ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ways in which gender, disability, and chivalry interact and influence one another throughout the text. Within the larger category of disability, lovesickness perhaps fits best under the label of a chronic illness with disabling symptoms. Nyneve's strong female desire subverts not only the "usual gendering of power" in the relationship between a knight and his lady but also the ability/disability system of knighthood that Malory establishes. In addition to presenting women as healers of the disabilities of men, the Morte also positions them as channels through which men incur those disabilities. One recurrent way in which women harm men in the text, albeit unintentionally, is through lovesickness, a condition "caused" by the sight of a beautiful woman. Knights affected by lovesickness caused by women take on feminine qualities that temporarily remove them from the chivalric realm, both physically and mentally.
