This book introduces the reader to a feminist psychological understanding of the age-old tale of the tragic lovers Tristan and Isolde. John Perkins offers us a series of life lessons designed to heighten our appreciation of our own sensibilities as he retells and examines Gottfried von Strassburg's twelfth century work Tristan.
The central dilemma is the tension between our duty to follow the ingrained patriarchal values of our society on the one hand and an in-depth realization of our holistic human nature on the other-following an authentic life over a prescribed one; the struggle between obligation and love-behaving correctly under surveillance (the watchful dictates of law or custom) or living by the spontaneous inclinations of the illumined heart.