Sir Gawain, the Green Knight, and the Conquest of Self

"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," original manuscript, author unknown. Public Domain

Modern fantasy literature has roots in the chivalric romances of medieval Europe. In strong, stately verses, the medieval poets examined the question of what constitutes heroism and the ideals of Christian knighthood. In these tales, a legendary knight sets out on a quest that tests his traits of loyalty, courtesy, honor, and courage; he encounters marvelous and magical forces in the misty, half-mythic lands that border on the known.

One of the foremost of these works is a poem called “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” written by an anonymous poet in the second half of the 14th century. “Sir Gawain” offers a sophisticated and spiritualized take on the traditional chivalric romance. Rather than focusing on the hero’s feats of arms, the tale emphasizes the feats of the spirit. The greatest heroes, the poem suggests, are such because they first learn to conquer themselves, their own weaknesses and sins. “Sir Gawain” is primarily a spiritual battle and no less epic for that.

An Unsettling Opening

The poem begins with a Christmas feast in King Arthur’s court. Amid the laughter, the pipes, the smoldering and sizzling meats, the ladies arrayed in garments “all broidered and bordered with the best gems,” with “clerics and all the court acclaim[ing] the glad season,” a monstrous figure suddenly strides into the hall. Green from head to toe, this huge man brandishes an axe in one hand, and, paradoxically, a festive holly branch in the other.

As medievalist Philip Chase points out, the Green Knight bears close kinship to a folk figure popular in medieval legend: the Green Man, a strange sort of embodiment of fertility, the wild, and nature. He is a mysterious “other”—a kind of living challenge to the world of courtliness, civilization, and chivalry epitomized by King Arthur’s court.

So this wild, anti-civilization force enters Arthur’s hall and berates its inhabitants, challenging them to prove that they have the chivalric virtues they claim to. If they’re really courageous and noble, they must accept his challenge. The challenge is a variation of another folklore motif, the “beheading game.” In this “game,” the contestants much exchange blows in an attempt to decapitate one another. The Green Knight challenges Arthur’s court to strike a blow at him, and, if he survives, he will return the blow a year later at his own home, the “Green Chapel.”

Only Sir Gawain, Arthur’s nephew, accepts the challenge. Using the great axe, he beheads the Green Knight. The latter, undisturbed and much to the shock of the onlookers, picks up his own head, reminds Gawain of his oath to travel to the Green Chapel a year hence, and strides out.

Sir Gawain (Dev Patel) hoists the Green Knight's mighty battle axe, in the 2021 film "The Green Knight." A24

The Knight and the Quest

This establishes Gawain’s quest: He must prove himself true to his word by keeping the appointment and receiving a blow from the Green Knight.

In many chivalric romances, a knight performs great feats of arms and fulfills some quest on behalf of his lady, the object of his courtly love. By contrast, in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Sir Gawain undergoes spiritual trials for his lady in the court of heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The earthly quest for the Green Knight and his Green Chapel becomes a frame in which a more important quest occurs: the quest to overcome both sensuality and cowardice, the quest to save the soul. As English professor Alan M. Markman explains, “What a man must do, or, in a word, human conduct, is the heart of the poem, and our participation in the hero’s test is its source of pleasure.”

Indeed, Markman argues that the focal point for the poem is Gawain’s character, which is presented to us as the embodiment of the ideal knight—though not without some humanizing flaws. The joy of the poem is to witness a great man confronting unexpected trials and temptations, bathed in an atmosphere of mystery and magic. Markman writes, “It is the function of the romance hero, I think, to stand as the champion of the human race, and, by submitting to strange and severe tests, to demonstrate human capabilities for good or bad action.”

Temptations and Remedies

What are the tests Gawain faces? They are tests that will push his chivalric code to its limit. First, he must keep his word by submitting to a fatal blow from the Green Knight without fighting back or defending himself in any way. Second, he must maintain his chastity and his loyalty when approached by a seductress. The two tests are beautifully tied together by the poet at the end of the poem.

We will consider the seduction attempt first. Sir Gawain sets out a year after the first encounter with the Green Knight to seek him at the Green Chapel. As Chase points out, the poet skips over the “action” scenes of fighting monsters and traveling through abandoned lands in just a few stanzas. Again, the poet’s concern is not for physical achievements, but rather for spiritual contests.

