The Mabinogion is a collection of eleven prose stories from medieval Welsh manuscripts. They draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and on early medieval historical traditions.
While some details may hark back to older Iron Age traditions, each of these tales is the product of a highly developed Welsh narrative tradition, both oral and written. The stories of the Mabinogion appear in either or both of two Medieval Welsh manuscripts, the White Book of Rhydderch written ca. 1350, and the Red Book of Hergest written about 1382-1410, although texts or fragments of some of the tales have been preserved in earlier 13th century and later manuscripts.
They were first translated into English by Lady Charlotte Guest in the mid 19th century. During the 1930s and early 1940s, a young woman from a lively, educated, Quaker family, writing under the name Evangeline Walton, began writing a series of novels focused on retelling the myths of the Mabinogion.
Publishing History
Only one of these novels was published at the time, in 1936 and under the unfortunate title (chosen by her publisher) of The Virgin and the Swine. The book sold poorly, and as a result none of the other novels in the series reached print at the time.
They were rediscovered in the 1970s, however, and published as part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. Their author, Evangeline Walton, became popular in North America and Europe for her “ability to humanize historical and mythological subjects with eloquence, humor and compassion” (Spencer, Paul. “Evangeline Walton: an interview.” Fantasy Review, March 1985).
The fourth novel in what is now known as The Mabinogion Tetralogy was published in 1974 and nominated for a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award in 1975, an honor which was won by another novel of the Tetralogy, The Song of Rhiannon, in 1973.
Gender Roles and Feminism in the Mabinogion
Although an element of feminism runs deeply through Prince of Annwn (Evangeline Walton, New York: Ballantine Books, 1974, ISBN: 345-24233-5-150), it still codes strongly as a narrative of traditional American sexual values.
Masculinity throughout the novel is idealized in the "warrior" model: strength, perseverence, courage, honor, and loyalty are privileged as the proper attributes of the masculine. The main character of the novel, Pwyll Prince of Dyved, is described frequently as "a bull in battle," and throughout his journey into the underworld on behalf of Arawn King of the Underworld, he faces overwhelming challenges with bravery and a stubborn willingness to die rather than fail, for the sake of a promise made in extraordinary circumstances.
Similarly, femininity coalesces in the "help-mate" model: the women of Prince of Annwn are glorified in their roles as faithful wife, supportive partner, peace maker, and ardent lover. Their many positive attributes, such as cleverness, wit, mercy, wisdom, and pity, are put into the service of the masculine in order to act, for they are powerless to act otherwise, or must appear so.
But appearances can be deceiving, as Pwyll learns too well. In the tale of the Prince of Dyved, women are all otherworldly. There are no female characters that are not imbued with a supernatural agency. The feminine is idealized as being more than natural, an agency for the work of a goddess of love and mercy.
In Evangeline Walton's medieval Wales, womanhood becomes a site of power because all women are priestesses of this divine agency of the feminine trinity: maiden/mother/crone. And yet, despite their privileged site of power as incarnation of the supernatural Mother, women in Evangeline Walton are without agency of their own.
Rhiannon must abide by the law of her father and marry a man not of her choosing, and may only extricate herself from this bondage relationship through the agency of another man, manipulated into action for reasons mysterious to him.
Gender and Performance
What becomes clear during the reading of Prince of Annwn is that gender roles, whether masculine or feminine, are selected or chosen from available models offered by a culture, and are then performed, like an actor performing Shakespeare.
Pwyll has many opportunities to avoid the challenges set before him by the King of the Underworld and the fairy woman Rhiannon, but choosing to avoid those challenges would mean choosing not to live according to the values of masculinity established by his culture (or, more to the point, by his author, Evangeline Walton).
By choosing to be "masculine," Pwyll must also choose to behave according to a masculinist fashion, and must therefore honor his commitments and demonstrate loyalty, fearlessness in battle, and strength at arms.
Similarly, the women of Prince of Annwn must demonstrate their femininity by performing according to the feminist fashion established by Walton: they must be clever, beautiful, sexual, and yet subordinate to male authority.
Thus, for Walton, feminism is not necessarily about liberating women from their subordinate role in a male-female binary opposition, but rather exploiting their position within that hierarchy through their performance of "the feminine."
