The Action of the Hunting and Bedroom Scenes, The Definition of Gawain's Sinfulness, and The Judgment of Gawain's Conduct
[In the following essays, Morgan examines how the Gawain-poet demonstrates nobility through character, rather than by action; contends that Gawain's confession is truly pious; and explores the themes of sin and repentance in the work.]
The Action of the Hunting and Bedroom Scenes
I
The moral seriousness of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is clearly established by the pentangle passage, and in the light of its values commentators have addressed themselves to the judgments of Gawain's conduct made by the Green Knight (2331-68), Gawain himself (2369-88, 2406-38, and 2494-512), and Arthur and his court (2513-21). It is not a matter of dispute that the moral outcome is determined in the series of bedroom exchanges, framed by the hunting scenes, which take place in Fitt III between Gawain and the host's wife. Nevertheless the moral implication of these events, reinforced as it is by the poem's interlocking structure, has not prevented some readers from reducing the bedroom interchanges to the level of light comedy or even farce. Thus Barron believes that Gawain's ‘elaborate and self-conscious piece of play acting’ when he feigns surprise at the lady's presence in his room and crosses himself (1200-1203) provokes laughter and that ‘though we may not be able to define the cause of our laughter, it must materially affect our relationship to the hero hereafter.’1 On the other hand we do not laugh when Lancelot is tested by a lady in the Perlesvaus and also resorts to crossing himself as a means of defence (8401-3, and 8409-11, and p. 223):
Ele sailli sus isnelement e s'en vient eu vergier la ou Lanceloz gisoit. Ele le trova dormant, si s'asiét dejoste lui, si le conmença a regarder en sospirant, … Ele aproche sa boche de la sieue e le besa au meuz e au plus bel q'el sot. iii. foiz, e Lanceloz s'esveilla tantost, si sailli sus e fist croiz sor lui; puis esgarda la damoisele.
The lady jumped up and came to the orchard where Lancelot lay. She found him still asleep, and so she sat down at his side and began to gaze at him, sighing … She lowered her lips to his and kissed him three times as finely and as sweetly as she could, and Lancelot woke up at once and leapt to his feet and crossed himself, and then saw the maiden.2
Clearly there is a difference of religious and moral sensibility here that makes it difficult for the modern reader to invest such actions with the seriousness that they deserve. In the same way Davenport compares the temptation of Gawain to fabliau, and observes that ‘by choosing the wiles of a woman as the means by which Gawain's honour and self-command are tested, the poet indicates a basically comic view of Gawain's failure, and introduces a note of parody into the poem’ (The Art, p.139). Such comparisons are essentially misconceived, and fail to give due moral weight to the values of chastity and courtesy. At the same time there is a violation of the poem's imaginative integrity as expressed in the idea of the pentangle.
It should indeed be axiomatic that the hunting and bedroom scenes are to be understood in relation to the poem's idea, for to repeat Aquinas (ST, la 15.2):
Ratio autem alicujus totius haberi non potest, nisi habeantur propriae rationes eorum ex quibus totum constituitur; sicut aedificator speciem domus concipere non potest, nisi apud ipsum esset propria ratio cujuslibet partium ejus.
Now a plan governing a whole necessarily involves knowing what is special to the parts which make up the whole; just as an architect cannot plan a house without knowing what is special to each part of it.
The idea of the pentangle establishes two fundamental principles, namely that nobility is a complex unity made up of interrelated parts and that, relative to other men, Gawain stands for the highest perfection of human nobility. The organization of the hunting and bedroom scenes builds upon and reflects these principles. The bedroom scenes are set within the hunting scenes and linked to them by the Exchange of Winnings agreement. The Exchange of Winnings agreement in its turn is set within the Beheading Game, and these too are linked, for the outcome of the Beheading Game is dependent upon the outcome of the Exchange of Winnings agreement. By means of this complex, interlocking structure of events there is a comprehensive testing of Gawain's trawþe. Our point of departure is Gawain's physical, moral, and spiritual excellence. This being so, the traditional contrast between the health of the hunting field and the sinfulness of the bedroom has to be subordinated to our sense of that excellence.
Moreover, the poet has once more given us the means of measuring that excellence, for Gawain's actions at this point are to be judged by their conformity to the terms of the Exchange of Winnings agreement. As in any proper game, the rules are set out with the greatest possible clarity and precision. On Gawain's part there are four elements to be observed; first, he will remain in bed; second, he will get up in time for mass; third, he will go to his food; and fourth, he will be entertained by the companionship of the host's wife until the host himself returns (1096-99). We can see for ourselves how these conditions are fulfilled by Gawain on the three successive days. The appearance of the lady in Gawain's bedroom is not only a violation of the rules of courtesy, but also of the implied pattern of the Exchange of Winnings agreement itself. Nevertheless, although the appearance of the lady in Gawain's bedroom complicates the predicted pattern of action, it does not in fact succeed in dislocating it. For all the difficulties created by the lady's intervention, Gawain remains true to the pattern of action required of him by his host.
At the same time the lord plays his part to the full in the hunting field. He is true to his word in getting up early and going off to the hunt (1133-38), and he does not do so without a fitting display of courtesy and piety (1135). Once again the pattern is repeated on the following days (1412-16, and 1688-96). The lord is not a poacher (like the man in The Parlement of the Thre Ages), but a true sportsman who respects the laws and conventions of hunting. He observes the close season, and so does not interfere with the male deer (1154-57). Although a great multitude of deer is slain, the slaughter is controlled and not wanton, being of ‘hyndez barayne’ (1320) and ‘of dos and of oþer dere’ (1322). The lord is open and generous when it comes to the exchange of winnings itself. He does not disguise his delight as a sportsman in his achievement, but he does not exult to the discomfiture of a worthy opponent, for he conducts himself towards Gawain ‘al godly in gomen’ (1376). In all this we are reminded that the best games are those which are suffused with sportsmanship and in which the opponents are well matched. We can see that the values of the host are not essentially different from those of Gawain himself as they are set out in the pentangle passage. Indeed the equality of host and guest is revealed in the discriminating generosity that Gawain displays towards the host on each successive evening. The venison is the best that he has seen in seven years in the season of winter (1381-82); it is the biggest quantity of flesh that he has ever seen on a boar (1629-32); and the embarrassment of ‘þis foule fox felle’ (1944) is a matter to be passed over as quickly as possible (1948-49).
The notion of equality between Gawain and the lord is sustained in the actual exchanges of the winnings themselves on the three successive evenings. The importance of these exchanges is underlined by the public ceremony that attends them, for they do not take place until the whole court has been assembled (1372-75, and 1623-25). Even allowing for the differences of the third evening (and they are significant differences) the transaction remains a public transaction (1924-27). The lord's success on the first day is matched by the kiss that Gawain gives ‘as comlyly as he couþe awyse’ (1389). It is not hard for us to believe that it could be superior to the lord's winnings (1392-94), but it is right for Gawain not to respond to the lord's promptings on this score. It is not for him to reveal to the husband the impropriety of the wife. Gawain is not bound by any promise to declare the source of his winnings (1395-97), and by his generous acknowledgment of the lord's success in the deer hunt has already shown himself to be abiding by the spirit as well as the letter of the agreement. The awesome prize of the boar on the second day does not diminish but on the contrary reveals the true worth of the two kisses that Gawain in his turn delivers to the lord (1639-40). Gawain is justified in claiming equality here: ‘Now ar we euen … / Of alle þe couenauntes þat we knyt’ (1641-42). On the third day Gawain's three kisses (1936-37) seem to earn for him a great advantage, for they are, as the lord truly acknowledges them to be, ‘suche prys þinges / … suche þre cosses / so gode’ (1945-47). Yet there remains an equality in this exchange too despite the superficial inequality, and it is an equality that is not entirely to Gawain's disadvantage. The lord is dissatisfied, but the fox did not get away from its pursuers. Indeed a ceremonial tribute or salute is paid to the fox as a fitting adversary (1916-17):
Þe rich rurd þat þer watz raysed for Renaude saule
with lote.(3)
In the same way the worth of Gawain's three kisses is not wholly undermined by his failure in the matter of the girdle.
The equality that is explicit in the Exchange of Winnings enables us to estimate the kisses that Gawain receives and exchanges at their true value. It is impossible to accept the view put forward by Davenport (The Art, p. 139) that they expose the hero to ridicule:
The receiving and giving back of Gawain's gains, the kisses from the Lady, both expose him to ridicule: as receiver Gawain is a parody of the youthful, chivalrous lover as he lies in bed using his wits to fend off the importunities of the bold, provincial lady; as giver Gawain is made to look a ninny as he solemnly plants kisses on the Lord's teasing face.
Malory's Lancelot sees no dishonour, and presumably no foolishness, in giving a kiss when he resists the temptation to love-making during his imprisonment by Mellyagaunce (The Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere, 1136/18-27):
So she cam to hym agayne the same day that the batayle shulde be and seyde,
‘Sir Launcelot, bethynke you, for ye ar to hard-harted. And therefore, and ye wolde but onys kysse me, I shulde delyver you and your armoure, and the beste horse that was within sir Mellyagaunce stable.’
‘As for to kysse you,’ seyde sir Launcelot, ‘I may do that and lese no worshyp. And wyte you well, and I undirstood there were ony disworshyp for to kysse you, I wold nat do hit.’
And than he kyssed hir.
Further, the kisses exchanged between Gawain and the lady can be seen to correspond to a pattern of courtly decorum, as J. Nicholls has observed.4 The only kiss on the first day is that of farewell (1305-8); the two kisses on the second day are ‘a delayed gesture of greeting’ (1504-5)5 and an act of farewell (1555-57); and the three kisses on the third day are of greeting (1757-58), pretended farewell after rejection in love (1794-96), and final leave-taking (1868-69). Above all the public exchange of the kisses thus received is a means of defining Gawain's moral excellence. The first kiss that Gawain bestows on the lord is given comlyly (1389), and this indicates the courtesy that is the dominant note of the first day's interchanges between Gawain and the lady. The same idea is present on the second day, for Gawain kisses the lord hendely (1639). The kisses that the lady gives Gawain on the third day are passionately delivered, for she exhausts every feminine art and feeling, and this is reflected by the vigour with which Gawain bestows the kisses in the Exchange of Winnings (1937):
As sauerly and sadly as he hem sette couþe.
To win kisses so entirely pure and passionate from a lady so beautiful, determined, and clever in the circumstances that Gawain finds himself involves moral action of quite exceptional courtesy and chastity. It is this combination of virtues that sets Gawain apart from a hero like Yder, for Yder succeeds in preserving his chastity only by means of kicking his temptress in the belly (Yder, 370-80):
E Yder respont brefment qu'il ment
E qu'il n'a de s'amor ke fere;
Ançois li loe ensus a treire
E qu'el se gart qu'il ne la fiere.
Quanques il puet se treit ariere,
Mes ele se treit tot dis soentre.
Yder la fiert del pié al ventre
Si qu'el chei ariere enverse
E qu'el en devint tote perse.
Jo nel sai pas de ço reprendre
Kar il ne se poeit defendre.
Yder replied briefly that she was lying and that he was not interested in her love; instead he advised her to go away and to be careful that he did not strike her. He drew away from her as much as possible, but she drew closer immediately. Yder kicked her in the belly so that she fell backwards and her colour drained away. I cannot criticize him for this as he was unable to defend himself in any other way.
Yder is a sophisticated romance, and the poet's defence of his hero's conduct is not simply to be dismissed. The cruelty of Yder's action is to be explained by the desperate peril he is in, for the virtue of chastity has to overcome powerful and almost irresistible desires. The courtesy that Gawain manages to display in such circumstances is in no respect worthy of laughter but only of the highest admiration.
The equality of host and guest is shown above all by the fellowship that they share. Thus the two ‘laȝed, and made hem blyþe / Wyth lotez þat were to lowe’ (1398-99) at the end of the first day, and this pattern of fellowship is repeated on the two succeeding days (1623-24, 1680-85, and 1952-59). The lord is not, however, merely Gawain's equal in an open competition, but is superior to him in his knowledge of the true significance of the events that are taking place. The lord is to be the judge of Gawain's conduct, and the poet anticipates for us the judgmental function of Fitt IV by giving to the lord on the evening of the second day of competition words that carry a special authority and resonance (1679): ‘For I haf fraysted þe twys, and faythful I fynde þe’. These words are conceived by the poet in no more of a naturalistic spirit than those he has given to the wife (1283-87), but they are important in giving moral shape and weight to the events that he describes.
Thus the terms of the Exchange of Winnings agreement, the repeated actions, and the interlocking structure are the artistic means by which the poet develops and clarifies his meaning. These are the elements that we must pay attention to ourselves if we are not to disturb the subtle moral and imaginative balance of forces which he has thereby created.
II
We must also take note of the primacy of another artistic principle, namely the priority of action to character. A character is to be perceived in the first place as the fitting agent of an action of some kind. This is not to say that character is unimportant, but only that it is secondary and unintelligible except in relation to the action. Although this may be a difficult principle for the modern reader to accept, it is a principle of great antiquity, most memorably asserted by Aristotle in the Poetics (6):
Tragedy is essentially an imitation not of persons but of action and life, of happiness and misery. All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of activity, not a quality. Character gives us qualities, but it is in our actions—what we do—that we are happy or the reverse. In a play accordingly they do not act in order to portray the Characters; they include the Characters for the sake of the action.6
What is applied by Aristotle to tragedy is no less applicable to narrative poetry, and it is so applied by Tasso in the Discorsi (Book III) at the end of the sixteenth century (II, 228 and p. 67):
… presupponendo che la favola sia il fine del poeta (come afferma Aristotele, e niuno ha sin qui negato) …
… assuming the fable to be the goal of the poet (as Aristotle affirms, and no one has denied to this day) …
Once we begin to look to the relation between the hunting and bedroom scenes in Sir Gawain in terms of action rather than or as prior to character, that is, with character as fittingly subordinated to action, then much begins to make sense that would otherwise be obscure. It is by giving priority to character over action that Gollancz concludes that ‘Gawain'’s conscience makes him unwilling to prolong discussion of the exchange’ (p. 124) on the third day, and it is for the same reason that he is followed by a critic so sensitive as Burrow (A Reading, p. 111). It is to be noted that Burrow assumes that the courteous Gawain can act brusquely on occasion since he knows that even the most courteous people sometimes lapse from the highest standards of courtesy. But the Gawain-poet cannot present Gawain as discourteous other than by a specific violation of the idea of nobility in terms of which his narrative is organized. And if it were so that Gawain has been discourteous, the discourtesy would need to be brought before the Green Knight for judgment in the same way as the violation of fidelity through the concealment of the girdle. In the light of the principle of the primacy of action we may now turn directly to the corresponding patterns of action in the three sets of hunting scenes and bedroom scenes.
On the first day of hunting the deer are quick to sense danger; they try to escape to the high ground, but are driven back by the ring of beaters (1150-53). It is indeed in this way that they are eventually slaughtered at the low-lying hunting stations (1167-73). In the same way Gawain is quick to sense danger (1182-83), and he too tries to get to safer ground, but is encircled in his bed by the determined purpose of the lady (1218-25). There is no doubt, as Davis observes (p. 107), a contrast between the noise of the hunt (1158-66) and the stillness of the bedroom (1182-94). But stillness is not to be taken for peace. Gawain is being hunted with the stealth that is necessary, as we have seen, in a deer hunt (PTA, 40-42), and remains in deadly danger. The Master of Game (pp. 8-11) emphasizes the great joy of hunting, and especially the hunting of the hart (see also p. 29), and this emphasis is strongly present in the Gawain-poet's account (1174-77):
Þe lorde for blys abloy
Ful oft con launce and lyȝt,
And drof þat day wyth joy
Thus to þe derk nyȝt.
Again, the joy of the chase is matched by the joy in the bedroom. The lady exudes a surface gaiety and charm (1208-12) and Gawain responds in kind (1213-17). Indeed, throughout this first interchange these qualities are continually stressed (1245, 1247, 1248, and 1263). The issue of the first day finally turns on a question of courtesy, for Gawain's reputation for courtesy is challenged by the lady (1290-1304).7 Here is another direct link with the framing hunting scene, for the cutting up of the deer (1323-64) is entirely a matter of courtesy. First of all, the correct order must be observed, and this is underlined by the series of deictic adverbs, syþen (1330, 1332, 1339, 1354, and 1363) and þen(ne) (1333, 1337, 1340, 1353, 1356, and 1357). Secondly, skill is required, and this is emphasized by a series of evaluative adverbs and adverbial phrases focusing on the swiftness, deftness, and correctness of the procedure: lystily (1334), grayþely (1335), radly (1341, and 1343), verayly (1342), by resoun (1344), and swyft (1354). Thirdly, there is a mastery of the technical vocabulary, as for example in the use of querré (1324) and asay (1328). And fourthly, each huntsman gets the portion of the deer to which he is properly entitled (1358): ‘Vche freke for his fee, as fallez for to haue’. Here is true courtesy in the behaviour that fully matches the occasion. Hunting is a proper activity for men of a medieval court, and the cutting up of the deer is a proper concern of huntsmen; hence ‘þe best boȝed þerto with burnez innoghe’ (1325). Moreover, the propriety of the hunt is observed from the beginning to the end by the accompaniment of the fitting sounds. The uncoupling of the hounds is signified by three long single notes, ‘þre bare mote’ (1141). The death of the deer and the return home are marked by a like formality; ‘baldely þay blw prys’ (1362) and ‘strakande ful stoutly’ (1364). The significance of this display of nobility is brought out by Malory in The Book of Sir Tristram (682/25-683/4):
And every day sir Trystram wolde go ryde an-huntynge, for he was called that tyme the chyeff chacer of the worlde and the noblyst blower of an horne of all maner of mesures. For, as bookis reporte, of sir Trystram cam all the good termys of venery and of huntynge, and all the syses and mesures of all blowyng wyth an horne; and of hym we had fyrst all the termys of hawkynge, and whyche were bestis of chace and bestis of venery, and whyche were vermyns; and all the blastis that longed to all maner of game: fyrste to the uncoupelynge, to the sekynge, to the fyndynge, to the rechace, to the flyght, to the deth, and to strake; and many other blastis and termys, that all maner jantylmen hath cause to the worldes ende to prayse sir Trystram and to pray for his soule. AMEN, SAYDE SIR THOMAS MALLEORRÉ.
