Gawain's Antifeminist Rant, the Pentangle, and Narrative Space

Gawain's Antifeminist Rant, the Pentangle, and Narrative Space
Author(s): Catherine Batt
Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 22, Medieval Narrative Special Number (1992),
pp. 117-139
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3508380 .
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Gawain's Antifeminist Rant, the Pentangle,
and Narrative Space
CATHERINE BATT
Queen Mary and Westfield
College, London
Bot hit is no ferly ka3 a fole madde
And lur3 wyles of wymmen be wonen to sor3e;
For so watz Adam in erde with one bygyled,
And Salamon with fele sere, and Samson, eftsonez-
Dalyda dalt hym hys wyrde - and Dauyth, perafter,
Watz blended with Barsabe, pat much bale poled.
Now pese were wrathed wyth her wyles, hit were a wynne huge
To lufhom wel and leue hem not, a leude pat coupe.
For pes wer forne pe freest, pat fol3ed alle pe sele
Exellently, of alle pyse oper vnder heuen-ryche
kat mused;
And alle pay were biwyled
With wymmen pat Pay vsed.
ka3 I be now bigyled,
Me pink me burde be excused.1
Gawain's declaration of innocence and helplessness in the face of female
perfidy in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is curiously located between two
moments of self-castigation: earlier in his dialogue with the Green Knight,
the protagonist has confessed his guilt: 'Now am I fawty and falce ... Al
fawty is my fare' (11. 2382-86). Later, he explains to the Arthurian court how
his adventure demonstrates his 'cowarddyse and couetyse' (1.2374): the
green girdle he wears is 'le token of vntrawke pat I am tan inne' (1. 2509).
Gawain, according to his reading, has violated the 'trawke' of which the
pentangle on his shield is emblematic: found 'false' in one respect, the
knight's moral and ethical world collapses. If Gawain is so persuaded of his
own guilt, why does he deliver, and not later retract, lines in which he
abnegates responsibility for his own actions?
This question does not relate solely to a desire for consistency in the
presentation of the protagonist, although critical commentary on the antifeminist
passage has, by and large, sought to interpret the episode with
regard to what one might call the individuation of Gawain's character. The
lines have been viewed as a statement of masculine knightly identity in
response to the threat constituted by the feminine: as a 'rueful witticism' on
Gawain's part: as an indictment of his moral blindness: as 'psychologically
1 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript,
edited by Malcolm Andrew and
Ronald Waldron (Exeter, I987), 11. 2414-28. All future references are to this edition, by line number, in
the text.

II8 Gawain's Antifeminist Rant
true', registering the normally courteous Gawain's state of shock after his
recent experience.2 Other readings concentrate on the lines as a distinct
topos, familiar to the poem's audience, in order to raise questions not
relating solely to Gawain. A. C. Spearing, though reluctant wholly to
abandon the 'psychological' explanation, suggests the antifeminism might
be the poet's own; Maureen Fries considers it possibly 'a parody of stereotyped
pronouncements upon women'.3 Mary Dove goes some way towards
reconciling the 'rhetorical' and the 'psychological' aspects of the antifeminist
passage, by viewing it in the light of the literary tradition within which the
poet is working. She surveys the available- and contradictory -
images of
Gawain, and suggests that his antifeminism be viewed in the context of
oppositions and contradictions evident elsewhere in the poem, and this
perspective
meshes well with other commentators' examinations of anti-
thesis and opposition in the text as a whole.4
Dove creates a picture of the kinds of expectation a contemporary
audience might have had of Gawain as a literary persona: she cites instances,
in other Middle English literature, of Gawain as not only a 'mirror of
courtesy', but as 'exemplary victim of women's guile' (p. 2 1): for example, in
an English version of the Anglo-Norman lyric, 'Quy a la dame de parays', he
is mentioned in the company of Samson and Solomon as one whose
2 For the first explanation, see P. C. B. Fletcher, 'Sir Gawain's Antifeminism', Theoria, 36 (1 97 ), 53-58:
Fletcher considers the lines as part of Gawain's assertion of a 'masculine ideal of chivalry', 'an attitude
which preserves a courtesy towards (women) but does not allow them in any way to dominate the
knightly code' (p. 58). For the second point of view, see Waldron and Andrew, The Poems of the Pearl
Manuscript, p. 296. See also David Mills, 'The Rhetorical Function of Gawain's Antifeminism?',
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 71 (1970), 635-40, which explains the passage in terms of a change in tone: its
'comic exaggeration' balances Gawain's 'overemotional outburst' (p. 640). Howard V. Hendrix, "To luf
hom wel, and leve hem not": The Neglected Humor of Gawain's "Antifeminism"', Comitatus, 14 (1983),
39-48, endorses this view of the lines as comic, and exonerates Gawain from the charge of misogyny: 'The
self-deprecatory humor of the speech is a sign of evolving humility on
I
Gawain's part' (p. 48). Ross G.
Arthur, Medieval Sign Theory and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Toronto, 987), emphasizes Gawain's
guilt: 'both the speech and the speaker are culpable and even untrue ... and (Gawain's) whole intent, to
excuse himself from responsibility for his own lapse, is as sinful as the lapse itself (p. 4I ). A. C. Spearing,
The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study (Cambridge, 1970), p. 229, andJohn Burrow, A Reading of'Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight' (London, 1965), p. 147, subscribe to the view that the poet is here an observer of human
psychology. The most ingenious defence of these lines is provided by R. A. Shoaf, The Poem as Green Girdle:
'Commercium' in 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' (Gainesville, Florida, '1984), in the context of a discussion
of the words 'wonen' and 'wynne' as pertaining to 'commercial discourse': 'Though his misogyny may be
distasteful, Gawain's awareness of the commerce of human affairs is vastly improved. Gawain knows now
that people do not exist as integers of pure value but as complicated entities in a web of relations largely
commercial and therefore liable to sudden fluctuation' (p. 47). But surely such misogyny denies, rather
than offers access to, any flexibility of male response to womankind.
3 A. C. Spearing, Readings in Medieval Poetry (Cambridge, 1987), p. 197. Maureen Fries, 'The Characterization
of Women in the Alliterative Tradition', in The Alliterative Tradition in the Fourteenth Century,
edited by Bernard S. Levy and Paul E. Szarmach (Kent, Ohio, 1981), pp. 25-45 (P. 37). Fries does not
quite explain the relationship between the possibility of parody here, and her reading of the Lady as moral
threat: 'It is necessary for Gawain's self-realization that he should understand the lady's moral as well as
her
4
courtly significance' (p. 37).
Mary Dove, 'Gawain and the "Blasme des Femmes" Tradition', Medium Evum, 41 (I972), 20-26. For
another reading of contrast in the poem, see Thomas L. ReedJr, "Bope blysse and blunder": Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight and the Debate Tradition', Chaucer Review, 23 (1988), 140-6 i. On the poet's love of
contraries, see too W. A. Davenport, The Art of the 'Gawain'-Poet (London, 1978), passim.

