Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, page 12
And from her closet she came with many comely maidens.
She was fairer in face, in her flesh and her skin,
her proportions, her complexion, and her port than all others,
and more lovely than Guinevere to Gawain she looked.
He came through the chancel to pay court to her grace …
(39.942–6)
There follows a brief description of her beauty in contrast to the old and wrinkled and ugly lady that was at her side:
For if the younger was youthful, yellow was the elder;
with rose-hue the one face was richly mantled,
rough wrinkled cheeks rolled on the other;
on the kerchiefs of the one many clear pearls were,
her breast and bright throat were bare displayed,
fairer than white snow that falls on the hills;
the other was clad with a cloth that enclosed all her neck,
enveloped was her black chin with chalk-white veils …
(39.951–8)
When Gawain glimpsed that gay lady that so gracious looked,
with leave sought of the lord towards the ladies he went;
the elder he saluted, low to her bowing,
about the lovelier he laid then lightly his arms
and kissed her in courtly wise with courtesy speaking.
(40.970–4)
And the next day at the dinner on Christmas Day he is set on the dais beside her, and of all the mirth and splendour of the feast the author (as he says himself) is concerned only to depict their delight.
Yet I ween that Wawain and that woman so fair
in companionship took such pleasure together
in sweet society soft words speaking,
their courteous converse clean and clear of all evil,
that with their pleasant pastime no prince’s sport compares.
Drums beat, and trumps men wind,
many pipers play their airs;
each man his needs did mind,
and they two minded theirs.
(41.1010–19)
This is the setting, but the situation is not yet fully prepared. Though Gawain takes his ease for a while, he does not forget his quest. For four days he enjoys the merrymaking, but in the evening of the fourth day when there are now but three left of the old year before the appointed New Year’s Day, he begs leave to depart on the morrow. He tells no more of his errand than that he is obliged to try and find a place called the Green Chapel and reach it on New Year’s morning. Then he is told by the lord that he can rest at ease three days longer and complete the cure of all the hardships of his journey, for the Green Chapel is not two miles away. A guide shall be found to lead him thither on the morning itself.
At this point the author makes one of his many skilful combinations of elements of older fairy-story with the character of Gawain (as he is depicting him) to provide the machinery of his own version. In what follows we glimpse the Perilous Host who must be obeyed in every command, however silly or outrageous it may seem; but we see also that warmth, almost we might say impetuous excess, of courtesy that characterizes Gawain. Just as when he rehearsed the compact with the Green Knight he said largely ‘whatever may be the consequences’ and so landed himself in more than he bargained for; so now in delight and gratitude he cries:
‘Now I thank you a thousand times for this beyond all!
Now my quest is accomplished, as you crave it, I will
dwell a few days here, and else do what you order.’
(44.1080–2)
The lord immediately seizes on this, and holds him to his word: Gawain is to lie late abed, and then spend the days with the lady, while the lord goes off hunting. And then a seemingly absurd compact is propounded.
‘One thing more,’ said the master, ‘we’ll make an agreement:
whatever I win in the wood at once shall be yours,
and whatever gain you may get you shall give in exchange.
Shall we swap thus, sweet man – come, say what you think! –
whether one’s luck be light, or one’s lot be better?’
‘By God,’ quoth good Gawain, ‘I agree to it all,
and whatever play you propose seems pleasant to me.’
‘Done! ’Tis a bargain! Who’ll bring us the drink?’
So said the lord of that land. They laughed one and all;
they drank and they dallied, and they did as they pleased,
these lords and ladies, as long as they wished,
and then with customs of France and many courtly phrases
they stood in sweet debate and soft words bandied,
and lovingly they kissed, their leave taking.
With trusty attendants and torches gleaming
they were brought at the last to their beds so soft, one and all.
Yet ere to bed they came,
he the bargain did oft recall;
he knew how to play a game
the old governor of that hall.
(45.1105–25)
So ends the Second Fit and the great Third Fit begins, about which I wish specially to speak. I will say little about its admirable construction, since that has often been commented upon. Indeed (once granted an interest in contemporary sport and its details, or even without that concession) its excellence is obvious enough to any attentive reader: the way in which the hunts are ‘interleaved’ between the temptations; the significant diminuendo from the herds of deer (of real economic value in winter) slain in the first hunt to the ‘foul fox-fell’ of the last day, contrasting with the increasing peril of the temptations; the dramatic purpose of the hunts, not only in timing, and in preserving a double view with the three main actors kept all the while in sight, but also in elongating and making most weighty the three vital days out of the whole year of the general action: all this needs no elaboration.4 But the hunts have also another function, essential to the handling of the tale in this version, that is more to my purpose. As I have already indicated, any consideration of ‘analogues’, especially the less courtly, or indeed any close examination of our text without reference to others, will suggest that our poet has done his best to turn the place of the temptation into a real chivalrous castle, no mirage of enchantment or abode of fays, where the laws of courtesy, hospitality, and morality run. The hunts play a significant place in this change of atmosphere. The lord behaves as a real wealthy lord might be expected to behave in the season. He must be out of the way, but he does not remain mysteriously aloof, or just vanish. His absence and the lady’s opportunity are thus accounted for naturally; and this helps to make the temptations also more natural, and so to set them on a normal moral plane.