Here we see the importance that is attached to the development and mastery of the correct terms, and it is in relation to the correct terms that the bedroom and hunting scenes of the first day are finally linked. For just as Gawain is concerned ‘lest he hade fayled in fourme of his castes’ (1295), so the poet is anxious to ensure that he has distinguished between the avanters (1342) and the numbles proper (1347-48):
And þat þay neme for þe noumbles bi nome, as I trowe, bi kynde.
The second day's hunt is of sterner stuff, as is at once evident from the uncoupling of the hounds ‘among þo þornez’ (1419). The course of the hunt is no longer over hills and dales (1151-52), but over marshy ground amid rough cliffs (1429-36). The boar is a ferocious adversary (1437-53, and 1571-80), and he makes even brave men flinch (1460-63, and 1573-76). Similarly, there is a shift in tone between the first and second day's bedroom scenes, for on the second day there is a greater directness in the confrontation between the lady and Gawain. The lady comes to Gawain with a clear purpose (1472-76), but Gawain is now ready for her (1477).
Further, the analogy with the action of the hunt is once again clear. As the arrows bounce off the boar (1454-59), so Gawain's words of greeting meet a swift reply (1478): ‘And ho hym ȝeldez aȝayn ful ȝerne of hir wordez’, and the lady undeterred returns to the attack (1479-80). The debate now turns not only on the propriety of kissing (1481-94), a matter of courtesy, but also on the admissibility of the use of force (1495-1500), a matter that bears on a knight's courage. The combination of these two virtues in Gawain is seen in his initial response to the lady's importunity whereby she seeks to elicit from him an inappropriate forwardness in kissing (1492):
‘Do way,’ quoþ þat derf mon, ‘my dere, þat speche.’
But the lady's argument, as Burrow has shown (A Reading, pp. 90-91), is more subtle than it first appears. For a lady to refuse Gawain would be churlish (1497) and, according to Andreas Capellanus, De amore (I.11), the resistance of a peasant woman to amorous embraces is not to be overcome ‘nisi modicae saltem coactionis medela praecedat ipsarum opportuna pudoris’.8 The underlying reality of the argument is acknowledged by Malory in the account of the begetting of Torre by Pellinore on a maid, subsequently a cowherd's wife (The Tale of King Arthur, 101/10-15):
Anone the wyff was fette forth, which was a fayre houswyff. And there she answerde Merlion full womanly, and there she tolde the kynge and Merlion that whan she was a mayde and wente to mylke hir kyne, ‘there mette with me a sterne knyght, and half be force he had my maydynhode. And at that tyme he begate my sonne Torre.’
Malory has here softened his French source, which represents Pellinore as having entirely disregarded the maid's will, u je vausisse ou non (Works, p. 1326). Sidney's Cecropia shows no such faint-heartedness. She puts the argument for violence to her son Amphialus, languishing in a hopeless love for the heavenly Philoclea, with a brutal frankness (Arcadia, 1590; III.17.3):
Tush, tush sonne (said Cecropia) if you say you love, but withall you feare; you feare lest you should offend; offend? & how know you, that you should offend? because she doth denie: denie? Now by my truth; if your sadnes would let me laugh, I could laugh hartily, to see that yet you are ignorant, that No, is no negative in a womans mouth. My sonne, beleeve me, a woman, speaking of women: a lovers modesty among us is much more praised, then liked … above all, mark Helen daughter to Jupiter, who could never brooke her manerly-wooing Menelaus, but disdained his humblenes, & lothed his softnes. But so well she could like the force of enforcing Paris, that for him she could abide what might be abidden. But what? Menelaus takes hart; he recovers her by force; by force carries her home; by force injoies her; and she, who could never like him for serviceablenesse, ever after loved him for violence.9
Amphialus is interrupted by a messenger before he can answer these arguments. But Sidney knows that they require no answer. Their wickedness is sufficiently vouched for by the wickedness of the one who delivers them. For Gawain, too, there can be no compromise with such arguments even in a qualified form (1498-1500):
‘Ye, be God,’ quoþ Gawayn, ‘good is your speche,
Bot þrete is vnþryuande in þede þer I lende,
And vche gift þat is geuen not with goud wylle.’
The values of the pentangle forbid any possible use of force in winning a woman's love, whether lady or peasant, and Gawain's rebuttal of the lady's proposition is thus direct and forceful in itself. Gawain stands his ground here as does the boar against its adversary (see 1450-51, 1562-66, and 1582, and The Master of Game, p. 49), but at the same time he offers the lady no discourtesy (1501-7). The lady is obliged to retreat, and pretends in the process to be fearful of offending one who can take against such propositions in so decided a way (1508-9). She shifts her position now from that of teacher (1481-91) to that of pupil (1525-34). This is a stratagem that Gawain recognizes in his urbane reply (1535-39), and undermines by the effective use of the rhetorical device of gradatio (1540-45). Thus the lady's imposture is exposed and she is forced to break off the contest of the second day (1554-57). But for all the surface charm we are left in no doubt of the strenuousness of the moral struggle that has taken place (1549-50):
Þus hym frayned þat fre, and fondet hym ofte,
For to haf wonnen hym to woȝe, what-so scho þoȝt ellez.
But, like the lord's killing of the boar (1583-96), Gawain's triumph on the second day is decisive (1551-53):
Bot he defended hym so fayr þat no faut semed,
Ne non euel on nawþer halue, nawþer þay wysten
bot blysse.
On the third day the fox leads the huntsmen a merry dance, dodging and doubling back (1707-8), but when he thinks that he is safe he runs into more trouble (1709-14). He is forced into the open (1715-18), rebuked by the pursuing hounds (1719-25) and given no respite (1726-28). On the third day Gawain too is under attack from all sides. The lady now exploits her sexual charms to the full (1733-41), and rebukes the knight for sleeping in his bed (1742-47). This is doubly unfair, for Gawain is preoccupied by anxious fears of impending death (1748-54). He has to manoeuvre in this way and that to avoid the dangers that beset him, at once of unchastity, discourtesy, and infidelity (1770-75). He does not yield to unchastity either by admitting to a previous love (1788-91) or by acknowledging the lady's love in offering her a love-token (1805-7) or by accepting from her a love-token (1821-23). Nor has he been moved by the great value of the precious ring that she first offers him (1817-20). His rejection of all the lady's blandishments and importunities is complete (1839-41):
‘And þerfore, I pray yow, displese yow noȝt,
And lettez be your bisinesse, for I bayþe hit yow neuer
to graunte.’
But, like Reynard before him, when he thinks that he has escaped from the danger he finds himself in most deadly peril. The lady, like the titleres at Reynard's tail (1726), presses relentlessly. Suddenly she shifts her ground, and is prepared to vilify Gawain (1846-47) with a charge of covetousness of which it is already apparent that he is free (1826-29). She appeals instead (with unerring aim) to the knight's fears for his life (1849-54), and as he struggles with the contending emotions of fear and relief (1855-58) she prevails upon him to make that fateful promise which marks the limit of his virtue (1863-65): ‘þe leude hym acordez / þat neuer wyȝe schulde hit wyt, iwysse, bot þay twayne / for noȝte’. Thus Gawain is taken in the trap, for from the contradiction of the promises thus made to the lady and the lord there is no escape.
III
The intricate and delicately balanced structure of Sir Gawain is nowhere more evident than in the enclosing of the bedroom scenes within the hunting scenes, and the parallel development of the action of the three days. The repeated actions are not only significant in themselves, but also in the very fact of being repeated. Each single action demands to be viewed in relation to the larger pattern of which it is a part.10 Now the question of the symbolic value of the hunts ought not to be considered apart from the parallels that exist between them in the progressive development of the fable. If one of the hunts is symbolically significant, all three are likely to be symbolically significant; if two of the hunts are not symbolically significant, why should we assume that a third which is structurally parallel is symbolically divergent? Here is an aesthetic objection to Burrow's reading (A Reading, p. 98) in which he posits symbolic value on the third day only in violation of the poem's structure, and is led as a result to violate the moral significance of the poem by predicating cunning of Gawain (A Reading, p. 112). Our first principle, then, in respect of the poem's symbolism, is that we seek to identify a consistent symbolic relation between the hunting and bedroom scenes corresponding to the parallel narration of the events of the three days.
In the second place the symbolism of deer, boar, and fox is not to be pressed to the point of identity any more than the symbolism of the pentangle. To look for an identity between symbol and referent is to deny the very meaning of a symbol, which lies not in denotation but in suggestiveness. Judgment is always required of the reader in knowing how far and in what directions to press the potential significance of a symbol. To look for a symbolic identity between Gawain and the deer, boar, and fox respectively is an error of judgment, akin in many ways to that of those who insist upon reading allegorical works in terms of a one-for-one correspondence in the levels of meaning. In the present instance the judgmental error is based upon the elevation of character at the expense of fable, and the consequent imposition of a psychological frame of reference alien to the poet's exposition of his abstract, co-ordinating idea. If we are not to posit a deer-like timidity of Gawain on the first day, and a boar-like ferocity of him on the second day, by what imaginative logic are we to posit a fox-like cunning of him on the third day? Commentators who recoil from the ideas of timidity and ferocity as applied to Gawain should recoil also from the application to him of cunning, and for the same reason, namely its inaptness. The symbolism, as is only too evident in the case of the fox, has a moral value, but being moral it is generalized. We may contrast in this respect the symbol of the pentangle and its value of nobility or righteousness. The poet intends to apply this symbol directly to Gawain and he goes out of his way to do so, enforcing the relation with a syllogistic precision (623-35). The symbols of deer, boar, and fox are not fastened on Gawain in this way, and we must assume that the poet (no less than his modern readers) wishes to avoid the absurdity of doing so.
At the same time no reader can deny the attribution of cunning to the fox—‘so Reniarde watz wylé’ (1728)—nor its relevance to the bedroom scene on the third day. It is a good point at which to examine the way in which the symbolism works. The fox is cunning, it is true, but no less cunning are the hounds that pursue him. And it is the cunning of the hounds that the poet first of all chooses to draw to our attention (1699-1700):
Summe fel in þe fute þer þe fox bade,
Traylez ofte a traueres bi traunt of her wyles.
It is clear that the symbolic value of cunning is diffused rather than concentrated; cunning is relevant to the fable at this point, not the cunning of any particular agent in it. The idea of cunning can be applied, therefore, with perfect consistency to the lady's actions. Thus of the fox it is said (1727):
Ofte he watz runnen at, when he out rayked,
and shortly afterwards of the lady making her purposeful way to Gawain's bedroom (1735):
Bot ros hir vp radly, rayked hir þeder.
The coincidence of terms here, linking the fox and the lady, is well designed by the poet to alert his audience to the moral significance of the events that he is about to describe. And again, whereas the fox is cunning, he can hardly be called cunning for seeking to avoid the blow from the hunter's sword. There is no living creature, cunning or simply prudent, that would not instinctively seek to save its life in this fashion.11 But the notion of cunning has become so imprecisely generalized that Savage is able to characterize the death of the fox as follows:
… the fox resorts to a bit of trickery, and that bit of trickery is the very cause of his undoing. The position of Gawain is the same: in his desire to avoid death from the impending blow, he resorts to trickery, and his recourse to duplicity proves the sole and only cause of his disgrace. Thus the two situations closely resemble one another.12
But the resemblance consists in the instinct for life itself. Gawain suddenly sees in the offer of the girdle the hope of escape from certain death, and in grasping at that hope is undone by the lady's cunning (1859-63). If there is a direct moral comparison between Gawain and the fox it is with the fox as a thief, for the fox was ‘ofte þef called’ (1725) and Gawain in withholding the girdle from the lord is technically and objectively guilty of theft. The resemblance between Gawain and the fox can go no further, for the knight ‘voyded of vche vylany’ (634) is not to be characterized by cunning.13 It is here above all that the reader needs to exercise some tact in not pressing an analogy beyond the bounds that a poet has devised for it.
Thus although the idea of cunning is obviously relevant to the action of the third day, it is limited and defined by that action and does not explain every part of that action. And in the same way, as we have seen, the caution of the deer and the fierceness of the boar are analogies that cannot be pressed beyond certain definite limits. Indeed, the moral issue of the third day is in fact for Gawain one of courage rather than cunning. The evidence for this is that the poet reminds us of Gawain's need for the help of the Virgin Mary (1768-69):
Gret perile bitwene hem stod,
Nif Maré of hir knyȝt mynne.(14)
The immediate connection of the Virgin Mary is with the virtue of courage rather than chastity. This fact is established in the pentangle passage (644-50), and once again we must seek to do justice to the particularities of this poem (and especially to the matter belonging to its co-ordinating idea) rather than to more general considerations. Courage is necessary in the man who remains continent, for continence is nothing other than the resistance of evil passions, namely the desires and pleasures of touch. Moderation is above all most difficult in respect of these passions, and hence the virtue of temperance is principally concerned with them (Aquinas, ST, 2a 2ae 141.4). But since temperance is the moderation of the desires and pleasures of touch, it is as a consequence also directed to the sorrows that result from the absence of such pleasures (ST, 2a 2ae 141.3). And it is in the endurance of these sorrows that the virtue of courage, or more particularly perseverance (ST, 2a 2ae 137.2 ad 1), is called for. It is hardly possible to overstate the courage that Gawain displays here, for he has at the same time to contend with fears for his life, and these fears undoubtedly make him more susceptible to the lady's charms. The reason is that the presence of strong emotion predisposes one to the arousal of other emotions. Thus a man moved by fear is more likely to be moved by love than a man who is not moved by fear.15 Hence it is courage that Gawain shows when he responds decisively to the most powerful of the sexual temptations that the lady sets before him (1776):
‘God schylde,’ quoþ þe schalk, ‘þat schal not befalle!’
And it is in respect of the virtue of courage that Gawain's moral fall corresponds to the fox's death. The fox in seeking to save his life from the blow of the hunter's sword retreats into the jaws of the pack of hounds (1898-1905). And Gawain, seeking to avoid death from the blow of the axe at the Green Chapel, falls into the trap cunningly laid for him by the lady (1855-67). No wonder he is later to rue upon the ‘wyles of wymmen’ (2415).
The Definition of Gawain's Sinfulness
I
In a poem so intricately constructed and coherently developed as Sir Gawain a single mistake in interpretation is liable to have far-reaching consequences. Such is the case in respect of the identification of pité, the final virtue of the fifth pentad, with its modern equivalent of ‘pity’, rather than with ‘piety’. Tasso points to the importance of piety in the concept of chivalric perfection, and also perhaps to a reluctance to acknowledge it, when he writes that ‘chi vuol formare l'idea d'un perfetto cavaliere, non so per qual cagione gli nieghi questa lode di pietà e di religione’ (Mazzali, I, 193).16 The issue of piety assumes central importance when we come to Gawain's confession of his sins immediately after the acceptance of the girdle (1876-84), and it is no surprise that this passage has become the centre of critical controversy.
Upon the hunting and bedroom scenes the poet has imposed the idea of righteousness as symbolized by the pentangle, and hence he illustrates among other virtues the virtue of piety. This is evident in the conduct of both Bertilak and Gawain. On three successive days Bertilak goes to mass before he sets off for the hunting-field (1135-36, 1414-16, and 1690):
Ete a sop hastyly, when he hade herde masse,
With bugle to bent-felde he buskez bylyue.
So þat þe mete and þe masse watz metely delyuered,
Þe douthe dressed to þe wod, er any day sprenged,
to chace.
After messe a morsel he and his men token.
On the first and second days Gawain also goes to mass (1309-11 and 1558), but on the third day he goes to confession (1876-84):
Syþen cheuely to þe chapel choses he þe waye,
Preuély aproched to a prest, and prayed hym þere
Þat he wolde lyste his lyf and lern hym better
How his sawle schulde be saued when he schuld seye heþen.
Þere he schrof hym schyrly and schewed his mysdedez,
Of þe more and þe mynne, and merci besechez,
And of absolucioun he on þe segge calles;
And he asoyled hym surely and sette hym so clene
As domezday schulde haf ben diȝt on þe morn.(17)
The difference in Gawain's action on the third day is explained by the fact that he is in imminent danger of death. The poet significantly calls our attention to Gawain's anxious thoughts about the blow at the Green Chapel when the lady first enters his bedroom on this fateful third day (1750-54). Gawain's response to his justified fears of death is entirely proper, for in the Middle Ages the Church required a public confession of sins by those in expectation of death (ST, 3a Suppl., 6.5):
Et quia ea quae sunt de necessitate salutis, tenetur homo in hac vita implere, ideo si periculum mortis immineat, etiam per se loquendo, obligatur aliquis ad confessionem faciendam tunc …
Moreover, since man is bound to fulfil in this life those things that are necessary for salvation, therefore, if he be in danger of death, he is bound, even absolutely, then and there to make his confession …18
It is necessary that sacramental confession should be made to a priest (Suppl., 8.1). If circumstances make such a confession impossible, confession can in the hour of need be made to a layman (Suppl., 8.2):
… et ita etiam minister poenitentiae, cui confessio est facienda ex officio, est sacerdos; sed in necessitate etiam laicus vicem sacerdotis supplet, ut ei confessio fieri possit.