CATHERINE BATT
experience might encourage one to be cynical towards women.5 In the
thirteenth-century poem, 'The Thrush and the Nightingale', he features as
having 'founde ... neuere non (trewe) I Bi daye ne bi ni3tte'.6 The attachment
of Gawain's name to the otherwise non-chivalric misogynistic Latin
text, the De Coniuge non Ducenda, primarily concerned with male anxieties
about the economics of marriage, offers further evidence of a tradition in
which the knight is associated with those unfortunate in love.7 Dove argues
for the ability to bring together disparate traditions concerning Gawain as
an essential aspect of the poet's skill.
Certainly, the idea of Gawain as a 'known' figure is integral to the poem. If
readers of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight approach its protagonist with
certain presuppositions
-
assumptions they find relativized by their conjunction
with new and unexpected emphases such as that on Gawain's
chastity - no less do the figures in the poem, and even the poem's textual
style, 'read' and evaluate him within the frame of his established literary
persona. Earlier, the Lady teases her guest with regard to his reputation
(fostered especially by French romance) as a knight of'courtaysye':8 later,
the Green Knight humiliates Gawain, when he flinches from his blade, by
calling to mind his knightly reputation: 'Such cowardise of pat kny3t cowDe I
neuer here' (1. 2273). Gawain's qualities and characteristics are viewed and
judged discretely here, yet they supposedly constitute an integral self. In his
relation with others, for example, in his encounters with the Lady, Gawain
appears to be constrained by his own literary past, but, amusingly, when he
accounts for his actions by blaming women, he is seen actively to construct
the tradition that associates him with misogyny. Yet these lines represent
more than a piece of sophisticated sleight-of-hand practised by a knowing
and bookish poet. To have Gawain define himself in a way endorsed by his
own literary past, but patently insufficient to answer to the moral demands
of his present situation, poses us as readers with a problem we can only
address through a close examination of rhetoric and literary form. The
antifeminism seems particularly incongruous in terms of the Gawain of the
poem who emerges at times as a free individual capable of development and
5 Even were he 'as douhti a swain I as was Samson ... or al so wi3t so was Wawain', says the poet, he
would not treat women badly (11. 243-5 ). The poem is edited by F. Holthausen, Archiv, Io8 (I902),
289-99.
6 English Lyrics of the Thirteenth Century, edited by Carleton Brown (Oxford, I932), pp. IOI-07, 11. 92-93.
Later in the poem 'Saunsum Pe stronge' is added to the list of men betrayed by women (1. 139).
7 Gawain on Marriage: The 'De Coniuge Non Ducenda', edited by A. G. Rigg, Pontifical Institute of Medieval
Studies, Studies and Texts, 79 (Toronto, 1986).
8
See, for example, 11. 1290-30 I, where the Lady observes that if Gawain were Gawain, he would by now
have asked for a kiss, and 11. I48I-9I, and 11. 1508-24:
'And 3e ar kny3t comlokest kyd of your elde,
Your worde and your worchip walkez ayquere,
And I hafseten by yourself here sere twyes,
3et herde I neuer of your hed helde no wordez
Pat euer longed to luf, lasse ne more'.
9
(1. 1520)
II9

120 Gawain's Antifeminist Rant
informed moral choice. From the point of view of the traditionallysanctioned,
'rhetorically constructed', persona of Gawain, the association is
fitting, though also disjunctive in its narrative context. The passage under-
lines the composite nature of Gawain's identity, marking a point at which a
response to Gawain as an individuated persona, and an aspect
of his
'rhetorical' definition, are conjoined. I want to return later to the difficulties
this presents as far as the interpretation of Gawain is concerned. For the
moment I would suggest that these lines do not constitute merely a local
problem in the text, but that they have a broader function within the
Gawain-poet's programme of self-conscious composition.
The way in which Gawain's identity is created and presented is not unlike
the way in which the poem itself is structured, that is, by recourse to familiar,
'known', literary topoi, made unfamiliar and therefore open to new readings:
the poet effects this defamiliarization in part by means ofstartlingjuxtapositions
of rhetorical forms, juxtapositions that force us to re-examine the
function of the rhetoric we use. But the poet does more than simply alert us to
the dangers of complacency with regard to literary value and meaning. The
poem's components are set within a particular interpretative framework,
and the irony with which this frame is handled emphasizes how literary form
and rhetorical encodings structure and, inevitably, limit perception.
The alliterative mode constitutes a powerful medium for the Gawainpoet's
exposition and investigation of the literary past and literary constructions,
because it naturally draws on a common stock of rhetorical 'set-pieces'
and poetic diction. As A. C. Spearing has noted, it is a body of poetry
'strongly homogeneous in style', and its style draws attention to its own
artfulness.9 Alliterative poetry is rich in literary resonances, but also gains a
strength and flexibility from not being strictly formulaic.10 Ronald Waldron
has described the metre employed in alliterative verse as not a constraining
pattern to which poetry must conform, but as 'part of the mnemonic
technique of the poet'.11 This 'mnemonic technique' does not only facilitate
composition: it 'places' such poetry in a particular
relation to the culture in
which it is produced. Waldron's observations on the metre of this poetry are
complemented by Geoffrey Shepherd's illuminating discussion of the
mnemonic aspect of its subject-matter and style: alliterative composition, he
notes, had traditionally been regarded as a 'preservative of power, patri-
mony, and communal wisdom'.12 Alliterative literature accretes a special
status, 'historically', by reason of its implicit reference to the literature of the
past, and synchronically, by means of the language and idioms it shares with
9 Readings in Medieval Poetry, pp. 137, I41: 'In alliterative verse we are almost always kept aware of the
verbal texture and the skill of the poet who is producing it.'
10 Thorlac Turville-Petre considers the aptness of the term 'formulaic' as applied to alliterative poetry in
The Alliterative Revival (Cambridge, I977), pp. 83-92.
11 'Oral and Formulaic Technique and Middle English Alliterative Poetry', Speculum, 32 (1957),
792-804 (p. 800).
12 'The Nature of Alliterative Poetry in Late Medieval England', Proceedings of the British Academy, 56
(1970), 57-76 (P. 59)-

CATHERINE BATT
contemporary alliterative texts. Shepherd notes how 'set-pieces' (a descrip-
tion of nature, or of a storm at sea)13 come to constitute a 'new transferable
property' among poets ('The Nature of Alliterative Poetry', p. 59). Allitera-
tive poetry would seem, then, to depend primarily for its effect on a (real or
assumed) conservative community of agreement. Yet such a sense of agree-
ment does not preclude, but rather, encourages, examination of the bases on
which a common perception may be established.
The narrator of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in explaining the poem's
origins, draws attention to traditional modes of authorizing alliterative
poetry:
If 3e wyl lysten pis laye bot on littel quile,
I schal telle hit astit, as I in toun herde,
With tonge.
As hit is stad and stoken
In stori stif and stronge,
With lel letteres loken,
In londe so hatz ben longe.
(1.30)
This text draws on a known story, told elsewhere, and conforms to a
prescribed poetic form. There is some editorial debate as to whether line 36
refers to the antiquity of the story, or of its metre.14 Whether the reference is
to subject-matter or to style appears deliberately ambiguous: it seems
calculated to convey an assurance that the whole poem, and therefore its
integral meaning, is fixed and agreed. Spearing has noted the similarity
between this description of the poem, 'With lel letteres loken', and that of the
pentangle, in which 'vche lyne vmbelappez and loukez in oper' (1. 628). In
each line, the verb 'louke', to fasten or enclose, suggests fixity and closure.
Spearing comments on the perfection of the pentangle - it is 'a complete
enclosure: its boundary is unbroken and leaves no gaps for imperfection to
enter' (Readings in Medieval Poetry, p. I99) - and suggests it functions as an
image for the seamlessness of the poem that contains it, although this
figuring of perfection is later balanced by the inclusion of another image, the
more tractable and less perfect girdle. Leaving aside discussion of the
pentangle proper for the moment, we may examine other 'enclosures' the
poet brings into play in the narrative.
The narrator promises us a construct, the poem itself, apparently impervious
to change. Yet confidence in the possibility of permanence has already
been undercut in the opening lines of the poem, which, ironically, also offers
a means of fixing the significance of the story. For the Arthurian subjectmatter
is framed within a topos familiar to the reader from other alliterative
13 N. Jacobs discusses this particular aspect of the style in 'Alliterative Storms: A Topos in Middle
English', Speculum, 47 (1972), 695-719.
14 Waldron and Andrew, The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, p. 208: see also the note to these lines in Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight, edited by J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, second edition, revised by
Norman Davis (Oxford, i967).
121

