Joseph L. Lockett
Dr. Chance
ENGL 401
December 4, 1986

Arthurian Features in That Hideous Strength

Tales change with every teller. Features may be added or subtracted, stories may be broken apart or combined. Often the story-teller will adapt the tale for his own purposes to emphasize some theme of his own. C. S. Lewis uses and modifies older sources in many ways in his novel That Hideous Strength, incorporating themes and portions of Arthurian literature to add color and emphasize the subjects of his plot.

Lewis includes many direct references to older Arthurian literature in his novel. The leader of his group of heroes is the former philogist Ransom, at first known as "Mr. Fisher-King," who has a wounded foot. The name and the wound are obvious reminders of the Fisher-King myth which produces the quest for the Holy Grail in Malory, and the allusion is further supported when for his meal he is served only "a small flacon of red wine, and a roll of bread" (Lewis, p. 149) -- reminders of the Last Supper and the resulting relics that the Fisher-King is associated with. Lewis' tale differs in that the Fisher-King is the same person as the Pendragon. Yet his tale also combines a quest for holy things (eldilic help through Merlin) to heal the sickness of the land with a great, climactic battle against evil, thus merging the two characters' functions as well as their attributes. Also, as in earlier versions of the story, the Pendragon disappears after his final battle is completed, and the crowning conflict itself takes place in a dense fog which obscures everything.

When Merlin arrives, his full name is given as Merlinus Ambrosius, the name he is given in one of his earliest appearances in Arthurian literature, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Brittaniae. Merlin himself makes allusions to his master Blaise, the rumor that he was the son of an "airish man" or incubus, and the Dolorous Stroke of Balin. As Cecil Dimble searches for Merlin in the woods, he recalls the ancient "houses whose mortar had been ritually mixed with babies' blood" (Lewis, p. 233), reminding readers about the early stories of Vortigern's vanishing tower and the druids' plot to destroy the young Merlin by having his blood spread on the foundation. When Ransom's friendly bear, Mr. Bultitude, destroys the awful severed head through which the leaders of the N.I.C.E. (National Institute of Controlled Experiments) receive instructions from the evil "eldils," or spirits, Lewis seems to be referring to Arthur's dream in Geoffrey's Historia where a bear and a dragon fight together. There the bear is slain, but here he is victorious against the supernatural beast he fights against.

Dreams have been important in much of Arthurian literature, from the Historia of Geoffrey of Monmouth to Wace's Brut and the alliterative and stanzaic Morte Arthures. In those works, a vivid dream came to Arthur at some crucial point or points, whether on the way to Gaul, in his camp at Rome, or in England before his battle with Mordred. In That Hideous Strength, dreams appear not just at important moments, but regularly. Jane Studdock discovers herself to be a seer, able to dream of real events either happening or about to happen, and thus supplies important information to the Pendragon and his companions. Her dreams are more realistic and informative than allegorical, like King Arthur's. She directly sees Merlin being unearthed, lying in his "tomb," or emerging from it, or the head of Alcasan amidst its life-support fixtures. Yet still her dreams sometimes need interpretation, such as when she sees Frost unscrewing Alcasan's head and taking it away, or, even more allegorically, when she sees Venus (the wraith of Perelandra) and her helpers causing disorder and chaos in her marriage-chamber.

Lewis draws on Arthurian ideas and examples in less obvious ways as well. For both Arthur, the main character of most previous tales, and Mark Studdock, one of the protagonists of Lewis' novel, pride is a dangerous sin. In many early versions of his story, Arthur receives the news of Mordred's treachery and usurpation as he is roving across Europe subjecting it to his rule in defiance of Rome. Returning to England to defend his throne, he is overthrown in his final battle with Mordred, in many versions of the story as a consequence of his earlier pride. Mark is almost brought down because of his pride -- he is willing to do or overlook anything just to be part of an "inner circle" of power, where he can be in a position of control. Just in time he sees his error and begins to mentally defend himself against Frost's attempts to prepare him for "initiation" to fellowship with the evil Macrobes. These "inner circles" cause destruction in both normal Arthurian tales (Mordred, Agravaine, and their followers form a dissident subset in the court which plot its downfall) and in That Hideous Strength, (The Progressive Movement at Bracton and the many interlocking "inner circles," each deceiving the one below it, of the N.I.C.E.). In both Lewis' version and earlier retellings, a major figure on the evil side of the conflict is a "fairy." Both Morgan le Fay and "Fairy" Hardcastle accomplish their ends by deception, whether tricking knights into attacking their liege-lord (as in Malory's "Arthur and Accolon") or inciting riots and publishing false newspaper articles (as in Lewis' account), but in his "modern" tale Lewis laughingly makes Hardcastle a "fairy" of the modern type -- a homosexual.

Love and sex have often played large parts in the philosophy of Arthurian tales, and That Hideous Strength is no exception. One of the book's major themes is love and how a husband should behave towards his wife (and vice versa). Jane and Mark Studdock, the main characters of the story, have a marital relationship that seems to be in trouble until they learn through the events in the plot how a proper couple should behave. Ransom diagnoses her problem: "you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience" (Lewis, p. 147). Husbands and wives, to be lovers, must be obedient to one another, alternating in command and submission. Mark comes home from his experience with the N.I.C.E. in Belbury chastened, stripped of all his former lofty yet false ideals, and cognizant of the necessary "humility of a lover." The Dimbles and Dennistons provide examples of proper couples throughout the book, and finally the Studdocks too achieve this variety of courtly love that Lewis espouses.

