Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Arming Scene

An extremely lengthy passage in the poem (as Gawain departs Camelot) provides a vivid and detailed description from head to foot of Gawain’s armour. While the arming of Gawain does, on a basic level, develop the narrative action, signalling his imminent departure from Bertilak’s castle, the arming motif in romance writing symbolises much more. This ritualistic description is being employed to signify the nature and role of the hero. Later in the story, the animation provides a full-screen view of Gawain’s physical body. In the poem there is no such focus on Gawain’s appearance; the focus is solely on the armoury, on the visual external signifiers of knightly identity. The Gawain-poet develops this romance motif one stage further with a lengthy exposition of Gawain’s shield.

THE SHIELD

Gawain’s shield has two images, one of the Virgin Mary on the inside and the other of a pentangle on the outside. This is the only section of the narrative where the narrator acts as a moralist. Elsewhere, the role of the narrator is either that of a distant observer or an omniscient voice. This section is not open to interpretation because of the narrator’s stance as a moralist. The explicit code that is being discussed is presented as an unequivocal truth. The images of the pentangle and the Virgin Mary indicate the poet is concerned not only with the external signifiers of knightly identity, but also with the internal nature of the Arthurian ideal that Gawain is being held responsible to defend.

VIRGIN MARY

Gawain departs from Camelot in a quest to defend not only the honour of the Round Table, but also of the Virgin Mary. It is she who appears on the inside of the shield that is used in his heroic combats, and to whom Gawain turns for inspiration while his chivalry is on test in the bedroom scenes. Gawain repeatedly prays throughout the poem and confesses in the chapel before leaving to face the Green Knight. He obviously attempts to aspire to and live his life by religious ideals.

However, the poem demonstrates that in maintaining his secular reputation as a knight by accepting the girdle as a love-token, Gawain is dishonest, dishonouring the lady whom he claims to serve above all others, the Holy Mother of God. The Virgin Mary can be easily honoured in the heroic combats against wild beasts and supernatural figures, but in the attack on his psychological armoury, Gawain finds it impossible to honour both the ideal and the real lady, his religious and secular allegiances. The poem does, however, conclude with a supplication to Jesus Christ.

Thus, while it is demonstrated that the chivalric code is fallible, due to the pressures on human nature, affirmation of religious ideals is shown to be the viable alternative. Such a reading can, of course, be immediately challenged. The pagan contexts and unresolved dangers of nature and human society do not suggest that any resolution, code or ideal triumphs. Yet such disillusion in the secular world is what results in the search for an ideal that permits frailties, and the religious ideal advocates the imperfection of the secular in contrast to the perfection of the divine.

PENTANGLE

The interlocking geometric lines of a pentangle are loyal to each other. The image symbolises the nature of the value system Gawain is representing. The poet’s description of the pentangle as an ‘endless knot’ (line 630) indicates that the focus is on the interdependency of the five virtues. It is not the virtues in themselves, but rather the relationships between them that are being tested.

The poet creates a sustained allegory of the five lines and five points of the pentangle as features of ideal chivalry. The discussion is religious in focus. Gawain’s five senses and his actions are attributed in their purity to his trust in the five wounds of Christ, his trust in salvation. His supreme virtue of fortitude has a religious source in his devotion to the five Joys of the Virgin Mary. There is particular attention paid to the five virtues of truth, ‘trouthe’:

Particular attention is paid to the relationship between cleanness and courtesy.

The reader is clearly presented with the ideals that are to be tested in the Temptations and Exchange of Winnings scenes. Note, however, the symbol of the pentangle does not survive these scenes. After Gawain returns from his experience of the Beheading Game, Arthur’s court adopts not the image of idealised perfection, but the green sash.