122 Gawain's Antifeminist Rant
poetry, the link between Trojan and British history.15 The established topos
may be seen as placing the poem within a particular literary context, in that
it refers us to other poems, as well as directing us towards an analysis of how
an historical consciousness may be seen to operate in the text itself. Lee
Patterson takes up the invitation to 'historicize' what is ostensibly a romance
narrative, when he views the poem as '(trying) to tell the truth about history
... in defining as its central value trawie, and then committing itself to a
magical narrative, the poem forces us to recognize that the crucial events by
which history is shaped often present themselves in unprepossessing and
even deceptive forms'.16 This adroit reading itself represents, and draws
attention to, a significant element in alliterative narrative: thejuxtaposition
of seemingly unlike, or apparently only tangentially-related elements,
obliges one to make interpretative connexions: but the historical topos, as
handled by the Gawain-poet, gives the reader another clue as to the way the
narrative is to be organized, and according to what co-ordinates it is to be
interpreted. Historical judgement is represented as paradoxical: the ambivalence
of the syntax in the opening lines makes Aeneas both hero and traitor
(11. 3-7), but greater emphasis is placed on the way in which power and
control are imaged in terms of the founding of cities: the first lines describe
the utter destruction of the town of Troy, 'brent to brondez and askez' (1. 2).
As the imperium moves west, to Rome, across Italy, and finally to Britain, the
various conquerors are celebrated for founding and building new settle-
ments and cities (11.9, II, 12, I4, 20). As Troy's fate demonstrates, such
attempts at building stability may be doomed: the condition of human
history, with its alternation of'blysse and blunder' (1. 18) does not augur for
lasting edifices. But the opening stanzas' brief resume of historical events
stresses humankind's impulse to mark off fixed boundaries, to create particular
areas of control, whether in terms of geographical or rhetorical space.
I hope to show how the poem (which itself originates, we are told, in a
specific social and cultural 'enclosure', 'in toun') replicates the desire to
define and control spaces, actual and metaphorical, in its narrative movement,
and in terms of the established rhetoric it uses: it is also preoccupied
with the interaction of the various modes of understanding and of apprehending
meaning it brings into play. Gawain, crossing the narrative's
defined spaces both geographically and mentally, is the link between these
spaces, but is also a focus for irony as regards the interpretation of him as the
poem's protagonist. If a locus or topos has certain associations, no less does
Gawain carry with him a burden of association that modifies and controls
responses to him on the part of readers and of figures in the narrative.
15 Derek Pearsall, in Old English and Middle English Poetry (London, I977), p. 158, lists other alliterative
texts using the same topos.
16
Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature (Madison, Wisconsin, 1989),
p.2IO.

CATHERINE BATT
Seen as reflecting a general concern with containment, definition, and
control, a containment not necessarily maintained, the pentangle emerges in
rather more complex relation to the poem than its straightforward equation
with perfection or intricacy would suggest. As a model for our understanding
of the poem's rhetorical design it is ambiguous, for it is neither as fully
inclusive as it might appear to be, nor is it unambivalent in structure. It is
not fully explicatory of the narrative, but generates a set of readings in its
own right, as it draws responses based on a reader's prior knowledge of
numerology, and the poet places the reader within the community of
responses to the pentangle inscribed in the poem. Both the number five, and
the geometrical figure based on it, are hedged about with ambivalences, and
those ambivalences are exploited by the poet with regard to the poem's
structure and to our construction of Gawain's knightly identity. Five is a
'perfect' number: it is emblematic of incorruptibility, as it reproduces itself
in the last digit when raised to its powers.17 But five can be divided into its
component numbers of two and three, and therefore contains within itself
the human and the Divine: 'Three has reference to the mystery of the Holy
Trinity', says Byrhtfer3's Manual, 'two to love of God and our neighbour.'18
The poet exploits this plural association the number has with the worldly
and the numinous: in the reference to Gawain's five senses and his five
fingers (11. I640-41) is a reminder that five is the number denoting the
physical.19 Yet it also has scriptural and religious significance. The Old
Law, being imperfect, is contained in the Pentateuch,20 but the Gawain-poet
draws special attention to the number's place in the New Law, to the five
wounds of the crucified Christ (11. 642-43), and the Five Joys of the Virgin
(11. 645-47). The number five affords the pentangle its sense of both unity
and imperfection. The pentangle, glossed, appropriately, in twenty-five lines
(11. 640-65), serves as a focal point for the structuring in general of the poem
by the number five, and replicates the latter's ambivalence. Mysterious,
talismanic, infinitely glossable, the geometrical figure draws attention to the
attractiveness of producing meaning through the imposition of patterning,
and to the necessity of collusion, of a community of agreement, for the
production of that meaning.
The poem's numerical patterning itself reflects the concern with ordering
strategies articulated in the presentation of the pentangle, and indicates the
I23
17 Vincent Foster Hopper, Medieval Number Symbolism (New York, 1969), p. 124 and passim. For other
associations for the number five, see also the Appendix to Russell A. Peck, 'Number as Cosmic
Language', in Essays in the Numerical Criticism of Medieval Literature, edited by Caroline D. Eckhardt
(Lewisburg, i980), pp. 5-64 (pp. 60-6 ).
18
Byrhtfer's Manual, edited by S.J. Crawford, EETS OS I77 (London, 1929), p. 105. See also Jacques
Ribard, Le Moyen dge: litterature et symbolisme (Paris, I984), p. 27: '[le] cinq ... totalise en lui le deux et le trois,
le corruptible et l'incorruptible, le charnel et le spirtuel, le cree et l'incree.'
19 On this aspect of the Pentangle's significance, see especially Roger Lass, "'Man's Heaven": The
Symbolism of Gawain's Shield', Medieval Studies, 28 (1966), 354-60: 'in the unity, the "endelez"
self-sufficiency of the pentangle, there is a suggestion of imperfection, of the physical and the mutable'
(P 357)-
20 Hopper, Medieval Number Symbolism, p. 86. Hopper refers to Augustine, On John, xvII.2, on this issue.

124
Gawain's Antifeminist Rant
possibility of their transgression and supplementation: patterns of two and
three, and of eleven, as well as of five, recur in the poem.21 Line 2525 is the
last long line of the poem, which, however, continues for a further five lines,
an intentional 'defect', perhaps, but at the same time a demonstration of
poetic skill (the number five does not, locally, account for the differing
stanza-lengths in the poem), and a joke at the expense of those who seek to
translate the numerical into the significant. The pentangle as 'gomen', as
process and as play, encourages us to delight in discovering, and constructing,
meanings suggested by traceable formal patterings. To recognize the
importance of the number five is not to find the 'key' to the poem, as much as
to be alerted to another manifestation of the human desire to define and
impose order, to acknowledge the extent to which the reader, seeking after
meaning, participates in that desire: the pentangle does not feature prominently
in the action of the poem,22 but as a geometrical figure it suggests a
model for the construction of the poem, a work of literature the diverse
elements of which are held together in a curious tension.
Two names are given to the pentangle as it is being described: both
postulate a community of perception about the sign, and, taken together,
they emphasize its inherent ambivalence. The pentangle, we are told, has
been instituted by Solomon, 'In bytoknyng of trawle' (1. 626): its having,
like a circle, no beginning and no ending, makes it an apt sign of integrity. Its
English name celebrates that quality: 'Englych hit callen Oueral, Q as I here,
"Pe endeles knot"' (11.629-30). Mention of 'the English' in the present
tense, in the context of how the emblem is assigned to Gawain in recognition
of his perfect qualities, brings together the 'time now' of the text's production,
and of our reception of it, and the time of 'Arthurus day', to suggest
shared values and perspectives, especially in relation to Gawain, 'oure
luflych lede' (1. I469). In Gawain are united the qualities of'fraunchyse',
'fela3schyp', 'cortaysye', 'clannes', and 'pite': he exists in a frame of reference
at once physical, secular, and religious.23 The name assigned the pentangle
among the community of the learned suggests more precisely the complexities
of the figure's form and applicability. The very intricacy of the 'pure
pentaungel' maps out a careful balance of Gawain's virtues, but even the
description threatens the equilibrium, the superlatives suggesting a hierarchy
of values: if'trawle' is the central significance of the pentangle, 'pite',
21 See Alan Metcalf, 'Gawain's Number', in Essays in the Numerical Criticism of Medieval Literature,
pp. I41-55; A. Kent Hieatt, 'Sir Gawain: Pentangle, Luflace, Numerical Structure', Papers on Language and
Literature, 4 (1968), 359-69. Michael Robertson, 'Stanzaic Symmetry in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight',
Speculum, 57 (1982), 779-85, discusses the relation between the numbers eleven and five in the poem,
while D. R. Howard examines groupings of twos and threes in 'Structure and Symmetry in Sir Gawain',
Speculum, 39 (1964), 425-33.
22 W. A. Davenport, The Art of the Gawain-Poet (London, 1978), pp. I78-79, comments both on the
apparently minor role of the pentangle, and on the confusing plurality of patterns offered us for our
understanding of the poem.
23 On the identification of this triad, see Roger Lass, "Man's Heaven"', p. 358.

