Engaging with Elaine

“ Just make us all laugh!”

Regina Penman, Secretary of the ARC Arthurian Readers Club, had come to Malory Tennyson’s Cloudbank Cabin for Arthurian Studies, to help the current Artisan in Residence, Little Plump Jo, compile her plenary session address for the coming ARC Conference, Reading the Research.

“We need some comic relief. My Arthur has planned this whole conference around research, archaeological digs, ancient manuscripts and such and he was the one who invited all the other presenters for the plenary sessions."

"But the majority of the members of the ARC are not interested in those things. Most of them like to read modern retellings of the myths and legends, historical fiction, fantasy, romantasy, swords and sorcery, even science fiction. They are going to be so bored and those auditorium chairs are going to get so hard. I feel tempted to put whoopee cushions in their welcome bags to liven things up!”

“Things are pretty grim if the comic relief is supposed to come from a session about a character who dies of unrequited love and goes floating down to Camelot in a flower bedecked barge with a lily and a farewell note to Sir Lancelot du Lac clasped in her lifeless hands” said Little Plump Jo. “I don’t think I would be able to make a discussion about Elaine funny.”

“Your Elaine is a very amusing character. Some of the situations she gets herself into have me rolling on the floor.”

Unlike Arthur Penman, the President of the ARC, both Regina Penman and Little Plump Jo had the ability to communicate with animals and fictional characters.

Elaine the Fair, The Lily Maid of Astolat, had taken the opportunity presented by plot holes in Little Plump Jo’s writing to state that she would refuse to nurse Sir Lancelot for months on end and die of unrequited love for him. She would not be floating down to Camelot in a state of rigor mortis. Instead, she should now be addressed as Lady Charlotte-Elaine, Lady of Shalott, and entrepreneur owner of Charlotte’s Web Weaving. She would also become a patron of the Arts and set up the charitable foundation, Red Sleeve Care Provider Services.

“Well yes, but readers of Arthurian literature would not even recognize My Elaine. I was not planning to talk about My Elaine at all.”

“But you need to talk about the depiction of Elaine in your writing. Just look at the wording of the abstract for your session.”

Engaging with Elaine

L.P.J. White is a talented emerging writer of Arthurian fiction, poetry, and short stories.

Her beautifully observed characters are based on her extensive reading and her own insights. In this session she will discuss how the depictions of Elaine of Astolat, Elaine of Corbenic and The Lady of Shalott in poetry, fiction, art, music, and film have influenced her portrayals.

“Yes. Thanks a lot, Regina. You wrote that abstract for me.

So, what I am planning to do is to trace the pattern of retellings of the stories of those three characters and show how in some cases Elaine is a composite character. I will compare the characters and motivations of the three Elaines, maybe referencing the role of women in society at the time the various versions were written. That would fit the research-based theme of the conference. Fortunately, you have linked my knowledge of the characters to wide reading rather than particular research methods!

I was only going to mention my Elaine as a throwaway line in the very last paragraph.”

“So is your Elaine a composite character?”

“Not as much as she would like to be. She has the weaving and the seeing Sir Lancelot riding by her tower in common with The Lady of Shalott. But she does not plan to go singing to her death, sitting up in a boat headed for Camelot."

"She had the opportunity to merge with Elaine of Corbenic and become The Grail Maiden and mother of Sir Lancelot’s son, Sir Galahad. But she blew that chance when she affirmed that she was the daughter of Bernard of Astolat and therefore was not the Grail Maiden, Princess Elaine of Corbenic, the daughter of King Pelles.”

“But for all that she has accomplished and all the character development that has happened for her she is still not content. Elaine still wants Sir Lancelot. And he is no more impressed with the new Elaine than he was with her former persona” said Jo.

“So she has tried out other guises like the Southern Belle approach. Wearing too much kohl and rouge and carrying a large silk fan she crooned

‘Hiiiiii! I’m Rosebud McGuffin! Ah do de-clare, Monsieur Doo Laque, that you just get handsomer every time ah see you! You can come and save this Southern Belle in de-stress any time you like!’ But Lancelot was simply bewildered and said ‘Frankly, my dear, that name is not mentioned on my Hero’s To Do list.’

“See what I mean. Your Elaine is hilarious” said Regina.

Little Plump Jo’s five canine writing companions, the Dabrowski Dogs gathered round to contribute their own favourite Our Elaine stories.

“Remember when she first decided to be The Lady of Shalott and bought The Tower. The door always swelled in the damp and the plumbing was dodgy. Elaine ordered a Worm Farm starter kit, but what she received was a Wyrm Dragon starter kit – just add water. Because she could not open the door, the parcel sat on the doorstep and was soaked by the rain. And soon Elaine had a fully grown wyrm dragon running round her garden, scorching the plants and terrifying the locals. And then she got her toe caught in a misaligned plughole in a steam filled room and nobody would come to save her because of the dragon” woofed Sensual Dabrowski.

