Knight of the Pentangle
On the surface, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is an entertaining story about an adventure of Sir Gawain, but it is below the surface where the poet's true intents lie. The poem is more than a grand adventure - it is a medium to teach the reader the value and worth of religious adherence over short-term secular gains. The pentangle, Gawain's standard, is put to the test by the Green Knight. It is through the good Sir Gawain's faults that we are to learn the importance of placing religion above worldly things.
The depiction of the pentangle occurs when Sir Gawain is preparing to gear up for his quest for the Green Chapel. Gawain's gear is described in great detail, including its color, makings, and finery. His armour is meant to serve as a means of protecting his physical being; it is distinctly secular in its abilities. Time is also spent on the description of the Gawain's shield. It was a field of red with the golden 'endless knot', and contains a portrait of Mary on the inside. While the shield also serves as part of his armour, this particular shield has great spiritual values, too, in the five-points of the pentangle. The description of the five 'fives', which Gawain is said to embody, is given in detail:
And first, he was faultless in his five senses,
Nor found ever to fail in his five fingers,
And all his fealty was fixed upon the five wounds
That Christ got on the cross...
That all his force was founded on the five joys
That the high Queen of heaven had in her child.
The attempt to maintain and balance his high religious values with his earthly secular ideals of courtesy is the eventual cause of Gawain's downfall at Bercilak's castle. But this scene is before Gawain becomes tainted through Bercilak's wily tests, thus we are given this impressive view of Gawain as he prepares to leave:
On shield and coat in view
He bore that emblem bright,
As to his word most true
And in speech most courteous knight.
Gawain will find that his 'word most true' and courteous speech will become twisted before his final confrontation with the Green Knight.
Before Gawain's fall we see a successful combination of both virtues when Gawain, in search of the Green Chapel, prays for help on Christmas Eve. His language is in accord with his religious teachings and piety:
..."I beseech of Thee, Lord,
And Mary, thou mildest mother so dear,
Some harborage where haply I might hear mass
And Thy matins tomorrow-meekly I ask it
And thereto proffer and pray my pater and ave
and creed."
His speech combines the meekness and reverence to the Lord that he, as Mary's knight, should have. Mary's knight's prayers seem answered as the surrealistic castle becomes noticeable off in the distance. Though seemly a miracle Gawain remains a courteous knight by reminding himself:
"Still, I must ask hospitality here," he said to
himself...and rode toward the main gate leading
to the drawbridge.
Gawain then rides up to the gate and asks with honorable words for lodgings for this eve of Christ's birth. This seemingly simple scene shows how the pentangle can have true balance, for Gawain prays for a solution to his current predicament, and upon finding a solution he procures his lodgings through courtly requests. Finally, he properly thanks Jesus for his 'good' fortune. Of course Gawain gains entrance, but for a reason he does not and will not fathom until his tryst at the Green Chapel.
It is in this castle that Gawain's competing values are put to the test. Up until now Gawain has been fitted in his armour and shield, but at the castle he finds that:
With light talk and laughter they loosed from him then
His war-dress of weight and his worthy clothes.
Robes richly wrought they brought him soon....
This short passage is important because Sir Gawain is now stripped of his symbolic identity by the removal of both shield and gear. In its place he wears materialistic wrought clothing; our knight has stepped into secular garb. This, I feel, is the first step toward the disruption of the balance of values that the pentangle represents. It is these clothes he wears when the lady tempts him during the three mornings.
Gawain's next observable fault occurs when he eyes the lady of the castle. He describes her in very secular, covetous terms:
The fair hues of her flesh, her face and her hair
And her body and her bearing were beyond praise,
And excelled the queen [Guenevere] herself....
He even goes on to compare her voluptuousness with the haggardly (yet respectful) old woman at her side. He thinks to himself:
More toothsome, to his taste,
Was the beauty [the lady] by her side.
This, of course, is not characteristic of the way one views the wife of a lord who is giving you safe harbor for the next several nights, especially if one is renowned as the Virgin Mary's knight. Describing someone's wife as 'toothsome' to your desires is bound to create some kind of trouble. Again, I feel this change in Sir Gawain is from the lowering of his shield (literally) and the secular comfort of the castle's luxuries. Sir Gawain is then tested by the lady when her husband is off on the hunt.
Sir Gawain redeems himself in the reader's eye and listener's ear when he refuses the persistent lady's advances during the three mornings, despite his moment of lusty thoughts from the night before. The Gawain-poet goes into great detail describing the psychology of the scenes during each daily test, so far as to symbolically compare them with the animal(s) of the day being hunted by Bercilak and his troop. For all purposes Sir Gawain maintains his courtesy with the lady during each day, but he looses ground, too, in that she receives one more kiss each successive day.
On the first day, Gawain is quite shy at the lady's obtrusion into his room. His replies to her are jumpy and skittish like the hunted deer's movements. He fends her off with his courteous words, even when it involves cutting down his own image in the face of her blatant suggestion to sex. Gawain finally escapes by ceding the lady a kiss, which he then, as the rules of the game demand, gives to the lord (without telling him from whom it came from).
