“The tree may be judged by its fruits”

“The tree may be judged by its fruits” is a moral maxim in the preface to Malory’s work: the worth of the chivalric ideal should be assessed by the good it produces, even where its practice is entangled with serious failings. The editor applies it particularly to the influence of women and to the mixed moral legacy of romance, then points to the penitential ending of Launcelot and Guenever as an instance of good contending with evil.

The Maxim and Its Argument

The phrase appears within a reflection on the knight’s devotion to his lady. The editor describes romance’s language of devotion as sometimes approaching the worship addressed to saints, while suggesting that behind its extravagant conventions lay an ennobling faith in human ideals. The maxim supplies the argument’s test: rather than dismissing the ideal because its expression could become excessive, the reader should consider what it has yielded.

The preface makes that test social as well as literary. The editor credits the humanizing influence of womanhood and ladyhood with helping make society better than it would otherwise be. Chivalric reverence for women, in this account, belongs to a valuable tradition whose results remain visible beyond the romances themselves.

Good and Evil in Chivalric Romance

The maxim is not an unqualified celebration. The editor acknowledges that much evil accompanies the good and, more troublingly, that romance can confuse the two. Such confusion, the preface argues, marks both the attractive characters and tales of chivalry and the morals and manners of the periods in which these romances were written and read. The ideal’s fruits must therefore be judged without pretending that every action performed in its name is virtuous.

The qualification sharpens the proverb’s force. It asks readers to distinguish an ideal from the conduct that imperfectly represents it: the presence of wrongdoing does not erase every beneficial result, but neither does an admirable ideal excuse the wrongdoing.

The Ending as Evidence

The editor sees the romances’ moral struggle most clearly in the conclusion of Launcelot and Guenever’s guilty love. After hearing of Arthur’s death and Guenever’s retirement to Almesbury, Launcelot visits her, takes leave, and resolves to follow her example. He becomes a hermit and penitent, living in a forest hermitage between two cliffs and serving God with prayer and fasting. The account continues that he and other knights endure penance for six years; Launcelot then takes priestly orders and sings mass for a year.

This ending gives the maxim a morally complex application. The editor notes that even medieval morality censured the constancy of Launcelot’s love, although romance might praise such constancy in another lover. The lovers’ eventual penitence does not make their guilt disappear; instead, the conclusion places their story within the broader contest between good and evil that the preface identifies as a defining feature of chivalric romance.