For his novel Lewis draws not only on the materials of Arthurian literature, but also on the medieval view of the universe which underlies it all. The five planetary wraiths -- Viritrilbia, Perelandra, Malacandra, Glund, and Lurga, the manifestations of, respectively, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn -- all correspond to the medieval idea of "planetary Intelligences" of the heavenly spheres, and have characteristics and effects corresponding to medieval beliefs and ideas about the planets they govern. Mercury was believed to represent studiousness and learning, though combined with eagerness and swiftness, and the metal associated with it was quicksilver (the element mercury). Thus, as Viritrilbia arrives, the normal people in the house are moved to engage in swift, clever word-play and poetry, and upstairs where Ransom and Merlin are, "fragments [of thought and sanity]... went rolling to and fro like glittering drops and reunited themselves" (Lewis, p. 322) like quicksilver. Venus' metal was copper, and she represented beauty, amorousness, and good events. As Perelandra comes to the house, everyone is overwhelmed by beautiful sights and smells and becomes more friendly and charitable to each other, and Ransom says "this house is deeply under her influence. There is even copper in the soil" (Lewis, p. 317) This influence seems to be the reason all the animals and people are so friendly and peaceful in the house. To the medieval man, Mars represented martial feelings and hardiness, Jupiter kingliness and cheer, and Saturn, whose metal was lead, melancholy and age. When Malacandra, Glund, and Lurga arrive in the house, all the denizens undergo all these feelings and emotions as well. Thus all the planets, though represented as being worlds in the modern sense, rather than existing in a Ptolemaic universe, have the traits ascribed to them by the ancients. Lewis also follows medieval practice in setting the boundary between heaven and earth, pure and sinful, angelic and demonic, at the orbit of the Moon, and made the Earth, Tellus, the abode of the fallen angels, the "dark-eldils." Interestingly, in the medieval view the Moon often represents madness. According to Filostrato, the inhabitants of the Moon have already achieved the goal sought by N.I.C.E. by making their world utterly devoid of any life except their own, and making that highly artificial as well. But to any sane and normal person, this horrid plan surely represents madness.

In many version of the Arthurian saga, ideas are the enemy as much as people. In Malory, a mistaken idea is Mordred's main support in his campaign, since he has convinced the populace of Britain that "with kynge Arthur was never othir lyff but warre and stryff, and with sir Mordrede was grete joy and blysse" (Malory, p. 708). In White's The Once and Future King, the Orkney children would have been good people, but they have been warped, Mordred worst of all, by the ideas and prejudices fed them by their mother, Morgause. The idea of "fashion" and the "right people" to be with begin to eat away at the court under Mordred and Agravaine, and when they decide to overthrow Arthur they gain support by creating the Thrashers using the ideas of communism, nationalism, etc. Even as Arthur is dying, he realizes that all the misery of the wars he has had to fight has been caused by ideas: the necessity of revenge, the concept of frontiers and boundaries. In White's tale, Arthur's whole life comes down to a conflict of ideas: that of Might for itself and of Might for Right (or Law for Right later on).

Lewis' story also has ideas as antagonists. For,

"Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists; indifference to it, and a concentration upon mere power, had been the result... Dreams of the far future destiny of man were dragging up from its shallow and unquiet grave the old dream of Man as God. The very experiences of the dissecting room and the pathological laboratory were breeding a conviction that the stifling of all deep-set repugnances was the first essential for progress... What should they find incredible, since they believed no longer in a rational universe? What should they regard as too obscene, since they held that all morality was a mere subjective by-product of the physical and economic situations of men?" (Lewis, p. 203).

This conflict of emotionless, antibiological science with Ransom's devoutly Christian, life-embracing humanism provides the main altercation of the story-line. Dimble explains it all when he describes the ongoing battle between Britain and Logres:

"...the Arthurian story is mostly true history. There was a moment in the Sixth Century when something that is always trying to break through into this country nearly succeeded. Logres was our name for it...something we may call Britain is always haunted by something we may call Logres. Haven't you noticed that we are two countries? After every Arthur, a Mordred; behind every Milton, a Cromwell: a nation of poets, a nation of shopkeepers; the home of Sidney -- and of Cecil Rhodes. Is it any wonder they call us hypocrites? But what they mistake for hypocrisy is really the struggle between Logres and Britain. ...the Pendragons... and the little Logres which gathered round them have been the fingers which gave the tiny shove or the almost imperceptible pull, to prod England out of the drunken sleep or to draw her back from the final outrage into which Britain tempted her." (Lewis, pp. 368-369, passim).

In his novel That Hideous Strength, C. S. Lewis uses many themes and images from Arthurian literature to improve his tale. By borrowing like this, he implies that the people of the medieval world may have been closer, in a way, to the truths of the universe than most of us modern, advanced, proud, scientific, atheistic, ambitious people. Science can be a great blessing, but only if it is used correctly and for the good of all humanity and, more importantly, all creation. Though Lewis deals with small, unimportant people -- fellows of small colleges and maids from small towns -- he places them in a setting and situation of Arthurian scope, and thus brings out the great nobility of ordinary man.

Works Cited

Lewis, Clive Staples.: That Hideous Strength. Macmillan Publishing Co.: New York, NY (1946).
Malory, Sir Thomas.: Works. Eugene Vinaver, ed. Second edition. Oxford University Press: New York, NY (1971).
White, T. H.: The Once and Future King. The Berkley Publishing Group: New York, NY (1958).