In like manner the minister of Penance, to whom, in virtue of his office, confession should be made, is a priest; but in a case of necessity even a layman may take the place of a priest, and hear a person's confession.
The common occurrence of such a need accounts for the spread in the fifteenth century of the Latin treatises known generically as the Ars Moriendi, and also for its translation into English as The Book of the Craft of Dying. At the end of the century Caxton reflects the continuing importance of deathbed confession by his publication of two related treatises, The Art and Craft to Know Well to Die (1490) and the Ars Moriendi (?1491).19 A central part of all these versions is the interrogation of the dying man; indeed The Book of the Craft of Dying and The Art and Craft to Know Well to Die contain two sets of interrogations, drawn respectively from St Anselm's Admonitio Morienti and Gerson's Opusculum Tripertitum.20 If circumstances are such as to make public confession of any kind impossible, whether to priest or layman, true contrition with the intention of making confession is sufficient (Suppl., 2.3 sed contra and 6.1):
Nullum peccatum dimittitur, nisi quis justificetur: sed ad justificationem requiritur contritio …
… no sin is forgiven a man unless he be justified. But justification requires contrition …
Et ideo ad culpae remissionem et actualis, et originalis requiritur sacramentum Ecclesiae, vel actu susceptum, vel saltem voto, quando articulus necessitatis, non contemptus, sacramentum excludit …
Wherefore for the remission of both actual and original sin, a sacrament of the Church is necessary, received either actually, or at least in desire, when a man fails to receive the sacrament actually, through an unavoidable obstacle, and not through contempt.
There is no question at this time of justification by faith alone. Gawain therefore fulfils a religious obligation when he makes a complete confession of his sins on the eve of his departure from Bertilak's castle. In his confession, therefore, we have an outstanding example of his piety. But it is no more than we should expect in a knight so aptly symbolized by the device of the pentangle on his shield and coat armour. Thus we see at this point in the narrative an importance attached to piety that corresponds to the importance claimed for it in the pentangle passage. It is indeed central to the poet's moral and spiritual exposition.
Moral acts are the products of free and deliberate movements of the will, and their corresponding habits or virtues presuppose such freedom and deliberation. An act that is grudging cannot for that reason be described as morally good. Virtue requires not only that we do what is good, but that we do it by reason of its goodness. The mark of a virtuous act, therefore, is that it is performed promptly and with pleasure (ST, 1a 2ae 107.4). Gawain's attendance at mass and at confession amounts to more than a religious formality. They are the moral acts of the virtue of piety, and so the poet observes of them that they are performed with promptness and pleasure (1309-11, 1558, and 1872-76):
And he ryches hym to ryse and rapes hym sone,
Clepes to his chamberlayn, choses his wede,
Boȝez forth, quen he watz boun, blyþely to masse.
Then ruþes hym þe renk and ryses to þe masse.
When ho watz gon, Sir Gawayn gerez hym sone,
Rises and riches hym in araye noble,
Lays vp þe luf-lace þe lady hym raȝt,
Hid hit ful holdely, þer he hit eft fonde.
Syþen cheuely to þe chapel choses he þe waye …
Such promptness on Gawain's part has reference to more than the habit of virtue in general, but is the special mark of the act of devotion, the internal act of the virtue of religion, that is, in our sense, piety (ST, 2a 2ae 82.1):
Unde devotio nihil aliud esse videtur quam voluntas quaedam prompte tradendi se ad ea quae pertinent ad Dei famulatum. Unde dicitur (Exodus, 35.20), quod multitudo filiorum Israel obtulit mente promptissima atque devota primitias Domino.
Devotion, therefore, is nothing other than the will to give oneself promptly to those things that pertain to the service of God. Hence, it is written, everyone offered first fruits to God with a most prompt and ready heart.
The importance of promptness in carrying out religious observances is signified in the words that Gawain uses in his anxious prayer to God and the Virgin Mary on Christmas Eve (753-58):
And þerfore sykyng he sayde, ‘I beseche þe, lorde,
And Mary, þat is myldest moder so dere,
Of sum herber þer heȝly I myȝt here masse,
Ande þy matynez to-morne, mekely I ask,
And þerto prestly I pray my pater and aue and crede.’
A fundamental moral principle, derived from Aristotle's Ethics, is that the virtues are interconnected. The principle is explained by Aristotle in terms of the possession of the virtue of prudence (Ethics, VI.13):
But in this way we may also refute the dialectical argument whereby it might be contended that the virtues exist in separation from each other; the same man, it might be said, is not best equipped by nature for all the virtues, so that he will have already acquired one when he has not yet acquired another. This is possible in respect of the natural virtues, but not in respect of those in respect of which a man is called without qualification good; for with the presence of the one quality, practical wisdom (i.e. prudence), will be given all the virtues.21
It is this conception of the virtues as interconnected, as we have seen, that the symbolism of the pentangle is above all designed to express. Piety as a virtue, therefore, is connected with other moral virtues, and indeed it is introduced by the poet immediately in conjunction with four other virtues—generosity, fidelity, chastity, and modesty—as constituting a fifth group of fives (651-55). If Gawain's confession to the priest is an act of piety, it cannot be taken to imply the simultaneous commission of sin. And here we confront a seemingly intractable moral difficulty, namely the reconciliation of the fact of piety with the fact of infidelity. The poet has shown with a characteristic moral precision that on the third day Gawain is brought through fear for his life to fall short in fidelity. The moral situation is accurately stated by the Green Knight himself in the judgment scene of Fitt IV (2366-68):
Bot here yow lakked a lyttel, sir, and lewté yow wonted;
Bot þat watz for no wylyde werke, ne wowyng nauþer,
Bot for ȝe lufed your lyf; þe lasse I yow blame.
By pledging to the lady that he will conceal the girdle from her lord, Gawain has entered into two mutually incompatible agreements, for by the Exchange of Winnings agreement he is already obliged to hand over all his gains to the lord (and the girdle is undeniably such a gain). If Gawain confesses his sin of infidelity, he will undoubtedly be required to make restitution by way of satisfaction. And yet there is no suggestion in the poem of any attempt to do so.
Those scholars who recognize in Gawain's confession of his sins an act of piety are led as a result to deny the gravity of the act of withholding the girdle in the Exchange of Winnings agreement (the resultant infidelity of the fidelity to the promise to the lady to conceal the girdle). According to Davis (p. 123) the withholding of the girdle is not to be considered a sin at all:
The poet evidently did not regard the retention of the girdle as one of Gawain's ‘mysdedez, þe more and þe mynne’, which required to be confessed.
T. P. Dunning likewise finds no special moral difficulty to be posed here, and reduces Gawain's retention of the girdle to nothing more than a social solecism:
To ‘orthodox imaginative men of the fourteenth century’, the situation would seem clear enough: the girdle, as the lady assured Gawain, was not of any great material value (1847-8); the bargain with his host was, as Professor Smithers calls it, ‘sportive’ (M.Æ. xxxii (1963), 175); Gawain's resolve to retain the girdle was a yielding to superstition to which even the best of Christians are sometimes prone, but he certainly did not construe this resolve as a sin, worthy of being mentioned in confession. It was, however, a social solecism, as the Green Knight will rub in later (though he excuses him) …22
But this is a trivialisation of the moral issues of the poem, and Burrow is right to object to it as such (A Reading, p. 106):
… notice that the particular ‘chivalric virtue’ in question here, fidelity to the pledged word, shares its name with the whole Christian-chivalric complex to which it belongs—both are ‘trawþe’. Are we to believe that Gawain's ‘untrawþe’ (narrow chivalric sense) involves no more than a marginal disturbance of his (broad sense) ‘trawþe’? Surely not. If Gawain's integrity, his virtue, is ‘trawþe’ (and the poet chose the word), then ‘untrawþe’ is to be looked to. It is not, prima facie at least, a trivial matter.
The interconnection of the virtues, and in the present case the linking of felaȝschyp and pité in the same group of five virtues, does not admit of the moral reduction of infidelity to a social solecism.
Those scholars who see in Gawain's retention of the girdle in the Exchange of Winnings agreement the sin of infidelity are led in contradiction of the poet's explicit words (1876-84) to call into question the piety of his confession. The confession is to be seen rather as a false confession, an act of impiety. Gollancz tells us (p. 123) that ‘though the poet does not notice it, Gawain makes a sacrilegious confession’, and Burrow claims (A Reading, p. 109) that Gawain's confession ‘must be seen as invalid—not a remedy, but a symptom of his fall from grace’. In both these cases there is a failure to appreciate the seriousness of the moral offence. There is a hierarchy of sins as well as of virtues, and the gravest of sins are those committed directly against God (ST, la 2ae 73.3):
… peccatum quod est circa ipsam substantiam hominis, sicut homicidium est gravius peccato quod est circa res exteriores, sicut furtum; et adhuc est gravius peccatum quod immediate contra Deum committitur, sicut infidelitas, blasphemia et hujusmodi. Et in ordine quorumlibet horum peccatorum, unum peccatum est gravius altero secundum quod est circa aliquid principalius vel minus principale.
… sins which affect the very being of a man such as homicide are worse than sins which affect an exterior good, e.g. theft; and more serious still are those sins which are immediately against God, as infidelity, blasphemy, etc. And in each of these basic areas of sin, one sin will be worse than another if its object is more important than that of another.
The response of pious Moslems to the blasphemy of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses may indicate to uncomprehending modern readers the horror that would have been felt by a medieval Christian at a sacrilegious confession. The Gawain-poet is lucid and subtle in his moral analysis. It is unthinkable that he would fail to detect an act of theft or of murder on the part of his hero, and it is even less likely that he would have failed to detect an act of sacrilege. The assumption of a false confession implicitly devalues the meaning of piety, and this is evident in Burrow's own reconstruction of Gawain's act as an act of piety (A Reading, p. 105):
So Gawain approaches his priest, not because he has just imperilled his soul by agreeing to hide the girdle, but because he thinks he is to die next morning. He simply takes a convenient opportunity to do what any Christian should do when in peril of death. It is a routine visit.
Here piety is robbed of its essential meaning as a moral act, for the exercise of virtue can never be merely a routine matter. But if Gawain were guilty of impiety his sin would cry out for recognition. This is not only because of its intrinsic seriousness. The poem as a whole is ordered to the idea of righteousness as it is defined in the pentangle passage, and an act of impiety would be the violation of a virtue that is given exceptional emphasis as the final virtue of the final group of virtues. But in the judgment scene of Fitt IV, where cowardice, covetousness, and infidelity are mentioned and indeed insisted upon (2366-68, 2373-75, 2378-84, and 2505-12), there is no mention of an act of sacrilege.
The only possible position that does justice to the moral argument of the poem is one that recognizes the retention of the girdle as involving an act of infidelity and the confession in the face of imminent death as an act of piety. Gawain's infidelity and piety can be reconciled on the assumption that Gawain, unlike the reader of the poem, is blind to the moral implications of his act when he makes his promise to the lady to conceal the girdle from her lord. And the moral situation that the poet describes is such as to make this an entirely reasonable assumption. Indeed self-knowledge in a sinner is always difficult to achieve; as the psalm (18.13) has it:
Delicta quis intelligit? Ab occultis meis munda me.
Who can understand sins? from my secret ones cleanse me, O Lord.
The need for self-knowledge in the penitent sinner is symbolized by the first of the three steps at the entrance to Purgatory proper in Purgatorio, IX.94-96:
Là ne venimmo; e lo scaglion primaio
bianco marmo era sì pulito e terso
ch'io mi specchiai in esso qual io paio.
We came on then, and the first step was white marble so smooth and clear that I mirrored myself in it in my true likeness.23
Sin, then, is characteristically the product not of knowledge, but of ignorance. This is the opinion of Socrates, and as Aquinas observes it contains a measure of the truth (ST, la 2ae 77.2):
In quo quidem aliqualiter recte sapiebat. Quia cum voluntas sit boni vel apparentis boni, nunquam voluntas in malum moveretur nisi id quod non est bonum aliqualiter rationi bonum appareret: et propter hoc voluntas nunquam in malum tenderet, nisi cum aliqua ignorantia vel errore rationis. Unde dicitur Prov., Errant qui operantur malum.
There is something to be said for this opinion. Since the object of the will is the good, or at least the apparent good, the will is never attracted by evil unless it appears to have an aspect of good about it, so that the will never chooses evil except by reason of ignorance or error. Thus it says in Proverbs, Do not those who plot evil go astray?
But Aristotle shows in the Ethics that it is possible for a man to do what he knows is not good for him. Here Aristotle distinguishes between knowledge possessed and exercised, and knowledge that is possessed but not exercised. Man sins through ignorance by failing to exercise the knowledge that he possesses of what is good for him (Ethics, VII. 3):
But (a), since we use the word ‘know’ in two senses (for both the man who has knowledge but is not using it and he who is using it are said to know), it will make a difference whether, when a man does what he should not, he has the knowledge but is not exercising it, or is exercising it; for the latter seems strange, but not the former.
Aquinas distinguishes three kinds of sin, in so far as there is a defect of reason (sin of ignorance), a defect of the sensitive appetite (sin of passion), and a defect of the will (sin of malice). Although the sin of ignorance is the term specifically applied to acts in which there is a defect of reason, all three kinds of sinful act involve ignorance of some sort (ST, la 2ae 78.1 ad 1):
Ad primum ergo dicendum quod ignorantia quandoque quidem excludit scientiam qua aliquis simpliciter scit hoc esse malum quod agitur: et tunc dicitur ex ignorantia peccare. Quandoque autem excludit scientiam qua homo scit hoc nunc esse malum: sicut cum ex passione peccatur. Quandoque autem excludit scientiam qua aliquis scit hoc malum non sustinendum esse propter consecutionem illius boni, scit tamen simpliciter hoc esse malum; et sic dicitur ignorare qui ex certa malitia peccat.
Sinning out of ignorance means total unawareness that a thing is evil. Sometimes ignorance involves only temporary unawareness that a given thing is here and now evil, and this is what happens when a man sins under the impact of emotion. Sometimes, however, a man fails to consider that the loss suffered is not worth the gain even though he knows full well that the loss is itself evil, and in this case ignorance is compatible with resolute malice.
Gawain's piety in confession is irreconcilable with his act of infidelity only on the assumption of a sin of malice in which the simple knowledge of evil is present.24 But the poet has made it clear that Gawain's sin stems from passion. Not only does the poet show us the hero tormented by fears on the third day of the Exchange of Winnings agreement (1750-54), but he explains also Gawain's motive in accepting the lady's offer of the girdle (1855-58):
þen kest þe knyȝt, and hit come to his hert
Hit were a juel for þe jopardé þat hym iugged were:
When he acheued to þe chapel his chek for to fech,
Myȝt he haf slypped to be vnslayn, þe sleȝt were noble.
Gawain's sin is a sin of passion, and the ignorance which characterizes it is ignorance of the particular knowledge that can and should be derived from universal knowledge. Passion can prevent a man from drawing a correct conclusion from universal knowledge, but instead can direct his attention to a universal idea that is consistent with it. The Aristotelian argument is formulated by Aquinas as follows (ST, la 2ae 77.2 ad 4):
Unde Philosophus dicit in Ethic., quod syllogismus incontinentis habet quatuor propositiones, duas universales: quarum una est rationis, puta nullam fornicationem esse committendam; alia est passionis, puta delectationem esse sectandam. Passio igitur ligat rationem ne assumat et concludat sub prima; unde, ea durante, assumit et concludit sub secunda.
Thus Aristotle writes that the incontinent man forms a syllogism from four propositions of which two are universal, e.g. one from reason that says fornication is to be avoided; and another from emotion that says pleasure is to be sought after. Accordingly, emotion hinders reason lest it draw a conclusion from the former and at the same time moves one to conclude from the latter.
This reasoning can be directly applied to Gawain's case. The first universal proposition of which Gawain has knowledge is that all winnings are to be exchanged. But he fails to draw from it the particular proposition that the girdle is a winning to be exchanged because he is hindered from doing so by fear. The second universal proposition of which he has knowledge is that a device that would preserve his life would be worthy of possession. Gawain is inclined towards this universal proposition by fear and so, being unhindered by fear in respect of it, draws from it the correct conclusion, namely that the girdle is such a device and hence worthy to be possessed. The lady cunningly exploits Gawain's temporary moral disarray, and represents the retention of the girdle as an act of virtue, namely the keeping of a pledge.
We cannot say, therefore, that Gawain goes to confession in a state of knowledge. Rather he goes in ignorance of the particular knowledge that it is unlawful for him to retain possession of the girdle. But confession is an act of virtue in so far as it is a true profession of that which a man has on his conscience (Suppl., 7.2):
Haec autem conditio ad virtutem pertinet, ut aliquis ore confiteatur, quod corde tenet; et ideo confessio est bonum ex genere, et est actus virtutis.
