Before taking the 300-level English course on King Arthur in Literature and Film, I would have said that Arthurian legend was about a very special sword that had a mind of its own, choosing its very special champion who would lead their land to ultimate victory. I also would have said that the only other major part of Arthurian legend was that the champion’s best friend and romantic partner were in an affair that would break the champion’s heart. What was the main takeaway of this story? That, I would not have been able to articulate, but after this semester, I still don’t have a clear-cut answer…
It was shocking to begin this course with the impression that the story of King Arthur revolved mostly around navigating betrayal while battling external enemies, because our first reading, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, did not hint at anything that I was familiar with. No one ever told me I shouldn’t rely on Disney Channel to give me all the gory details that would prepare me for this course’s content.
To me, the most memorable and hopeful films we viewed were Sir Lanval (2010) and The Sword in the Stone (1963). Other films, I either don’t remember well or will be trying to forget: King Arthur (2004), Excalibur (1981), Lancelot du Lac (1974), and The Mists of Avalon (2001). For different reasons, two movies that were really fun to watch were First Knight (1995) and Perceval le Gallois (1978); the former because the acting and story were interesting and funny at times, and the latter because it was fun to hate on. Monty Python (1975) and Connecticut Yankee (1931) were fun movies, objectively, but they were not to my taste. T.H. White’s Once and Future King and Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee fall into the bracket of seeming objectively fun, too, but I didn’t spend enough time with them to greatly appreciate the storytelling.
There’s almost a direct correlation to my ease of getting through Arthurian material and the favoritism I show to each literary or film piece. Chétien de Troyes produced the first telling of Lancelot who had an affair with King Arthur’s queen, Guinevere. This piece of writing, The Knight of the Cart, is highest on my list of favorite writings. Even though I wanted more reasoning behind this love affair, but did not receive any, the fact is that Chrétien supplied what I was looking for in Arthurian legend: romance (Marie de France supplied this as well, with Lanval). This aspect began to feel small when looking at the big picture, though, and this brings me back to the question of why society, throughout millennia, has found Arthurian legend so important.
Somehow, the important themes lied within the pieces that either greatly disturbed me, weirded me out, or simply bored me. Namely, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon, Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, and Chrétien’s The Story of the Grail. Themes of religion/Christianity, war, and much more difficult topics are addressed in these texts. In an effort to grapple with the gruesome or complex nodes of humanity, creators have gone back to the bones of Arthurian legend and built flesh around those bones to suit the world that they knew and possibly wished to see. It is only odd to me that, though King Arthur is supposed to be creating an ideal kingdom—a utopia for his people—it always ends in tragedy, though there lies vague promise of a hopeful future.
“Castle Near Body of Water Under Golden Hour” Photo by Ray Bilcliff from Pexels
This idea that King Arthur is supposed to be creating a utopia is probably most thwarted by selfish undertakings throughout the course of Arthurian literature and film. Without doubt, we can say that leadership is used in the worst way when it is primarily self-concerned instead of primarily others’ focused and about service. Mists of Avalon has become the epitome of this, since the intentions and choices that Viviane makes, specifically, are with no regard to anyone else’s well-being. It’s possible that all of Arthurian legend and the purpose of it revolves around the real battle between selfish ambition and hope for the world.
This semester, my teamwork skills and my view on leadership have developed the most.
Teamwork Skills
My class’s team case studies were one of the first things we worked on this semester. Working with others so early on was an intimidating idea! However, Professor Cain gave us the resources we needed to learn how to cooperate as a team. Doing this early on helped us realize that we could get things done with anyone if we put the work in.
My team members were great to work with. I learned that defining what our goals are as individuals and as a group, as well as establishing an understanding and communicative environment, can be what makes or breaks productivity within a team. This is information that I can take with me throughout my college career and in life.
Leadership Understanding
My understanding of leadership has been impacted even more, though. I had the opportunity to think about what leadership really is in numerous moments throughout the semester, and I also got to consider what a leader may look like. By reading about and discussing different leaders throughout the semester, my view of who can and should lead was widened and—more importantly—strengthened.
Before this class, I hadn’t learned much about female leaders at all, let alone female person-of-color leaders. What the world tried to determine for me up to the point before college is that female leads only exist in TV shows—and it’s ten times more likely if they’re attractive in a Eurocentric fashion.
I’ve appreciated this course so much because it reminded me of what it’s like to believe that I can do something that the massive world around me doesn’t truly want me to believe. It was inspiring to see women in history recognize when something needs to change and then (seemingly fearlessly) organize to make those changes! Not only did they choose to push for change, but they also showed others how important it was and got many people to follow their lead.
What I’ve realized about leadership is that no matter their background, what they look like, or how they sound, a leader is someone who makes a way. That description has no physical guidelines or rules of personality. Whether the masses believe they are leading well or not, leaders have to be decisive and their choices must be agreeable to some extent. I realized this by learning about women—of many different backgrounds and beliefs—who have created paths for others to follow.