CATHERINE BATT
also, 'passez alle poyntez' (1. 654), and Gawain, we learn, 'vsed | ... fraun-
chyse and fela3schyp forbe al lyng' (11. 651-52). The reader is asked to hold
in play the possibility that Gawain's qualities might in practice be as
mutually exclusive as they are potentially mutually informing.
Sandwiched between mention of the two names are lines in which the
interrelation of Gawain's qualities, and the description of the pentangle as
geometrical form representative of that interrelation, elide, with the effect of
blurring the distinction between the sign
and the nature of the values it is
meant to explicate:
Now alle pese fyue sy,ez forsole were fetled on pis kny3t
And vchone halched in oper, lat non ende hade,
And fyched vpon fyue poyntez pat fayld neuer,
Ne samned neuer in no syde, ne sundred nouper,
Withouten ende at any noke I oquere fynde,
Whereeuer Pe gomen bygan or glod to an ende.
(1.656)
We cannot disentangle Gawain's virtues from the formal patterning by
means of which those virtues are perceived, just as the poem itself needs to be
interpreted as a whole. Yet this conflation of shaping and meaning also
deflects attention from the question of how Gawain's virtues are to be kept in
perfect balance when he has to confront the vagaries of experience: we are
made aware that the reading of the sign as one of integrity, and of Gawain as
'perfect knight', is ingenious rather than analytical. Such a reading is also
exclusive; it disregards those difficulties suggested by the discrete planes and
angles of the pentangle, and to which the poem's language draws attention
even as it expounds on the figure's circularity. If the hero appears
unconscious at this stage of the inherent contradictoriness of the claims
made upon him, for the reader, the pentangle as elucidatory symbol
indicates a troubling ambivalence.
Other signs and emblems, moreover, figure in the description of Gawain
as he sets out on his quest, supplementing and competing with the balancing
of values charted in the pentangle: thus Gawain has a band of embroidered
silk on which are embroidered 'trulofez' (1.612), parrots,
and turtle-doves:
these emblems of love-gallantry are themselves balanced by the depiction of
the Virgin Mary on the inside of Gawain's shield, which the knight has
requested to have painted, 'bat quen he blusched perto his belde neuer
payred' (1.650). This particular devotional emphasis cannot be stressed
within the pentangle's structure. In this respect the pentangle, though
intricate and apparently exhaustive in meaning, is 'insufficient' as a unique
symbol to explain the text, and other interpretative boundaries and loci in
the poem are subject to this same irony.
In very general terms, the pentangle offers a model for the composition of
alliterative poetry. Its planes, intersections, and divisions may be seen as
drawing attention to how individual poetic works are pieced together from
I 25

126 Gawain's Antifeminist Rant
distinct rhetorical descriptions and set-pieces: spring, the arming of a knight,
a hunting-scene. Shepherd develops his argument on the mnemonic aspect
of alliterative poetry by noting how the organization of such language
encourages the reader/listener to receive information in 'memorable and
discrete parcels' ('The Nature of Alliterative Poetry', p. 59). The metonymic
relation of these 'parcels' is, Shepherd suggests, less important than the
changes in register that differentiate them and are calculated to elicit diverse
responses. Thus he explains the 'hunting and wooing' scenes in Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight as belonging to different categories: the dismembering of
the deer (11. I323-6I) would, he says, have been recognized primarily as
exemplary of an 'instructional' mode, and would have been accommodated
as such by a reader/listener. During this description, the audience 'will have
switched their attention from the story to the instruction'. Such an analysis
goes some way to 'solving' the perplexities of reading the poem: in our linear
progression through the text with Gawain, we can simply 'compartmentalize',
assigning each piece of rhetoric to a distinct category. The poem itself
seems designed in a sense to facilitate our understanding of these set
categories by means of the co-ordinates it sets up for us to process the
information it gives us. The narrative sets out a series of discrete,
contiguously-related 'spaces', or 'areas of containment', which ostensibly
determine the function and meaning of what they enclose. Camelot, the
wilderness of Gawain's travels, Bertilak's castle, the Green Chapel, and,
again, Arthur's court, have their own 'decorum': they engender particular
expectations as romance loci. Butjust as the pentangle's intricacy points out
the desire for ingenious mappings of space even in its inscription as perfect
figure, so the boundaries drawn in the narrative ultimately draw our
attention to a desire for, and even the dangers of, compartmentalization,
rather than constituting a straightforward bracketing of material. For our
desire for order, in the form of our literary expectations, is frustrated by the
poet's irony, but within the poem itself, readings of experience and event are
also treated ironically. Thus the poem not only conveys a sense of the
difficulty of establishing meaning according to the 'fixed' boundaries of
rhetoric and place, but also debates the means by which those boundaries
are established.
This difficulty is further compounded by the questions alliterative poetry
(like its model, the pentangle) raises, but apparently does not answer, of
what status should be accorded each of its components: each different
register; how these components interrelate; what aspect of the poem we
should eventually privilege. The focus of such irony, in the pentangle and in
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is the identity of Gawain, whose integrity is
constituted from the diverse and contradictory claims made upon him, and
figured in different rhetorical modes. In narrative terms, Gawain is an object
about which others have fixed expectations, expectations based on a traditional
image of who and what he is: yet he himself imports different frames of

CATHERINE BATT
127
reference into areas that would seem to demand other kinds of rhetorical
engagement. His 'penitential' declaration of guilt upon his return to court,
for example, would seem to violate the decorum of that environment, but his
attitude also causes unease, as it seems implicitly to demand a reassessment
of Arthurian values. The last part of the poem is crowded with judgements,
but as we shall see, the poem denies us a 'moral centre' on which to establish
absolute judgement with any certainty.
Gawain is involved in all the 'spaces' charted in the narrative, with the
exception of the hunting-scenes, which perhaps appear unproblematic
because the descriptions represent an uncontested male dominance and
control over part of the natural world, while other loci and topoi chart the
dynamics of human social intercourse. Retrospectively, the hunting-scenes
emphasize Gawain's own vulnerability vis-a-vis the natural world in his
journey in Fitt 2. Gawain's first appearance, however, shows him perfectly
integrated in the locus in which he is described. He is introduced as 'gode
Gawan' (1. 109), and slightly later he is described as 'Gawan 1e hende'
(1. 405): the evaluative epithets are consonant with his reputation as given in
other texts,24 and they are fitting also in the context of Camelot (although
they will be invoked in an ironical context later in the poem). Like the
founders of the poem's opening stanzas, Arthur is associated with a particu-
lar place: constant reference is made to the King's 'house', to the physical
actuality of his hall and his court.25 Arthur greets the Green Knight with
'Wy3e, welcum iwys to ]is place' (1. 252), introduces himself as "hede of lis
ostel" (1. 253), and invites him to stay: the knight refuses "to wone any quyle
in [is won" (1. 257), to become, in effect, part of Camelot, and declares
instead that he wishes to test Arthur's reputation for 'cortaysye' (1. 263).26
The Knight's initially unanswered challenge to the court to participate in his
'gomen' threatens to destroy its reputation: 'Where is now your sourquydrye
and your conquestes, Your gryndellayk and your greme and your grete
wordes?' (11. 311-12). Gawain's elaborate speech of courteously-articulated
courage (11. 34 i-6i) reflects his individual worth, but also redeems Camelot.
That a knight's domicile is part of his identity is further conveyed in
Gawain's questioning of his adversary, before the beheading, as to where
they are to meet again: 'Where is py place? I wot neuer where lou wonyes,
... Ne I know not pe, kny3t, py cort ne ji name' (11. 398-400). Typically,
the Green Knight's eventual revelation of'my hous and my home and myn
24 The Parlement of the Thre Ages, edited by I. Gollancz (London, 1915), mentions 'sir Gawayne the gude
that neuer gome harmede' (1. 475); The Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, edited by W. A. Wright,
Rolls Series, 86 (London, I887), speaks of'sire wawein pe hende' (1.4435), and 'wawein .. flour of
corteysye' (1. 4351). B.J. Whiting assesses Gawain's literary associations in 'Gawain: His Reputation,
His Courtesy and His Appearance in Chaucer's Squire's Tale', Mediaeval Studies, 9 (1947), I89-234.
25 Arthur's court is described as a company 'on sille' (1. 55), 'in halle' (1. 102), 'heredmen in halle'
(1. 302). The Green Knight, when no one immediately responds to his challenge, expresses astonishment:
'What, is pis ArPures hous?' (1. 309).
26
Interestingly, in the light of architectural motifs elsewhere in the poem, the Green Knight describes
Arthur's reputation as one might a building: 'pe los of e, lede, is lyft vp so hy3e' (1. 258).

