Posted by Will Patrick
5 January 2023By Ashwag Al Thubaiti
University of Exeter
Introduction[1]
Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and The Last Enchantment have all the elements you need to describe them as an Arthurian trilogy: historical locales, the sword Excalibur, the tragedy, the love and the war.[2] But its theme of education is one of its most important elements. At the height of her popularity, after writing successful romantic thrillers that made her ‘an internationally recognised and award-winning novelist in the mid to late-twentieth century’, Mary Stewart decided to turn to the Arthurian legend through writing her first Arthurian novel The Crystal Cave.[3] Initially, this unexpected switch alarmed her publisher who advised her against writing The Crystal Cave in the first place, as she explained, ‘“[the publishers] like you to be categorised and go on producing the same book” to better guarantee a readership, and a profit’ but her initial three Arthurian novels, published from 1970-1979, formed an internationally best-selling trilogy.[4] The trilogy is mainly set in fifth century Britain after the Roman withdrawal. Myrddin Emrys, commonly known as Merlin, is the hero of the trilogy and the first novel is an autobiography ofhis life. Stewart created a pedagogical scheme for his childhood education in Maridunum and for his adolescent and adult education in Brittany with his father, Ambrosius the High King of all Britain. Her second and third novels tell the story of Arthur, particularly his childhood and education as well as Merlin’s role as his tutor and later his adviser.
The education of Merlin and Arthur is often of minimal importance in stories about Arthur. Instead, focus is usually given to the circumstances of Arthur’s birth and the mystery surrounding it. T. H. White and Mary Stewart are both exceptions, in that they shed light on education as an important aspect of the Arthurian legend which we know little about. It can be no coincidence, that Mary Stewart’s and T. H. White’s Arthurian stories engage unusually deeply, for the Arthurian canon, with ideas of education, as they both worked as schoolteachers before taking up writing novels as a profession. An examination of Stewart’s and White’s educational background reveals circumstances which one would not immediately suppose to be conducive to a love of learning, as both experienced restrictive educational regimes growing up in inter-war Britain before becoming educators themselves. Both Stewart and White hated their early schooling but were not put off education by it and, on the contrary, devoted the early parts of their careers to it. Although neither brings their teaching experiences into their novel biographically in any simple sense, it is revealing to examine education in the novels with an awareness of the educational contexts in which Stewart and White worked.
In their Arthurian fiction, Stewart and White create an educational scheme for their pupils, particularly Arthur, through building a connection between the young future King and nature by turning back to the educational theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (especially in Emile: Or On Education).[5] Scholars looking at the trilogy have focused on several themes but its theme of education is never fully considered compared with T. H. White’s masterpiece on education, The Sword in the Stone and Rousseau’s Emile or On Education .[6]Reading Stewart’s trilogy alongside these texts help to understand her preoccupation with education and how she used Arthurian legend to address contemporary conflicts and concerns surrounding education. This article assesses Mary Stewart’s treatment of the theme of education in her trilogy in light of T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone while paying attention to both authors’ social situations. Their attention to education in their fiction is, to a significant extent, a response to their previous school experiences. A turn to nature is prominent here, and this article argues that, alongside childhood experiences at school, the educational theory of Rousseau (especially in Emile; or On Education) casts particularly revealing light on these novelists’ rejection of the mid-twentieth century pedagogical mainstream. This article analyses how Stewart and White borrowed, reformulated and used Rousseau’s ideas in new contexts, within their twentieth century retellings of the Arthurian legend. Both envision the role of natural history in education, with fantastic lessons of metamorphosis in contrast to modern systems of education. Although there is no evidence that either of them read Rousseau directly, they were both promoting intertextual ideas that were first developed by Rousseau and then became popular among English educators and thinkers from Sarah Fielding through to the Hadow report of 1933.
Mary Stewart and T. H. White: Some Historical and Biographical Considerations (1920s-1930s)
There are biographical reasons that made both Stewart and White write about education in a new and unusual context, the Arthurian legend. Although Stewart’s and White’s childhoods varied widely, they both suffered from traumatic experiences resulting from the hard-edged, restrictive educational regimes of inter-war Britain before becoming educators themselves.