There would not, I think, and I am sure that the author intended that there should not, be any more suspicion in the minds of genuine first-time readers or hearers of his story5 than in the mind of Sir Gawain himself (as is clearly shown) that the temptations were all a ‘put-up job’, just part of the perils and trials that he had been inveigled from Arthur’s court to undergo and so be destroyed or utterly disgraced. In fact it is possible to wonder whether the author has not gone too far. Has not his contrivance a grave weakness? All – apart perhaps from unusual but not incredible magnificence – all is so normal in the castle that on reflexion the question must soon arise: ‘What would have happened, if Gawain had not passed the test?’ For we learn in the end that the lord and lady were conniving; yet the test was meant to be real, to procure if possible Gawain’s downfall and the disgrace of his ‘high order’. The lady was in fact his ‘enemy keen’. How then was she protected, if her lord was far away, hallooing and hunting in the forest? It is no answer to this question to point to ancient and barbaric customs or to tales in which memory of them is still enshrined. For we are not in that world, and if indeed the author knew anything about it he has wholly rejected it. But he has not wholly rejected ‘magic’. And the answer may be that ‘fairy-story’, though concealed, or taken for granted as part of the machinery of events, is really as integral to this part of the narrative as to those where it is more obvious and unaltered, such as the incursion of the Green Knight. Only fayryʓe (240) will suffice to make the plot of the lord and lady intelligible and workable in the imagined world that the author has contrived. We must suppose that just as Sir Bertilak could go green again and change shape for the tryst at the Chapel, so the lady could have protected herself by some sudden change, or destroying power, to which Sir Gawain would have become exposed by falling to temptation, even in will only.6 If we have this in mind, then perhaps the ‘weakness’ becomes strength. The temptation is real and perilous in the extreme on the moral plane (for Gawain’s own view of the circumstances is all that matters on that plane7); yet hanging in the background, for those able to receive the air of ‘faerie’ in a romance, is a terrible threat of disaster and destruction. The struggle becomes intense to a degree which a merely realistic story of how a pious knight resisted a temptation to adultery (when a guest) could hardly attain.8 It is one of the properties of Fairy Story thus to enlarge the scene and the actors; or rather it is one of the properties that are distilled by literary alchemy when old deep-rooted stories are rehandled by a real poet with an imagination of his own.
In my view, then, the temptations of Sir Gawain, his behaviour under them, and criticism of his code, were for our author his story, to which all else was subservient. I will not argue this. The weight, length, and detailed elaboration of the Third Fit (and of the end of the Second Fit which defines the situation) are, as I have said, sufficient evidence to show where at least the prime attention of the poet was concentrated.
I will turn then now to the temptation scenes, especially to those points in them that are most significant, as I believe, of the author’s views and purpose: the keys to the question ‘what is this poem really about?’ as it is by him presented. For this purpose it is necessary to have fresh in mind the conversations of Gawain and the Lady of the Castle.
(Here the temptation-scenes were read aloud in translation).9
From these scenes I will select some points for comment. On December the 29th the lady comes to Gawain’s room before he is fully awake, sits upon his bed-side, and when he arouses puts her arms about him (49.1224–5). She tells him that all is quite safe, and makes her all-out assault. It is, I think, here important to say that though some critics have held this to be a mistake on her part (which can in reality mean only a mistake on the part of the poet), they themselves are certainly mistaken. The lady is very beautiful indeed, Gawain was from the first, as we have seen, greatly attracted by her, and not only is he severely tempted on this occasion, but by the lady’s declaration (49.1235–40) that temptation remains in force throughout his dealings with her. All their converse and talk slips perpetually towards adultery thereafter.
After the first temptation no private conversation between Gawain and the lady (except in his room) is reported – he is either with at least both the ladies together, or after the lord’s homecomings in company – save only in the evening after the second temptation. And we may well consider the change that has occurred, contrasting the scene after supper on December the 30th with the untroubled air at dinner on Christmas Day (which I have already recited, p. 119):
Much gladness and gaiety began then to spring
round the fire on the hearth, and freely and oft
at supper and later: many songs of delight,
such as canticles of Christmas, and new carol-dances,
amid all the mannerly mirth that men can tell of;
and ever our noble knight was next to the lady.
Such glances she gave him of her gracious favour,
secretly stealing sweet looks that strong man to charm,
that he was passing perplexed, and ill-pleased at heart.
Yet he would fain not of his courtesy coldly refuse her,
but graciously engaged her, however against the grain the play.
