5 - Castles as Prisons

Summary

A survey of castle prisons across the medieval period evidences considerable variety. Prison cells may occupy towers or gatehouses or underground chambers, for example. Records of captivity likewise hint at variability in the treatment of prisoners: some experience the relative comfort of a trapped guest, while others endure physical and emotional hardships. This holds true in Malory’s Morte Darthur. However, across these different types of prisons, commonalities emerge. Prison cells enforce containment, but one not easily established, as prisoners yearn for the world beyond the walls. By their nature, prisons also produce a hierarchical relationship between captor and captive, both of whom tend to look inward and outward, toward and away from the cell. The relationships of both jailer and jailed to the spaces of imprisonment prove complex and essential to understanding characters and spaces alike – this is no surprise, as the prison and its cells are, of course, social spaces. The social project of the prison cell (of the space at work) is to break the captive, to stop him or her from looking either inward or outward. Malory’s imprisoned knights and ladies cannot be thus conquered by the spaces, treacherous as these spaces may be at times. They are, with few exceptions, ever looking in and out, ever thinking in and out, and ever gesturing in and out. The prisons become porous in response to this. We can learn much about Malory’s castles and his characters on both sides of the imprisonment by inspecting the prisons and their inability to enclose. The mechanics of power implicit in castle structures as a whole, and particularly in their various prisons, which are designed to subjugate in an extreme fashion, constantly push against the opposing power and identity of the captives.

This chapter will roam far and away from Arthur’s own castles, as we so rarely see them used as prisons. Indeed, as Chapter Two details, we see Balyn’s imprisonment only in his release, a move that, though intentional, highlights that even the prisons of Camelot cannot hold. The porousness of Arthur’s prisons is not examined further in the text. Arthur and his knights win many prisoners over the course of the Roman War, but there it is the taking of the prisoners and not the keeping of them that seems to matter most.