Now to express in words what one has in one's thoughts is a condition of virtue; and, consequently, confession is a good thing generically, and is an act of virtue.
Now a true profession of a sin of which one is ignorant is not possible. Moreover, a complete account of one's sins will always be difficult because of the pervasive reality of sin, and many sins will have been simply forgotten. But forgetfulness does not necessarily imply a lack of sincerity in confession (Suppl., 10.5 ad 4):
… sed oblivio de actu peccati habet ignorantiam facti, et ideo excusat a peccato fictionis in confessione, quod fructum absolutionis, et confessionis impedit.
Now forgetfulness of an act of sin comes under the head of ignorance of fact, wherefore it excuses from the sin of insincerity in confession, which is an obstacle to the fruit of absolution and confession.
A general confession is sufficient for mortal sins that have been forgotten (Suppl., 10.5 sed contra):
… sed ille qui confitetur omnia peccata, quae scit, accedit ad Deum, quantum potest: plus autem ab eo requiri non potest; ergo non confundetur, ut repulsam patiatur, sed veniam consequetur.
Now he who confesses all the sins of which he is conscious, approaches to God as much as he can: nor can more be required of him. Therefore he will not be confounded by being repelled, but will be forgiven.
Thus provision is made for general confession in a treatise such as The Book of the Craft of Dying. The third interrogation of the Gersonian set ends as follows (BCD, 34/8-10):
Desirest thou also in thyn hert to haue verray knowynge of alle (the) offenses that thou hast doo ayenst God and foryete, to haue special repentaunce of hem alle?
The Gawain-poet leads us to understand that Gawain makes a sincere confession. He does what is possible for one who is ignorant of the particular knowledge that defines his sin. He must, therefore, have made a general as well as a particular confession of his sins.25
Passion does not excuse from sin altogether, unless it rules out entirely the voluntariness of an act, as in those who become mad through love or fear. But Gawain is not so moved by fear as to have lost the use of reason altogether (1866-67):
He þonkked hir oft ful swyþe,
Ful þro with hert and þoȝt.
Ignorance of the moral status of the act of retaining the girdle does not therefore excuse from sin (ST, 1a 2ae 77.7 ad 2):
Ad secundum dicendum quod ignorantia particularis quae totaliter excusat, est ignorantia circumstantiae quam quidem quis scire non potest, … Sed passio causat ignorantiam juris in particulari, dum impedit applicationem communis scientiae ad particularem actum. Quam quidem passionem ratio repellere potest …
The ignorance of concrete fact which totally excuses from sin … is ignorance of a circumstance which could not possibly be foreseen. A highly emotional state causes one to be unaware of the particular application of a general principle, which is a detail of law rather than of fact. A reasonable man can and should withstand the influence of such emotions …
But passion does diminish the sinfulness of an act if it precedes that act (ST, 1a 2ae 77.6):
Si igitur accipiatur passio secundum quod praecedit actum peccati, sic necesse est quod diminuat peccatum.
When emotion precedes sin, it necessarily diminishes sinfulness.
Thus Gawain's sin in retaining the girdle is a mortal sin generically, but becomes venial through the weakness that results from the fear of death. It is to be classified as venial from the cause.26 This is the position adopted by the Green Knight himself in the judgment scene of Fitt IV (2367-68):
Bot þat watz for no wylyde werke, ne wowyng nauþer,
Bot for ȝe lufed your lyf; þe lasse I yow blame.
II
The ease and lucidity with which the Gawain-poet expresses a complex moral argument in a continuous narrative are made possible by an assumed foundation of Scholastic moral philosophy on which such an argument rests.
Misinterpretation can result when the modern critic is unfamiliar with this philosophical foundation, as in the case of the confession scene. We need also at this point to consider some fundamental Scholastic principles about the goodness of human acts, for these have a direct bearing upon the poet's definition of Gawain's sinfulness.
There are two related activities involved in the creation of a human act. There is the interior act of the will, that is, the very act of willing elicited by the will itself, and there is the exterior act, that is, the determination of the will by its interior act results in the exterior act commanded by the will. Both the interior act of will and the exterior act have their proper objects. The proper object of the interior act of will is the end, and the proper object of the exterior act is the object itself with which it is engaged (ST, 1a 2ae 18.6):
In actu autem voluntario invenitur duplex actus, scilicet actus interior voluntatis, et actus exterior; et uterque horum actuum habet suum objectum. Finis autem proprie est objectum interioris actus voluntarii, id autem circa quod est actio exterior est objectum ejus. Sicut igitur actus exterior accipit speciem ab objecto circa quod est, ita actus interior voluntatis accipit speciem a fine sicut a proprio objecto.
Now we find a double activity here, namely the will's own internal activity and its externalized activity; and each of these has its objective. Strictly speaking the end intended is the objective for the will's internal act, while the objective for the external act is what it is engaged with. As the external act gets its specific character from the objective with which it is concerned so the internal gets its specific character from the end intended, this being its proper objective.
In accordance with this distinction an act can be said to be willed formally in relation to its end, and materially in relation to its object (ST, 1a 2ae 18.6):
Et ideo actus humani species formaliter consideratur secundum finem, materialiter autem secundum objectum exterioris actus. Unde Philosophus dicit in Ethic., quod ille qui furatur ut committat adulterium est per se loquendo magis adulter quam fur.
Hence the specific character of human acts is assessed as to its form by the end intended and as to its matter by the objective of the external deed. That is why Aristotle observes that he who steals in order to commit adultery is directly more adulterer than thief.
It is to be noted, therefore, that the sinner is responsible for both the formal and material sinfulness of an act, and this distinction becomes important in Gawain's specification of his own sinfulness in Fitt IV. In the poet's analysis of Gawain's conduct we need to be aware both of its formal and material dimensions. But we should not in the process elevate the intention of the agent above the objective nature of the act. The goodness in an exterior act derives from its object, and is not a function of the will. Theft, for example, as the taking of another's property is wrong in itself, independently of the intention of the agent. To suppose otherwise is to argue for a mere subjective basis for good and evil, and Aquinas is not willing to allow moral activity to be reduced in this way (ST, 1a 2ae 18.2):
Et ideo sicut prima bonitas rei naturalis attenditur ex sua forma, quae dat speciem ei, ita et prima bonitas actus moralis attenditur ex objecto convenienti …
Hence as the basic goodness of a natural thing is provided by its form, which makes it the kind of thing it is, so also the basic goodness of a moral act is provided by the befitting objective on which it is set …
Armed with these distinctions we may proceed to a further examination of Gawain's conduct in the crucial scenes of Fitts III and IV. And we shall see that the poet's representation of the conduct is characteristically lucid and precise.
Gawain's acceptance of the girdle offered to him by the lady is the last in a series of acts that progressively define his moral condition. Gawain values his courtesy even to the point of public misrepresentation of it (1658-63), but courtesy stops short of yielding to the sins of unchastity and infidelity (1770-75). Indeed Gawain is not prepared to acquiesce in the lady's suggestion that he has rejected her because of his love for another (1779-84). To do so would be to call into question the virtue of chastity, for chastity is in itself a sufficient ground for rejection of the lady's advances, irrespective of any other moral consideration whatsoever. This is perhaps not an attractive moral argument in our own age, but chastity as a virtue pursued for its own sake is rare at any time, as we may gather from the words of Spenser's Squire of Dames (FQ, III. 7.60):
Safe her, I neuer any woman found,
That chastity did for it selfe embrace,
But were for other causes firme and sound;
Either for want of handsome time and place,
Or else for feare of shame and fowle disgrace.
It is the purpose of the Gawain-poet here to show that Gawain is firm and sound for the virtue of chastity itself. This is the point of the invocation of the apostle St John, for St John was revered as an example of celibacy (1788-91):
þe knyȝt sayde, ‘Be sayn Jon,’
And smeþely con he smyle,
‘In fayth I welde riȝt non,
Ne non wil welde þe quile’.
Chastity does not imply the absence of feeling but the control of feeling. The very demonstration of the virtue of chastity has involved the exertion of a great moral effort on Gawain's part, aided by the grace he receives from the Virgin Mary (1768-69), and it is softened by a consideration for the lady's own feelings in the expression of a gentle and compassionate smile (1789). The lady represents herself as a true unrequited lover, and so destined to a life of bitter unrelieved sorrow (1794-95). But she cannot by this stratagem induce Gawain to give her a gift as a keepsake, since such a keepsake would cast doubt upon the chasteness of his love for her and would be in itself dishonourable (1805-7). It is not by chance that the lady specifies Gawain's glove as a keepsake, for the glove has a possible sexual significance (1799-1800):
Gif me sumquat of þy gifte, þi gloue if hit were,
Þat I may mynne on þe, mon, my mournyng to lassen.
Criseyde's betrayal of Troilus is thus significantly prefaced by the giving of her glove to Diomede (TC, V.1012-13):
And after this, the sothe for to seyn,
Hire glove he took, of which he was ful feyn.(27)
Gawain turns the discussion away from the gift of a glove, which he recognizes as a dishonourable act (1806-7), towards an apology for his inability to give an expensive gift that would truly be worthy of her (1808-9):
And I am here an erande in erdez vncouþe,
And haue no men wyth no malez with menskful þingez.
The distinction that he makes here is between an implicit acknowledgment of love and the explicit offering of a gift that any guest would consider fitting for his hostess.28 But the lady is undeterred, and offers Gawain a gift in her own right, but Gawain rejects it, for the same argument that prevents him from offering a gift also prevents him from accepting one (1822-23). The lady then affects to believe that it is the costliness of the ring and not its symbolic import that has led Gawain to reject it (1826-29). She succeeds only in provoking the most emphatic rejection of an offer that it is possible for a poet to contrive (1836-38):
And he nay þat he nolde neghe in no wyse
Nauþer golde ne garysoun, er God hym grace sende
To acheue to þe chaunce þat he hade chosen þere.(29)
There can be no doubt that in the scene between Gawain and the lady up to this point the poet intends us to see his hero in the most admirable light. He is zealous in the defence of his chastity, and resolute also in the defence of the rights of his host by turning aside from the sin of adultery. He laments his present incapacity to be generous (1808-12), but is unmoved by covetousness of the precious ring that the lady offers him as her gift (1817-20). And all the time he strives to maintain his reputation for courtesy, save in so far as courtesy in itself becomes prejudicial to acts of virtue.
It is by successive acts of virtue that the poet proceeds to the one sinful act by which Gawain's human imperfection is defined. The lady now shows her quality in entirely shifting the ground of her attack, for by doing so she is able to attribute to Gawain a covetousness that is the product only of her own suggestion (1846-47):
‘Now forsake ȝe þis silke,’ sayde þe burde þenne,
‘For hit is symple in hitself? And so hit wel semez.’
She now takes advantage of a complication in the moral environment that results from the enclosing of the Exchange of Winnings agreement within the Beheading Game, for Gawain is beset by fears of impending death from the return blow. The poet has carefully drawn our attention to these fears at the beginning of this third moral confrontation between Gawain and the lady (1750-54):
In dreȝ droupyng of dreme draueled þat noble,
As mon þat watz in mornyng of mony þro þoȝtes,
How þat destiné schulde þat day dele hym his wyrde
At þe grene chapel, when he þe gome metes,
And bihoues his buffet abide withoute debate more.
And it is to these fears that the lady successfully appeals. She puts it to Gawain that by accepting the girdle he will preserve his life (1851-54); it is a proposition to which his fears readily lead him to assent (1855-58). Once she has secured her advantage, the lady does not fail to press it home. She begs the knight not only to accept the girdle, but faithfully to conceal it from her lord (1862-63). The knight agrees to do so (1863-65):
… þe leude hym acordez Þat neuer wyȝe schulde hit wyt, iwysse, bot þay twayne for noȝte.
And we see that he is indeed faithful to his word, for he ‘hid hit ful holdely’ (1875). But he is by now compromised, for no knight can maintain faith between two irreconcilable pledges.
The poet's clarity in his representation of these moral issues in the temptations is reinforced throughout the rest of the narrative, so that we need be in no doubt as to what are Gawain's motives for his actions and what are not his motives. We may proceed to specify these motives in terms of covetousness, fidelity, and fear. First of all it is clear that Gawain is not motivated by covetousness, for he rejects the ring ‘worth wele ful hoge’ (1820) offered to him by the lady. Further, the poet reminds us that Gawain was not attracted to the girdle because of its costliness when he fastens it round his waist over his surcoat before setting out for the Green Chapel (2037-39):
Bot wered not þis ilk wyȝe for wele þis gordel,
For pryde of þe pendauntez, þaȝ polyst þay were,
And þaȝ þe glyterande golde glent vpon endez.
Moreover, in his judgment of Gawain's conduct, the Green Knight too recognizes that covetousness was not a motive (2367):
Bot þat watz for no wylyde werke, …
Secondly, it is clear that Gawain is moved by a deep regard for the pledged word, and shares the knightly perspective of an Arveragus that ‘trouthe is the hyeste thyng that man may kepe’ (CT, F 1479). His fidelity to his pledged word in honouring the Exchange of Winnings agreement is evident on the first two days (1385-97, and 1637-43), and also, up to a not insignificant point, on the third day as well (1932-41). He is faithful too in honouring the appointment at the Green Chapel in accordance with the terms of the Beheading Game, and his good faith in so doing is acknowledged by the Green Knight (2237-41). He is careful not to compromise his pledge to the Green Knight in the Beheading Game in accepting fresh obligations on the third day of the Exchange of Winnings agreement (1670-85). Even in concealing the girdle, as we have seen, Gawain is faithful to a pledge (1874-75). Thirdly, there can be no doubt that Gawain yields to the lady's importunity in pressing upon him the girdle because he recognizes its value as a means of saving his life (1851-61). The poet reminds us that the reason why Gawain wears the girdle over his coat armour in setting out for the final journey to the Green Chapel is (2040-42):
… for to sauen hymself, when suffer hym byhoued,
To byde bale withoute dabate of bronde hym to were oþer knyffe.
The Green Knight himself identifies the motive of fear when he observes in his judgment that Gawain was moved to accept the girdle ‘for ȝe lufed your lyf’ (2368). Gawain in his turn has the honesty to recognize the justice of this description of his own conduct (2379-80):
For care of þy knokke cowardyse me taȝt
To acorde me with couetyse, my kynde to forsake.
Gawain's intention in accepting and retaining the girdle, the end or proper object of his interior act of will, is to save his life; formally, therefore, his sin is a sin of cowardice. Gawain's act of retaining the girdle is a sin materially in two respects. First of all it is materially a sin of covetousness. Gawain accuses himself of covetousness in retaining the girdle on three separate occasions (2374, 2380-81, and 2507-8). The threefold self-accusation of the sin of covetousness obliges us to consider it seriously, even though it is plainly at odds with Gawain's expressed motives. Covetousness cannot here be understood in the wide sense of the inordinate desire of any temporal good whatsoever, that is, as cupiditas in opposition to caritas,30 for this would be to suggest a more radical failure in respect of the virtues of the pentangle than the poet's own exposition allows. And as Burrow rightly points out in his reply to Hills,31 covetousness is opposed by Gawain not to caritas but to larges (2381), that is, generosity.32 Covetousness is to be understood in the specific sense of the inordinate desire for riches, and its relevance here is to be explained by the specific classifications of this sin in the Middle Ages. Thus in the Ancrene Wisse we read:
Edhalden cwide, fundles, oþer lane, … nis hit spece of ȝisceung & anes cunnes þeofde?
… withholding what has been promised, found, or borrowed, … is not this a species of covetousness and a kind of theft?33
By retaining the girdle, which properly belongs to the lord by virtue of the Exchange of Winnings agreement, Gawain is thus guilty of covetousness. Secondly, if we look at the act of retaining the girdle from a different but related point of view, we shall see it as a material failure on Gawain's part to keep faith with the lord in the Exchange of Winnings on the third day. And it is in these terms that the Green Knight puts it to Gawain (2354-57):
Trwe mon trwe restore,
Þenne þar mon drede no waþe.
At þe þrid þou fayled þore,
And þerfor þat tappe ta þe.
The dual significance of Gawain's act in respect of its material sinfulness reflects the central significance of the interconnectedness of the pentangle virtues, and in particular of the link between fraunchyse and felaȝschyp (652).
The poet's moral analysis is as lucid as it is subtle. Fear for life has led Gawain to the acceptance of the girdle into his permanent possession, and hence to the breaking of his faith with his host in the Exchange of Winnings agreement. The facts of the case and their moral significance are not in doubt, and they are confirmed for us, if confirmation were at all to be needed, by the Green Knight's subsequent rehearsal of them (2366-68). Nevertheless, at the same time as we specify Gawain's sins we cannot but also admire his moral excellence. The material covetousness in retaining the girdle must be set beside the formal generosity that Gawain displays in his acknowledgment of his host's winnings. Further, a single sinful act is not in itself sufficient to destroy the habit of virtue, for the habit of virtue is acquired by repeated acts, not by a single good act (ST, 1a 2ae 71.4 sed contra). Hence Gawain continues to perform virtuous acts after he has wrongfully taken the girdle into his possession with the intention of concealing it from the lord, and ironically displays his virtue by proceeding at once to carry out that intention.
