Overall, I really liked this story. I thought that, unlike some of our previous romances, this one balanced action with the rest of the narrative well. I also liked how even though infidelity is what sets the story in motion, there's very little emphasis on sexual transgression past Sir Gowther's birth. There's little emphasis on romantic relationships at all, which is refreshing - while the maiden is beautiful but mostly mute (which is another discussion for another time), she is not the focus of the story, or Gowther's focus either. They marry in the end once he becomes a better person, no fuss, no drama. While I understand that drama is what makes a romance, I was glad to see a female character who doesn't suffer overmuch. A lot of the action in medieval romances occurs at a woman's expense, like in Emare. I was glad to see that the trend somewhat changed here.
This tale was also sensational, and I am a huge fan of the sensational. I love the supernatural, and the concept of cambions (half-human, half-demon children) is appealing to my love of weirdness and witches and magic and all that fun stuff. I shouldn't have been surprised by the fact that Gowther was a literal hellion, but I was, because I was hoping that he would be his own person and not so... devilish? Murdering people and biting your mother's nipple off is not a great start to life, dude.
Laverne's Jesus disapproves of your... shenanigans.
While I liked Sir Gowther's unapologetic murdering (because it was such a non-issue; he just killed people and that was what he did), I have a difficult time really wrapping my head around the fact that, redemption aside, he did kill a lot of people and did a lot of terrible things, and that becoming forgiven doesn't change the fact that those things happened. Just because you're forgiven doesn't mean that everything is fine - the medieval idea of forgiveness and mine are two totally different things, which is sometimes makes things hard in class.
Even though this is a little paradoxical, I was actually a little sad that Gowther had a literal "come to Jesus" moment. I love monsters, and I love it more when monsters embrace their monstrosity, I'm not quite sure why.
Sir Gowther, immediately following his... talk... with his mom.
But really: "oh my god" is a great summary for this tale.
This story had a lot of drama and twists in it. The fact that Gowther's mother had sex with the devil is totally weird but funny at the same time. See as the Devil's son he does go off and does crazy murderous crimes but at that point he doesn't know that he's the devil's son. Until that one faithful day he asked his mother and all of a sudden he wants to do good and be forgiven for his crimes. He tries to make up for his crimes but we all know that its going to take a lot more than killing more people in battle, being silent, and eating from dogs mouths. Overall this story was really good I enjoyed it very much.
ReplyDeleteI thought this story was pretty neat as well. I really liked how different it was from the other stories not only in that it broke the stereotypes, but also the fact that it actually went through Gowther’s entire journey in being forgiven. It was a nice change to see a man get punished for doing something wrong and actually have to work to be forgiven instead of just expecting it. But I agree with you when you said that Gowther getting killed would be a good ending as well. Basically all of the stories we have read so far have had nice and happy endings (for the most part), and it would have been nice to see a tragedy for once. I mean, I probably would have been really sad while reading it, but it would have been something new.
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