Stewart drew on her unhappy childhood when writing both her brief autobiography About Mary Stewart and her novel Thornyhold.[7] Stewart’s first contact with education was neither pleasant nor particularly educational. In 1924, she was sent to a boarding school where she spent two unhappy years. Her intelligence, making school history by passing all six grades of the Royal Drawing Society examination by age thirteen, resulted in bullying, ‘The experience stayed with her – “I still have no self-confidence”, she said – and also made its way into her fiction’.[8] She left the school in 1926 after a near nervous breakdown and received a scholarship to Eden Hall, Cumberland where she spent a happy and peaceful time.[9] Stewart graduated from Durham University with First Class Honours in 1938.
Stewart’s teaching experience began with her first job, during World War II, at an elementary school in Middlesbrough where she taught arithmetic, sewing and music. From 1941-1956, Stewart gained experience in a number of institutions, including Durham University, St. Hild’s College, and University of Dramatic Society, teaching different subjects at different levels.[10] In 1956, Stewart moved with her husband, Frederick Henry Stewart, to Edinburgh where her husband had been appointed Regius Professor in Geology and she decided to take up fiction writing full-time.[11]
Like Stewart, White’s story is touched by the legacy of schooling that effectively destroyed his self-esteem and emphasised his sense of inferiority. In the last years of his life, White gave lectures on ‘The Pleasures of Learning’ to highlight his consistent need to learn new skills as ‘a compensation for an unhappy childhood whose legacy was what he termed ‘“my sense of inferiority, my sense of danger, my sense of disaster”’.[12] In September 1920, White was sent to Cheltenham College, the oldest of the Victorian public schools which had a military side which trained prospective army entrants.[13] In his diary and poems, White referred many times to the environment of fear and violence of this school and its harsh regime which made young White pray madly every night ‘Please God, don’t let me be beaten tonight’.[14] In July 1924, White left Cheltenham to join Queens’ College, Cambridge, and graduated in 1928 with a first-class degree in English.[15] After graduation, White worked as a school teacher for six years. His first position was an assistant master to a preparatory school in Reigate in the south of England where he taught Latin from 1930-1932.[16] He then worked as a head of English at Stowe School from 1932-1936, a school founded by headmaster J. F. Roxburgh on 11 May 1923 with a desire to awaken in students an interest in poetry, architecture and nature.[17]
Natural history and the education of the future King
In Stewart’s trilogy and in White’s novel, the education of Arthur is highly influenced by Rousseau’s Emile. In Emile, Rousseau gives an account of how he would educate an imaginary male student, Emile. Rousseau differentiates between the education of a man and the education of a citizen and based on this he divides schooling into two systems: the public and common education, and the private and domestic education or the education rooted in nature. For Emile, he chooses the education of nature where Emile is taken away from his parents and is put into the hands of a tutor who brings him up in close contact with nature.
For this article, I will focus only on one important point of similarity and one important point of difference in how Stewart and White reformulate Rousseau’s ideas in their fiction. The first important point of similarity with Rousseau is his idea of education being rooted in nature. In Stewart’s trilogy and White’s novel, the young king, Arthur, is sent away from his parents to be raised by a foster father who hires tutors to educate this future king with his sons in isolation and close to nature. Nature plays a role in improving the child’s senses and bodily health. Rousseau believed that the child’s bodily health is the foundation for everything that follows: ‘Exercise his body, his limbs, his senses, his strength’.[18] In Stewart’s and White’s novels, the Wild Forest or Forest Sauvage plays a major role in Arthur’s early education where the emphasis lies in training his body and senses. Arthur’s education takes place in a natural environment where he learns horse-riding, swordsmanship, fishing, climbing, and racing. These physical skills help in strengthening Arthur’s body and senses to perform their natural, directive function.
Another important point that can be attributed to Rousseau’s influence is the exclusion of the study of books within this natural education. Rousseau takes a strongly critical position on the use of books and claims that most of Emile’s lessons are given to him in a practical way where he uses his reason and senses to learn science. In The Sword in the Stone, the rigid and unpleasant system of medieval education that enforced studying books under stern discipline is made tolerable by Merlin. Merlin’s lessons are done by transforming Arthur, known as the Wart, into different animals which enables him to experience living in different environments. These different environments allow the Wart to observe and learn by himself where his imagination and senses are all involved. Similarly, the lessons of Stewart’s Merlin take the form of storytelling, practical and experimental learning such as involving Arthur in constructing a map of Britain made out of clay. The exclusion of books allows Merlin to involve Arthur physically in his process of learning as well as teaching him several skills, which later on will be part of his life as a king.