The Judgment of Gawain's Conduct
Thou in thyself art perfect, and in thee Is no deficience found; not so is Man, But in degree …
(Milton)
I
In pledging to the lady that he will ‘lelly layne fro hir lorde’ (1863) the girdle, Gawain has been led through her cunning (1846-50) and his own fear for his life (1851-58) to compromise himself, for by the Exchange of Winnings he is obliged to hand over the girdle as a winning to the lord. The poet makes us aware of the compromise when he describes how Gawain does in fact conceal the girdle (1872-75):
When ho watz gon, Sir Gawayn gerez hym sone,
Rises and riches hym in araye noble,
Lays vp þe luf-lace þe lady hym raȝt,
Hid hit ful holdely, þer he hit eft fonde.
This is indeed the act of a man who is habitually faithful to his pledged word, but it is also by the same token an act of infidelity. Gawain's faithful infidelity is also suggested by the ‘bleaunt of blwe’ (1928) in which he is dressed for the Exchange of Winnings on the third day, for blue is the colour of fidelity. That is why Criseyde bids Pandarus take a ring with a blue stone to Troilus to assure him of her continuing faithfulness (TC, III.885).
It is important to recognize that what the poet is concerned to represent here is moral contradiction and not moral turpitude. Gawain is not simply unfaithful in the Exchange of Winnings agreement on the third day. The three kisses that he hands over have been hard won and are highly esteemed (1936-37):
Þen acoles he þe knyȝt and kysses hym þryes,
As sauerly and sadly as he hem sette couþe.
It is this combination of moral excellence and sinfulness that is illustrated in the juxtaposition of the pentangle and the girdle at the beginning of Fitt IV. In this second arming scene the poet follows the systematic and orderly method of description that is recommended by the rhetoricians and is characterized by his own practice. But according to the logic of the poet's descriptive method the putting on of the surcoat and the wrapping about of the girdle will be separated by the girding on of the sword. The poet displays considerable syntactic ingenuity, as Burrow has explained (A Reading, p. 115), in avoiding this natural effect of his own method (2025-36):
Whyle þe wlonkest wedes he warp on hymseluen—
His cote wyth þe conysaunce of þe clere werkez
Ennurned vpon veluet, vertuus stonez
Aboute beten and bounden, enbrauded semez,
And fayre furred withinne wyth fayre pelures—
Yet laft he not þe lace, þe ladiez gifte,
Þat forgat not Gawayn for gode of hymseluen.
Bi he hade belted þe bronde vpon his balȝe haunchez,
Þenn dressed he his drurye double hym aboute,
Swyþe sweþled vmbe his swange swetely þat knyȝt
Þe gordel of þe grene silke, þat gay wel bisemed,
Vpon þat ryol red cloþe þat ryche watz to schewe.
The pentangle is a symbol of human perfection, and the girdle is the sign of Gawain's imperfection. But the girdle is not opposed to the pentangle, and does not take the place of the pentangle (Burrow, A Reading, p. 116). It renders explicit the element of sinfulness that is implicit in the definition of human perfection. In one hardened by a sin of malice the wearing of the girdle might be taken for an act of shameless ostentation. But virtuous knights are not given to ostentation of any kind, as we see from Chaucer's portrait of his knight (CT, A 73-78). And no more is Gawain. It is the lesser sinfulness of sin preceded by passion of which Gawain is guilty (2037-40):
Bot wered not þis ilk wyȝe for wele þis gordel,
For pryde of þe pendauntez, þaȝ polyst þay were,
And þaȝ þe glyterande golde glent vpon endez,
Bot for to sauen hymself, when suffer hym byhoued.
The guide assigned by Bertilak to lead Gawain to the Green Chapel is no less a tempter than the lady, and the poet makes his function in the poem no less evident to the reader. First of all the relationship between lord and servant is reversed when the servant commands the lord to stop (2089-90). Although his language is formally correct in the use of the plural form of address (yow, 2091, etc., and ȝe, 2092, etc.), his manner is patronising in the assumption of superior wisdom that his words contain (2096):
Wolde ȝe worch bi my wytte, ȝe worþed þe better.
He knows what is in the moral interest of Gawain better than does Gawain himself. Secondly his language becomes overtly contemptuous and abusive towards Gawain after his temptation has been resisted. The polite plurals give way to the condescending singulars, most improperly used of a servant to his master (2140-42):
‘Mary!’ quoþ þat oþer mon, ‘now þou so much spellez,
Þat þou wylt þyn awen nye nyme to þyseluen,
And þe lyst lese þy lyf, þe lette I ne kepe.’
Gawain has fallen short in fidelity through fear for life. The testing of Gawain by the guide is designed to take the moral issue one stage further, for Gawain is not simply a coward who abandons his pledged word when beset by fears. Indeed the guide's asseveration ‘Mary!’ (2140) is an implicit acknowledgment of Gawain's courage, for in the pentangle passage Gawain's courage is seen as being derived from the image of the Virgin Mary depicted on the inner side of his shield (648-50).
The guide assures Gawain of the formidable size (2098-2102) and merciless nature (2103-9) of his adversary. The keeping of his pledge in the Beheading Game involves the certainty of death (2111-13):
Com ȝe þere, ȝe be kylled, may þe knyȝt rede,
Trawe ȝe me þat trwely, þaȝ ȝe had twenty lyues to spende.
These are truths that we ourselves can easily vouch for, and there is no need for Gawain to misbelieve the truth of the guide's words. The guide promises to conceal Gawain's guilt in words that are specifically intended to recall the loss of fidelity in the concealment of the girdle (2124-25):
… I schal lelly yow layne, and lance neuer tale
Þat euer ȝe fondet to fle for freke þat I wyst.
But the temptation here is less insidiously stated. Indeed the moral issues are straightforward for Gawain (although hardly the less difficult for that), and Gawain responds honourably towards them. We are confirmed in our belief in the lesser imperfection of Gawain's sin. When the simple knowledge of evil is present Gawain does not hesitate to reject the course of cowardice and infidelity (2129-31):
Bot helde þou hit neuer so holde, and I here passed,
Founded for ferde for to fle, in fourme þat þou tellez,
I were a knyȝt kowarde, I myȝt not be excused.
The poet therefore asserts Gawain's excellence in terms of those very virtues in which he has fallen short. And this fact is further acknowledged by the guide himself when he takes his departure (2149-51). It is also clear that in the midst of the dangers that confront him, Gawain's confidence rests securely in God (2136-39):
þaȝe he be a sturn knape
To stiȝtel, and stad with staue,
Ful wel con Dryȝtyn schape
His seruauntez for to saue.
This is a point important enough for the poet to return to it in the wheel at the end of the following stanza (2156-59):
‘Bi Goddez self,’ quoþ Gawayn,
‘I wyl nauþer grete ne grone;
To Goddez wylle I am ful bayn,
And to hym I haf me tone.’
Thus the poet also asserts the excellence of Gawain's faith, or rather (as with his courage and fidelity) reasserts it, for faith is one of the virtues explicitly set out in the account of the pentangle as a symbol (642-43).34
In the description of Gawain's solitary journey on the final stage of his quest to the Green Chapel (2160-2238), the poet reminds us insistently of the perils of the situation in which the hero now finds himself. He describes the desolation and seeming hostility of the place itself; the rough rocks that graze the skies (2166-67); the water boiling in the stream (2172-74); and the grass-covered mound with its devilish associations (2178-96). The suggestion of menace is at once confirmed by the description of the hideous noise of grinding (2199-2204 and 2219-20) and of the size and sharpness of the Green Knight's axe (2223-25):
A denez ax nwe dyȝt, þe dynt with to ȝelde,
With a borelych bytte bende by þe halme,
Fyled in a fylor, fowre fote large.
The poet focuses entirely on the fearsome qualities of this weapon. There is no occasion here, as there was in the description of that other axe on the first meeting in Arthur's hall (see 214-20), to dwell on the fine craftsmanship of which it is a product. There is no comfort either to be found for Gawain in the mood of the man who wields this evil weapon. He strides forward to the meeting with the hero ‘bremly broþe’ (2233). The poet has thus superbly concentrated his effects, and, what is more, has presented them to us from Gawain's point of view (2163, 2167 and 2169-70):
And þenne he wayted hym aboute, and wylde hit hym þoȝt.
Þe skwez of þe scowtes skayned hym þoȝt.
And ofte chaunged his cher þe chapel to seche:
He seȝ non suche in no syde, and selly hym þoȝt.
We are made sharply aware of the dangers that he confronts and the fears that they inspire, and as a result we are bound not only to recognize his great fidelity (2237-38), but also the courage that such fidelity requires of him.
In the account of the blows that Gawain receives at the hands of the Green Knight (2239-2330) the poet reveals yet again a precision in his moral analysis. Gawain's physical response indicates at one and the same time the extent and limitations of his courage. We are led to admire the courage with which he presents himself for his death and controls his fears (2255-58). Such conduct entirely justifies the poet's description of him as one ‘þat doȝty watz euer’ (2264). But it is at this very point that the great courage of the knight fails him, for he flinches as the blow descends (2265-67):
Bot Gawayn on þat giserne glyfte hym bysyde,
As hit com glydande adoun on glode hym to schende,
And schranke a lytel with þe schulderes for þe scharp yrne.
This relative failure of nerve corresponds to the partial failure in the Exchange of Winnings agreement, and it brings down on Gawain's head the sternest of recriminations (2268-79). Such recrimination stands in need of explanation when we compare this incident with a similar incident in Perlesvaus. Here Lancelot is compelled to enter into a Beheading Game at the Waste City, and he too flinches when he comes to receive the return blow. But no criticism is offered him for doing so (Perlesvaus, 6695-700 and p. 183). The reason is that the fact that Lancelot has presented himself for the return blow in the first place speaks volumes for his outstanding courage and fidelity. Indeed the author records that at least twenty knights before Lancelot had failed to keep their promise because of a lack of courage (Perlesvaus, 6714-23 and pp. 183-84). The Green Knight's rebuke of Gawain for flinching is deliberately overdone, for there is a calculated exaggeration of Gawain's offence on the poet's part. The rebuke underlines and does not diminish the reality of Gawain's courage. And Gawain is justly enabled to say in his own defence that it does not lie in his power to restore his own head after the manner of the Green Knight himself (2280-83). There is a suggestion here of an unfairness in the rules of the game as it applies to the two contestants. Before the second blow is offered Gawain gives his word to receive it without flinching (2284-87). This pledge enables the poet to set before us once again the admirable combination of fidelity and courage in his hero, for Gawain is as good as his word (2292-94):
Gawayn grayþely hit bydez, and glent with no membre,
Bot stode stylle as þe ston, oþer a stubbe auþer
Þat raþeled is in roché grounde with rotez a hundreth.
The poet shows once again that Gawain does not yield to his fears when he has a direct knowledge of their moral consequences. As in the testing by the guide Gawain's reputation for fidelity is restored, so here his reputation for courage is restored. The good knight offers no resistance on the occasion of the third blow until the blow itself has been struck, even though he has the expectation only of death (2305-8):
Þenne tas he hym stryþe to stryke,
And frounsez boþe lyppe and browe;
No meruayle þaȝ hym myslyke
Þat hoped of no rescowe.
By means of this narrative of the beheading the poet has realised in Gawain the classic definition of courage, namely, firmness of mind in the face of the fears aroused by the dangers of death (ST, 2a 2ae 123.4). The manner in which Gawain receives the three blows aimed at him enables us to see his fidelity and especially his courage in their proper perspective. There is no need for us to minimize the seriousness of Gawain's failing, for the sinfulness of the human condition is not something that the poet wishes lightly to accommodate. But at the same time we can appreciate the great moral excellence of Gawain. The poet intends us to share in the Green Knight's unfeigned admiration of the courage of the man, and underlines it by rhetorical amplification (2331-35):
The haþel heldet hym fro, and on his ax rested,
Sette þe schaft vpon schore, and to þe scharp lened,
And loked to þe leude þat on þe launde ȝede,
How þat doȝty, dredles, deruely þer stondez
Armed, ful aȝlez: in hert hit hym lykez.(35)
We have been led to see that in this life authentic courage in its noblest manifestations co-exists with the weakness of man's fallen nature.
II
We must not as readers withhold from Gawain the admiration that is due to his virtuous conduct in the quest that he has undertaken. But we must recognize at the same time that he is blind to his sins in failing to hand over the girdle to the lord in the Exchange of Winnings agreement, and that such sins are properly to be cleansed by satisfaction. The poet duly proceeds to these matters in the meeting between Gawain and the Green Knight at the Green Chapel. The penitential significance of this meeting cannot escape the attention of any reader of the poem, and it has in many respects been satisfactorily explained by Burrow (A Reading, pp. 127-33). But the second or quasi-confession stands in relation to the first not as valid to invalid, but as the completion of a moral process.
The Green Knight occupies the role of confessor, and Gawain that of penitent sinner. It is not possible to hide one's sins from the supreme judge, as the fictional Dante learns when he comes to make his confession before Beatrice (Purg., XXXI.37-39):
Ed ella: ‘Se tacessi o se negassi
ciò che confessi, non fora men nota
la colpa tua: da tal giudice sassi!
And she: ‘Hadst thou kept silence or denied what thou confessest, thy fault would be not less plain, by such a judge is it known.’
Similarly the Green Knight is the judge who understands the hidden causes of things, and hence gives a true report of Gawain's motives and measures the extent of his sin (2366-68):
Bot here yow lakked a lyttel, sir, and lewté yow wonted;
Bot þat watz for no wylyde werke, ne wowyng nauþer,
Bot for ȝe lufed your lyf; þe lasse I yow blame.
The importance of the Green Knight's function as judge explains why so much is made of his jovial nature. Bertilak is a jovial type in the full medieval sense; he is not only merry and companionable (908-9, 936-37, 981-87, 1086-87, and 1174-77), he is also generous (988-90, and 1156-57) and courteous (833-37, 1002, and 1029-36). It is Jove who dispenses justice, and justice is to be dispensed with equanimity. The authority of Bertilak is characterized by that lack of harshness of spirit or gentleness that disposes to mercy (2336-38):
Þenn he melez muryly wyth a much steuen,
And wyth a rynkande rurde he to þe renk sayde:
‘Bolde burne, on þis bent be not so gryndel.’
He thus resembles as judge the merciful and patient Lord who rebukes Jonah for his foolish lack of patience (Patience, 524-25):
Be noȝt so gryndel, god-man, bot go forth þy wayes,
Be preue and be pacient in payne and in joye.
The third blow that the Green Knight delivers is not seen in any way as an act of mercy, however, but as an act of satisfaction for sin, that is, a due punishment (2389, and 2393-94):
Thenn loȝe þat oþer leude and luflyly sayde …
‘I halde þe polysed of þat plyȝt, and pured as clene
As þou hadez neuer forfeted syþen þou watz fyrst borne.’
Satisfaction for sin is an act of justice, and it is defined as (Suppl., 12.3):
… illatae injuriae recompensatio secundum justitiae aequalitatem.
… compensation for an inflicted injury according to the equality of justice.
Man cannot make satisfaction in the sense of quantitative equality, that is, he cannot do anything that equals the goodness of divine grace, but he can do so in the sense of proportionate equality. By the justice of satisfaction, therefore, is to be understood a strict measure in accord with proportionate equality (Suppl., 8.7 sed contra, and 13.1 sed contra):
Isaiae 27: In mensura contra mensuram, cum abjecta fuerit, judicabis eam; ergo quantitas judicii punitionis peccati est secundum quantitatem culpae.
Praeterea. Homo reducitur ad aequalitatem justitiae per poenitentiam inflictam: sed hoc non esset, si quantitas culpae, et poenae non sibi responderent; ergo unum alteri respondet.
… It is written (Isa. xxvii.8): In measure against measure, when it shall be cast off, thou shalt judge it. Therefore the quantity of punishment adjudicated for sin answers the degree of fault.
Further, man is reduced to the equality of justice by the punishment inflicted on him. But this would not be so if the quantity of the fault and of the punishment did not mutually correspond. Therefore one answers to the other.
Satisfactio est, cum poena culpae aequatur; quia justitia est idem, quod contrapassum, ut Pythagorici dixerunt …
… there is due satisfaction when the punishment balances the fault, since justice is the same as counterpassion, as the Pythagoreans said
(Aristotle, Ethic. v).
It is in accordance with the principle of contrappasso or fitting retribution that Dante assigns punishment to the impenitent sinners in hell. Thus the spirits consumed by lust, that is, those who in their lives set the disturbance of passions above the order of reason, are driven weeping and wailing before the unrelenting tempest (Inf., V. 28-51). And in the same way the impiety of diviners in claiming to forecast future events is punished by the denial of ordinary forward vision (Inf., XX.10-15). But the example of fitting retribution that comes closest, potentially and implicitly at any rate, to Sir Gawain is that of Bertran de Born whose head is severed for the fomenting of the rebellion of Henry against his father Henry II of England (Inf., XXVIII. 112-42). Bertran explains the meaning behind this terrible punishment as follows (Inf., XXVIII. 139-42):
‘Perch'io parti' così giunte persone,
partito porto il mio cerebro, lasso!,
dal suo principio ch'è in questo troncone.
Così s'osserva in me lo contrapasso.’
‘Because I parted those so joined I carry my brain, alas, parted from its root in this trunk; thus is observed in me the retribution.’
The principle of fitting retribution is the principle of measure that is at work in Sir Gawain, and it accounts for the contrivance of three blows of the axe to match Gawain's conduct on the three days of the Exchange of Winnings agreement (2352-53, and 2356-57):
For boþe two here I þe bede bot two bare myntes
boute scaþe …
At þe þrid þou fayled þore,
And þerfor þat tappe ta þe.
