An article published in a 2002 edition of The Modern Language Review noted that there is a growing belief among scholars that Sir Gawain is a misogynistic figure who descends “to the level of a churl capable of abusing the ladies of (the Green Knight’s) household” (Morgan, 265). Indeed, Gawain’s rant, which takes place near the end of the classic medieval poem, is part of an ancient literary tradition that reaches into the distant past. And yet Gawain is also a contradictory figure, a knight errant critical of women in the story and yet a hero who bore the image of the Virgin Mary on his shield, evincing a pure love and trust in the archetypal image of virtuous womanhood. Thus, Gawain must be regarded within the context of his faith and the fact that it is faith which colors his perception of women.
Gawain’s sense of frustration at being caught in a web of deceit does not mean that he is a misogynist. He is a knight of Arthur’s court, and that makes him a paragon of virtue and honor. And to that high ideal Gawain holds women, against whom he compares to the example of his holy patroness. It was commonplace for a knight to bear the symbols of religious inspiration. “These holy displays of religious symbols or images largely coincided with a knight’s particular personal identification with a saint, biblical passage, or other holy entity” (Religion Among the Laity, 2012). Had Gawain been a true misogynist it is certainly conceivable that he would have chosen a male figure as his champion, perhaps St. Michael, the
warrior archangel of Heaven, to adorn his shield and armor. But the poem leaves no doubt where Gawain’s loyalty lies:
“On the inner part of his shield, her image portrayed,
That when his look on it lighted, he never lost heart” (Damrosch, Baswell and Schotter, 208).
The story makes pointed references to Gawain’s reliance on Mary to see him through his trials. “His admiration and holy reverence to Mother Mary is referenced several times, and therefore her portrayal on this knight’s shield serves as a physical evidence of his devotion and reliance upon her guidance and support” (Religion Among the Laity, 2012). Choosing a holy guardian was no trivial matter for a knight. It was more than a superstitious conceit or a simple affirmation of faith. Thus, bearing religious iconography was a significant and consequential act because it represented the spiritual means by which the knight expected to accomplish his mission. For Gawain, Mary was both icon and intercessor:
“And at that holy tide,
He prays with all his might that Mary may be his guide
Till a dwelling comes in sight” (Damrosch, Baswell and Schotter, 210).
When observers comment on Gawain’s “misogynous outburst” and note that “he turns on women and blames them,” it is in the belief that it is a deliberate and considered insult (Morgan, 265). Yet, in truth, he is commenting on attempts to lure him into temptation as would a devotee of Mary, as a knight of the Round Table and an upholder of a chivalrous code that requires honor and virtue of men and women alike. Gawain knows that he owes his host honorable and respectful behavior, and he expects it in return. That this does not occur as he
expects is a betrayal of the code to which he has dedicated his life. “If Gawain were to give in to sexual temptation, he would be committing a grave offense against leute, repaying his host’s (apparent) trust with betrayal. Also, Gawain would then be false to his own ethos, which involves clannes (‘purity’) and devotion to the Virgin Mary” (Battles, 19).
There is more going on in the story than an accusation of misogyny is capable of explaining. One theme of the story is concerned with Gawain’s attempt to protect his reputation, a complex matter of protocol upon which hinges the integrity of the entire chivalric code. Gawain’s honor will not permit him to reject the chatelaine’s advances outright, and this gives her the opportunity to continue probing for vulnerabilities, for “chinks” in Gawain’s moral armor. While Gawain does not relent and give in to her overtures, he is unable to resist when the opportunity to obtain the protection of the green girdle arises. It is the girdle that undermines Gawain’s chivalric integrity, not the blandishments of the chatelaine. Worse, Gawain is forced to admit his perfidy to Sir Bertilak. “Sir Bertilak finds that Gawain’s failure to return the belt shows a want of leute, and both Gawain himself and the narrator concur. Both cowardice and a failure of leute can be interpreted as weaknesses in the feudal aspect of chivalry” (Battles, 19).
When Gawain vents his anger, it is an expression of frustration over his own vulnerability and personal weakness. The chatelaine has betrayed her own honor but Gawain’s concern over his reputation and efficacy caused him to commit an even greater betrayal. When he “rants” against the deceptiveness of women, he is railing against the fact that women are as capable as men of being manipulative and self-aggrandizing. And it is to this subterfuge that Gawain has allowed himself to fall prey. The chatelaine uses her sex to her advantage within the
context of the very code that is the guiding force in Gawain’s life.
In Gawain and the Green Knight, it is the females who determine the course of the action. Morgan le Fay issues a challenge to Arthur and, more specifically, to her rival Queen Guinevere. Gawain takes up the challenge as a good knight should, but in so doing he is undone by the chatelaine’s maneuverings; “the Virgin Mary intercedes for her knight, and Gawain only accepts a belt from the Lady, for which he later receives a cut on the neckwhile his life is spared” (Battles, 20). Gawain survives his ordeal by virtue of Mary’s grace, but his commitment to the chivalric ideal is compromised by one of the women in the story, which proves central to the poem’s chain of events. Gawain and the Green Knight is a woman’s story as much as it is a man’s tale. “In the process of revising our understanding of the poem’s plot, the female characters go from marginal accessories to planning and shaping its every twist” (Battles, 20).
