One major theme in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the role that women have. This poem shows that women are not always as innocent as they seem, and yet they do have some kind of power over men almost all of the time. It is an easy to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a romantic celebration of chivalry, but Ruth Hamilton believes that “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight contains a more wide-ranging, more serious criticism of chivalry than has heretofore been noticed” (Hamilton 113).
Specifically, she feels that the poet is showing Gawain’s reliance on chivalry’s outside form and substance at the expense of the original values of the Christian religion from which it sprang. As she shows, “the first order of knights were monastic ones, who took vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity. The first duties the knights undertook, the crusades, were for the Church” (Hamilton 113). The great divergence in the two came with the rise of courtly love in which the knights were led to great feats of bravery and uplift by devotion to a mistress rather than God.
Given the Church’s mistrust of women and the flesh, the contradiction seems clear. Hamilton tells us there was a mass of clerical writings in the Fourteenth Century that were critical of chivalry and show the split between chivalry and the church during that time. Given this mistrust of women by the church, the placement of the women in the story is a critical medium for delivering this message. Interestingly, the women appear to have great power. Bertilak’s wife is carrying on with Gawain in the bedroom as the aggressor.
Morgan is the initiator of the plot which begins the story, and she is strong enough to move into Bertilak’s castle, turn him green and order him to walk and talk with a severed head. Lady Bertilak is seen in the Biblical role of temptress, as Maureen Fries shows “Eve became known as the source and symbol of lust and the dangers of the flesh; it was she who led Adam astray” (Bertilak, 27). In fact, Gawain actually places her in a long line of other biblical temptresses including Delilah and Bathsheba (1216-19).
Although she is seen as a temptress, Lady Bertilak is also strongly associated the romantic archetype of “courtly love”. As such, Fries says, the Lady “becomes the ambivalent mirror in which the knight pictures his own potential for moral achievement or moral failure in terms of the male warrior ethos such literature was designed to glorify” (Freis, 28). The Virgin Mary has a special relationship to Gawain. Mary is unique among women in Christianity. She is a life giver without sin, the only woman to have both motherhood and chastity.
This seems to sum up the positioning of Mary on one side representing spiritual love, chastity, obedience and life and Lady Bertilak on the other as the archetype of both courtly love and biblical temptress with associations of lust, disobedience and death. Describing this concept so fundamental to Christianity, Marina Warner says “To this day it is a specially graceful analog… a great vault thrown over the history of western attitudes to women, the whole mighty span rising on Eve the temptress on one side, and Mary the paragon on the other” (Warner 60). That Gawain is Mary’s Knight is made clear as he is robed for battle.
Because Marys image, the pentagle, is etched on the back of his shield, it further demonstrates how important Mary is to Sir Gawain. The poem describes the arming scene which shows her special relationship to Gawain: That his prowess all depended on the five pure Joys that the holy Queen of Heaven had of her child. Accordingly the courteous Knight had that Queen’s image etched on the inside of his armored shield, So that when he beheld her, his heart did not fail. (645-65) It is important to observe that Gawain derives his skill and courage from his special relationship with Mary.
As long as Gawain is facing the dangers which grow out of his bargain with the Green Knight his spiritual faith is clear and unshaken and his skill and courage hold. On his journey to look for the Green Knight he is surrounded by a number of hardships and is finally at the point of despair. As he lies freezing in the forest he prays to Mary find him shelter and a place to say Mass on Christmas eve. She answers his prayers and leads him to Bertilak’s castle. When Gawain comes to Bertilak’s court he is thrown into a totally different world.
Here, it is Gawain’s prowess in courtly love that the courtiers of Bertilak’s castle are interested in rather than some feat of daring like that which Arthur wanted before starting dinner. They say: This noble Knight will prove what manners the mighty bring; His converse of courtly love shall spur our studying (920-927). De Roo has argued that Arthur’s court, which is described as “in its fair prime” (De Roo 54) and Arthur as “childlike” (De Roo 86), represents the early days of chivalry, when it was still young and innocent, given over to jousting and martial exploits more than love.
Bertilak, as an older figure, presides over a much more sophisticated and worldly court and presents a more complicated moral situation for Gawain. In Arthur’s court, Guinevere sits statically on a dais, silent. In Bertilak’s court, Bertilak’s wife is a force to be reckoned with in the bedroom. Even in the early days of Arthur’s court, a level of moral decay is suggested with their frivolous celebration of Christmas and their reaction to the Green Knight’s challenge.
There is a warning implicit in the dangers facing them, that the continuing separation of chivalric and Christian values will inevitably be destructive. This separation becomes clear from the beginning of his visit in Bertilak’s court and it is demonstrated in his first meeting with the Lady. After his arrival, we see Gawain at Mass “in serious mood the whole service through”(940). This serious mood is immediately forgotten with the sight of the Lady. All he wants to do is to escort her down the aisle and admire her loveliness:
Most winsome in ways of all women alive, She seemed to Sir Gawain, excelling Guinevere. To squire that splendid dame, he strode through the chance. (944-46) This scene contains another inferred warning; women may look beautiful, but they can also be the route to death and decay. Strolling down the aisle with the Lady is an older woman and the two are compared, ‘For if the one was winsome, then withered was the other” (951). Rather than just representing the beauty that comes with age and time, the comparison is a moral statement about women and their association with sex, sin and death.
Marina Warner quotes several Medieval theologians and concludes “the lure of Eve’s beauty was nothing but an aspect of the death bought about by her seduction of Adam in the garden” (Warner 58). Further, decay of the flesh is often a symbol of spiritual decay and this also traces to Eve who “cursed to bear children rather than blessed with motherhood was identified with nature, a form of low matter that drags man’s soul down the spiritual ladder (Warner 58). The juxtaposition of the two women demonstrates this idea.