It is the same principle that explains the poet's earlier comparison between the girdle and the axe. When describing the massive blade of the Green Knight's axe—it is four feet wide—the poet is led to observe, somewhat oddly it seems to a modern reader, that (2226):
Hit watz no lasse bi þat lace þat lemed ful bryȝt.(36)
The girdle is the measure of Gawain's sin, and the axe the instrument of punishment for that sin. The concerns of the final fitt, then, are those of justice simply, and not of justice and mercy.37 Gawain receives at the hands of the Green Knight what is strictly due to his virtue. There need be no doubt that if he had fallen gravely short in his quest he would, like Bertran de Born, have lost his head, for the Gawain-poet is no less morally realistic than Dante. Sin involves a disturbance of the order of justice, and that order can only be restored by the virtue of penitence. When Gawain's sin is disclosed to him, he shows himself to be excellent in the moral virtue of penitence no less than in the theological and moral virtues set forth under the symbol of the pentangle. This is not to argue for a gap in the scheme of the pentangle, but for a necessary implication of that imperfection which is contained in the pentangle. Gawain's behaviour from here onwards follows in detail the requirements of penitential practice, and it has been the failure of critics to set his conduct in a penitential context that has accounted for some notably unsympathetic and even hostile misinterpretations of it. I shall indicate in the notes to the discussion that follows the points at which these misinterpretations need to be corrected.
The virtue of penitence is to be classified as a part of justice (ST, 3a 85.3). It is the right reason whereby one chooses to grieve for past sins that merit such grief, and in proportion to the nature of those sins, for there is also a mean of virtue in relation to the sorrow of repentance (ST, 3a 85.1). Hence penitence is a specific virtue concerned with the destruction of past sins (ST, 3a 85.2):
Manifestum est autem quod in poenitentia invenitur specialis ratio actus laudabilis, scilicet operari ad destructionem peccati praeteriti, inquantum est Dei offensa, quod non pertinet ad rationem alterius virtutis. Unde necesse est ponere quod poenitentia est specialis virtus.
Now it is clear that with penitence there is an act of special value, namely of working towards the destruction of past sin as an offence against God, and this belongs to the specific function of no other virtue. Hence we conclude that penitence is a special virtue.
The habit of the virtue of penitence is expressed in the three related acts of contrition, confession, and satisfaction.38 The nature of the relationship between them is plainly to be seen in the standard definition of contrition as (Suppl., 1.1 arg.1):
… dolor pro peccatis assumptus, cum proposito confitendi, et satisfaciendi.
… an assumed sorrow for sins, together with the purpose of confessing them and of making satisfaction for them.
The conditions of all three are fulfilled in the conduct of Gawain.
Contrition involves a great disturbance of soul, for it is nothing less than a crushing of the heart. Such a disturbance results from the fact of being torn from one's own previous judgment of one's acts. Thus the fictional Dante is broken like a cross-bow under too great a strain before Beatrice's accusations (Purg., XXXI.16-21):
Come balestro frange, quando scocca
da troppa tesa, la sua corda e l'arco,
e con men foga l'asta il segno tocca,
sì scoppia' io sott'esso grave carco,
fuori sgorgando lacrime e sospiri,
e la voce allentò per lo suo varco.
As a cross-bow shot with too great strain breaks the cord and bow and the shaft touches the mark with less force, so I broke down under that heavy charge, pouring forth tears and sighs, and my voice failed in its passage.
In the same way Gawain is overwhelmed by his new-found sense of sin, and takes a long time to absorb the shock of the Green Knight's disclosure. He has to come to terms with the reversal of his judgment that he has been faithful to the lord in the Exchange of Winnings agreement and to the Green Knight in the Beheading Game. The realisation of his moral sinfulness in retaining the girdle fills him with shame (2369-72):
Þat oþer stif mon in study stod a gret whyle,
So agreued for greme he gryed withinne;
Alle þe blode of his brest blende in his face,
Þat al he schrank for schome þat þe schalk talked.
This is without doubt Gawain's first realisation of his sin, and indeed shame answers to the first recognition of sin, for shame is a reaction to a shameful deed as present (ST, 3a 85.1 ad 2). Since penitence is not merely a passion, but a virtue, true contrition requires a willed displeasure for the sin committed (Suppl., 3.1):
… in contritione est duplex dolor: unus est in ipsa voluntate, qui est essentialiter ipsa contritio, quae nihil aliud est, quam displicentia praeteriti peccati. Et talis dolor in contritione excedit omnes alios dolores, quia quantum aliquid placet, tantum contrarium ejus displicet: finis autem ultimus super omnia placet, cum omnia propter ipsum desiderentur; et ideo peccatum, quod a fine ultimo avertit, super omnia displicere debet.
… there is a twofold sorrow in contrition: one is in the will, and is the very essence of contrition, being nothing else than displeasure at past sin, and this sorrow, in contrition, surpasses all other sorrows. For the more pleasing a thing is, the more displeasing is its contrary. Now the last end is above all things pleasing: wherefore sin, which turns us away from the last end, should be, above all things, displeasing.
The importance of willed displeasure for sin is also stressed in a treatise such as The Book of the Craft of Dying (47/11-48/3):
… therfor to euery suche man that is in suche caas and is come to hys last ende (it) is to be counceiled besily that he laboure wiþ reson of hys mynde after hys power to haue ordinat 7 verray repentaunce, that is to menynge, not withstondynge þe sorwe 7 greuaunce of (hys) siknesse 7 drede that he hath of hasty deth, that he vse reson asmoche as he may, and enforce hym self to haue wilfully ful displesynge of alle synne for the due ende 7 (a) parfyt entent, that is for God …39
Gawain's response to the Green Knight's disclosure of his sin is not one of uncontrolled self-disgust, for that would be to add one sin of passion to another, but one of willed displeasure. The poet makes this distinction clear when he states that Gawain remained in silent thought for a long time before speaking (2369). Gawain's willed displeasure at his sins is repeatedly emphasised by the poet, for it is so essential to his future spiritual welfare. He repudiates his cowardice and covetousness (2374):
‘Corsed worth cowarddyse and couetyse boþe!’
He repudiates also the girdle as a sign of the breaking of faith (2378):
‘Lo! þer þe falssyng, foule mot hit falle!’
And he condemns the infidelity itself and the loss of righteousness that is its necessary consequence (2382-84):
Now am I fawty and falce, and ferde haf ben euer
Of trecherye and vntrawþe: boþe bityde sorȝe
and care!(40)
It is important to recognize also that Gawain's action in removing the girdle and flinging it fiercely to the lord (2376-77) is not an impetuous gesture, but the expression of a proper alienation from sin. In order to make this distinction clear the poet has set Gawain's action in a carefully ordered sequence of events; it not only follows upon a period of silent thought and inward mortification (2369-72) but is placed between the penitent's two judgments of his sin (2373-75, and 2379-84). These judgments are considered judgments, as is suggested by their very compatibility, and they answer to one of the conditions that is essential to a proper confession of sin, namely that it should be the product of knowledge (Suppl., 9.4):
… prima (sc. conditio) est, ut aliquis sit sciens; et quantum ad hoc confessio dicitur esse discreta, secundum quod in actu omnis virtutis prudentia requiritur: est autem haec discretio, ut majora peccata cum majori pondere confiteatur.
The first (sc. condition) is knowledge, in respect of which confession is said to be discreet, inasmuch as prudence is required in every act of virtue: and this discretion consists in giving greater weight to greater sins.
It is necessary to stress the prudence that Gawain displays here, since prudence is not an obvious mark of Gawain's judgment of his own sinfulness for a modern reader unacquainted with penitential practice and Scholastic moral philosophy.41 But the amplification of the judgment and the repetition of the same specific moral terms are intended as an implication of Gawain's prudence (2374-75, and 2379-81):
‘Corsed worth cowarddyse and couetyse boþe!
In yow is vylany and vyse þat vertue disstryez …
For care of þy knokke cowardyse me taȝt
To acorde me with couetyse, my kynde to forsake,
Þat is larges and lewté þat longez to knyȝtez.’
In the language of Scholastic moral philosophy Gawain is saying that his sinful act is formally one of cowardice, and materially one of covetousness and infidelity. It will be seen that Gawain's own judgment corresponds to that of the Green Knight, and that both are in accord with the poet's representation of his conduct in the Exchange of Winnings agreement.
There is, however, a difference in emphasis or rather in perspective between Gawain's judgment and that of the Green Knight. The Green Knight addresses himself to the essential significance of Gawain's act and focuses as a result on Gawain's intention. And, per se loquendo, Gawain's act is one of cowardice, not of covetousness nor of infidelity. But the Green Knight does not disregard the proper object of Gawain's exterior act, namely his infidelity, for he stands in a twofold relation of faith to Gawain as a result of the Beheading Game and the Exchange of Winnings agreement. The Green Knight does indeed find fault with Gawain for the material sin (2366):
Bot here yow lakked a lyttel, sir, and lewté yow wonted.
But he finds in the passion of fear a mitigating circumstance; he blames Gawain, but he blames him the less as a result of it (2368). This is a judgment strictly in conformity with the principles of Scholastic morality; it is not indulgent, but even-handed.42 Gawain's own situation is necessarily very different from that of the Green Knight. He is to be judged by the standards appropriate not to a confessor but to a penitent sinner. And here we need to note that it is not enough for a penitent's statement of his sins to be accurate; it must be also explicit, simple, and complete (Suppl., 9.4):
Sed ex propria ratione hujusmodi actus, qui est confessio, habet quod sit manifestativa. Quae quidem manifestatio per quatuor impediri potest: primo per falsitatem; et quantum ad hoc dicitur fidelis, idest vera: secundo per obscuritatem verborum; et contra hoc dicitur nuda, ut non involvat obscuritatem verborum: tertio per verborum multiplicationem; et propter hoc dicitur simplex, ut scilicet non recitet in confessione, nisi quod ad quantitatem peccati pertinet: quarto, ut non subtrahatur aliquid de his, quae manifestanda sunt, et contra hoc dicitur integra.
By reason of its very nature, viz. confession, this act is one of manifestation: which manifestation can be hindered by four things: first by falsehood, and in this respect confession is said to be faithful, i.e. true. Secondly, by the use of vague words, and against this confession is said to be open, so as not to be wrapped up in vague words; thirdly, by multiplicity of words, in which respect it is said to be simple, indicating that the penitent should relate only such matters as affect the gravity of the sin; fourthly none of those things should be suppressed which should be made known, and in this respect confession should be entire.43
Hence Gawain specifies his covetousness as well as his infidelity. But the Green Knight does not say that Gawain is not guilty of covetousness, he says that he was not motivated by it—a very different matter. And as we have seen, the covetousness has the same moral status as the infidelity; it is a sin materially, but not formally.
In discussing Gawain's detestation of his sins we have moved imperceptibly to his confession of them. This is inevitably the case when the penitent's assumed sorrow for his sins directly involves an intention to correct them. But confession is explicit in Beatrice's words to the fictional Dante in the earthly paradise (Purg., XXXI. 5-6):
‘dì, dì se questo è vero: a tanta accusa
tua confession conviene esser congiunta.’
‘say, say if this is true; to such an accusation thy confession must needs be joined.’
The distinctness of the act of confession as an essential act of the virtue of penitence is rendered explicit in two ways by the Gawain-poet, first of all subjectively in Gawain's words to the Green Knight (2385-86):
I biknowe yow, knyȝt, here stylle,
Al fawty is my fare,
and second objectively in the Green Knight's acceptance of Gawain's confession as complete (2391):
Þou art confessed so clene, beknowen of þy mysses.(44)
Moreover, in his representation of Gawain's subsequent conduct the poet continually underlines its penitential fitness in respect of confession. Now confession is, as we have seen, an act of the special virtue of penitence, and as such it must meet certain specific conditions. First of all it must be full of shame in so far as it expresses the sinner's horror at the shamefulness of his sin (Suppl., 9.4):
Quae quidem primo initium sumit in horrore turpitudinis peccati; et quantum ad hoc confessio debet esse verecunda, ut scilicet non se jactet de peccatis propter aliquam saeculi vanitatem admixtam.
First of all it takes its origin in the horror which one conceives for the shamefulness of sin, and in this respect confession should be full of shame, so as not to be a boastful account of one's sins, by reason of some worldly vanity accompanying it.
The sense of shame is still with Gawain when he comes to tell the court at Camelot of his sin (2501-4):
He tened quen he schulde telle,
He groned for gref and grame;
Þe blod in his face con melle,
When he hit schulde schewe, for schame.
There is nothing morbid in all of this, not at least if we judge it (as we surely must) from within the value system of medieval penitential literature.45 The sense of shame is nothing less than what is proper to the reality of sin. Any moral danger that may be perceived in this situation is not the indulgence of shame but the avoidance of shame. Langland sees the friars as the agents who undermine the salvific purpose of penance (PPl, B XX.281-85):
For persons and parissh preestes, that sholde the peple shryve,
Ben curatours called to knowe and to hele,
Alle that ben hir parisshens penaunces enjoigne,
And ben ashamed in hir shrift; ac shame maketh hem wende
And fleen to the freres …
Meed the Maid has no difficulty in finding an accommodating friar (PPl, B III. 43-44):
Thanne Mede for hire mysdedes to that man kneled,
And shrof hire of hire sherewednesse—shamelees, I trowe,
and by the sound of it Chaucer's Friar is no less accommodating, for ‘ful swetely herde he confessioun’ (CT, A 221). The second specific condition of confession is that it should be tearful in spirit, that is, that it should be an expression of regret for the past sin (Suppl., 9.4):
Secundo progreditur ad dolorem de peccato commisso; et quantum ad hoc dicitur esse lacrymabilis.
Then it goes on to deplore the sin committed, and in this respect it is said to be tearful.
Hence the confession of the fictional Dante to Beatrice is characterized by tearfulness (Purg., XXXI. 34-36):
Piangendo dissi: ‘Le presenti cose
col falso lor piacer volser miei passi,
tosto che 'l vostro viso si nascose.’
… weeping, I said: ‘Present things with their false pleasure turned my steps as soon as your face was hid.’
It is evident that Gawain too retains a sense of the injury that his sin has done him, and still deplores it on his arrival at Camelot (2505-8):
‘Lo! lorde,’ quoþ þe leude, and þe lace hondeled,
‘Þis is þe bende of þis blame I bere in my nek,
Þis is þe laþe and þe losse þat I laȝt haue
Of couardise and couetyse þat I haf caȝt þare.’
The third specific condition of confession is that it should be humble (Suppl., 9.4):
Tertio in abjectione sui terminatur; et quantum ad hoc debet esse humilis, ut se miserum confiteatur, et infirmum.
Thirdly, it culminates in self-abjection, and in this respect it should be humble, so that one confesses one's misery and weakness.
The fictional Dante's humble abjection in his confession is shown in the image of him as a child, ashamed and silent, with eyes on the ground (Purg., XXXI. 64-67):
Quali i fanciulli, vergognando, muti
con li occhi a terra stannosi, ascoltando
e sè riconoscendo e ripentuti,
tal mi stav'io …
As children ashamed stand dumb with eyes on the ground, listening and acknowledging their fault and repentant, so I stood there …
The nourishment of such humility is Gawain's expressed motive for the acceptance of the girdle from the Green Knight himself (2437-38):
And þus, quen pryde schal me pryk for prowes of armes,
Þe loke to þis luf-lace schal leþe my hert.(46)
Such behaviour stands clearly defined when set against that of someone like the Wife of Bath, who displays the sin of pride in both its inward and outward forms (CT, A 449-57). She does not lament the reality of human imperfection, but rather rejoices in it (CT, D 105-12):
Virginitee is greet perfeccion,
And continence eek with devocion,
But Crist, that of perfeccion is welle,
Bad nat every wight he sholde go selle
Al that he hadde, and gyve it to the poore,
And in swich wise folwe hym and his foore.
He spak to hem that wolde lyve parfitly;
And lordynges, by youre leve, that am nat I.
It has already been observed that the act of confession by its very nature as the manifestation of sin should be true, explicit, simple, and complete. Gawain's declaration of his sins to the court fulfils these conditions no less admirably than his earlier declaration of them to the Green Knight. And here we might justly commend the moral courage of one who is not deflected by shame from making so full a confession of his sins. Such courage in confession belongs to the general condition of virtue, as Aquinas also explains (Suppl., 9.4):
Quarta (sc. conditio) est, ut immobiliter operetur; et quantum ad hoc dicitur, quod debet esse fortis, ut scilicet propter verecundiam veritas non dimittatur.
The fourth condition is that one should act immovably, and in this respect it is said that confession should be courageous, viz. that the truth should not be forsaken through shame.
As a truly contrite and fully confessed sinner, Gawain is willing to make satisfaction for his sin (2387-88):
Letez me ouertake your wylle
And efte I schal be ware.
But the Green Knight makes it clear that Gawain has done satisfaction for his sin by receiving the nick on the neck from the third blow of the axe (2392):
And hatz þe penaunce apert of þe poynt of myn egge.
As a result it can be said that he has received absolution for his sin (2393-94):
I halde þe polysed of þat plyȝt, and pured as clene
As þou hadez neuer forfeted syþen þou watz fyrst borne.
His subsequent behaviour is therefore to be understood as that of one made whole again by penance.
III
It is very easy to misinterpret the matter which directly follows upon the second confession scene and which presents Gawain's leave-taking of Bertilak. The poet is all too readily seen by some modern readers as lapsing into a characteristically medieval anti-feminism, and Gawain as a result is held to show bad grace in blaming his failure in the quest not on his own weakness but on the deceit of women.47 But it is impossible to attribute such conduct either to one whose virtue is symbolized by the pentangle or to one who has been made whole by penance.