However, one of the most important points where both Stewart and White reformulate Rousseau’s Emile: deciding the appropriate age to introduce the child to intellectual education, especially scientific education. For Rousseau, twelve years old, described as ‘the age of reason’, is the right time for Emile to engage in a practical study of nature where he studied cosmography, geography, and physics. In contrast, Arthur’s science education starts when he meets Merlin at the age of seven in The Sword in the Stone and the age of nine in Stewart’s trilogy. With Merlin, Arthur’s education progresses from this physical education in nature to science. In White’s novel, the study of science takes the form of the metamorphosis into different animals which is based on the four elements of life: (i) water (being a fish), (ii) air (being a bird), (iii) fire (part of the untold lessons) and (iv) earth (being a badger). Through metamorphosis, the Wart learns a lot of facts about animals, not through imparting information and facts but through living within their bodies. In this practical way, he learns about their features as well as their behaviour in their own environment. In Stewart’s trilogy, the education of Arthur is not limited to lessons from natural history like the Wart but includes teaching him different subjects such as history, geography, and languages.
What, then, is the main principle in the education of the king from the point of view of both novelists? Actually, after studying the novels, both Stewart and White believe that Arthur is born and educated for the kingdom, but how he will be educated is shaped by the time in which their novels were written. The difference between Stewart’s and White’s point of view on education can be explained, to a large extent, by what Harry Hendrick has described as ‘a shift of focus “from bodies to minds”’ in post-war Britain.[19] In White’s novel, although disapproved of by Merlyn, most of the Wart’s education takes a pragmatic approach, stressing military ability more heavily, preparing him to be a knight where most emphasis in the Wart’s education, including Merlyn’s education, is to have a strong body and spirit, focusing particularly on building his individual physical skills. The Wart spends most of his time training to be a knight starting as a page where he needs to learn all the skills related to the art of war, including tilting, horsemanship, hawking, archery, and boar hunting.[20] Merlyn’s education works on the other aspect of knighthood which is building a strong spirit using natural history and metamorphosis and within this teaching, the magician intends to make the Wart happy, self-sufficient, and free: ‘Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance’.[21] In White’s novel, the Wart’s physical development is more important than his intellectual education and he grows up interested in animals more than in books and ideas.
On the other hand, Stewart’s point of view on education can be considered a more modern and well-balanced education than that of White. Stewart considers both the physical development as well as the intellectual enrichment in Arthur’s education. Her curriculum also remains relevant to the rapidly changing-socio-economic and political environment of Britain in the 1960s. Arthur, therefore, needs to be a comprehensive representation of the society as a whole and he should not be a knight, or a scientist or a philosopher but must have proper knowledge in the practical issues of politics. Additionally, Stewart’s education reflects the modern progressive ideas where Merlin, like a modern teacher, takes into consideration Arthur’s needs and interests and directs his education to where Arthur’s interests lie such as languages, history, and geography. So, Stewart’s Arthur speaks several languages which includes the old languages of his own nation and has a proper knowledge of history and geography. In doing so, Stewart’s Arthur stands out by putting his best qualities into the spotlight, using these qualities to build his public persona and to unite his people.
In conclusion, Stewart’s trilogy and White’s The Sword in the Stone are not only retellings of a well-known legend in the history of English literature, but are also stories about education that emerge from the novelists’ personal experiences. As Rob Gossedge has written about White’s novel ‘White’s Arthuriad – whether in its original or revised form – was very different from contemporary retellings of the legend. It is a remarkably personal version of the story. . . [the] Wart’s carefree yet loving childhood is largely a consolation for his own traumatic youth’.[22] The novelists’ turn to Rousseau’s educational theory of natural education is an attempt to correct early miserable experiences and to write about a gentle and more inspiring educational philosophy which instils in their pupils’ liberty and beauty from the earliest hours of life up to perfect maturity.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile, or On Education. Library Fund, Inc., Liberty Fund, Inc., 1921.