(66.1652–63)
This I believe to be a fair translation of a passage that contains some verbal, and possibly textual, difficulties; but neither this version nor the original must be misunderstood. Gawain’s mood is not that of one who has been ‘put off’ or disgusted, but of a man who does not know what to do. He is in the throes of temptation. All his breeding constrains him to go on playing the game, but the lady has already exposed the weakness of such ‘nurture’, that it is a perilous weapon in such a situation, as dangerous as a handful of pretty rockets near a real gunpowder-plot. Immediately afterwards fear or prudence suggests flight, and Gawain tries to get out of his promise to do the lord’s bidding and stay three nights longer. But he is caught again by his own courtesy. He has no better excuse to offer than to say that it is very near the time for his appointment, and he had better start in the morning. This the lord easily counters by pretending to think that his own good faith is doubted, and he repeats that he gives his word that Sir Gawain shall reach the Green Chapel in good time. That this attempt at flight on Gawain’s part is due to moral wisdom (to fear of himself, that is) and not to disgust is made clear by the sequel.
Apart from this hint, however, in the first two scenes the author has been content to report events and sayings without revealing Gawain’s feelings (or his own views). But as soon as we come to the third scene the tone changes. So far Gawain has been engaged mainly in a problem of ‘courtesy’, and we see him using the wits and good manners for which he was renowned with great skill, and still (until the evening of December the 30th) with a certain confidence. But with stanzas 70 and 71 (lines 1750 ff.) we come to the ‘nub’ of the affair. Gawain is now in great peril. Wise flight has proved impossible without breaking his word and the rules of courtesy to his host.10 His sleep has been dark and troubled with the fear of death. And when the lady appears again he welcomes her with sheer pleasure and delight in her beauty. On the last morning of the old year she came again to his room:
in a gay mantle that to the ground was measured
and was fur-lined most fairly with fells well trimmed,
with no comely coif on her head, only the clear jewels
that were twined in her tressure by twenties in clusters;
her noble face and her neck all naked were laid,
her breast bare in front and at the back also.
She came through the chamber-door and closed it behind her,
wide set a window, and to wake him she called,
thus greeting him gaily with her gracious words of cheer:
‘Ah! man, how canst thou sleep,
the morning is so clear!’
He lay in darkness deep,
but her call he then could hear.
In heavy darkness drowsing he dream-words muttered,
as a man whose mind was bemused with many mournful
thoughts,
how destiny should his doom on that day bring him
when he at the Green Chapel the great man would meet,
and be obliged his blow to abide without debate at all.
But when so comely she came, he recalled then his wits,
swept aside his slumbers, and swiftly made answer.
The lady in lovely guise came laughing sweetly,
bent down o’er his dear face, and deftly kissed him.
He greeted her graciously with a glad welcome,
seeing her so glorious and gaily attired,
so faultless in her features and so fine in her hues
that at once joy up-welling went warm to his heart.
With smiles sweet and soft they turned swiftly to mirth,
and only brightness and bliss was broached there between them so gay.
They spoke then speeches good,
much pleasure was in that play;
great peril between them stood,
unless Mary for her knight should pray
(69–70.1736–69)
And with that we have the re-entry, for the first time since the pentangle and the shield of Gawain (that is here indeed alluded to), of religion, of something higher than and beyond a code of polite or polished manners which have proved, and are going again and finally to prove, not only an ineffectual weapon in the last resort, but an actual danger, playing into the hands of the enemy.
Immediately afterwards the word synne is introduced, for the first and only time in this highly moral poem, and so all the more emphatically; and what is more, a distinction is drawn, Gawain himself is forced to draw, a distinction between ‘sin’ (the moral law) and ‘courtesy’:
For she, queenly and peerless, pressed him so closely,
led him so near the line, that at last he must needs
either refuse her with offence or her favours there take.
He cared for his courtesy, lest a caitiff11 he proved,
yet more for his sad case, if he should sin commit
and to the owner of the house, to his host, be a traitor.
‘God help me!’ said he. ‘Happen that shall not!’
(71.1770–6)
The end of the last temptation-scene, with the lady’s complete shift of ground after her final defeat on the major (or higher, or only real) issue, is, of course, an added complexity in this complex poem, which must be considered in its place. But we must from this point move at once to the scene that follows the temptation: Gawain’s confession (75.1874–84).
Gollancz at least deserves credit for noting the confession,12 which had previously received little or no attention. But he totally missed the point, or points, involved. These I wish now specially to consider. It is not too much to say that the whole interpretation and valuation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight depends on what one thinks of the thirtieth stanza of the Third Fit [stanza 75]. Either the poet knew what he was about, meant what he said, and placed this stanza where he wished it to be – in which case we must think about it seriously and consider his intentions; or else he did not, and was just a muddler, stringing conventional scenes together, and his work is not worth long consideration at all, except, perhaps, as a lumber-room of old half-forgotten and less than half-understood stories and motives, just a fairy-story for adults, and not a very good one.
