4 - Castles and the Domestic Sphere

Summary

As the previous chapters have discussed, the castle is the site – architecturally, symbolically, and socially – that houses the king and his community and participates in defining both. However, while performing myriad public duties, castles remain the primary domestic space for the king and queen (though not always together), as well as many other knights. Indeed, the castle as fortress and residence necessitates the presence of the domestic, which here and throughout this discussion I understand broadly, as in its Latin root, domus, or home. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, offers a vast definition: ‘Of or belonging to the home, house, or household; pertaining to one’s place of residence or family affairs; household, home, “family.”’This potentially encompasses everything at or related to the house and family; this chapter explores several domestic areas, though it focuses primarily on love (and lust and marriage) and childrearing, and peers briefly at food (both its preparation and its consumption).Within the walls of the Morte’s castles, we see many acts of love and nourishment. These glimpses into the private sphere offer – or at least hint at – a rounded picture of the life in and around Arthur’s court, but often via controversy and trouble. Gaston Bachelard says, ‘We must first look for centers of simplicity in houses with many rooms. For as Baudelaire said, in a palace, “there is no room for intimacy.”’How true this is in the Morte Darthur, where we often see the uncomfortable and even impossible overlap between the domestic – the private – and other more public affairs. Indeed, I am not sure the domestic is ever entirely distinct from politics, war, community, etc. Specifically domestic resolution and success prove difficult to find. Malory’s castles, like those across much medieval literature and life, provide an exaggerated example of the home office, but one in which home is routinely sacrificed for office. The scenes of domestic life tend to have a significant impact on political and military action, and on the health of the Arthurian community as a whole. Marion Wynne-Davies has argued that ‘Malory’s main concern in the Morte Darthur is to examine the role of men in relation to their private desires and public responsibilities; however, as a natural adjunct to this central theme, the position of women in fifteenth-century literature is inevitably touched upon.’