Sir Gawain And The Green Knight example essay topic

When a reader hears "Camelot,"King Arthur", or "the Round Table", the first word that springs to mind is usually "chivalry". Chivalry is the cornerstone of the Arthurian mythos, and it was the decline of chivalry that brought about the fall of Camelot. Chivalry and its decline in these tales were not just meant to entertain the readers of the day. They were also meant to instruct people in the ways of chivalry, and present the problems that could result from discarding the ideals it represents.

David L. Boyd in his paper claims: By the late fourteenth century, the institution of chivalry had already lost much of its social value. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight attempts to defend chivalric ideals by blaming their decline on external forces: queer male behavior and desire that derives from the deceit and wiles of women. (Boyd, 77) While I do not contest the decline of chivalry, I do not believe that the Gawain-poet is attempting to blame it on queerness or desire. I will attempt to show that the Gawain-poet intended to show within Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the folly of pride as the cause of the decline of chivalry. The queerness and desire were simply used to shock the reader and give the message more of an impact. Before progressing further, it is important to make clear the meaning and intent of the word "queer".

The term has become so common in popular culture as well as the academic world that it is very possible to have its meaning improperly understood. "Queer" is all too often taken to simply mean "gay". While it manifests this way in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that is not the true meaning. Richard E. Zeikowitz says of the term", [it] can thus signify any nonnormative behavior, relationship, or identity occurring at a specific moment. It may also describe an alternative desire that threatens the stability of the dominant norm". (Zeikowitz, 67) The Gawain-poet skewed the image of what was normal to emphasize the role of pride in the perverting of chivalry.

He did not mean to show the abnormal itself as the source of the perversion. To show that the "queer" is not responsible for the failing of chivalry, it is important to first examine the places where the poem does deviate from the norm. The first sign of the queer comes with the arrival of the Green Knight to Arthur's court. In a "guise all of green" (151), a horse of matching hue (175), and being "half a giant" (140), the Green Knight is a picture of the nonnormative. While his size and color do not go unnoticed by the court, it is the rest of the Green Knight that draws their attention and begins adding the homoerotic charge to the poem. While the lovely Guinevere is summed up as simply being the "Fair queen, without a flaw", the Green Knight is described in great detail.

With descriptions including his "broad neck to buttocks, so bulky and thick, / And his loins and his legs so long and so great" (138-39) to his "waist in its width [being] worthily small" (144) to "His great calves" (158), we see the roles being reversed as the woman is all but ignored while the man is examined in an almost sexual way. It was more of a homo social norm at the time for a man, or in this case a primarily male court, to admire another man's physical attributes. But when the Gawain-poet focuses on the Green Knight's description while the queen barely even mentioned, it is apparent that a point is being made with the purpose of grabbing the reader's attention. With a queerness setting the mood for the poem in Arthur's court, the Gawain-poet turns the tables at Hautdesert by making the norm so out of place that normalcy itself seems queer. This is made apparent again by the initial description of Bercilak. Though this time, it is as if the reader takes on Gawain's point of view as he "gazed on the host that greeted him there" (842).

This enhances the homoerotic sense of the situation as Bercilak is observed to be a "lusty fellow" (843) with "stalwart shanks" (846) who was "well suited [... ] / To be a master of men" (849). Once again the hetero normative action of noticing a lady, Lady Bercilak in this case, is done very casually. Gawain briefly notes that she is more beautiful than Guinevere (945), no small feat, and then gives her no more notice than the old woman accompanying her. The queerness continues when Bercilak binds Gawain to an agreement to exchange their winnings for the Gawain's last three days at Hautdesert.

Bercilak's daily hunts parallel those of his wife, and set Gawain in the dually non-normal roles of both the feminine and the hunted. On the first day, Bercilak and his men hunt only the female deer, as it is a crime to hunt the males in that season (1154-57). Meanwhile, mirrored in the bedroom, Lady Bercilak takes the role of the aggressor and "hunts" Gawain. The second and third days pass in similar fashion with the Bercilaks each "hunting" their "feminine" prey. This all brings the abnormal to center stage, but it is the exchanges at the end of the days that truly adds queerness to Hautdesert.

