As a mythologist I spend more time than I should in collecting tales from around the world and reflecting on what they teach us about the mad and wonderful business of being human. One such tale was from the perennial fount of wisdom which are the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. It seemed to be a perfect story, one that illuminated the agreeable new-age delusion that the past had more wisdom in living life than we do nowadays in the relatively miserable present. Recently however, I came across the older version of that tale and it has suddenly darkened in tone, become much more complex and perplexing. It is almost as if the Shadow of this tale was waiting to ambush my simple conclusions. Let the reader judge.

The story as it exists in today's post feminist literature is the crushing answer to Freud's loftily pained query, "What do women really want?" This was asked before and answered in a manner that he could perhaps never have anticipated, though it seems strange that with all his knowledge of myth Freud missed this one.

The core story skeleton is simple.

Sir Gawain, favouite nephew of Arthur, and the most handsome man in the kingdom is out riding with his uncle. They are accosted by a giant with a grudge against the king and the inclination to work it off right then. However the giant is also a knight and will not fight unarmed men. So he offers them an equally serious medival alternative - a challenge of wits. They have one year to find out the answer to the burning question, "What do women really want?"

To be unable to answer would constitute a moral defeat, far worse than a physical one so the two men are in a real dilema. Arthur, with the kingly instinct of delegating responsibility when in trouble, tells Gawain it is his duty to find out. Arthur would have liked to do so too but he had responsibilities - ruling the kingdom, fighting tournaments and watching Guinevere and Lancelot like a hawk. Gawain rides off, resigned to noblesse oblige and holding the can at the end of the year if he cannot find the answer.

The poor knight begins a humiliating journey accosting women at all places and demanding form them the answer to his puzzle. Since he was very good-looking most of them did not scream and run, but gave him some self serving pap as their take on the question of the ages.

He was accumulating a real data bank of possibilities but he instinctively felt that none of them would do. "To punch up her brother," is a real feeling but not the answer. Nor was "Somebody to do the housework and bring me nourishing soup. "He was also reasonably sure that the giant would not accept, "A rich man who is great in bed". Nor was the advice given by a passing strumpet very useful or reassuring, "Lancelot knows, and if he wont tell you, ask your aunt - she taught him".

Finally he enters the Forest of Inglewood, rumored to contain a magic well and a femine guardian who knows everything. At the well he meets the most horrifically ugly female has has ever seen and he falls off his horse in shock. However this appariton says she has the right answer, and he has to promise to marry her to get her to open up. Summoning his knightly fortitude for reasons of state he agrees.(The marriage turns out well and she turns out to be beautiful too but that need not concern us here).

At the end of the year, the giant gets his answer. "What women really want is - freedom."He goes away muttering about the state of things where even the deepest secrets are now available in the public domain and how England was surely going to the dogs since the glory days. In some versions of the myth the answer is that "What women really want is sovereignty. "Which does not alter the fundamntal idea that the woman wants to be her own person, controller of her fate, and not answerable or dependent upon Men. It is a magnificent plea for the innate value of people being free, and is a properly most-modernist sentiment. So all in all, a terrific myth, and one that has immediate value to us in our modern life too.

Then I came upon the older myth and the value system turns upside down.

In this version Gawain is the nephew of the king and only too aware of his consequent privileges. Like the other brutes in armour of the time he has a pretty low opinion of women. Coming across a young girl in the woods he casully rapes her. Normally not a great problem, but this young girl was of noble blood and she was a virgin to boot. Since "by very force he took her maidenhead" he was sentenced to lose his head in a macabre tit for tat.

The ladies at court raised an uproar. He was so very handsome and this girl was after all only a nobody, even if of noble blood. Anticipating Shakespeare, they demand, "Is a man to be hanged(or have his head cut off) for the rebellion of a codpiece?" The queen too throws in her plea for clemency and Arthur is only too pleased to grasp at any straw. So that it will not be too easy, and so that he sweats blood a bit and learns the value of restraint, Guinevere sets him the same question. In this version however, the question is subtly altered, "What is it that women most desire?" He gets the answer from the same hag, but this answer is totally different from the first.

"A woman wants the self-same sovereignty over her husband as over her lover".

The queen and the ladies enthusiastically acclaim the answer as the right one and he gets to live. In the first myth when he marries the hag he gives her the freedom to choose whether she will remain half-ugly/half beautiful by day or night alterantively. In giving her the freedom of choice she becomes beautiful all the time. Here however the choice is more drastic. An ugly, faithful wife or a beautiful one who will cuckcold him every chance she gets. Utterly beaten he admits her sovereignty over him, whereupon she transforms into a perpetually beautiful and faithful wife.

Now the two are not the same answers nor are the conclusions the same. In the first case it was the freedom to be her own self that liberates both of them. In the second case it is her freedom to be a bully, to dominate and take away his freedom that gets them the happy ending. Simplistic solutions to this dilema will not do, it is not a case of male chauvinist impotence versus the truth. The second myth has a darkly disturbing power and the very fact that it exists as an answer shows that it must have been seriously considered to be the correct answer. To deny the impuse of the bully and tyrant to women is to deny history and the plainest common sense. It is that dangerous road of rendering them powerless by putting them up on a pedestal, leached of all human impulses.

So the whole debate has been thrown wide open once more. We now have two answers like two horns of a very serious dilema. Once again I am astounded by the power of myths to confound you, to force you to confront disturbing aspects of your psyche, to look beyond the beguiling surface to what writhes and roils below. These myths are Yin/Yang in their perfect juxtapositioning, each the same and yet the exact opposite. Myths do not give any easy answers but they surely expand the possibilities of the mind. The jury is still out on this question, but we have some really remarkable answers to work with.

- Rohit Arya

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