For Gawain, women are supposed to be the objects of chivalric adventure, not the shapers of events. That is a role reserved for men. Lady Bertilak is an aggressive figure, who uses her femininity to get what she wants as surely as men use male qualities of physical strength and aggressiveness to achieve their aims. This is an awkward state of affairs for Gawain, and it does not square with his view of womanhood which proceeds from the inviolable figure of Mary. It is Mary who comes to his aid, helping him when his own strength proves inadequate to the challenge of the chatelaine and the temptation of the girdle. Mary is Gawain’s strength when his own resolve wavers and guides him through the complexity of the story, which is offers a sophisticated interplay of free will, conscience and guilt based on the biblical notion of temptation. Gawain is tempted by a woman to act contrary to the dictates of his conscience and
Gawain’s anger and frustration emerges from his own sense of guilt, from his shame at having been proven vulnerable. But he is caught up in a complicated and deceptive game, the full extent of which he does not fully understand until it has played out. It proves to be a rigged contest, devised by Morgan in the guise of the elderly lady. True, the Lady Bertilak is his chief adversary but a man, Lord Bertilak in the form of the Green Knight, is also in on the deception. Thus, there is more at work behind the scenes than simple female duplicity, the quality that Gawain complains of and against which he needs Mary’s protection. Ultimately, Gawain’s steadfastness in the exchange game, his instinctive adherence to faith and courtesy, proves to be his saving grace (Kittredge, 76). It is to Mary that he appeals for strength when the game is truly on the line. And it is his faith, or Mary as the source of his faith, that sees him through the worst of the ordeal. Gawain’s consciousness of this precludes the possibility that he could truly be a misogynist.
Gawain needs help to negotiate the complications of his challenge. As a knight, he is bound to respond to a woman’s requests and when he receives the green girdle, he finds himself on the horns of a dilemma. He is bound by the chivalric code to “play fair,” yet driven to salvage his reputation and to act in the interests of his own self preservation. It is a powerful moral riddle, and it is administered to him by a woman. Gawain is coerced into playing a deceptive game of his own in order to keep the girdle hidden, thereby violating the rules of the exchange game. Yet he has remained virtuous within the context of his relationship with Lady Bertilak. In
this sense Gawain passes the test, though he has broken the rules of his compact with Lord Bertilak. Given the convoluted nature of his challenge, Gawain’s frustration toward women can,
perhaps, be understood. He has, after all, been a pawn in a much larger game.
There is a lack of orderliness to the story, a sense that Gawain is adrift and being carried along against his will, an irresistible tide against which he must struggle in order to restore order to his life and to restore his honor. Gawain is caught in the proverbial web, the inference being that only a woman could weave such a troublesome and self-ensnaring trap. It is in this aspect of the story that we see the issue through Gawain’s eyes, through his anger at having been played by a woman savvy enough to use Gawain’s own personal code and sense of honor against him. Thus trapped and betrayed by his own unavoidable vulnerability in this situation, Gawain lashes out against women. But it is his faith in the ultimate woman, in the ideal of feminine purity that sees him through in the end. Without his faith in Mary’s loyalty and support, Gawain would have failed utterly in his test.
It is the representation of female deceptiveness that intimates that men can only do so much to maintain their personal integrity in such a world. Gawain proceeds from an assumption of honor, honor from within and honor in others. To do otherwise, to presume that others, especially women, are intrinsically false, would be a betrayal of the chivalric ideal because it would mean that those he has sworn to protect are unworthy of his faith and protection after all. Thus, the poem reveals its delicacy. When one strand is undone, the entire framework of knightly virtue, the foundation upon which Gawain’s world rests, is compromised. In such a world, vulnerability is assured and personal efficacy can only carry one so far. Seen in this
context, Gawain’s railing against women is a howl of frustration against the impossibility of preserving perfection in an imperfect world.
In an imperfect world, the poem appears to be asking, where can one turn for permanence and reassurance? If Gawain cannot rely on others to uphold the civil code by which he has chosen to live his life, then no one can truly be trusted. There is no absolute and the male-ordered image of the perfect world is an illusion. This is certainly in keeping with the idea that the world is a transitory place, a place where change and impermanence comprise the only reliable “code.” Gawain’s complaint against women comes with this realization, the understanding that the world is not his to maintain. Events unfold as they will, and his only option is to try and endure the consequences of the actions he must take in order to survive in such a world. Ultimately, this is the gist of the conundrum that Lady Bertilak and the green girdle represent.
It is this state of affairs that causes Gawain to call upon Mary. In an unordered world, only the divine can provide any sense of solidity. This is the most profound lesson that Gawain learns and the poem imparts. Women, in the persons of Morgan and Lady Bertilak, represent the overarching, eternal forces that determine personal fate. One may rail against the seeming unrelenting cruelty of such forces, but in the end it is as fruitless as complaining about cold in winter or heat in summer. The primal forces of nature do not obey or act based on human ideas of civilization. When Gawain turns to Mary for aid in surviving his challenges, it is a concession that his strength alone is limited. That Mary is a woman, and the perfect image of womanhood, proves that Gawain is not a misogynist but a very human actor caught in a moment of frustration at the bewildering and uncontrollable forces that determine one’s fate.
References
Battles, Paul, ed. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Calgary, AB: Broadview Press, 2012.
Damrosch, David, Baswell, Christopher and Schotter, Anne Howland, eds. The Longman
Anthology of British Literature. London: Longman, 2002.
Kittredge, George Lyman. A Study of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1960.
“Knight’s Material Religious Devotions.” Religion Among the Laity. 2012. Available from:
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/.
Morgan, Gerald. “Medieval Misogyny and Gawain’s Outburst Against Women in ‘Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight.’” Modern Language Review, 97(2), April 2002, pp. 265-278.
