Parzival the Son

As with a lot of medieval texts, the position of the son plays an important role in Parzival. We’ve seen lineage as an important part of the self in almost all of the previous pieces. With Beowulf, with Siegfried, and with Gawain, their familial ties link the reader to a concrete definition of the self. The fathers, or in Gawain’s case the uncle, establish their standing, outside the context of the narrative as a significant hero or a person of elevated standing, and thereby the actions of the son build on the honor and elevated status of the father. The poets of Beowulf and The Nibelungenlied seem to expect the same sort of behavior from the son as they have seen or heard of from the father.

However, with regards to Parzival, the son cannot draw upon the expectations of his father to define the self. He only has his mother’s fosterage and his inborn otherness (the distant relationship to faries), which prove to be detrimental to forming relationships with others. In every way, Parzival is so far removed from the realm of chivalric practice and knightly behavior that it’s surprising that the knights he meets in the forest even recognize him as anything but what he’s dressed like: a backwoods, isolated hick.

Perhaps, like his half-brother Feirefiz, Parzival has inherited a part of his father that is visible even beneath the clothing. I’m speaking, of course of Feirefiz’s patches of white skin against the contrast of his black skin. Just as Gahmuret’s legacy is clearly visible on the skin of his half-heathen baby, so Parzival retains a visible kind of legacy on his person in place of the more tangible material links Beowulf and Siegfried retained with their fathers. It might be a bit of a stretch, but in the absence of the constant reminder of his father’s exceptional reputation or the father’s inheritance, the sons of Gahmuret take instead the legacy of their father in less concrete and more personal ways.

The knights he encounters, Gurnemanz in particular, make it clear that although he is noble in bearing, his education is inadequate. Gurnemanz tells Parzival to discard the teachings of his mother and asserts his knightly education as the superior education: “Keep to my advice, it will save you from wrongdoing.” (Von Eschenbach 95) What’s most shocking about Gurnemanz’s reeducation of Parzival is that he feels the need to emphasize “Hold ladies in high esteem: that heightens a young man’s worth.” (Von Eschenbach 96) One would think that in a home environment with only the mother present Parzival would have learned that lesson intrinsically. His mother has raised him so poorly, however, that he has to have another knight teach him about honoring women. Is it that ludicrous to assume that a Parzival needs a father-figure in order to know how to honor women? (Especially given some of the stellar examples of the fair and noble treatment of women in some of the pieces this semester.)

Despite the fact that his mother raises him in isolation from the knightly, chivalric world, Parzival’s successes in his new knightly identity are not attributed to the primary caregiver. As the father or the lord in charge of his wardship, Parzival’s successes and failures reflect back on those who raised him. In this sense, Parzival’s natural affinity for the knightly lifestyle can be referenced back to Gahmuret, not to Herzeloyde.

The fact that Parzival is so inept in relating to the outside world speaks more about the poet’s biases about the mental failings of women. Only a man, specifically a father, can properly teach a boy about the proper way to present oneself. In a roundabout way, Wolfram is reaffirming the otherness of woman by giving us the shortcomings of a boy fostered exclusively by his mother. In a sense, nothing Parzival does is his own failing; it’s his mother’s. Of course, the argument could be made that it’s not Herzeloyde’s mental deficiencies that are being denigrated; it’s her education, which was not available to her. The notion that ignorance is a forgivable shortcoming in Parzival is quite disturbing to me. As modern readers, we expect ignorance to be othering and isolating, but in Parzival, his ignorance is acceptable, forgivable, since blame can be displaced so easily. Parzival’s arrested development is due to his mother’s inadequate life training, which is due to the father’s untimely death, and the father’s legacy or absence, in the case of Parzival, serves to make him the Other.