For example, the woman I chose for my personal case study project: Phyllis Schlafly. Although I didn’t agree with many of her beliefs nor her agenda, she was still a strong leader and had many people taking after her example to fight for something they all believed in. No matter how people may judge her agenda, the fact is she was able to create a following and made decisions that her followers supported.
There were also many subjects from this semester who made a difficult decision to start doing something they believed would make positive change, no matter what others were telling them was the right or wrong thing to do. That is leadership! And whether it be for a cause that’s big or seemingly small, that is something so many of us can do.
In the beginning of the 1970s, the feminist movement was gaining quite a lot of ground. Many laws were being put into action that catered to the feminist agenda. This included the addition of the Title IX section to the education amendments and the allowance of birth control rights to unmarried women across America.
Feminists of this time sought real equality between men and women. They wanted equal pay as well as equal opportunity to seek jobs and career paths that were typically only for men. They also wanted to be freed of domestic life by having the government provide child-care services—this way the women could have more opportunity to work outside of the home. Some feminists spoke of wanting to hold the same powers as men; they basically wanted to disestablish the power that men held over women simply because they were born male.
One of the biggest priorities for the women’s liberationist movement was enacting the Equal Rights Amendment, or ERA. This amendment had been written up decades prior and was brought to the attention of Congress many times since 1923, but it did not receive enough attention to get passed through the House and Senate floors until the early 1970s.
The vision of the ERA was to allow true equality between men and women in all areas of life. This is what Phyllis Schlafly, and other women who enjoyed their domestic lives, could not understand. They believed that women had freedom in their domestic lives and that wanting equality between men, among other things, would mean taking away the safeties that women had in America. So, after Schlafly heard about the ERA becoming more popular and speaking to other women who appreciated the lives that they had in America, she chose to take decisive action in order to keep her lifestyle intact.
“Activist Phyllis Schlafly wearing a ‘Stop ERA’ badge, demonstrating with other women against the Equal Rights Amendment in front of the White House, Washington, D.C., February 4, 1977” https://www.wunc.org/post/will-north-carolina-be-next-state-ratify-equal-rights-amendment Wikimedia Commons
Biography
Phyllis Schlafly lived from 1924 to 2016. She was a wife and a mother, but she was also an advocate against the women’s liberationist movement.
Schlafly grew up in a roman catholic, conservative household during the Great Depression. Her father lost her job, so her mother stepped up and took over two different jobs in order to care for their family during this time.
Schlafly also excelled in school and when she found her first college situation too simple, she opted for a more rigorous program at Washington University and, later on, Radcliffe College. By working factory night shifts, she was able to pay her college tuition. She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and her master’s in government. She even served as the leader of the Illinois Federation of Republican Women from 1960 to 1964. After that, she began writing regularly to inform people about political issues. Although not all of her efforts pushed political issues to go the way she wanted, she continued to do the work that she set out to do.
Despite all these events, Schlafly was still against feminist ideas.
She married John Fred Schlafly Jr., who was a wealthy attorney, in 1949. Her husband allowed her to pursue a law degree after realizing it would help in her fight against the ERA. Fighting this amendment is what Schlafly is most remembered for. Her efforts are highly credited for lessening the ERA’s popularity and finally not being voted into law. She spoke and organized demonstrations against the ERA and pushed heavily against the women’s liberationist movement.
Schlafly also wrote many books in her lifetime. She wrote to push her conservative agenda, making arguments for and against different people and policies. Now, there are 27 published books that she either wrote or co-wrote.
Text Analysis
Schlafly used strong tactics to push her views on other women and persuade them into believing that progressive ideas would only do damage to society. Some of her ideas can be seen in her book, The Power of the Positive Woman. Schlafly gained a lot of support by assertively partnering widely accepted statements with her own conservative ideals, producing an air of knowledge; people with similar ideas or backgrounds could turn to favor her direction.
The book excerpt in analysis is the first 13 pages of The Power of the Positive Woman, which was published in 1977. It’s a persuasive piece, outlining her view of what it looks like to be a healthy American woman—as a wife and a mother—opposed to what it looks like to be a feminist, pushing Americans to turn to her conservative ideals and/or start making noise about them.
Schlafly associates “the Positive Woman” with good behavior and pokes fun at women’s liberationists and describes them in a foolish light, belittling their beliefs. She also makes a point to say they choose to make enemies of men, which Schlafly believes to be one of the biggest mistakes made by women’s liberationists. In her own words, “By its very nature, therefore, the women’s liberation movement precipitates a series of conflict situations…with man targeted as the enemy. …Women and men become adversaries instead of partners” (Schlafly, 1979). By her assertions, one could infer that conservative women during this time found it more appealing to contest with other women, rather than men. This can aid in explaining their passionate fight against the ERA.