128
Gawain's Antifeminist Rant
owen nome' (1. 408) is only partial: the 'Green Knight' is simply descriptive:
the Green Chapel, in name at least, promises to be neither court nor
wilderness. The Green Knight's motive, as he reveals it later in the poem, is
disruption, but he is in effect assimilated into the court's experience as a
'marvel', his axe given pride of place in the hall,just as the court later effects
a social transformation of Gawain's discomfiture when it assigns a different
meaning to the green girdle at the end of the poem. The more sinister
implications of the knight's manifestation seem to concer only Gawain: by
accepting the adventure, Gawain saves the court's honour - it remains a
locus of 'renoun' - but it is his person which is 'wyth vertuez ennourned'
(1. 634), and, as he later interprets his situation, he bears the burden of moral
responsibility: any fault committed reflects on himself as an individual.
Yet from its beginning, the moral parameters of the adventure are not
clear, in spite of the elaborate glossing of the pentangle. When Gawain leaves
Camelot in search of the Green Chapel, many voice the feeling that
'Crystmasse gomnez' do not perhaps call for such serious response.
Gawain's life-threatening situation is, viewed from one perspective, a challenge
to keep a covenant, a matter of honour, and from another, to keep such
a bargain is simply indicative of a dangerous pride (11. 674-83). Throughout,
the play on the seriousness or otherwise of the contracts and spaces in which
Gawain engages raises questions about how we prioritize and how we read,
and focuses on the problematics of moral judgement. In thejourney through
the wastelands (where, ironically, the perils of the romance landscape of the
unknown are trifling compared to the terrors and discomforts of cold
weather) there is a straightforward equation between Gawain's inner spiritual
state, and his surviving the adventures he encounters:
Nade he ben du3ty and dry3e and Dry3tyn had serued,
Douteles he hade ben ded and dreped ful ofte.
(1. 724)
But in the 'civilized' space of the castle (which rises up as if in answer to his
prayer in the wilderness) such easy matches between experience and
integrity give way to the difficulties ofjudgement within a network of social
and ethical obligations, the parameters of which are continually being
defined. Gawain is ushered into the new space of the castle by a solicitous
porter who greets him in much the same manner as Arthur welcomed the
Green Knight at Camelot: 'purely I trowee | pat 3e be, wy3e, welcum to won
quyle yow lykez' (11. 8 3-I4). The Lord amplifies this welcome to the knight
errant by emphasizing his guest's freedom:
'3e ar welcum to welde, as yow lykez,
Pat here is; al is yowre awen to haue at yowre wylle
And welde.'
(1.835)
These greetings signal Gawain's entry into a space the limits of which are set
out by a self-conscious social decorum. Initially, the part of the good guest

CATHERINE BATT
seems clear enough: gracious acceptance of hospitality offered. Gawain's
first meal, a series of fish dishes prepared with a delighted ingenuity by the
cooks ('Summe baken in bred, summe brad on 1e gledez, | Summe sopen,
summe in sewe sauered with spyces' (11. 891-92)) belongs to the categories
of feast and of fast: it gives the opportunity for both hosts and guest
to offer
the conventional courtesies with some sincerity: 'Hendely', Gawain declares
it a banquet, while those who serve him apologize for the penitential fare
(11. 894-900).27 Other exchanges at the castle are not so accommodating in
their categorization, although they may appear to operate according
to the
same rules of social politeness. The Lady's equivocal invitation to Gawain,
for example, in the course of their first private conversation, incorporates the
language of both the Lord's and the Porter's greetings:
'3e ar welcum to my cors,
Yowre awen won to wale'
(1. I237)
where 'cors' may mean 'me', 'my body', or 'my courts'.28 But the ambiva-
lence of this greeting demands that Gawain respond pragmatically rather
than in accordance with the dictates of established ceremony: it also
emphasizes Gawain's responsibility for determining the limits, in speech
and in action, of his engagement with the Lady.
The environment of the hall seems more easily to delimit the sexual aspect
of courtesy to the socially acceptable. When Gawain first arrives at the
castle, there is much excitement over the 'fyne fader of nurture' (1. 919), who
is adept in ']e teccheles termes oftalkyng noble' (1. 9 7). Gawain's conversation
with the Lady in the hall is described as 'clene cortays carp closed fro
fyl,e' (1. 1013). Yet if public 'luf-talkyng' incorporates a due decorum, the
courtesies of polite society are also the occasion for flirtatiousness and sexual
dalliance. In greeting the two ladies, young and old, who appear in the hall,
Gawain observes due ceremony in saluting one and kissing the other, but the
narratorial effictio of the old and young ladies, the one with 'buttokez bal3 and
brode' (1. 967), the other 'more lykkerwys on to lyk' (1. 968), makes clear that
this custom conveniently gratifies the knight's sexual preference. The mas-
culine evaluative nature of this description has an ironic effect on the
narrator's glosses on the ensuing bedroom-scenes: do the asides on the
Lady's amorousness adequately explain her motives, or are they expressive
of male anxiety about female desire, adding further dramatic complexity to
the dialogues rather than offering an objective context within which to
27 R. W. Hanning, 'Sir Gawain and the Red Herring: The Perils of Interpretation', in Acts of
Interpretation: The Text in Its Contexts, 700-600oo. Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Literature in Honor of E.
Talbot Donaldson, edited by Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk (Norman, Oklahoma, 1982),
pp. 5-23, makes an equation between the artfulness of the sauced fish and 'the artfulness of the poet
embellishing his poem with emblems, false leads, and ambiguities that make it at once a feast for the eye
and ear and a treacherous wilderness (or penitential experience) for the would-be interpreter' (p. 23).
28 David Mills discusses the ambivalence of this greeting in 'An Analysis of the Temptation Scenes in
Gawain', JEGP, 67 (1968), 612-30, p. 6 6.
I29

130
Gawain's Antifeminist Rant
interpret them? Certainly the Lady remains inscrutable: it is uncertain
whether she is role-playing or in earnest: moreover, the locus of the bedroom
makes overt the sexual aspect of love-talk that is otherwise masked by the
social niceties of public conversation. Gawain maintains faith in the impunity
of public love talk: in response to the Lady's advances at table, 'he nolde
not for his nurture nurne hir a3aynez I Bot dalt with hir al daynte, how-seeuer
Pe dede turned | Towrast' (11. 1661-63). But the rules of'nurture' offer
no guidelines for the private love-talk of the Lady and Gawain. The bedroom
is a space in which the proprieties of conversation have to be re-negotiated.
The 'hunting' and 'wooing' scenes in the poem are similar in that they
represent tests of skill: the Lord's and his retinue's knowledge of venery,
Gawain's social adeptness (albeit in an unusually private context). But the
hunting-scenes figure control, with respect to the activity, and the terms
describing that activity: there are set rules for the time, manner, and place of
hunting, and the 'set-pieces' of butchery place us in specific relationship to
the text, demanding our appreciation of a particular craft. Set against these
scenes, the 'bedroom-scenes' emerge all the more forcefully as areas in which
language constitutes the continual negotiation of meaning and intention.
The interviews between Gawain and the Lady of the castle isolate Gawain's
'courtesy', but also beg questions as to how one defines this virtue, when its
context shifts between social and private spaces. The interviews ask to what
extent 'luf-talkyng', as social adjunct to, or expression of, courtesy, may be
considered as contiguous to sexual activity, or as a civilized substitutive
metaphor for it. Both the Lady and Gawain are connected with love: love is a
'conventional accompaniment' to the word 'lady', and its full range of
associations and meanings ('luf' as 'affection', 'passion', 'friendship', 'woo-
ing') is evoked and exploited by the poet, ambivalently figuring her intentions.29
Gawain, of course, as the Lady several times observes, has a
reputation as a lover. The 'wooing-scenes', however, frustrate the audience's
and the Lady's expectations of Gawain's behaviour, but offer so many
reasons for his recalcitrance that his motives, like the Lady's, ultimately
remain unclear. When the Lady first enters his bedroom, Gawain responds
in accordance with his 'cortays' nature, in so far as he decides (we are told) to
engage in dialogue with her as the 'more semly' (1. 1198) way of determining
29 Waldron and Andrew comment on the association of'love' and 'lady' in a footnote to 1. 1927, The Poems
of the Pearl Manuscript, p. 277. At 1. I927 ('Among pe ladies for luf he ladde much joye') the poet, they
suggest, is simply employing a 'tag', but the line conveys effectively Gawain's sense of ease at public
conversation in contrast to private talk. Gawain also acknowledges love as the Lady's domain in his
farewell when he leaves the castle: 'Pe leue lady, on lyue luf hir bityde!' (1. 2054). The different
associations of'luf make it difficult to assess whether, when 'pe lady, for luf, let not to slepe' (1. 1733), she
is motivated by increasing ardour, or by determination to manipulate Gawain.