This moral ‘drag’ becomes apparent from the beginning of his association with the Lady. On Christmas morning, “that morning when men call to mind the birth of our dear Lord born to die for our destiny” (996-7), instead of finding solace in the meaning of Christmas, Gawain and the Lady “found such solace and satisfaction seated together, in the discrete confidences of their courtly dalliance” (1011-12). When Gawain was alone in the forest, fearing death, he could only think of one thing, that Mary should lead him to a place to say mass on Christmas.
Now he is so consumed with his ‘luf-talk’ that he has forgotten the significance of the day. This scene is only a foreshadowing of the dangers of courtly love; the bedroom scene is the real proving ground. First, Chaucer subtly shows how courtly love can fall outside the bounds of the male feudal hierarchy and its rules. On the first day of her assault the Lady begins to establish her own bargain with Gawain–a bargain of courtly love– through a subtle set of valuations based on his prowess in ‘luf-talk’.
She says to him: For were I worth the whole of woman kind, and all the wealth in the world were in my hand, And if bargaining I were to bid to bring myself a lord- With your novel qualities, knight, made known to me now, Your good looks, gracious manner and great courtesy, All of which I have heard of before, but here prove true- No lord that is living could be allowed to excel you. ’ And Gawain replies: ‘Indeed, dear lady, you did better,’ said the knight, ‘But I am proud of the precious price you put on me, And solemnly as your servant say you are my sovereign. May Christ requite it you: I have become your knight.
Not realizing what he was doing, Gawain has entered into another bargain, but now his bargain is with a woman rather than a man, and his ability to please her with his talk is being tested rather than the other bargains which test his loyalty, bravery and truthfulness. Chaucer is setting up the different bargains to ask the question, which is the most important value of chivalry. The Lady believes courtly love is the highest value in chivalry as she says on the second day: Since the choicest thing in Chivalry, the chief thing praised, is the loyal sport of love, the very lore of arms (1512-13).
This points out a serious conflict; in the game of courtly love, a man is forced outside of the traditional male hierarchies, placed on equal footing with a woman, and not subject to the feudal loyalty system. It is further suggested that this relationship has excelled other relationships within the code of chivalry. And, unlike the other contests, established by men, where the rules are clearly defined, the Lady’s game is puzzling. We can see this as the seduction progresses; Gawain’s moral code cannot stand strongly enough in this arena.
While he is able to see that his chastity is more important than his courtesy, he is still desperately trying to balance the two. It is his inability to make a clear choice between the two which leads him to accept the girdle. While Mary, representing his spiritual love and faith, saves him from losing his chastity, as the poet says, “And peril would have impended Had Mary not minded her knight” (1768-9), Gawain still turns around and disavows her. When the Lady directly asks him if he has another love, Gawain answers, ” ‘I owe my oath to none, nor wish to yet a while’ ” (1790-1).
His devotion has been lost in his bargaining. This loss of devotion and faith is his defeat because it was his faith in Mary, that gave him his ability and courage. With a weakening of his faith in her he is prey to the Lady’s offer of another token to protect him, the girdle. In this way he becomes guilty of the sin of cowardice, as Gawain himself names it when the Green Knight reveals his shortcomings We also see that in his bargaining with the Lady and her evaluation of him, he has come to value himself too highly, and in this way commits the sin of covetousness.
There is another possible significance in the acceptance of the girdle as a substitute for the pentangle, his trading of a religious symbol for a secular symbol. Richard Green points out that during the time the poet was writing, there was a well-known apocryphal story in which Mary gives Doubting Thomas her girdle, the Sacred Cintola, as a sign of his ultimate faith and truthfulness.
Green points out the irony which this suggests “from a comparison of the two arming scenes (the prominent shield which serves to establish Gawain as Mary’s Knight in the first scene being replaced in the second by a secular travesty of the Sacra Cintola, its green color carrying the ironic implication of disloyalty in love)” (Cintola 7). It supports the idea that he has been disloyal to Mary in accepting the ‘false girdle. ’ This is reinforced by the final exchange between Gawain and the Green Knight where Chaucer shows the way he feels feudalism should work–by banishing courtly love and women from the code of chivalry.
Sheila Fisher shows how the power the women hold is reappropriated by the men in order to support the male social order. First we see that the outcome of the beheading game, and therefore Gawain’s life, rests on his performance of the ‘exchange of winnings’ agreement, that is to say, on his fidelity to Lord Bertilak. Secondly, after the Green Knight reveals the meaning of the test, he states that the Lady acted at his behest and thereby appropriates the power she seemed to hold.
Later in the scene, he reveals that Morgan sent him to Arthur’s castle in the disguise of the Green Knight; however, by the time he reveals this, he has already appropriated the plan for his own purposes. It is also possible that the bartering game, which becomes the basis for the judgment, is his own invention since he does not credit this to Morgan’s agency. This enables him to then turn her plan, which was hatched for destructive purposes, to a noble and elevating test which serves the high moral purpose of teaching Gawain a lesson–hold true to the ideals of the Christian doctrine as a support for the chivalric code.
Gawain, in his confession and absolution, goes through a similar shifting of power and blame. When the Green Knight first reveals Gawain’s failure of “cowardice and covetousness” (2374), Gawain shows deep shame and self abnegation (2369-75). However, after he has been absolved by the Green Knight, he launches into a tirade about women, all biblical temptresses, in which he becomes one in a long line of male victims unwittingly duped by women (2413-28). In this way he displaces the blame and is able to regain his power within the story by returning not as a failure but as a fully reinstated knight of honor.