“lesbianism is logically the highest form in the ritual of women’s liberation”
Phyllis Schlafly
A lot of Schlafly’s influences came from her Christian background, as well as her white and upper-class background. From her perspective, the ERA would make little positive difference to her lifestyle. She believed that new abortion and LGBTQ choices, of which she disagreed with, were soon going to be legally permitted if the amendment became law. She concluded that “lesbianism is logically the highest form in the ritual of women’s liberation” and made it clear that the Positive Woman knew “baby-producing organs [were] not designed by a conspiracy of men, but by the Divine Architect of the human race” and that the fact should be celebrated, instead of protested (Schlafly, 1979). This is a prime example of her using knowledge that most people could agree on to accompany her own deductions or ideas.
Legacy
What Phyllis Schlafly did, essentially, was inspire fear into some American women that equality with men would take away whatever safety and protection they had without the ERA in action. With this fear being placed into women, some men also began to believe it was unnecessary to put women through such conditions of life.
Schlafly’s most prominent work is seen as the fight she led against the Equal Rights Amendment, and her efforts are credited for making sure the amendment wasn’t ratified. It is true that Schlafly organized the STOP ERA movement and garnered a lot of vocal support as well as women who were ready to stand by her and protest the amendment with her. Some would say that the division of many feminists is what made it so difficult to gain support on the ERA and gain support in general when it came to the feminist agenda in the 1970s, after Schlafly started to work against women’s liberationists. In any case, though, her STOP ERA campaign had a large impact on the success of the amendment, or lack thereof.
She wrote many books and participated in periodical writings and other media creations, including her very last work that advocated for President Trump. Of her most recollected works are the latter, The Conservative Case for Trump, her first publishment, A Choice Not An Echo, and her most popular piece against feminism and the women’s liberationists, The Power of the Positive Woman. These books and other forms of media hold her thoughts and continue to show what kinds of things she believed in while she was alive. The words that she leaves behind for future leaders or conservatives can be counted as a part of her legacy.
One thing that she received reproof for was the fact that she advocated for domestic life for women—taking care of children, cleaning and working at home—but her political work undermined this kind of advocacy.
All of the schooling she’d gone through shows that she was prepping for a thought-filled life ahead that would take her out of her home in some fashion. This would be evident even if she ended up staying in her home due to her husband’s cautions. However, it seems she was allowed to go out and work, and she did so fervently. She once said “My husband lets me do what I want to do. I have canceled speeches whenever my husband thought that I had been away from home too much” (Kettler, 2020). So, at times, she was away from her children and away from her housework—as one could often be if they are working so passionately in political matters. The heavy work she took on in politics took her away from domestic life, which goes against the very thing she was trying to protect throughout her career.
Phyllis Schlafly was a well-educated woman who used outstanding skills of persuasion, as well as charm, to push her conservative agenda. Although there were many feminists then, and likely many now, that disagree with her and her tactics, she did strong work and continues to be an interesting subject for study and analysis.
Further Reading
Bergeron, Ryan. ‘The Seventies’: Feminism Makes Waves. 17 Aug. 2015, www.cnn.com/2015/07/22/living/the-seventies-feminism-womens-lib/index.html.
Boissoneault, Lorraine. “The 1977 Conference on Women’s Rights That Split America in Two.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 15 Feb. 2017, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1977-conference-womens-rights-split-america-two- 180962174/.
Cunningham, John M. Phyllis Schlafly, Encyclopædia Britannica, 1 Sept. 2020, www.britannica.com/biography/Phyllis-Schlafly.
StrengthsQuest is a tool that takes students through a process of choice-making to find their strengths. Then, the students get information about each strength and how they can become even better!
I loved reading about my strengths and learning more about myself. It wasn’t hard for me to decide that what I want people to see in me the most is my Developer strength, which is my top strength out of all five. I want people to be able to see past my introspective spirit and understand that I care a great deal about every person who comes across my path. I want people to know that I care about their future, I see their potential and I want to encourage them.
I’ve often thought of myself as a “traveling teacher” because I felt that I wanted to be a mentor to many people without staying in one place for so long that someone else misses out on the positivity I may be able to bring into their life. That is the kind of attitude I want to show people every day, so they’ll know I’m ready to be an aid in their journey!
What can I say? The main thing that’s been occupying my mind recently is school! And can you blame me? My class is having such an odd start to college life. As taxing as it may seem right now, though, I know that it will make us better and stronger in the end.
At Agnes Scott, we’re conducting our semester fully online. We don’t have studying in the library, meals in the cafeteria, nor face-to-face conversations. We do have face-to-screen-to-screen-to-face conversations, though! I know, it’s not the same… In fact, I feel like that’s the hardest part of this for me. It’s so much harder to push myself out of my comfort zone and talk to anyone and everyone about anything and everything when I’m so far from everybody.
There are a lot of things that can inhibit us, students, this semester. I think it’s important to recognize for ourselves, though, that we want this and we’re willing to work hard for it! We did get into one of the best liberal arts colleges in the country, right?
My mind finds it easy to focus on the negatives and to slow myself down with that kind of mentality. Instead, we can all focus on the positives and what we can appreciate!–individually, and collectively. We can remember that–yeah!–this is a hard time, but what doesn’t kill us absolutely makes us stronger.
