In the very first place we should notice Gawain's physical fitness for knighthood. Throughout the feudal age the armoured cavalryman had to possess strength and endurance, he had to be skilled in the use of his weapons, and he had to be a good horseman. Anything short of proficiency in these qualities would have rendered a knight unfit. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Gawain represents physical perfection. He is strong enough to wield the Green Knight's tremendous ax; with one blow he decapitates his adversary, driving the steel bit into the floor of Arthur's hall. He has both the strength and endurance to complete his arduous journey to the Green Chapel: a lesser man might well have died on such a trip, but Gawain persisted, and, in spite of the severe season,
managed to survive. His agility in placing himself in position to attack after the Green Knight had lightly wounded him on the neck, as well as his handling of the war ax, demonstrates the skill at arms which the feudal age demanded of the knight. His many days in the saddle, and especially the concern for his horse which Gawain evinced as he
appraised the care shown to Gringolet by his host's men, illustrate almost too well the horsemanship expected of the knight. Without a doubt, Gawain is shown to be a perfect knight physically.
The nonphysical qualities of the ideal knight which Gawain possesses are courage, humility, courtesy, and loyalty. His courage, of course, is demonstrated, in the first place, by his willingness to accept the monstrous challenge of the Green Knight and, thereafter, by his action at the Green Chapel. (The fundamental motivation for Gawain's intervention is really his sense of duty, or decorum: what a knight must do to help his lord extricate himself from an unseemly situationin a word, loyalty. But the act demanded great courage too.) Humility becomes any man. Gawain's chagrin, displayed after the Green Knight has explained the purpose of their bargain, and his refusal to claim any glory when he returned to Arthur's court show that Gawain was, when he ought to be, a humble man. His courtesy requires no discovery here. His very first words in the romance, as he asks Arthur's permission to accept the challenge, and his conduct with the Lady of the Castle are the perfection of knightly courtesy. For Gawain courtesy was a way of life. The strongest part of his character, however, is his sense of loyalty. He is loyal to his lord, Arthur, and he is loyal to his host, Bercilak. He is a man who can be counted on to keep his word. His own declaration to his host, as he explains why he cannot tarry, constitutes the extreme of trustworthiness. It behooves me, he states, to move on. I have now at my disposal barely three days, and I would just as soon fall dead as fail in my errand. Loyalty, or trustworthiness, actually underlines every action and thought of the hero; he is the particular man he is because his strong sense of duty compelled him to do what was most needed at the time. Like that other great feudal hero, Roland, Gawain's chief accomplishment, in the eyes of his peers and lord, was his Ciceronian capacity to attend to his nearest duty. A favorite with the ladies, a good companion, a stalwart fighter with a strong right arm, a decoration at any man's board, The Flower of Knighthood all this Gawain is, but if it were possible for him to step from the pages of romance, our latter-day Charleses and Arthurs would welcome him primarily, I think, because he would be a man who could be counted on to do, in any situation, what most needed to be done. As we found him to be eminently fitted physically for knighthood, so too do we find that Gawain's character illustrates perfection of knighthood....
Gawain, to be sure, is something more than a glittering symbol of perfection. He is a man. One of the marks of genius in the romance is the deliberate care which the poet took to make his hero human. His acceptance of the Lady's lace, of course, is the most notable incident in the romance which illustrates his humanity. But his behavior throughout is distinctly human.... His trials and joys are made to seem real enough. Who could doubt that the young knight, so relieved at finding unexpected comfort in Bercilak's castle, so sincere in both his moments of elation and concern, is a human being? His greatness, I think, is defined most clearly when, amidst the long faces o earch which, it was felt, must lead to certain death, Gawain alone remained calm, and replied to his fellows:
... quat schuld I wonde?
Of destines derf and dere
What may mon do bot fonde?
[Why should I hesitate? Against a
hard and dire fate, what can a man do
but try?]
Such a man we can all admire. Take him where you will in the romance, Gawain is, for his age, the representation of the very best man who everlived.
Much has been said about the Green Knight. Bercilak's true nature will be understood, however, only when it is realized that his primary function is to serve as Gawain's antagonist. The Green Knight is not a superhuman or supernatural being. He is an ordinary human being who, as he tells it to Gawain, has been transformed by Morgan le Fay.... He is not, to be sure, the victim of magic, but the agent of magic, the marvelous man whose single purpose in the romance is to serve as the agent of Morgan le Fay's
will. It is a brilliant plan. Since Gawain is the very best man, his opponent, if he is to test the hero severely, must but be something more than another ordinary human being. The choice of a man temporarily endowed with the power of magic was the best possible solution. Not only is the hero given a formidable opponent but the adventure itself is
also given its indispensable atmosphere of romance.