When Lady Bercilak completes her own hunt each day, she kisses Gawain, adding one more kiss each day. The six kisses in total are given less notice than the amount of time it takes Gawain to get dressed. This might not seem so abnormal, if so much more description were not given to the kisses Gawain gives to Lord Bercilak in return. Gawain "embraces his broad neck with both his arms, / And confers on him a kiss in the comeliest style" (1388-89) on the first night, "kisses [Bercilak] in courteous style" twice (1639-40) the second night, and finally "Then a coles he the any t and kisses hym thr yes, / As sauer ly and sadly as he hem sette cou the". (1936-37) on the third night. Translated, this describes the three kisses as "satisfying" and "of sufficient length".

Not only does this twist the norm, it also forces the reader to consider how this pact with Bercilak would have turned out had Gawain slept with his wife. The Gawain-poet must have intended this knowing that since homophobia was rampant in the late 14th century (Boyd, 97), this would certainly make the readers of the time pay closer attention. Making even less of an impact on the decline of chivalry than queer male behavior was the "desire that derives from the deceit and wiles of women". Lady Bercilak both deceived and wiled Gawain on each of her three "hunts". The results of these being more queer male behavior and the gift of the girdle. When Gawain is told in the Green Chapel that he was tricked, he is "gripped with grim rage" (2370) with Lady Bercilak.

When he then discovers that she was put up to it by Bercilak, who was himself put up to the entire charade by Morgan le Fay, Gawain politely refuses an invitation to return to Hautdesert for a feast with his aunt and the Bercilaks (2471), then leaves for Camelot. By undercutting Gawain's rage toward Lady Bercilak with the total lack of emotion on finding out the true source of the deceit, the Gawain-poet could not have meant for womanly wiles to be seen as the cause for the decline of chivalry. The true culprit responsible for the decline of chivalry, according to the Gawain-poet, is pride. This is first seen in Arthur's court when the Green Knight challenges Arthur to a game and accuses Arthur of being "puffed up so high" (258).

There is a pause after the challenge when "all were slipped into sleep" (244), when not even Arthur answers. When Arthur accepts the challenge, every knight in the court should have spoken up to take his place in the face of potential danger. It was not fear of the queer man that gave them pause, but rather fears of potentially losing pride if the challenge were lost. These knights had faced all manner of magical and strange beasts before, according to the tales.

One tinted half-giant should not give them pause. When Gawain offers to step in for Arthur, his beseeching of the queen (341-2) and his "humble" belittling of his own worth and ability are simply acts of pride. Through them, he is able to boost his status in the eyes of the court and rub in the fact that they are even less brave than he. Gawain did fear death, but he feared a being another face in the crowd even more. It was this fear of death that later made him accept the girdle that would render him unable to die, and fail to turn it over to Bercilak as part of their agreement.

The pride that he would have from winning the Green Knight's challenge with the secret help of the girdle was enough to cause one of Arthur's finest knights to bend his knightly beliefs. His outburst towards Lady Bercilak in the Green Chapel makes more sense when it appears he has just been revealed as a prideful fraud who was duped by a woman. This rage turns into shame as Gawain again dons the girdle as a sign of his transgression, which could lead readers to believe that Gawain has been jolted back onto the true knightly path. (Though one may question how humble Gawain might be while wearing a girdle that bestows invulnerability.) Arthur and his court seem oblivious of any moral or message Gawain had tried to convey in his story, as they don similar girdles. They are more concerned with the appearance of the girdle than the underlying message. This seems strange considering it was a member of the court that so plainly stated Gawain, and also chivalry's downfall, when he cites Gawain's motivation for accepting the Green Knight's game as "empty pride" (681).

Neither the queer behavior of men nor the deceit of women is shown in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as being the cause of the decline of chivalry. They are both simply used as tools by the Gawain-poet to shock the readers of the fourteenth century. By shocking them thus, he would engage the readers, make them more observant, and make them more likely to learn from the mistakes made by Gawain and Arthur's court.

Bibliography

Anonymous. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Eds. J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.
Bor roff, Marie. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, and Pearl. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.
Boyd, David L. "Sodomy, Misogyny, and Displacement: Occluding Queer Desire in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". Arthurian a 8.2 (1998): 77-113.
Zeikowitz, Richard E. "Befriending the Medieval Queer: A Pedagogy for Literature Class". College English 65.1 (2002): 67-80.