It has to be said that Gawain is indeed the victim of deceit, for the cunning of the lady is amply evident in the bedroom scene of the third day, and it is symbolically confirmed by the analogy of the fox-hunt. But the argument that Gawain is a victim of such cunning is not in its turn to be pressed unreasonably. Gawain is certainly aware of his own responsibility as he is aware of feminine deceit (2414-15):
Bot hit is no ferly þaȝ a fole madde,
And þurȝ wyles of wymmen be wonen to sorȝe.
And no one is more severe in judgment on Gawain than Gawain himself (2374-84). Moreover, as we have seen, Gawain's severity is a due severity. When Gawain concludes that (2427-28):
Þaȝ I be now bigyled,
Me þink me burde be excused,
he does not literally mean that he should in fact be excused his sin, for that would be inconsistent with all that he has said before. Rather we must attribute to him the rueful good humour of one whose guilt for sin has now been removed.
The reference that Gawain now makes to Adam, Solomon, Sampson, and David (2416-19) is designed by the poet to draw attention once again to the central theme, namely that the highest human excellence is flawed. No human attainment is superior to that of these men, and yet all of them fell short (2422-24):
For þes wer forne þe freest, þat folȝed alle þe sele
Exellently of alle þyse oþer, vnder heuenryche
þat mused.
Chaucer's Parson draws the same lesson from the same examples (CT, I 955):
Ful ofte tyme I rede that no man truste in his owene perfeccioun, but he be stronger than Sampson, and hoolier than David, and wiser than Salomon.
And herein we may appreciate the special fitness of the association between Solomon and the pentangle (625-26), for the pentangle is a symbol that at one and the same time expresses human excellence and imperfection.
In judging Gawain's conduct at this point we need to remember that he has already taken his leave of Bertilak and the ladies before setting out for the Green Chapel (1975-82), and has done so in such a warm and loving manner that he could hardly improve upon it even if he were to return to Hautdesert as Bertilak suggests (2400-2406). What may be construed as Gawain's bad grace in taking his final leave of Bertilak and the ladies is in fact another fine display of good manners. Considerable social tact is exercised by Gawain here, for he can hardly deny that these three have been responsible for his bitter self-knowledge of imperfection. Thus he courteously removes his helmet and wishes his host well, using the polite plural form of address (2407-10):
‘Nay, for soþe,’ quoþ þe segge, and sesed hys helme,
And hatz hit of hendely, and þe haþel þonkkez,
‘I haf soiorned sadly; sele yow bytyde,
And he ȝelde hit yow ȝare þat ȝarkkez al menskes!’
And no less courteously does he commend himself to the ladies (2411-13):
And comaundez me to þat cortays, your comlych fere,
Boþe þat on and þat oþer, myn honoured ladyez,
Þat þus hor knyȝt wyth hor kest han koyntly bigyled.(48)
He remains their servant, and his gesture is more than an empty formality. He is even able to look with some ironic humour on the way in which he has been deceived. But these ironic possibilities have been hard earned in terms of the knowledge of himself that he has gained on the quest.
When Gawain returns to Arthur's court he does so as one made whole through penance, so that the stain of sin has been made clean. And it is the recognition of this fact that makes possible the joyful welcome of the court. But to understand the conduct of Gawain and the court on the knight's return it is necessary to set the responses of each in a proper perspective in relation to the virtue of penitence.
Although the sensible sorrow that accompanies contrition can be immoderate (Suppl., 3.2), contrition itself lasts for the whole of the present life, even though satisfaction may have a temporal limitation (Suppl, 4.1):
… in contritione … est duplex dolor: unus rationis, qui est detestatio peccati a se commissi: alius sensitivae partis, qui ex isto consequitur. Et quantum ad utrumque contritionis tempus est totius vitae praesentis status.
… there is a twofold sorrow in contrition: one is in the reason, and is detestation of the sin committed; the other is in the sensitive part, and results from the former: and as regards both, the time for contrition is the whole of the present state of life.
Thus when Gawain returns to Camelot the slight wound in his neck is healed (2484), but his sorrow for his sins (2501-4) and his displeasure for them (2505-10) remain unimpaired. The motive of sorrow persists because of the knowledge of the harm that has been done by sin (Suppl., 4.1 ad 1):
… manet autem dolori, qui non solum de culpa est, inquantum habet turpitudinem, sed etiam inquantum habet nocumentum annexum.
… but there does remain a motive of sorrow, which is for the guilt, not only as being something disgraceful, but also as having a hurt connected with it.
This harm is the obstruction that has been placed in the way of man and his salvation (Suppl., 4.1):
Quamdiu enim est aliquis in statu viae, detestatur incommoda, quibus a perventione ad terminum viae retardatur, vel impeditur; unde, cum per peccatum praeteritum vitae nostrae cursus in Deum retardetur, quia tempus illud, quod erat deputatum ad currendum, recuperari non potest, oportet quod semper in vitae hujus tempore status contritionis maneat, quantum ad peccati detestationem.
For as long as one is a wayfarer, one detests the obstacles which retard or hinder one from reaching the end of the way. Wherefore, since past sin retards the course of our life towards God (because the time which was given to us for that course cannot be recovered), it follows that the state of contrition remains during the whole of this lifetime, as regards the detestation of sin.
And this harm too Gawain acknowledges (2511-12):
For mon may hyden his harme, bot vnhap ne may hit,
For þer hit onez is tachched twynne wil hit neuer.(49)
There is no lack of spiritual or moral discernment on the part of the court in the welcome that it extends to Gawain. The best of knights returns in safety from a quest which has seemed to hold out only the certainty of death (see 672-86). The virtues symbolized by the pentangle he wears on shield and coat armour have been triumphantly vindicated, while the imperfection that accompanies them has been made good by satisfaction and absolution. And as Aquinas also explains, when the guilt is removed, so too is the shame (Suppl., 4.1 ad 1):
… erubescentia respicit peccatum, solum inquantum habet turpitudinem; et ideo postquam peccatum quantum ad culpam remissum est, non manet pudori locus.
Shame regards sin only as a disgraceful act; wherefore after sin has been taken away as to its guilt, there is no further motive for shame.
Gawain has made a shameful confession of his sin to the court in his account of his adventures, and this is indeed an efficacious act.50 But now the moment for shame has passed. The court shares its humanity with Gawain, and Gawain is its representative, the nephew of their king (2464-66). The only fitting response of such a court is to comfort the knight who has survived so profound a spiritual and moral examination, and to receive him back joyfully into their midst (2513-14):
Þe kyng comfortez þe knyȝt, and alle þe court als
Laȝen loude þerat …
It is another sign of the fitness of the court's response (its courtesy in the strict sense) that it should wish to associate itself with the knight's imperfection (2514-18):
… and luflyly acorden
Þat lordes and ladis þat longed to þe Table,
Vche burne of þe broþerhede, a bauderyk schulde haue,
A bende abelef hym aboute of a bryȝt grene,
And þat, for sake of þat segge, in swete to were.
But the girdle, as a measure of Gawain's sin, is by the same token a measure of human excellence, and its fitness as such is acknowledged by the Green Knight (2398-99):
… and þis a pure token
Of þe chaunce of þe grene chapel at cheualrous knyȝtez.
The girdle is the symbol of human virtue as it is proved in the quest of the Green Chapel, and as Aristotle observes (Ethics, IV.3) honour is the reward that is due to virtue. Since the adventure of the Green Chapel is one of the most marvellous adventures concerning Arthur (27-29) and since Arthur is by repute the noblest of the kings of Britain (25-26), the honour that is won for the court by Gawain's conduct is spread abroad and so becomes renown. At the end of the poem as at the beginning Gawain and the court are united in the renown of the Round Table (2519-21):
For þat watz acorded þe renoun of þe Rounde Table,
And he honoured þat hit hade euermore after,
As hit is breued in þe best boke of romaunce.
The romance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight justly takes its place, therefore, among ‘þe Brutus bokez’ (2523) as a witness of the nobility of England in the days of King Arthur.
Notes
-
Barron, Trawthe and Treason (1980), p. 12. A similar view is expressed by D. Mills, ‘An Analysis of the Temptation Scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, JEGP, 67 (1968), 612-30, when he observes that Gawain's crossing himself ‘is a gesture of comic surprise rather than a serious reminder of moral danger’ (p. 613). More judicious is the opinion of C. Dean, ‘The Temptation Scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Leeds Studies in English, 5 (1971), 1-12 (p. 4): ‘He makes the sign of the cross so that he might be þe sauer (1202). This action should probably not be considered very significant. Very likely it is nothing more than part of his pretence of waking up.’ Dean is right to emphasise the naturalness of Gawain's action. It is what a pious knight would do on any morning. But the reason for that action is also significant, for it points to the ever-present reality of moral danger. And in the actual circumstances of the first bedroom scene the action has more than its usual significance, for Gawain is indeed in immediate moral danger. Thus B. S. Levy, ‘Gawain's Spiritual Journey: Imitatio Christi in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Annuale Mediaevale, 6 (1965), 65-106, is surely right when he observes (p. 96): ‘Nor is Gawain unaware of his vulnerability, for at the first approach of the lady, who attempts to distract him from his basic concern for his spiritual welfare, he carefully blesses himself to assure the safety of his soul.’
-
B. J. Whiting, ‘Gawain: His Reputation, His Courtesy and His Appearance in Chaucer's Squire's Tale’, Mediaeval Studies, 9 (1947), 189-234 and printed in Twentieth Century Interpretations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, edited by D. Fox (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1968), pp. 73-78, records an example from Gerbert de Montreuil's Continuation de Perceval in which Gawain is saved from death by his piety in making the sign of the cross: ‘Gawain, with a touch of happy, if not completely congruous, piety, makes the sign of the cross as he enters the bed, and the knife is more or less miraculously disclosed to him’ (p. 197).
-
It is necessary here to reject the description of J. D. Burnley, ‘The Hunting Scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, The Yearbook of English Studies, 3 (1973), 1-9 (p. 9): ‘On the hunting field anxiety turns to panic and an unceremonious death which invites our contempt and, with memories of the previous heroic struggle, a deep sense of disappointment.’ A contrast may be noted with the lack of success of the hunt in The Book of the Duchess, for here the hounds had ‘on a defaute yfalle’ (384), that is, they had fallen in error since they had been foiled by the hart. See D. Scott-MacNab, ‘A Re-examination of Octovyen's Hunt in The Book of the Duchess’, Medium Aevum, 56 (1987), 183-99 (pp. 191-92).
-
J. Nicholls, The Matter of Courtesy: Medieval Courtesy Books and the Gawain-Poet (Woodbridge and Dover, New Hampshire, 1985): ‘the seemingly erotic kisses are so placed that they can also be seen as conventional gestures of greeting and farewell’ (p. 133). See also his continuing discussion on p. 134, where the reference to Lancelot is cited (n. 56).
-
The phrase is that of Nicholls, p. 134.
-
Aristotle goes so far as to say that ‘a tragedy is impossible without action, but there may be one without character’ (Poetics, 6). This is a hard saying. What it means is that actions are carried out by agents, but by ‘character’ Aristotle understands moral choice, and human agents are not always seen in the act of making such choices. Characters are then seen to possess a moral, but not a poetic autonomy. See G. F. Else, Aristotle's Poetics: the Argument (Cambridge, Massachussetts, 1957), pp. 238-39.
-
Assumptions about Gawain's reputation for courtesy are often imported into interpretations of the poem, and these in their turn need to be challenged. Gawain is often identified in the later romances as sexually active and even lecherous, so that sexual innuendo is taken to be a predictable element in his conversation, and love-making the end towards which that conversation is directed. Thus Whiting, ‘Gawain: His Reputation, His Courtesy and His Appearance in Chaucer's Squire's Tale’, describes Gawain as the ‘well-mannered wooer of almost any available girl’ (p. 203). This conception of Gawain has hardened into dogma, so that Spearing represents the hero of Sir Gawain in terms of a secular cortaysye defined as ‘thoughtfulness for others, refined manners, deference, the service of ladies, and elegant love-making’ (The Gawain-Poet, p. 11). But the image of Gawain is by no means so clearcut in the medieval romances, and Whiting is obliged to counter the view that Gawain was originally a model of chastity (p. 203). Indeed, since we are dealing here with fictional creations not historical realities, as Whiting himself reminds us (p. 203), we can accommodate two or several traditions concerning the character of Gawain. There is no evidence, so far as I am aware, that Chrétien's Gawain was unchaste. The courtesy and chastity of Gawain are disparaged by the Maidens of the Tent in Perlesvaus much as they are by the lady in Sir Gawain (Perlesvaus, 1813-17, and p. 64):
‘Par Dieu, fet l'une a l'autre, se ce fust cil Gavains qui niés est le roi Artu, il parlast a nos autrement, e trovissions en lui plus de deduit que en cestui; mes cist est uns Gavains contrefez. Malement est enploiee l'onneurs q'on li a fete en ceste tente’.
‘In faith’, said one, ‘if this were Gawain, the nephew of King Arthur, he would speak to us differently, and we should find in him more entertainment than in this man: this Gawain is an impostor. The honour we have paid him here was ill-spent.’
(Compare also Sir Gawain, 1478-94, and see Perlesvaus, 6995-96 and p. 190, where Gawain is represented as not merely chaste, but also shy). Thus Gawain's courtly conversation in Sir Gawain does not necessarily presuppose any sexual element, as Nicholls (The Matter of Courtesy, p. 129) observes, drawing out in the process a comparison between the innocent talk of love in Sir Gawain, 1506-7 and at Theseus's feast in The Knight's Tale (CT, A 2203). The chaste tradition is essentially that within which the Gawain of Sir Gawain has been conceived and which the pentangle passage has made explicit, although the Gawain-poet is familiar with the alternative tradition and exploits the tension between the two in the bedroom scenes of Fitt III. For a recent discussion of the history of Gawain in medieval romance, emphasising the positive rather than the negative sides of his character, see J. Matthews, Gawain: Knight of the Goddess (Wellingborough, 1990).
-
‘Unless the remedy of at least some compulsion is first applied to take advantage of their modesty.’ Reference is to the text and translation of P. G. Walsh, Andreas Capellanus on Love (London, 1982), pp. 222-23.
-
Reference is to The Prose Works of Sir Philip Sidney, Volume I, Arcadia, 1590, edited by A. Feuillerat, reissued with minor corrections (Cambridge, 1969), p. 452.
-
The general position is admirably stated by Burnley, YES, 3 (1973), p. 2: ‘The co-occurrence of three seduction scenes with three hunting scenes has attracted the attention of every reader of the poem, and the almost unanimous desire to pair the scenes in some way can scarcely be ascribed to a universal aberration of sensibility. If, however, the scenes cannot be paired, then occurring as they do in a context of parallels, their evident deliberation must constitute a major flaw in an otherwise carefully constructed poem. The probability is, therefore, that a grand overall pattern is conceived in Fitt III whose moral significance unites in some way with the moral theme of the poem.’ Unfortunately the ensuing discussion fails to do justice to the narrative details by means of which the respective hunting and bedroom scenes are linked.
-
A graphic instance of the animal instinct for life is given by Leonard Woolf, The Journey Not the Arrival Matters: An Autobiography of the Years 1939-1969 (London, 1969), pp. 20-21:
My bitch had five puppies and it was decided that she should be left with two to bring up and so it was for me to destroy three. In such circumstances it was an age-old custom to drown the day-old puppies in a pail of water. This I proceeded to do. Looked at casually, day-old puppies are little blind, squirming, undifferentiated objects or things. I put one of them in the bucket of water, and instantly an extraordinary, a terrible thing happened. This blind, amorphous thing began to fight desperately for its life, struggling, beating the water with its paws. I suddenly saw that it was an individual, that like me it was an ‘I’, that in its bucket of water it was experiencing what I would experience and fighting death, as I would fight death if I were drowning in the multitudinous seas.
-
H. L. Savage, ‘The Significance of the Hunting Scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, JEGP, 27 (1928), 1-15 (p. 6).
-
The eloquence of Savage has undoubtedly been influential in the attribution of cunning to Gawain; compare also the beguiling formulation he makes in JEGP, 27 (1928), p. 5: ‘On the third day, then, a false beast is roused in the forest, and a false man revealed in the castle; a sly fox is caught in the wood, a “sly fox” in the castle.’ Not all critics, however, have been persuaded. L. Blenkner, OSB, ‘The Three Hunts and Sir Gawain's Triple Fault’, American Benedictine Review, 29 (1978), 227-46 notes that ‘on the day of the fox, guileless Gawain is pointedly un-wily’ (p. 239), and that ‘there is … nothing tricky or devious in Gawain's acceptance of the girdle’ (p. 243).
-
According to Davis (p. 121), following Hulbert and Knott, the intervention of Mary here constitutes yet another artistic blunder, for it interferes with the testing of Gawain at a crucial point. But the operation of human free will is a secondary cause concerned with contingent realities, and is dependent on the first cause which is God. The will cannot be the ultimate source of its own free acts (see Aquinas, ST, 1a 2ae 10.1 ad 1, and 10.4 ad 2).
-
The relation of fear and love has been the subject of empirical testing. The experimental data are described by E. Berscheid and E. Walster in Foundations of Interpersonal Attraction, edited by T. L. Huston (New York and London, 1974), pp. 363-64. I owe this reference to Dr Margret Fine-Davis, Centre for Women's Studies, Trinity College, Dublin.