CATHERINE BATT
her intention.30 He is complicit with her in that he is willing to take part in,
and even prolong, conversation about love.31 Yet love-talk, as the exchanges
themselves reveal, cannot be viewed as an amusement separate from other
social concerns and obligations.
The conversations may take place in a sexually-charged locus, but their
'limits' appear to be set by laughter (11. 1206-07, I212-I8, I479, I757),
which seems to make of them yet another light-hearted game, and by
frequent invocations of Christ and the Saints, which ostensibly operate as
tenders of good faith on the part of the speakers: even as they exchange their
first kiss, 'Pay comly bykennen to Kryst ayper oper' (1. I307).32
Yet within
these boundaries, the narrator intrudes to signal possible moral danger to
Gawain, which clouds our perception of the knight's own moral awareness.
When, for example, Gawain crosses himself at his first unexpected encounter
with the Lady, 'as bi his sa3e fe sauer to worthe' (1. 1202),
his action may be
as much an expression of surprise, or an habitual gesture, as the apprehen-
sion of moral peril.33 During the last interview, the narrator intervenes with
an exclamation: 'Gret perile bitwene hem stod, | Nif Mare of hir kny3t
mynne' (11. I768-69), which leaves us to wonder at what mental space
Gawain affords the Queen of Heaven at this moment, for he himself does not
invoke her. Similarly, the language used in the debates intimates a more
serious appraisal of love and its obligations than the laughter surrounding it
would suggest.
Initiating the first exchange, the Lady exploits love-vocabulary's terms of
reference: she makes literal the conventional posturings of male lovers who
declare themselves prisoners of love, by emphasizing how she has 'impri-
soned' Gawain in his bed: 'Now ar 3e tan astyt!' (1. I 2 o),34 and reverses the
usual male/female roles of love-debate, by taking for herself the part of the
servant in love:
30 Both of the references to Gawain in Chaucer discuss his courtesy in the context of speech: The Romaunt
of the Rose, 11.2209-38, recommends one be 'Goodly of word', like Gawain, who was 'preised for his
curtesy'. In The Squire's Tale, 11. 95-97, the 'strange knyght' who appears is so courteous in speech and
bearing, that 'Gawayn, with his olde curteisye, Though he were comen ageyn out of Fairy, [Ne koude
hym nat amende with a word.' (The Riverside Chaucer, edited by Larry D. Benson (Oxford, I988), pp. 7I0,
I70).
31Just as the Lady has welcomed Gawain, so he signals willing participation in love-talk when he
extends welcomes to her, on the second and third occasions of their meeting in his bedroom: 'Sir Wawen
her welcumed worly on fyrst' (1. I477); 'He welcumez hir worlily with a wale chere' (1. 1759).
32 In their first conversation, for example, the Lady invokes 'pat ilk Lorde pat Pe lyfte haldez' (1. 1256),
and conventional pieties punctuate the speakers' exchange of words: 'Mary yow 3elde' (1. 1263); 'Bi
Mary' (1. I268); 'Kryst yow for3elde' (1. 1279).
33 We are told, for example, that Gawain behaves as though surprised: '(he) let as hym wondered'
(1. I 20 I), and to make the sign of the cross in astonishment rather than out of piety is not without literary
precedent. In La Mort le roi Artu, when Arthur is told of the rumour that Guinevere has poisoned a knight,
'li rois ... se seigne plus de mil foiz de la merveille que il a del chevalier qui est morz par tel mescheance'
(edited byJean Frappier (Geneva, I964), p. 77,11.75-78. See also p. 76,11. 47-48).Jonathan Nicholls, The
Matter of Courtesy. Medieval Courtesy Books and the Gawain-Poet (Woodbridge, 1985), p. 136,
mentions a reference in a courtesy book to the propriety of crossing oneself when first awaking.
34 The Lady repeats that she has the advantage, at 11. 1251-52, 1257-58.
13 I
note 60,

I32
Gawain's Antifeminist Rant
Me behouez of fyne force
Your seruaunt be, and schale.
(1. 1239)
This apparent expression of subservience none the less signals the greater
power in that it imposes an obligation on the beloved. The Lady's appropriation
of a traditionally 'male' language, here and elsewhere in the dialogues,35
allows for a greater flexibility of response between the speakers, but
also highlights the fact that traditional love talk as represented by, for
example, the work of Andreas Capellanus, offers little scope for the articulation
of female volition.36 Gawain extricates himself from his situation by
exploiting the double reference courtly language has, as an initiator of, or as
a substitute for, sexual action. He accepts the Lady's 'welcome' and offer of
herself to him in their most general sense, and quickly reclaims the male role
of servant, which he uses as part of a social politesse, to regain control: 'soberly
your seruaunt, my souerayn I holde yow And yowre kny3t I becom'
(11. 1278-79). When the Lady declares that, were she free to choose, she
would choose him as her lord, Gawain reminds her of the world outside their
conversation: '3e haf waled wel better' (1. I 276). The Lady finally effects the
transition from love-talk to love-action by an attack on Gawain's integrity as
a 'courteous' knight ('>at 3e be Gawan hit gotz in mynde!' (1. 1293)) and by
setting the request for a kiss within the context of the 'game' of urbane
conversation ('sum towch of summe tryfle at sum talez ende' (1. I30) ). By
an appeal to Gawain's 'courtaysye', the Lady extends the boundaries of
what Gawain is willing to countenance as permissible behaviour. Gawain's
diffidence during this first interview (1. 1282), confronted by a Lady who
appears to love him dearly (1. 1281), originates, the text explains, in his
preoccupation with his near-imminent death (11. I283-87). In subsequent
conversations, the claims of the value-systems within which Gawain exists
become rather more complexly interrelated.
In the second interview (11. I470-1557), the metaphor of power is shifted
from a master-servant to a teacher-pupil relation: the Lady says Gawain
ought to remember his 'lesson' of the previous day, that courtesy demands a
knight should respond to an evident willingness on the part of a lady.
Gawain counters that such action would be lacking in propriety should the
lady in fact deny him permission to advance further (1. 1494). The Lady
replies, with an argument familiar from the de Amore, that he cannot be
denied:37
35 On role reversal, seeJ. F. Kitely, 'The De Arte Honeste Amandi of Andreas Capellanus and the Concept
of Courtesy in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', Anglia, 79 (1961), 7- 6.
36 Toril Moi, 'Desire in Language: Andreas Capellanus and the Controversy of Courtly Love', in
Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology & History, edited by David Aers (Brighton, 1986), pp. I I-34, notes
how, in the de Amore, the Lady is 'deprived ... of a discursive initiative of her own' (pp. 24-25).
37 The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus, with Introduction, Translation and Notes by John Jay
Parry (New York, 1969), p. 50: 'When you find a convenient place, do not hesitate to take what you seek
and embrace (a peasant woman) by force.'