Although the romance is filled with realistic details which reflect its author's accurate observation of his own time, life, and sceneas a matter of fact, a line-by-line analysis discloses that slightly less than ten percent of the romance is given over to the marvelouswe must not overlook the nature and purpose of the marvelous occurrences in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. To begin with, everything in the romance which is either strange or untoward, or which cannot be explained rationally, and which I call the marvelous, is accounted for by the direct manifestation of Morgan le Fay's magical power, the transformation of Bercilak. It is the magical power of Morgan le Fay,
power she learned from Merlin, which gives rise to the romance atmosphere in the poem.... Yet even if not more than ten percent of the romance is given over to the marvelous, the marvelous is, of course, indispensable. It informs and shapes the entire narrative. From the moment the Green Knight enters Arthur's hall until Gawain returns safely to the same hall the action of the romance is severely conditioned by the influence of Morgan le Fay's magic. It is the cohesive force which joins together the two primary motifs in the poem, the Beheading Test and the ove Test. It is the force which compels Gawain to begin his journey, and it is the force which pulls him into Bercilak's castle. It is the force, finally, which constitutes the marvelous atmosphere, which supplies the necessary feeling that everything which occurs is occurring nowhere, which makes us accept the fundamental precept of romance, namely, that we are, at the same time, both in this world and in another world.
Thus far I have described what I think is the true nature of the hero, the antagonist, and the romance atmosphere of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. How and why the romance is constructed as it is becomes the most important question one can ask about the poem. Not only is it a question, by and large, which Arthurian criticism has neglected, but it also is, I am convinced, the most fruitful inquiry criticism can undertake. Sometimes a simple observation will bear useful results: it is so in the case at hand. A striking difference may be observed between the behavior of the romance hero, the epic hero, and the hero of the modern novel. It seems to be the function of the epic hero to show off, to display his well-known qualities in actions which, for the most part, were already known and admired by the audience which listened to the recitation. The exploits of Achilles, for example, were familiar to all, a part of public knowledge, so to speak. So too was his personality known. There was never a question of what Achilles would or would not do, or why he acted as he did. One's pleasure in the recital of old deeds surely must have come about as a result of perceiving, once again, the familiar champion going through his paces.... At the other extreme, the hero of the modern novel is, in the beginning, an unknown quantity, and the situations into which he is to be placed are unpredictable. What is perhaps the most significant of all literary innovations, character development, separates a Michael Henchard, say or a Santiago, from Achilles. Before our very eyes, from page to page as we follow him from one incident to the next, we see the hero of the modern novel grow. The hero of modern fiction has to earn his stature as he goes along....
Midway between the epic hero and the modern hero lies the romance hero. Where we find both the character and the actions of the epic hero known in advance, where we find both the character and the actions of the modern hero unknown in advance, we find that the character of the romance hero is known in advance but his action and behavior are not. My guess is that the romance hero exists to show us the way. We know who the hero is and what he is like, but we do not know what he will do. Gawain is the best man, we know his carefully established reputation attests no less the one knight who ought to perform in any situation as well as any man might be expected to. What reason could there be for placing such a man in action other than to test him, to try out our best representative? The romance hero brings his reputation along with him, but he has to earn stature in the romance; he may, as a matter of fact, gain or lose everything as he goes along; he has, indeed, a perilous course to tread, the eyes of readers of all ages watching each step he takes. It is the function of the romance hero, I think, to stand as the champion of the human race, and, by submitting to strange and severe tests, to demonstrate human capabilities for good or bad action. Seldom do we ask ourselves why the romance hero does this or does that: always we ask, What will he do now? or How can he do that? The romance condition seems to be very much like this: we construct the
very best man to represent ideal human behavior; we ask, then, what could such a man do if he were to be placed in the most trying, the strangest positions; we provide the unnatural incidents of romance to test the hero, because only the unknown can constitute a valid test and, at the same time, generate the universal appeal of the mysterious, the
remote. There is no doubt in my mind that the charm and appeal of Gawain is this: of all champions who have set out in romances to show us the way, none has lived up to his reputation so well as Gawain.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight displays the perfect knight contending against the unknown. No part of its structure can be elucidated if it is considered apart from its proper relationship to the chief aim of the romance, namely, to test Gawain and, in so doing, to project his behavior as a model for the very best human conduct....