Stewart, Mary. “About Mary Stewart”. Musson, 1973.
Stewart, Mary. The Crystal Cave. Hodder and Stoughton, 1970.
Stewart, Mary. The Hollow Hills. Hodder and Stoughton, 1973.
Stewart, Mary. Thornyhold. Hodder & Stoughton, 1988.
Stewart, Mary. The Last Enchantment. Hodder & Stoughton, 1979.
Thompson, Raymond. “An Interview with Mary Stewart.” https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/interview-with-mary-stewart. 19 Aug. 2020.White, T. H. The Once and Future King. Collins, London, 1958.
White, T.H. The Sword and The Stone. G. P. Putnam’s sons, 1939.
Secondary Sources
Friedman, Lenemaja. Mary Stewart. Boston: Twayne Publishing, 1990.
Gossedge, Rob. ‘ The Old Order Changeth ’: Arthurian Literary Production from Tennyson to White. Cardiff University, 2007.
Keegan, Faye. Soft Metafiction(s): Mary Stewart and the Self-Reflective Middlebrow. Diss., University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2016.
Sly, Debbie. “Natural Histories: Learning from Animals in T. H. White’s Arthurian Sequence”, Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 4, 2 (2000): 146-163, doi:https://doi.org/10.1163/156853500507799
Tisdall, Laura. “Stages of Development, Educational Psychology and Child-Centred Education.” A Progressive Education?: How Childhood Changed in Mid-Twentieth-Century English and Welsh Schools, Manchester University Press, 2020, doi:10.7765/9781526132901.00008.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. T. H. White. Viking Press, New York, 1967.
[1] Ashwag (aa969@exeter.ac.uk/aalthubaiti@bu.edu.sa) is a doctoral candidate at the University of Exeter. She graduated from Taif University, Saudi Arabia, in 2009, and completed her MA in English Literature at Umm Al-Qura University, Saudi Arabia, in 2015. This article is based on material from chapter two of my thesis on Mary Stewart’s Arthurian fiction, ‘Mary Stewart’s Arthurian fiction: A Comparative Study’. Quotation from T.H. White, The Once and Future King (London: Collins, 1958), 202.
[2] Mary Stewart, The Crystal Cave (Hodder and Stoughton, 1970); Mary Stewart, The Hollow Hills (Hodder and Stoughton, 1973); Mary Stewart, The Last Enchantment (Hodder and Stoughton,1979).
[3] Faye Keegan, Soft Metafiction(s): Mary Stewart and the Self-Reflective Middlebrow (Diss., University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2016), 3.
[4] Keegan, Soft Metafiction(s), 3.
[5] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education (Liberty Fund Inc., 1921).
[6] The Sword in the Stone was published as a separate volume in 1938, but reappeared and revised by White in The Once and Future King in 1958.
[7] Mary Stewart, About Mary Stewart (Musson, 1973); Mary Stewart, Thornyhold (Hodder and Stoughton, 1988).
[8] Keegan, Soft Metafiction(s), 2.
[9] Lenemaja Friedman, Mary Stewart (Boston: Twayne Publishing, 1990), 2.
[10] Friedman, Mary Stewart, 4.
[11] Ibid., 5.
[12] Debbie Sly, “Natural Histories: Learning From Animals in T.H. White’s Arthurian Sequence,” Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 4, no. 2 (2000), 146.
[13] Sylvia Townsend Warner, T.H. White, (New York: Viking Press, 1967), 29-30.
[14] Warner, T.H. White, 30-31.
[15] Ibid., 48.
[16] Ibid., 49.
[17] Ibid., 57-63
[18] Rousseau, Emile, 56.
[19] Laura Tisdall, A Progressive Education?: How Childhood Changed in Mid-Twentieth-Century English and Welsh Schools (Manchester University Press, 2020, 50.
[20] T.H. White, The Once and Future King (London: Collins, 1958), 3.
[21] White, Once and Future King, 44.
[22] Rob Gossedge, ‘The Old Order Changeth’: Arthurian Literary Production from Tennyson to White (Cardiff University, 2007), 260.