CATHERINE BATT
'3e ar stifinnoghe to constrayne wyth strenk,e, 3ifyow lykez,
3if any were so vilanous pat yow devaye wolde.'
(1. I496)
I33
The Lady here exposes how 'courtesy' may simply be invoked to corroborate
the claims of a brutal, self-justifying male desire. Courtesy, the Lady's words
and Gawain's attitude suggest, is less concerned with the proper reciprocity
of desire than with what is of advantage to the male. Gawain rejects as
ignoble the idea that the concept of courtesy may so easily serve as the means
to constraint. As if to show his own good will, Gawain has recourse to the
'custom' of the kiss, established the day before, again in the context of a
conventional love-talk in which both are willing to engage: 'I am at your
comaundement, to kysse quen yow lykez' (1. I50I). The kiss has been
co-opted into what is allowed in this recreational game of courtesy, but the
Lady resorts to the framework for behaviour literature amply provides, to
suggest how the boundaries could be more widely drawn: for is there not a
precedent for the vigorous Gawain, so famous for chivalry and courtesy, to
engage in love-matters when love is, the romances tell us, the motivating
force for adventurous knights (11. 1508-24)? The joke is, of course, at the
expense of Gawain's literary fame as a lover, but the Lady also recontextualizes
his valour within the obligations set up by the fact of their
present conversation: either his reputation is without foundation, or he is
insulting her by assuming she is too ignorant for 'instruction' in matters of
love (11. I525-30). The Lady's request to be taught 'Whil my lord is fro
hame' (1. I534) again alerts us to other social claims upon the participants, to
the conversation's possible impropriety. Gawain deflects the attack by
protesting unworthiness and ignorance: he says she is a better reader of
romances than he, and they settle once more to an extended loveconversation,
sanctioned by convention, and devoid, the description insists,
of all but innocent pleasure: 'nawler pay wysten | Bot blysse' (11. 1552-53).
But these lines are, of course, not without irony: the narratorial voice
ascribes sinister motives to the Lady: she 'fondet hym ofte, | For to haf
wonnen hym to wo3e, whatso scho po3t ellez' (11. I549-50). This seems less a
judgement of the Lady one may trust, than a reminder that there is no 'clene'
and purely recreational language, but that it must inevitably be viewed as
existing within, and constitutive of, a system of power-relations.38
On the morning of the third day, the physical aspect of love-talk comes to
the fore. Gawain, awaking from an uneasy dream about the Green Chapel,
responds gladly to the Lady's minutely-described beauty: 'Wi3t wallande
joye warmed his hert' (1. 1762), and is confronted at once with the moral
dilemma posed by the possibility of finally translating word into action:
38 Myra Stokes offers a rather different assessment of the Lady's function, in 'Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight: Fitt in as Debate', Nottingham Medieval Studies, 25 (1981), 35-5I, where she suggests that the
dialogues 'reveal a fear on the poet's part that the real moral significance of the chivalric and courtly
virtues was being cheapened in social usage' (p. 36).

134
Gawain's Antifeminist Rant
He cared for his cortaysye, lest crapayn he were,
And more for his meschef3ifhe schulde make synne
And be traytor to pat tolke pat pat telde a3t.
(1. 1773)
The syntax is imprecise as to whether Gawain considers sexual engagement
as a sin in social, more than in religious, terms. Where the Lady's manner
subscribes to the logic whereby sexual talk is a prelude to the act, Gawain
uses 'luf-la3yng' (1. 1777) as a means of deferring, or avoiding, the question of
sexual activity. The Lady closes the debate by shifting from the dynamics of
conversation to the passive language of love-lament. Rejected, she says: 'I
may bot mourne vpon molde, as may Pat much louyes' (1. 1795). If love-talk
is not to be manifest in a physical act, she suggests it may at least be recorded
materially, in the form of a love-token. Gawain is unwilling to be party to an
exchange of this kind, but finally accepts the splendidly-wrought girdle
because, the narrator explains, he sees a use for it in another context, as 'a
juel for pejoparde pat hym jugged were' (1. 1856).
The locus of the bedroom has had an unsettling effect on one's notions of
the limits and implications of courtesy and its related language. The issues
raised regarding the status and plurality of the 'cortays' register have not
been resolved, and courtesy has emerged not as a 'fixed' virtue, but as
something socially and pragmatically defined. Operating on the level of a
comedy of manners, the scenes suggest propriety may be rather arbitrarily
fixed. In one sense, the outcome of the bedroom-scenes is a measure of
Gawain's success: he has demonstrated his skill in 'cortays' speech, and may
be said to have observed degrees of'fraunchyse', 'fela3schyp', 'clannes', and
'pite' in his dealings with the Lady, even while conventional assumptions
about what he represents have been comically undercut. But if the bedroom-
scenes playfully question the parameters of'cortays' speech and behaviour,
the boundaries between word and action, their conclusion asks us to
consider what 'trawpe' is. The acceptance of a gift from the Lady involves an
act of 'trawhe' to her which competes with the 'exchange of winnings'
bargain made with her Lord, itself explicitly sworn with 'trawpe' and sealed
with drink and laughter (11. 1105-I3):
[Ho] biso3t hym for hir sake disceuer hit neuer
Bot to lelly layne fro hir lorde; the leude hym acordez
Pat neuer wy3e schulde hit wyt, iwysse, bot pay twayne (1. I862)
The different conditions under which Gawain accepts these covenants, the
one publicly, in jest, but also using legal language, the other in private, with
an earnestness the apparent sincerity of which seems to impart to it as much
validity as any formal agreement, make it difficult to assess which has the
greater claim on Gawain's integrity. Only retrospectively, of course, does
Gawain's loyalty in these respects emerge as important, but the way in
which events are marshalled to judge Gawain itself raises the question of

CATHERINE BATT
how absolute judgement may ever be possible, for Gawain's judge seems to
demonstrate bad faith rather than 'trawbe'. Gawain's bedroom is a definite
space within the Lord's castle, but rhetorically it functions to suggest we
re-evaluate the language used there. Much of the comedy arises from
whether a private place is indeed suited to intimate talk, while the narrator's
voice alerts us to the danger of Gawain's being in some way threatened or
compromised. The meaning of the locus is thus to some extent 'negotiable':
we may see it as a fit setting for a witty jeu d'esprit, or we may deem it,
retrospectively, an unexpected testing-ground for Gawain. The poem incor-
porates its own readings of the scenes' significance. Their import is redefined
through the events at the Green Chapel. Yet this latter place, subjectively
defined rather than precisely evoked, is itself strangely disorientating as a
context for judgement: both metaphorically and literally, we do not know
where we are. It is a suitable locus for the second encounter between Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight, which serves not as denouement, but to
demonstrate on what shifting ground are built the bases for judgement and
appraisal. The Green Knight, at his first appearance at Arthur's court,
embodies a disturbing combination of the unearthly and the courtly, and the
breakdown of boundaries between wild and civilized space finds full
expression in the place with which he is associated. The Green Chapel is a
vaguely described site of near-indescribable horrors: it is 'lat tene place'
(1. 2075): Gawain's guide calls it 'bat note place' (1. 2092), 'pe place ... ful
perelous'. Gawain's solitary journey towards 'bat waste' echoes his venture
into the wastelands of Fitt ii (the bob at 1. 2155, as at 1. 735, describes the
knight as 'alone'). What he finally approaches is reminiscent of a burial
mound, a cave, or a fissure in the rock, which defies linguistic categorization:
what it is 'he coupe hit no3t deme With spelle' (11. 2I83-84). Because the
place does not represent anything recognizable, Gawain has recourse to
defining it in terms of his only co-ordinate, its given name: he calls it an
'oritore', a 'chapel of meschaunce', 'be corsedest kirk', fit for the Devil
(11. 2185-96). Even the surrounding landscape is described as an edifice:
Gawain, making his way uphill, is said to climb 'to be roffe of bo ro3 wonez'
(1. 2198). The noise of his approaching adversary is not accommodated
within the imagery of the chapel: instead, Gawain maps out a space more
appropriate to his ordeal: he imagines some instrument marking out the field
of combat for him (11. 2205-07) .39
The definition of the area as a 'chapel', and as a place of combat, has some
influence on the kind of language employed in the ensuing scene: Gawain
attempts to face the unknown by recourse to the decorum of this partially
understood locus, using the language appropriate to a chapel, and to
combat. The co-ordinates for Gawain's actions are further set by mention of
39 This argument agrees with the interpretation of 11. 2206-07 suggested by Waldron's and Andrew's
editing. Norman Davis, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, p. I26, translates instead: 'That contrivance, as I
believe, is being prepared in honour of meeting me as a knight in customary form.'
10
I35

