ABSTRACT
Readings on women characters in Malory are by tradition tacitly inclined to concede to the feminine only a supporting place in the Arthurian society of the text. The image of knightly culture on which that civilisation is posited must assume feminine presence and assistance for its completion, yet also constitute the feminine in essentially subsidiary relation to masculinity. Because the female is read as adjunctive (though necessary), a specifically feminine point of view in the work is never fully recovered, but remains only an inchoate potential, subsumed and dispersed within other discourses. A subtextual reading is needed to extricate and identify the outlines of that view, and restore thereby a certain equivalence. The disruptive gestures and energies, intrusions and interruptions that are lodged within surface textuality ultimately point to a submerged second narrative interplaying with and often prompting the first, and marked by a recognisably feminine voice.
