Technically, female "heroes" do exist in the realm of Arthur but they only exist so as to help the (presumably "more important") male heroes. "Arthurian female heroes, contrariwise, exist (at least for a time) as active helpers to male heroes, but always in the service of the patriarchal culture the hero upholds" (Fries, 3)
Morgan Le Fay is an exceedingly powerful sorceress. However, unlike Merlin, who can use his powers for good, Morgan is a character who is painted in the one-dimensional shades of black, engaging in trickery and deception: "…for-by the treason of Morgan Le Fay to have slain Sir Launcelot, and for that cause she ordained thirty knights to lie await for Sir Launcelot" (Malory, 390)
It is she who gave me an abundance of gold and silver and such rich gifts as I have distributed from time to time among poor knights. It is she who exalted me and set me in the luxury I now enjoy… She it is who raised me from poverty to riches and from hardship to the sum of earthly bliss" (Matarasso, 89)
Pugh surmises that the male screenwriters of the film seemed to think that: "…a dead Guinevere provides a better female role model than a live but adulterous one" (69). The dead Guinevere in the film works as a message to young girls everywhere, alluding to the limits of their rights and femininity (Pugh, 69)
Confined in this marriage, she really embodied the proverbial caged bird or beautiful object enclosed within a glass case. As other scholars have noted, Guinevere is at times portrayed as a shadow of herself; a fundamental anxiety resounds throughout le Chevalier de la Charrette the poem composed by Chretien de Troyes in the 12th century (Sample, 107)
While Fries strongly attributes this narrowing and general one-dimensionality of the female figure in Arthurian literature, to the sheer inability of male authors of the period to imagine anything else, and this is in fact an accurate take on the situation, it's not the only reason why women in the Arthurian universe have to take on the role of counter-hero so immediately. So much of the female dynamic as counter hero is connected to the male fear of female power, and that if females were to actually achieve this power, they would use it to the detriment of men (Saul, 1)
While Arthurian authors are gifted at describing many of the female characters in vivid, memorable terms that make many of them seem like ethereal goddesses; a one dimensionality persists in their character, regardless of whether they are considered morally good or morally bankrupt according to the codes of the Arthurian realm. The female characters created demonstrate how in Arthurian literature heroism belongs chiefly to men, and that beauty, or more aptly flawed beauty, is a trait most immediately connected to women as medieval literature often uses a lady's beauty as a means of confirming that she has a strong moral character (Schaus, 79)
When female characters in this realm begin to embody more and more negative qualities, it's not an evolution, but rather just a maintenance of the status quo. Morgan becomes the representative anarchist of the Arthurian realm, a veritable tornado dedicated to destroying all the values that are held sacred (Slocum, 26)
, xii). Some scholars even go so far as to wager that in Medieval European scholastic literature, beauty and moral goodness weren't just immediately connected, there was no distinction made between the two (Stewart, 10)
In fact, one of the inherent difficulties with the idea of the American Revolution and the role of slavery in the Revolution has to do with a basic assumption underlying traditional discourse about the Revolution. It has been taken as axiomatic that men will resort to violent conflict in order to ensure their personal liberty and freedom (Appleby, 1976)
Despite that, it is unfair to characterize Britain as pro-slavery, as the British began to embrace abolitionist sentiments prior to the Revolution. In fact, British Imperialists struggled with the concept of slavery, because of the fact that denying the right to own slaves was viewed as economic oppression by many white colonists, because, without slavery, the cash crops that made colonies profitable were difficult, if not impossible, to harvest (Brown, 1999)
There is some misunderstanding among people who believe that while slavery may have existed during the colonial period, it was simply a marginal institution. In fact, the traditional belief was that it was only with Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin that American slavery became such an entrenched institution (Freehling, 1972)
In fact, one of the interesting aspects of the Revolutionary War is that it did not feature the same type of mass slave uprising that one saw in other countries fighting against Imperialistic occupation. "One scholar views the absence of any massive revolt as the result of changes in the southern labor force during the first half of the eighteenth century: the shift from free, independent labor to slave labor; from a free, depressed lower class of potentially armed and dangerous men to a totally oppressed, permanently enslaved labor force" (Frey, 1983)
Moreover, Nash is supported by direct evidence that the Founders did consider slavery to be immoral and incompatible with Revolutionary ideals, which places a moral responsibility on them that has traditionally been missing in historical accounts that suggest that, because of the time period, the Founders were somehow unaware of the apparent hypocrisy between fighting for liberty and still permitting people to hold slaves. In fact, the conventional view has been that the American Revolution ignored those who were not in positions of power, meaning that slaves would not have played a meaningful role in the American Revolution, not because of a lack of participation, but because they were denied the ability to interact in an outcome-determinative manner (Gundersen, 1987)
Of course, it has long been recognized that blacks, whether free blacks or slaves, played a significant role in the armed conflicts of the Revolutionary War. While blacks were generally limited to being privates, they made meaningful contributions to the war effort (Jackson, 1942)
However, Nash's book certainly suggests that such an approach is over-simplified, and investigates the fact that the Revolutionary War's leaders were well-aware that slavery was essentially incompatible with the natural rights and basic freedoms that served as the foundational basis for the war. In fact, it tackles the issue of slavery as something other than an exception to the American ideals of freedom, which is critical, because, during the Revolutionary period, approximately one-fifth of the American population was enslaved; a population far too large to be considered an exception (Morgan, 1972)
There also seems to have been a feeling that they would be rewarded for these efforts with freedom. Nash characterizes the Revolution as the largest slave uprising in American history (Nash, 1990)
While Nash focuses explicitly on slavery and race relations, it is important to understand that blacks were not the only racial minority to be treated with apparent unfairness during the Revolutionary period. Black slaves were not the only ones to suffer from this apparent hypocrisy; for example, during the 1770s, Puritan captivity narratives regained popularity, highlighting the apparent savagery of Native Americans, even though they had lagged in popularity during the colonial times between Puritans arriving in American and the American Revolution (Sieminski, 1990)
Many times the American Revolution is looked upon as an ideological war; such that those fighting for their freedom had to have been motivated by the desire for liberty, with little attention paid to their social and economic interests. Nash's book makes it clear that, while the Revolutionary War certainly had and ideological foundation, both social and economic factors were also significant motivators for the Revolution (Wood, 1966)
Accurate collection of revenue ensures that the organization can cater for its expenses thus maintain its operation. All organizations need to maintain financial records safely thus the need for institutions to use computer information software (Kurbel 138)