Eventually, Gawain prays to Mary, the mother of Christ, to guide him to some dwelling place. Sure enough, he shortly thereafter stumbles upon a castle. The lord of the castle, Bertilak, welcomes him heartily, and they engage in yet another game of folklore, the “exchange of winnings.” Bertilak will go out hunting each day and render to Gawain whatever he gains by it; Gawain will remain at the castle and give to the lord whatever he should receive during the course of the day.

The trouble begins when Bertilak’s wife, the lady of the castle, enters Gawain’s room each morning and tries to persuade him to make love with her. Here, the poet has wisely selected the perfect challenge for his noble knight because it pits various aspects of the chivalric code against each other. On the one hand, a knight must never be rude or rebuff a lady. On the other hand, he must be pure and chaste and loyal to his host Bertilak (by not sleeping with his wife). Through humble replies and witty evasions, Gawain manages to forestall the lady’s advances, though each time it becomes harder.

Lady Bertilk at Sir Gawain's bed, from the original manuscript, author unknown. Public Domain

In keeping with the Catholic belief in the intercessory power of Mary, the poet indicates that Gawain’s strength in resisting temptation derives from his devotion to the Mother of God. In the first place, when Gawain first issues forth on his quest, the poet spends time describing his armor and weapons in a mode very remindful of St. Paul’s famous passage in which he tells his hearers to “put on the armor of God.” Gawain’s physical and spiritual armor are intricately linked here, almost mixed up together in this passage.

As the description of armor continues, we learn that on the inside of his shield, he has an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary. “And therefore, as I find, he fittingly had / On the inner part of his shield her image portrayed, / That when his look on it lighted, he never lost heart.” Thus, in the midst of battle (whether physical or spiritual), the knight takes courage by looking at this picture of the heavenly queen, just as a knight might take courage from the thought of his beloved lady, back at the castle.

During his exchanges with Bertilak’s wife, Lady Bertilak, Gawain mentions the name of Mary. For instance, “‘Madame,’ said the merry man, ‘Mary reward you!’” The usage of Mary’s name appears casual, but Gawain likely utters it in an effort to recall to his mind that ideal of virginity who inspires him in chastity as he fends off this temptation.

Finally, the poet makes explicit the crucial role of this heavenly patroness in Gawain’s interior battle when he writes of Gawain and the Lady Bertilak’s rendezvous,

Good were their words of greeting; Each joyed in other’s sight; Great peril attends that meeting Should Mary forget her knight.

It is Mary’s protection of Gawain that will preserve him from sin. If she forgets him, he will fall—but she does not forget him. Note, too, that Mary’s sovereignty over Gawain is indicated here. He is “her knight.” This mirrors, again, the courtly love tradition in which ladies held the right to command their devoted knights, almost a right of ownership. C.S. Lewis called courtly love the “feudalization of love” in which the lady played the part of the suzerain, and the knight her vassal, owing her fealty. The poet applies that dynamic to Gawain’s relationship to his heavenly queen. She is the object of his courtly love, the one who sustains him, and for whom he ultimately performs his acts of spiritual fortitude when he successfully resists Lady Bertilak’s advances.

Sir Gawain is represented as the perfect knight, a fighter, a lover, and a religious devotee, in "The Vigil," by John Pettie, 1884. Public Domain

However, Gawain does fall into a lesser sin. At their final encounter, the Lady Bertilak offers him a green girdle, promising him that anyone wearing it cannot be harmed by weapons. Thinking ahead to this upcoming meeting with the Green Knight, Gawain accepts the girdle, and he does not hand it over to Lord Bertilak, despite their agreement to share all their winnings. He conquered his lust, but not fully his fear, leading him to break his word with Bertilak.

The Reveal

In the showdown with the Green Knight that follows, Gawain receives several revelations. First, he learns that the Green Knight is really Lord Bertilak, magically transformed, and that the encounters with Bertilak’s wife were a setup and a test. Because he resisted the seduction temptation, the Green Knight does not cut off Gawain’s head. He does nick it, however, scarring him, because of Gawain’s weakness in taking the green girdle and lying about it to Bertilak. Gawain thus comes to see that, really, his physical test (the beheading) and his spiritual test (the temptations) were one.

Although Gawain did not act without flaw, the Green Knight forgives him the lesser fault of keeping the girdle. Because Gawain conquered his own impulse to do wrong with the lady of the castle, he unwittingly saved his own life. Bertilak/Green Knight, having tested and proven Gawain’s inner character and heroism, lets him live. Thus the spiritual battle saves not only his soul, but his body too.

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