The second day of testing occurs much like the first, except that Gawain reflects the boar's movements of being constantly hounded and having to stop occasionally to parry off her sexual attacks. In the end, he loses two kisses to the lady, which he also gives to the lord of the castle.
It is on the third day that Gawain fails the test. We are alerted to Gawain's depressed state of mind in the passage:
Deep in his dreams he darkly mutters
As a man may that mourns, with many grim thoughts
Of the day when destiny shall deal him his doom
When he greets his grim host at the Green Chapel
And must bow to his buffet, bating all strife.
It is these brooding thoughts, not the scantily clad lady, that deals him his mortal blow. His fear for his own physical life is the reason for accepting the enchanted green girdle that lady offers, and not for materialistic reasons. This behavior strays away from his religious teachings that the body is but a cage for the soul; Gawain fears for the mortal blow his body must take. The knight's secular concerns are upon accepting the girdle:
Then the man began to muse, and mainly he thought
It was a pearl for his plight, the peril to come
When he gains to Green Chapel to get his reward:
Could he escape unscathed, the scheme were noble!
Gawain has not just broken the covenant between him and the lord of the castle, but also the the Green Knight's compact (even though they are the same man) when he schemes to cheat the blow. The whole thought of a scheme being noble is ludicrous, for cheating is both unnoble and spiritually wrong. Gawain has diminished the religious portion of the pentangle for fear for his own skin. In all fairness, as Bercilak de Hautdesert points out at the end, Gawain (though tainted) did far better on the impassable test than any other knight or man could do. Also importantly, Gawain goes to confession the first chance he gets before leaving - he is not wholly reduced to a despicable liar and cheat. He then prepares to set off for the Green Chapel.
The second arming scene parallels the first arming scene in all but one important detail. Donald R. Howard observes in "Structure and Symmetry in Sir Gawain" that the emphasis on the first arming is Gawain's shield, and on the girdle in the second arming. Where the shield once represented a balance of virtues, now the emphasis is on the girdle, which clearly invokes a dominant secular value, with religious ideals taking a back seat. Before, the shield gave him strength and courage to face his mystical foe, but now he relies on a 'sure thing' to strengthen his resolve. He takes his leave from the castle and passes the final temptation of the guide with an air of flippancy. Finally, he arrives at the mysterious Green Chapel to seek his doom.
Gawain's attitude changes when he meets the Green Knight for the second time. At Arthur's court he was the epitome of courtesy in his language with Bercilak, but at the second meeting he behaves impatiently and speaks in angry words. It is during the three 'axe blows' that the good Sir Gawain faults again: he flinches on the first attempt. Even though he has the girdle of invincibility he still fears for his own flesh, whereupon the Green Knight taunts Gawain much as he did Arthur's court when no one outright accepted his challenge:
"You are not Gawain the glorious," the green man said,
"That never fell back on field in the face of the foe,
And now you flee for fear, and have felt no harm:
Such news of that knight I never heard yet!
The Green Knight is just in embarrassing Gawain, for the knight has walked far asunder from the path of the pentangle.
Finally, after Gawain receives a nick, the Green Knight explains his test. The tap on the neck was because:
"...you lacked, sir, a little in loyalty there [with the castle lord],
But the cause was not cunning, nor courtship either,
But that you loved your own life; the less, then, to blame."
Although Gawain has ultimately failed Bercilak's test, he is sure to point out that Gawain is still a 'pearl...to other gay knights'. At this point Gawain is too stricken with embarrassment, and in his folly goes too far and misinterprets the wise words of the Knight: he exclaims:
"Accursed be a cowardly and covetous heart!
In you is villainy and vice, and virtue laid low!"
Your cut taught me cowardice, care for my life....
Now am I faulty and false, that fearful was ever
Of disloyalty and lies...!
Gawain chastises himself and undercuts the Green Knight's lesson and personal praise. He does, though, in the end wear the girdle as a symbol and reminder of the weakness of the human flesh, but it is unclear if Sir Gawain realizes the religious overtones of his new symbol.
The Gawain-poet disrupts the pentangle and Sir Gawain's life for a reason: to teach people a lesson. The lesson, of course, was to show the impossibility of maintaing ones earthly knight values, while also holding one's religious values. For the attentive reader and listener the lesson is more obvious, through Gawain's errors. Sir Gawain erred, but we need not. The pentangle is an excellent ideal, but in the real world it becomes impossible.
Works Cited:
Borroff, Marie, trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Unknown author. New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1967.
Ponsor, Y. R. Gawain and the Green Knight: Adventure at Camelot. New York, N.Y., Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1979.
Howard, Donald, R. "Structure and Symmetry in Sir Gawain". Twentieth Century Interpretations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Ed. Denton Fox. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.
© sklender, 1996 - Until My Death, and then three weeks beyond that.