BBC Terry Jones' Medieval Lives Documentary: Episode 3 - The Damsel

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HELPLESS, THREATENED AND FOREVER IN NEED OF RESCUE, the medieval damsel-indistress is an archetype deeply bound up with the image of the chivalrous knight in shining armour. It’s easy for us to understand that back in the brutal world of the Middle Ages women should be at the mercy of forces beyond their control, and that they should need rescuing by heroic males.

William Maw Egley’s 1858 painting of the Lady of Shalott and her distant hero, Sir Lancelot, seems to convey, in its antiquarian detail, an authentic medieval vision (at least if one overlooks the very nineteenth-century appearance of Mrs Egley): the helpless lady sealed in her chamber, the armoured man emblematic of freedom and courage. But the picture evokes a world that would have been incomprehensible in the age it is meant to represent...

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