class to low morality. She equates the task of washing ladles with promiscuous behavior like "torning broches."

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"When it was still in usage, thou and its derivatives were likely used as more direct, personal forms of address. You on the other hand was supposedly the more official, impersonal form... T/V pronouns, when used non-reciprocally, have the potential of insulting the addressee," (WIŚNIEWSKA-PRZYMUSIŃSKA1 142)

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"[a woman] should keep her eyes down in the streets... women's space, therefore, could be effectively preserved by physical limitations of the movement of the head and eyes," (Hanawalt 22).

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We see that, although Lynet is in Gareth's company, the narration insists that she approaches the enemy knights, which implies that she begins the encounter by bringing her open presence to them, which then prompts them to speak. We see this on page 221 where Malory writes, "whanne she came nyghe him [he] spake." Therefore, Lynet breaks typical historical boundaries for women's behavior by inviting conversation-- and therefore challenge-- by strange men.

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Lynet's breaking of boundaries-- and Gareth's reaction to these breakings-- is ultimately some kind of test for Gareth. Usually, tests of a knight's worthiness are tests of their adherence to the chivalric code.

Lynet's scolding of Gareth-- and his reactions to that scolding-- are indicative of only one aspect of the tests that are given to him in this narrative. If, according to chivalry, a knight is to balance his love and loyalty between his king, his God, and his lady, then Gareth is tightly bound to behave in a Christian manner, treat Lynet well, and carry out the duty of protecting her that Arthur, his king, has given him. Lynet is central to these tests-- both as a tester and a form of aid.

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Even Lynet's interference in and interruption of her sister's would-be pre-nuptial encounter with Gareth is a form of aid to her hapless kitchen knave. Fuller asserts, "Lynet's thwarting of the lovers' pre-nuptial tryst is, like her earlier mistreatment of Gareth, done for his welfare-- and that of Lyones... [since it involves protecting] the couple's chastity, and, by extension, the social standing of Lyones," (262).

Had the lovers been able to consummate pending Arthur and Morgawse's permission to do so, not only would the two of them have broken Christian expectations for sexual encounters, but they would have also unwittingly implied that the consummation took place because there was some amount of doubt about whether Lyones's social status matched Gareth's own well enough to wait for permission just in case.

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Witch trials in the middle ages remain infamous, and have become euphemistic of any unjust persecution. Witches-- also known as women-- were punished for their supposedly preternatural abilities of healing, or perhaps for "bewitching children" or "destroying livestock"; the punishments for these crimes was usually something along the lines of death by beheading and subsequent burning, exile, torture, hanging, and more (The World Betwitched: Visions of Witchcraft from the Cornell Collections).

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Even if Lynet, with her healing sorcery and her ability to conjure warriors to her aid, would have been able to escape the scold's bridle in the real world, it is unlikely that she would have escaped these punishments or others like them for her witchcraft. I find it especially interesting that most of Malory's women seems to be magical in some way when his own culture was so very anti-magic!

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It can be difficult to put one's finger on an exact definition of chivalry. On this subject, Maurice Keen writes,

"One can define within reasonably close limits what is meant by the word knight, the French chevalier... but chivalry, the abstraction from chevalier, is not so pinned down... Chivalry cannot be divorced from the martial world of the mounted warrior: it cannot be divorced from aristocracy, because knights commonly were men of high lineage: and from the middle of the twelfth century on it frequently carries ethical or religious overtones," (1-2).

However, chivalry can be boiled down to three loyalties which can and often do contradict: a knight's loyalty to his God, his king, and his lady.... although not necessarily in that order!

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Gareth makes it clear that, though the damoysel's chiding bothers him, he uses it to stregnthen his resolve.

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According to Fuller, Lynet also solves the problem of Gareth's need to keep his noble heritage a secret by "disparaging Gareth in front of other knights in order to discover his lineage," (257).

This happens when Gareth and Lynet encounter the black knight, who asserts that Lynet may be right in her insulting of Gareth, but that "how be it as ye say that he be no man of worshyp he is a ful lykely persone / and ful lyke to be a stronge man" (Caxton 222). That said, the knight goes on to speak disparagingly of Gareth's lineage, which frees Gareth to rebuttal with a statement regarding his nobiliy:

"I am a gentyl man borne and of more hyghe lynage than thou," (222).

In this way, Lynet's insults carved a path of Gareth to assert his own lineage without revealing his identity or seeming to boast falsely when he refuses to give his own lineage in order to protect his identity.

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Lynet also "mistreats Gareth in front of his defeated opponents, manipulating them into asserting his lineage and prowess," (257). This occurs throughout the text, but perhaps most notably in Gareth's encounter with the green knight.

"Meruelle me thynketh said the grene knyght to the damoysel why ye rebuke this noble knyghte as ye doo / for I warne you damoysel he is a full noble knight... ye shalle preue at the ende that he his come of a noble blood and of kynges lynage" (Caxton 225).

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Therefore, Lynet's scolding actually becomes more than a test of Gareth's patience. Rather, Lynet steps once again outside the boundary of her archetype to aid Gareth on his quest instead of hindering him.

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This is a digitized image of a German engraving in which a suspected witch was being tortured. Image from BBC's "What happened to those accused of being witches?" website

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I've included here an example of how Gareth indicates his respect for Lynet by using "you" pronouns, and how she disrespects him in turn by using "thou."

Gareth says, "Saye to me what ye wylle / I wylle not go from you what someuer ye say"

To which Lynet responds,

"Fy on the kechyn knave wolt thou fynysshe myn aduenture / thou shalt anone be met with al / that thou woldst not for alle the brothe that ever thou soupest ones to loke hym in the face," (219).

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Lynet is one of Malory's magical women. Two of her magical talents that we see in the Tale of Gareth are healing and conjuring. She displays both of these talents when she is "a lytel displeased" and thought her sister was "a lytel ouerhasty" in her romance with Gareth (Caxton 241). To remedy this, she "lete ordeyne by her subtyl craftes that they had not their entententes... vntyl they were maryed," (241)

These "subtyl craftes" come in the form of a conjured warrior whom Gareth beheads. Afterwards, "Dame Lynet [came] and toke up the hede in syghte of hem alle / and enoynted it with an oyntment there as it was smyten of / and in the same wyse she dyd to the other part... and thenne she sette it to gyders / and it stake as fast as euer it did," (Caxton 248)