136
Gawain's Antifeminist Rant
his reputation as active warrior. The literary conventions re-surface: he calls
himself'gode Gawayn' as he demands to see his challenger. For the narrator,
he is one 'that dou3ty was euer', and the Green Knight, having marked out
his territory with what is by now a familiar greeting for Gawain, 'Iwysse pou
art welcom, wy3e, to my place' (1. 2240), teases his flinching victim 'with
mony prowde wordez' (1. 2269), in a speech analogous to the Lady's previous
assault on another aspect of Gawain's reputation:
'Pou art not Gawayn ... pat is so goud halden,
Pat neuer ar3ed for no here by hylle ne be vale,
And now Pou fles for ferde er lou fele harmez!'
(1. 2270)
The traditional celebration of Gawain's active virtue is ironically unfitting
here: as he reminds the Green Knight, he has come here to fulfill a passive
role: 'Bot Pa3 my hede falle on pe stonez I con not hit restore' (11. 2282-83).
In his eagerness to fight once the blow has been dealt him, Gawain embraces
the active martial role of his reputation. The Green Knight, however,
deflects the contest into a series of verbal indulgences, both judging and
excusing Gawain: where the wit of the exchanges with the Lady has been
predicated on the boundary between love-talk and 'love in dede', the
unwilling Gawain attempting to confine himself to language, her husband
converts physical agon into light-hearted social exchange. In his indefinite
'place', the Green Knight modifies the significance of the poem's other
spaces. The conversations with the Lady turn out to have been a test of the
knight's lewte, plotted and controlled by the Green Knight/Bertilak: 'I wro3t
hit myseluen' (1. 2361). Even the girdle was not the Lady's to give freely: 'Hit
is my wede' (1.2358). Gawain's response is not to challenge the Green
Knight's privileging of one 'gome' or act of 'trawfe' over another: he does
not even ask by what concept ofjustice the Green Knight himself traverses
the bounds of one covenant in order to make it encompass the terms of
another (the terms of the original agreement require only that Gawain
appear on an appointed day to receive a blow). Instead, he has recourse to
another register, the language of the confessional, fitting to the locus of the
'chapel' in which he finds himself. He now regards his life-saving girdle, 'pe
falssyng' (1. 2378), with disgust, and asks his tormentor how he may make
restitution. Bertilak again takes control of the discourse, declaring that
Gawain has already fulfilled his 'penaunce' by submitting to this ordeal
(11. 239I-94). He offers him the gift of the girdle as a 'pure token' of his
adventure, and invites him to come home again and meet the Lady 'Pat watz
your enmy kene' (1. 2406). This recasting of the Lady's role in the earlier
scenes would seem to suggest to Gawain his next lines, in which, refusing
further hospitality, he utters his conventional denunciation of women's
wiles.
In his recourse to the formulaic in the anti-feminist passage, Gawain
imposes an unsatisfactory rhetorical patterning on experience, in order to

CATHERINE BATT
make it intelligible in already-known terms. Gawain does not later show
regret for his illogical calumny of women, because its expression exists as a
discrete encoding of received wisdom, for 'us' as well as for Gawain, a
commonplace that, by virtue of its familarity in sermons and other literature,40
needs neither justification nor examination. The invocation of a
commonplace may be said to be 'psychologically true' in that it shows a
mind wishing to evade culpability falling back on the reassuring banality of a
shared and unconsidered rhetorical topos:41 but reader response is further
complicated in that the idea of men's betrayal by women is also part of the
'common wisdom' concerning Gawain's own history. This makes the passage
more than an ironic reflection on Gawain's supposed 'cortaysye'.42 If
this is how Gawain's past is to be constituted and perceived, if his reputation
as betrayed lover is founded on his abnegation of responsibility, then the
assumed rhetorical formulae are themselves, perhaps, open to question.
The rhetorical formula takes the place of analysis here, and the effect is
shocking rather than comforting. The commonplace marks the limits of
Gawain's self-awareness, and comments also on how the use of established
rhetoric may contribute to a lack of awareness on the part of readers and
writers. But if Gawain falls back on a 'known rhetoric' to 'explain' female
behaviour, the plot itself also reveals that what was thought to be a journey
into the unknown has turned into an encounter with the all too familiar, and
is so preposterous as to close down the possibility of logical analysis. The
explanation of events calls on another established literary motif, the association
of Morgana la Fay with magic ('pat knowes alle your kny3tez I At hame'
(11. 2450-5) ) and her hatred of her half-brother. Bertilak claims to have
manipulated his wife, but he himself was merely the instrument of Morgana's
malice toward her kinsfolk. The 'testing' of Gawain has been
incidental to a plot the central purpose of which was to terrorize Guinevere
(11. 2459-62). How this aspect of Bertilak squares with his geniality, and his
courtesy as Lord of Hautdesert, can be explained only as part of the poet's
'game' with the apparent boundaries set up to mark out the different spaces
in the poem: boundaries the Green Knight/Bertilak of course violates in his
'judgement' of Gawain.
40 For instances of the triad of Samson, Solomon, and David in the homiletic tradition, and in other
Middle English literature, see R. W. King, 'A Note on "Sir Gawayn and the Green Knight", 24I4ff.',
Modern Language Review, 29 (I934), 435-36. On the assumed 'authority' and self-indicting nature of
misogynistic writing in general, see R. Howard Bloch, 'Medieval Misogyny', in Representations, 20 (1987),
I-24.
41 David Aers assumes a (male) community of agreement and the desire for a collective denial of
responsibility in his reading of the lines: 'the heart of Gawain's appeal is for male solidarity in the face of
the common enemy', Community, Gender, and Individual Identity: English Writing 136o0-430 (London, i988),
p. I7I.
42 The author of the Cursor Mundi, while employing the same topos as that used by Gawain, to gloss the
fate of Solomon, specifically denounces such language as 'vnhend' if applied indiscriminately to women in
general: 'I thinck na womman forto schend' (Cursor Mundi, edited by R. Morris, 5 vols, Volume 2, EETS,
OS, 59 (London, 1893), p. 52I,11.9023-24).
I37

I38
Gawain's Antifeminist Rant
The obvious unsatisfactoriness of the synopsis Bertilak offers may send us
back into the text to reassess and re-align its different components, and to try
and find some 'fit' between them in an attempt to establish the poem's 'moral
centre', firm ground on which to makejudgements. Gawain's response, in the
absence of a moral centre for the poem, can be interpreted as an attempt to
reclaim control by constructing another 'space' for himself, one so limiting as
to make possible only one reading of his behaviour. He therefore assigns a
meaning to the girdle different from that accorded it by Bertilak and defines
himself to Arthur's court as no longer 'enclosed' by virtue, but by a constraining
viciousness:
'Pis is Pe lae and pe losse Pat I la3t haue
Of couardise and couetyse, pat I hafca3t Pare;
Pis Pe token ofvntrawpe ]at I am tan inne.
And I mot nedez hit were wyle I may last'.
(1. 2507)
The court, however, reads the situation differently, in terms of the decorum
pertaining to its 'renoun', and to its relief at finding Gawain alive. The knights
of the Round Table decide to wear a green baldric in fellowship, for Gawain's
sake, and their appropriation of the girdle and their re-interpretation of its
meaning signal the social re-accommodation of Gawain.
The 'fixed' significance of the pentangle (fraught with ambivalence though
that meaning is), thus gives way to the more fluid definitions of the girdle, to
which meaning is more pragmatically assigned. In Sir Gawain and the Green
Knightwe are made aware, both in structure and theme, of the tension between
understanding according to pre-determined patterns and the ambivalences of
experience: Gawain's own case focuses attention on the delicacy with which
we have to approach issues of 'culpability' and judgement. His experience,
and the complex of responses its recounting evokes, mirrors the difficulty one
experiences when reading the poem, as to which of its aspects to privilege. At
the same time, through Gawain we learn to recognize that any single
evaluation of a situation will, inevitably, be insufficient, and therefore to some
extent erroneous. Narrative in the poem is conceived of as a series of spaces to
which we attach particular significances and certain expectations, just as we
expect specific blocks of rhetoric to function in predictable ways. But these
spaces, although they seem reassuringly delimiting, by virtue oftheirj uxtaposition
cannot exist as 'discrete parcels', as separate entities within the text.
They are not hermetically-sealed sites of meaning, but areas which may, like
the pentangle, contain conflicting claims, and like the girdle, be open to a
variety of interpretations. The strength of the poem lies in its demonstrating
how ambiguity is necessary, both to the rhetoric used and the spaces
containing it, and it does so by making us aware of the temptations and
limitations of exclusive readings.
Geoffrey Shepherd has remarked on alliterative poetry's lack of selfconsciousness:
'None of the alliterative poets turns a steady inquisitive gaze

CATHERINE BATT I39
upon his own composing ... they have neither the occasion, the interest, nor
the vocabulary to examine closely how they write' ('The Nature of Allitera-
tive Poetry', p. 69). The Gawain-poet analyses the strengths and shortcom-
ings of alliterative poetry through the very structure of this poem: in the
absence of secure moral judgement, and even of a 'sensible' plot, we are
brought to examine the assumptions behind not only the language we use,
but the influence upon it of the spaces we construct or appropriate for its
expression.