-
‘I do not know why anyone who wishes to form the idea of a perfect knight should deny him the commendation of piety and religion’ (Cavalchini and Samuel, p. 39).
-
On this passage compare The Parlement of the Thre Ages, 645-48:
Ite ostendite vos sacerdotibus,
To schryue ȝow full schirle, and schewe ȝow to prestis.
Et ecce omnia munda sunt vobis,
And ȝe þat wronge wroghte schall worthen full clene. -
Reference is to Divi Thomae Aquinatis Summa Theologica, second edition (Rome, 1894), Volume V, Tertiae Partis Supplementum, translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London, 1917).
-
Texts of the three English translations are made available in my unpublished doctoral thesis, ‘A Critical Edition of Caxton's The Art and Craft to Know Well to Die and Ars Moriendi together with the Antecedent Manuscript Material’, 2 vols (University of Oxford, 1973).
-
See Morgan, ‘A Critical Edition’, II, 129-31.
-
Reference to the Ethica Nicomachea is to the translation of W. D. Ross, revised by J. O. Urmson, in The Works of Aristotle, edited by W. D. Ross, Volume IX (Oxford, 1975).
-
T. P. Dunning, Review of J. A. Burrow, A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (London, 1965), RES, NS, 18 (1967), 58-60 (p. 59).
-
See P. Armour, The Door of Purgatory: A Study of Multiple Symbolism in Dante's Purgatorio (Oxford, 1983). Armour rejects the sacramental interpretation of the three steps as representing contrition, confession, and satisfaction in favour of the moral interpretation by which the three steps represent self-knowledge, the sorrow of contrition, and shame (pp. 1-34). Accordingly, the fictional Dante's own experience of the penitential process begins with the self-knowledge that leads to shame (Purg., XXX. 76-78):
Li occhi mi cadder giù nel chiaro fonte;
ma, veggendomi in esso, i trassi all'erba,
tanta vergogna mi gravò la fronte.My eyes fell down to the clear fount, but, seeing myself in it, I drew them back to the grass, so great shame weighed on my brow.
-
In his reconstruction of Gawain's confession in ‘The Two Confession Scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Modern Philology, 57 (1959), 73-79, Burrow explicitly attributes to Gawain a deliberation in his sinning: ‘He goes to confession, rather than to Mass, because he realizes that he has sinned in agreeing to conceal the gift of the girdle from Bertilak, against his promise; but, though, presumably, he confesses this, he neither makes restitution … by returning the girdle nor resolves to sin no more’ (p. 75).
-
Spearing justly observes that ‘it is difficult not to feel that if we were to understand that Gawain was deliberately concealing what he knew to be a sin then the poet would have given us some insight into his consciousness at this point, in order to make the matter clear’ (p. 225). The observation is developed by Davenport in such a way as to show the positive moral import it has for Gawain's conduct: ‘the poet most significantly chooses to withdraw knowledge of Gawain's inner mind in the scenes immediately after his acceptance of the green belt, so that we are shown his going to confession, his mirth, and the last exchange of winnings, from outside. These acts exist in the poem as a performance of virtue, a completely convincing appearance of truth’ (p. 189). The uncertain knowledge of sin in the sinner seeking expurgation is expressed by Agatha to Harry in T. S. Eliot's The Family Reunion, Part II, Scene II:
It is possible that you have not known what sin
You shall expiate, or whose, or why. It is certain
That the knowledge of it must precede the expiation.
It is possible that sin may strain and struggle
In its dark instinctive birth, to come to consciousness
And so find expurgation. -
This conclusion is in accordance with that arrived at independently by other scholars. Thus Levy, ‘Gawain's Spiritual Journey’ comments that ‘from a strictly theological point of view, Gawain's “sin” would have to be considered venial, for Gawain was caught in a dilemma, and his choice was thus not entirely voluntary’ (p. 102, n. 54). P. J. C. Field, ‘A Rereading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Studies in Philology, 68 (1971), 255-69 concludes that ‘breaking a secular promise over a possibly trivial matter in extenuating circumstances is a much less serious fault than committing adultery with no such excuse’ and that the juxtaposition of the two temptations ‘seems to put Gawain's lapse into perspective, and to place it firmly as a venial sin’ (p. 269). Similarly L. Blenkner, OSB, ‘The Three Hunts and Sir Gawain's Triple Fault’, American Benedictine Review, 29 (1978), 227-46 comments that ‘the hero does not deliberately sin; he tacitly consents to keep the girdle, but because he is ignorant he is not aware it is sin, and so his act of iniquity is a venial sin’ (p. 231, n.5).
-
See the comment of C. Wood, The Elements of Chaucer's Troilus (Durham, N. C., 1984), pp. 102 and 187, n.6.
-
The distinction is not perceived by Spearing, and accordingly he misrepresents Gawain's words and intentions. Gawain's ‘praise of the lady's efforts becomes positively patronizing’ and ‘his honour is obviously in his mind too’ (p. 211).
-
D. Burnley, The Language of Chaucer (London, 1989) describes such an accumulation of negatives in the phrase ‘negative support’, and explains it by the fact that ‘each negating item is mutually supportive of the others in clarifying the total negative character of the clause’ (p. 60). The purpose of such multiple negation is to add intensity to the utterance.
-
As argued by D. F. Hills, ‘Gawain's Fault in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, RES, NS, 14 (1963), 124-31.
-
J. A. Burrow, ‘“Cupiditas” in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Reply to D. F. Hills’, RES, NS, 15(1964), 56.
-
Burrow explains Gawain's covetousness by invoking the distinction between the formal and material nature of a moral act (A Reading, pp. 135-36). It will be apparent that I find his exposition at this point entirely convincing.
-
The passage is quoted by Davis, p. 128. The translation is that of M.B. Salu, The Ancrene Riwle (London, 1955), p. 93.
-
The explicit statement of Gawain's faith here rules out any interpretation of the wearing of the girdle as an act of superstition (such as that of N. Jacobs, ‘Gawain's False Confession’, English Studies, 51 (1970), 433-35, whereby we learn that ‘Gawain's reliance on sorcery rather than the mercy of God is culpable both as pride in the form of presumption and as sloth in the form of infirm faith’ (p. 433)). The wearing of charms is superstitious and unlawful if they bear inscriptions that involve demons or if confidence is placed in the form of the inscriptions or the manner in which they are worn (ST, 2a 2ae 96.4). If the girdle is such a charm the wearing of it would be a contradiction of Gawain's piety, for superstition is a vice opposed to the virtue of religion (ST, 2a 2ae 92.1). It would also be a contradiction of his faith, for piety presupposes faith as being an outward confession of faith (ST, 2a 2ae 94.1 ad 1). But the wearing of charms is not superstitious if they derive their power from God and the saints (ST, 2a 2ae 96.4 ad 3):
Ad tertium dicendum quod eadem ratio est de portatione reliquiarum. Quia si portentur ex fiducia Dei et sanctorum quorum sunt reliquiae, non erit illicitum: si autem circa hoc attenderetur aliquid aliud vanum, puta quod vas esset triangulare, aut aliquid aliud hujusmodi quod non pertineret ad reverentiam Dei et sanctorum, esset superstitiosum et illicitum.
This same consideration applies in the wearing of relics. If it is out of confidence in God and the saints, whose relics they are, this is not wrong. But if account were taken of some irrelevance, for instance, that the locket is triangular and the like, which has no bearing on the reverence due to God and the saints, it would be superstitious and wrong.
The lawful use of charms is also acknowledged in Chaucer's Parson's Tale after a vehement denunciation of superstitious practices (CT, I 607):
Charmes for woundes or maladie of men or of beestes, if they taken any effect, it may be peraventure that God suffreth it, for folk sholden yeve the moore feith and reverence to his name.
Now the source of the qualities attributed by the lady to the girdle is not specified (1849-54). Since Gawain is not accused of superstition we are entitled to believe that its power is derived from God. Further, when Gawain fastens the girdle twice around his waist (2030-36) the action is not carried out in any special manner that might suggest an act of superstition. We may draw a clear contrast with Chaucer's presentation of superstition in his Franklin's Tale, where the resort to astrological magic is condemned in unambiguous terms as ‘supersticious cursednesse’ (CT, F 1272). Gawain's act of acceptance of the girdle is followed by the confession of his sins (1876-79) and this act constitutes, as we have seen, the clearest demonstration of his piety.
-
Spearing takes a very different view of this scene (p. 190): ‘That pleasure of the Green Knight's is not entirely flattering to Gawain. He is pleased with him, from the same standpoint of superiority that might enable one to be pleased with a small boy or a pet dog that showed fighting spirit.’ These analogies cannot be accepted, for they unduly diminish the person of the hero. It is true, of course, that the Green Knight possesses the superiority of knowledge and Gawain the vulnerability of ignorance. But the gap between the two is that of equable judge and penitent sinner, and this is how it subsequently comes to be expressed. And there is nothing childish (in the pejorative sense) about the penitent sinner.
-
Davis (p. 126) takes lace (2226) to refer to a ‘thong’ wrapped about the shaft of the axe in the manner of that described in the first fitt (217-18). But it is hard to see what point there can be in such a reference. The identification of the lace with the lady's girdle was first made by S. Malarkey and J. B. Toelken, ‘Gawain and the Green Girdle’, JEGP, 63 (1964), 14-20 and printed by D. R. Howard and C. Zacher, Critical Studies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1968), pp. 236-44, and is further supported by Waldron in his note to 2225f. (p. 125).
-
Burrow's discussion of justice and mercy (A Reading, pp. 137-40) is not here relevant, and results from the erroneous assumption of an invalid confession.
-
The acts of penitence are not related to the virtue as parts but as effects (ST, 3a 90.1 ad 2). On contrition, confession, and satisfaction as acts of virtue, see Suppl., 1.2, 7.2, and 12.2.
-
The author of the Latin Ars Moriendi is here following Duns Scotus, Quaestiones in Lib. IV Sententiarum, Distinctio XX; see Morgan, ‘A Critical Edition’, Volume II, pp. 136-37.
-
The spiritual outlook of Gawain's detestation of his sins is reflected in the words of the preacher at the retreat at Belvedere in Joyce's Portrait of the Artist. The distinction between mortal and venial sin is here of little comfort, for ‘even venial sin is of such a foul and hideous nature that even if the omnipotent Creator could end all the evil and misery in the world, the wars, the diseases, the robberies, the crimes, the deaths, the murders, on condition that He allowed a single venial sin to pass unpunished, a single venial sin, a lie, an angry look, a moment of wilful sloth, He, the great omnipotent God, could not do so because sin, be it in thought or deed, is a transgression of His law and God would not be God if He did not punish the transgressor’. See J. Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Granada Publishing Limited (London, 1977), p. 122. The Portrait was first published in 1916.
-
Spearing writes of Gawain's response to his sin: ‘Certainly he does not take a balanced view of his situation. At one moment, before the Green Knight explains things to him, his conscience is apparently quite clear … At the next moment, having learned the truth, he is accusing himself of every sin he can think of’ (p. 227).
-
Benson describes the Green Knight's attitude as one of ‘indulgent forgiveness’ (p. 247) and Spearing comments that ‘the Green Knight is eventually more lenient towards Gawain's failing than Gawain himself is’ (p. 31). But equanimity is not indulgence nor leniency. The reason why the Green Knight's judgment is light is not due to any absence of moral rigour on his part, but rather to the presence of moral virtue on Gawain's part. Thus it is only after Gawain has made his confession and done satisfaction for his sin in retaining the girdle that the Green Knight addresses him as ‘Sir Gawayn’ (2396). See V. L. Weiss, ‘The Medieval Knighting Ceremony in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Chaucer Review, 12 (1978), 183-89 (p. 185).
-
The importance of completeness in confession is a matter that has already been raised in connection with Gawain's confession on the eve of his departure for the Green Chapel. The ubiquity of sin is impressed upon the gloomy spirits of Stephen Daedalus at the beginning of the retreat at Belvedere. He is led to reflect that at the final judgment ‘every sin would then come forth from its lurking place, the most rebellious against the divine will and the most degrading to our poor corrupt nature, the tiniest imperfection and the most heinous atrocity’ (Portrait, p. 104). It is the ubiquity of sin that explains the need for completeness in confession.
-
Davis glosses confessed so clene as ‘made clean by confession’ (p. 173). But clene probably means here ‘completely’ (see MED, s.v. clene adv. 3. (a)); it is used in the phrase clene-shriven to mean ‘fully shrived’, as in a 1500 Treat. G Battle 431: Heme that were clene-shryvene off alle here synnes. Compare also MED s.v. clene adj. 6. (a) ‘complete’, under which is supplied an example from a 1470 Malory, Wks. 886/10: I mervayle … how ye durste take uppon you … the hyghe Order of Knyghthode … withoute clene confession.
-
D. Pearsall, Old English and Middle English Poetry, The Routledge History of English Poetry, Volume I (London, 1977) believes that ‘the paragon of romance-heroes’ is reduced ‘to hysterical self-accusation and sour self-contempt’ (p. 174).
-
Spearing expresses a sense of unease about Gawain's conduct in this respect (p. 230): ‘There is something noble about his determination to wear the token of his failing publicly, but there is something a little absurd too … he will punish himself openly in his reputation, by wearing something that will call other people's attention as well as his own to his imperfection. And yet, without judging him unsympathetically, may we not feel that there are still traces of pride in the feeling that one's own imperfection deserves such ostentatious treatment.’ But the text focuses not on the effect that the wearing of the girdle has on others but on the effect it has on Gawain himself (2433-35):
Bot in syngne of my surfet I schal se hit ofte,
When I ride in renoun, remorde to myseluen
Þe faut and þe fayntyse of þe flesche crabbed.The issue here is not of reputation, but of humility. Spearing is not an unsympathetic reader of the poem, but his judgment of Gawain's conduct is deeply unsympathetic. The reason is that he has not fully understood the penitential ideas that the poet is here seeking to express.
-
Such a perspective is endorsed with copious illustration in Arthur's Medieval Sign Theory, pp. 134-41. Gawain's words of farewell to Bertilak (2411-28) are seen to be not only discourteous, but also sinful in so far as they constitute an attempt by Gawain ‘to excuse himself from responsibility for his own lapse’ (p. 141). A better way forward is suggested by P. J. Lucas, ‘Gawain's Anti-Feminism’, Notes and Queries, NS, 15 (1968), 324-25 when he comments that ‘there is in these lines a semi-humorous mocking of the embarrassment that would be Gawain's on meeting the lady again’ (p. 325).
-
Spearing comments that ‘when he goes on to speak of the two ladies … his courtesy gives way to a raw sarcasm’ (p. 223). Again there is a contradiction here of the idea represented by the pentangle, and there is no reason to see why it should be contradicted in this way. I owe my initial understanding of Gawain's courteous leave-taking to Waldron's note to 2425-28. Waldron draws attention to ‘the almost jocular tone of this stanza … In spite of the reader's first impressions, Gawain's chivalry and social tact are most in evidence here: in order to avoid directly implicating Bertilak's wife in his condemnation of himself he falls back on the ecclesiastical commonplace of the “eternal Eve”’ (p. 134).
-
See also The Parson's Tale (CT, I 304): ‘Forther over, contricioun moste be continueel, … ' Spearing misrepresents the point in stating that Gawain declares himself to be ‘permanently stained with sin’ (p. 221). Gawain is permanently affected with sorrow for sin. A similar misrepresentation is to be found in Arthur's conclusion that Gawain is unsuccessful in his attempt ‘to make the green girdle a sign for endless untrawþ … because his views are doctrinally erroneous’ (Medieval Sign Theory, p. 157). It is the critic, not the poet, nor the character, who is in error on the question of doctrine.
-
Compare once more the words of Beatrice in answer to the fictional Dante's confession (Purg., XXXI. 40-42):
Ma quando scoppia della propria gota
l'accusa del peccato, in nostra corte
rivolge sè contra 'l taglio la rota.… but when from a man's own cheek breaks forth condemnation of his sin, in our court the wheel turns back against the edge.
Abbreviations
Arthur, Medieval Sign Theory: R. G. Arthur, Medieval Sign Theory and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Toronto, 1987).
Barron: W. R. J. Barron, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Manchester, 1974).
Benson, Art and Tradition: L. D. Benson, Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1965).
Burrow, A Reading: J. A. Burrow, A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (London, 1965).
Davenport, The Art: Davis: W. A. Davenport, The Art of the Gawain-Poet (London, 1978). Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, edited by J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, second edition, revised by N. Davis (Oxford, 1967).
EETS (OS): Early English Text Society (Original Series).
JEGP: Journal of English and Germanic Philology.
ME: Middle English.
MED: H. Kurath and others, Middle English Dictionary (Michigan, 1952-).
MLR: Modern Language Review.
OE: Old English.
OED: The Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, prepared by J. A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner, 20 vols (Oxford, 1989).
RES, NS: Review of English Studies, New Series.
Spearing, The Gawain-Poet: A. C. Spearing, The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study (Cambridge, 1970).
ST: Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, edited by T. Gilby and others, 61 vols (London, 1964-81).
Suppl.: Divi Thomae Aquinatis Summa Theologica, second edition (Rome, 1894), Volume V, Tertiae Partis Supplementum, translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London, 1917).
Waldron: R. A. Waldron, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (London, 1970).
Get Ahead with eNotes
Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.
Already a member? Log in here.