A word or two must be inserted here about the nature of the love Test or so-called Chastity Test. As other scholars have pointed out, what keeps Gawain from inviting the Lady into his bed, to be blunt about it, is not his chastity, but his strong sense of loyalty. As the guest of Bercilak, Gawain is in the position, for the duration of his visit, of vassal to his host; his host is, for the time, his lord. It would have been a heinous breach of loyalty to his lord had Gawain made love to his lord's wife. Any feudal audience would understand that; the lovely chatelaine, at the hands of Gawain, was inviolable. It is, of course, a severe, extreme test of Gawain's integrity. The hero is placed in a terrifying dilemma. On the one hand he faces the normal sexual impulse of any man; on the other,
his sense of propriety and his loyalty to his lord. Because he is courteous, he cannot treat the Lady summarily. To his great credit, and the glory of British literature, Gawain retains both his honor and his reputation. The poet, however, is not without a sense of justice, and Gawain, because he made the slightest compromise, does not leave Bercilak's domain completely unscarred. His chastity was never in the balance, but his integrity was; for the small chink in his otherwise unsullied armor Gawain will payhe will carry to his grave a slight scar on his neck. The love Test and the Beheading Test complement each other. Man's greatest virtue, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells us, is loyalty, and if we wish to act to our highest capacity, we must be loyal to those who deserve our loyalty. In a word, we must be obedient to our station and social duty. For the mediaeval man, short of the advice which Holy Mother Church afforded to guide him to heaven, there could be no better injunction.
There are, to be sure, other matters of interest in the romance. The poet's sense of time and pseudohistory, like his use of a dual geography, reinforces the romance atmosphere. Other structural details, the balance of Gawain versus the Green Knight and Gawain versus the Green Knight's wife, say, or the similarity between the bargains arranged by the Green Knight and by his normal self, Bercilak, deserve further attention. I think, however, that they all fit well into the general structural outline I have described. Other elements, the color and number symbolism, for example, as well as the deep sympathy for what we have to call the sheer joy of living, are important in the poem. Certainly, to look in another direction for a moment, there are overtones in the romance which ought not to be passed overthere are, or may well be, traces of the Celtic world of mythology, of nature rites, of the paradoxical Northern, or Cold Hell, so-called. Certainly the romance has a positive and healthy Christian tone. I neither deny nor ignore these details; I simply believe they are of secondary importance.
What we need constantly to keep in mind, of course, is the real obligation to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a romance. The poem is not just the exposition of a single virtue, say chastity; to take it so is to under read the romance. Nor is it a Christian declaration of man's imperfection; to take it so is to overread the romance, to take it as primarily a Christian poem. Of course it is a Christian poem, but not exclusively, not even primarily so, as, say, Robert Grosseteste's Chasteau d'Amour, or Chaucer's Second Nun' s Tale, or Richard Rolle's religious lyrics are Christian. What we have at hand, I think, is the matter of the poet's attitude. I believe the Gawain poet's attitude (not his intention, which we do not know) is quite clearly that here is a man who goes as far as man can, who shows human capacity for action, who drums into our consciousness the most moral of earthly lessons we must act as our duty to others' dictates. And so it is I see loyalty as the human trait which underlies and informs all the virtues we seen in Gawain. In short, of all the components which inform and shape the romance magic, Christianity, realistic details, the overtones I have alluded to what comes out of it is not a symbolic knight in shining armor, but a man. Perhaps I have erected a live horse to beat I am really not sure I have not but the poem, like Gringolet, can carry this additional burden.
What I believe to be most important in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, put as directly as I Can, is that its true mark of genius is its forceful presentation of its human hero, Gawain. He is the point of interest; he indeed comes first. The romance exists to show us what a splendid man he is. We are drawn to him because, as he passes his tests, he shows us our capabilities for human conduct, because, in the best sense of it, he shows us what honest moral conduct is. We shall probably not equal his behavior, but we admire him for pointing out the way. We approach this excellent romance properly, I think, when we see that it is the urgent concern of Gawain to show us something of ourselves, to show us our human capability for right and good action, and, in fulfilling a fundamental requirement of fiction, to show us, in some measure, what it means to be alive in the world.
