Blooms Literary Themes - THE TRICKSTER.pdf - ymerleksi - home

236
Geoff rey Chaucer
spille” [“save or put to death”] (904) the knight; in this line, the word
“spille” evokes the gory consequences accompanying a justice that has
been transferred from the clearly defi nable code of masculine law to
the capricious, perhaps unstable, authority of the queen’s will.
Th e structure of this part of the tale echoes that of the Arthurian
romances popular in the court and in the kinds of tapestries alluded to
in the lines of the General Prologue that introduce the Wife. In particular,
the specifi cs of the queen’s challenge parallel those of the phantasmagoric
giant whose Yuletide game mocks the supposed virtue of King
Arthur’s court in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. First, the penalty
for both is the same. In Sir Gawain, the giant challenges the court to
a “beheading game.” Whoever is brave enough to behead the Green
Knight must submit to equal treatment at the end of a year and a day.
Similarly, the queen warns the knight to “keep thy nekke-boon from
yren” [“keep thy neck-bone from the axe”] (912) by providing an answer
within “A twelf-month and a day” [“A year and a day”] (915) to a seemingly
simple question: “What thing is it that wommen most desyren?”
[“What thing is it that women most desire?”] (911). Second, a woman
helps the quester to achieve his mission. Gawain receives a green girdle
that supposedly has the power to resist weapons, opening the possibility
that he may “escape unscathed” (Gawain 1858) from his meeting with
the giant in the Green Chapel. However, Gawain comes to see the
girdle as a sign of “my falsehood” (2378), because Bertilak’s wife tricks
him into accepting the gift.
Th e crone of the Wife’s tale also off ers a gift that saves the knight.
Th is gift, however, is a message, not an object. Th is message fi lters
through the numerous levels of the tale, the resonances of its meaning
infl uenced by its speaker. Th e content of the message is not revealed
when it fi rst appears in the tale. Shortly after the knight grants her
his “trouthe” [“pledged word”] (Bath 1019), she whispers something
in his ear that we can presume is the answer to the queen’s riddle. Th e
narrator recounts that the hag “rouned she a pistel in his ere” [“whispered
a message in his ear”] (1027), then moves the story forward to
the moment of reckoning in the court at the end of the year. Th e word
pistel, while often glossed as message, also suggests a specifi c kind of
message, the epistle. Th e word epistle, beyond referring to any kind
of message, is also used to describe instructive letters, particularly
those written by the apostles and appearing in the New Testament. In
eff ect, the unstated message at the center of the text has some kind of