“And then Sir Lancelot turned up doing his riding by the tower part of The Lady of Shalott’s story” barked Intellectual Dabrowski. “He thought he recognized the scenario as one of his Hero’s To Do List items, namely

1. Save the lady trapped in a steam filled room

2. Kill the dragon

3. Lift a marble tomb cover to reveal your name on the underside

4. Be tricked by her father, King Pelles into marrying her and then fathering Sir Galahad, thus fulfilling an ancient prophecy

So he went to get King Pelles as a witness, rendered the dragon unconscious but could not bring himself to actually kill it…”

“He wanted to relocate it to a sanctuary because Flame Crested Copper Bellied Wyrm Dragons are an endangered species” contributed Emotional Dabrowski.

“So he commandeered the cart of Thurifer Dwarf, the local pest exterminator to take away the wyrm. But Thurifer refused to carry it unless Sir Lancelot rode in the cart with it. I introduced Thurifer Dwarf the Exwyrminator, as he is now called!” yelped Imaginational Dabrowski proudly.

“Anyway, King Pelles was all for swapping his daughter, Princess Elaine of Corbenic with Our Elaine because most of the items on the list fitted the criteria and he was really eager to get the pure grandson, who would find the Holy Grail and heal himself and his kingdom.”

“But Sir Lancelot came over all holier-than-thou and said that Near Enough was NOT Good Enough! He had not actually killed the dragon and Elaine was not actually King Pelles daughter.”

“But the bit of the story that was really sad for Elaine” said Emotional “ was that Sir Lancelot had been clawed by the wyrm dragon and she had to extract the claw and stitch him up. And half way through the bandaging he remembered that he was supposed to be fighting a Trial by Combat Land Dispute for King Bagdemagus and rushed off with the bandage end flapping. So she still had to perform the yukky wound care part and he still did not notice her.”

“She is always getting stuck somewhere” barked Psycho Motor Dabrowski. “Remember when she got herself stuck in your “Free one week trial character development computer program which offered a relatability/likeability measure and a 3D printout?”

“Yes, and that is funny in retrospect!” Little Plump Jo said. “ The program sounded so good but you were only able to use a few of the features in the One Week Free Trial mode. You could not access the 3D printout feature and you could not even Save your character. You could print out a picture of the character with the likeability score on it. Elaine had gone into the machine hoping to get a high likeability score and some good pictures of herself for publicity material for Charlotte’s Web Weaving. Elaine described herself as ‘Entrepreneur’ and the picture of her showed an unattractive modern lady in a tailored pant suit with a Likeability Quotient of 34.6%. Elaine was not happy and refused to come out of the program until they gave back her dress and made her hair more honey blonde. All her complaining was damaging her Likeability Quotient. I could not press Print and get her out of the program, because I had run out of ink; and I was not able to save the character until I could print it. So Sir Lancelot very gallantly dived into the program to save her. The program almost crashed. A klaxon alarm was sounding and words were flashing on my screen saying that an unauthorised second character had entered the program. Lancelot hauled her out, still protesting. She now had a likability score of 1.3% and he had one of 98.7%. I did get a great screenshot of the rescue!”

“See Your Elaine is a real gem.”

“And tell Regina about the new protocols that Lady Charlotte-Elaine introduced to the Royal Physicians when her Red Sleeve Care Provider Services started sponsoring the tournaments.”

“She convinced the physicians that, since almost all the jousters had medical expenses covered by King Arthur’s Medical Benefits, all the participants in the tournaments should be made to visit the Physician’s Tent before and after their events. Before they competed, it should be compulsory for them to take a H.O.M.E. test, checking for Herbal Or Magical Enhancement. And after their events they should be checked again to be able to record their state of health at that time, in case of any future medical queries. At that time if the knights were uninjured, but seemed disheartened or embarrassed by their performance, they should be treated with Triple B or Triple P Packs, which could be claimed against their insurance. Triple B Packs were Boo-Boo Bandages and Triple P Packs were Pride Preservation Panaceas.”

“And remember the kerfuffle she caused when she made a whole lot of token sleeves, from her left over fabrics, for the ladies to give their knight to wear in the tournaments” yelped Imaginational Dabrowski. “She made about five red sleeves embroidered with pearls. I was already trying to get back the one original red sleeve which had cause all the problems in the original story and now I had six to locate and destroy! There was almost a riot when I started chewing up all the red tokens and Lady Charlotte-Elaine had to replace all the ruined sleeves with ones made from her most expensive fabric which had not sold. And the main sleeve was still not found.”

“You must tell us some of your Lady Elaine stories at the ARC Conference! It would certainly liven things up.”

“But my reputation would be gone. I cannot tell a group of Arthurian scholars that my research methods are observing and talking to the characters. I would be forever relegated to the status of Fan Fiction Writer, if not worse.”

“No, I think you should stay with the whoopee cushions idea!”