Virtue in Gawain

I am not that good at the verse version of Gawain. I like the prose version published by Dover. When I was reading this recently, I was struck by something interesting. When we look at the character of Gawain we are supposed to see virtue in his character. The problem is, we don't, at least not totally. Take the scene where the lord has gone hunting on the first day and left Gawain sleeping. Gawain wakes to find the wife of the lord, a woman, we are told in another place, that was “fairer even that Guinevere” (19) entering into his room. We are told that Gawain is “shamed” by the mere fact that the woman is entering his room while he is still in bed. Why is this the case? Because of his understanding of virtue.
We can spend countless hours looking up definitions for virtue. We can read many authors, including Marcus Aurelius and Augustine and still not come to a really helpful idea of virtue. That is because virtue, like faith and love, is primarily identified through actions. How does virtue look? This is the question that Gawain helps us with at this point in the story.
Gawain is shamed when the lady enters his room because he knows how it will look. It really doesn’t matter whether anything actually takes place between the two that is inappropriate. The very fact that she has come into his room is inappropriate. Gawain understands the nature of virtue to that extent. We would do well to learn this from him. There are situation and things that are simply inappropriate for us. The Bible warns us to “abstain from every kind of evil” (1 Thess. 5:22).
We put ourselves in and tolerate inappropriate situations all the time. Gentlemen should guard their speech around young ladies. There are things that may be appropriate for men to discuss in certain contexts by themselves, but should never be mentioned or discussed around young ladies. This is not being sexist; it is recognizing the biblical category of discretion; something we’ll address with the ladies as well.
Proverbs 2:10-12 tells us that “discretion will guard you ... from the man who speaks perverse things.” Here an antithesis is set between the man who has discretion and the man who speaks perverse things. The “perverse things” are things that should not be mentioned in mixed company. This can just as easily be said to the young ladies. There are things you should not mention in the company of young men either. Young ladies that lack discretion are likened to a pig with a gold ring in its snout in Proverbs 11:22.
Discretion is a sensitive issue but is very important for us culturally because our culture lacks so much discretion. The Greek concept of “obscene” (lit. off-scene) referred to an action that should not be witnessed. Oedipus gouges his eyes out and Jocasta hangs herself off scene because these actions are inappropriate for audiences. Our culture doesn’t think a film has been worth its ticket price if someone doesn’t die violently and as realistically as possible. And television is following the lead quickly. Series’ like CSI and House M.D. are doing their best to be gruesome with the death scenes. They and other series like Law and Order: SVU are crossing the line on inappropriate content for their stories all the time. Even the news programs are discussing this subject matter with regularity, although they tend to be more discrete in the details.
Returning to our text, we quickly see that Gawain’s shame does not keep him from getting entwined in further indiscretion with the lady. He asks her to give him a minute to get dressed before they talk, but does not hasten to avoid the situation when she refuses. He merely “jests” and pretends that nothing inappropriate is taking place. We may say that he stays in bed because he is not dressed and does not want to flee from her because she will see him in this state if he does. We can make immediate application here to the story of Joseph in Gen. 39:12. There we see that Joseph thought it more appropriate to flee naked than spend another moment with Potiphar’s wife. Here is where we get a sense of allowing one virtue to be elevated above another thus causing both to suffer. Gawain holds modesty as a virtue, as well he should, but not at the expense of propriety. He should not have remained in that room with the lady since she refused to leave and let him get dressed before talking.
We next see that a bad situation gets worse. Throughout the three days of hunting, Gawain allows her to kiss him each day. Gawain remains true to his covenant with the lord and gives the kisses each evening as he is bound to do, but never acknowledges where he received them from. Gawain knows that he has entertained indiscretion with the lady every day, talking about subjects such as love. It is interesting to note that as a guest, Gawain owed a certain amount of obedience to the lord and lady, as he acknowledges each day when she sits and talks with him. He is protecting his honor, in this sense. However, he is doing so in a way that elevates honor above truth and morality. This is similar to a situation we might find ourselves in. Your buddies dare you to throw a brick through an old ladies window. Knowing you should not, you refuse. Immediately they call you “chicken.” You decide that defending your bravery is more important than respecting another’s property and you launch the brick. You have just succeeded in throwing your worldview out of balance. Gawain has this problem and it is presented here for our instruction.
Virtues cannot contradict each other. If we elevate one virtue over the others we throw the balance out of our ethics.

On Reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Are you hot-tempered? Do you flare up at the slightest offense and do everything in your power to maintain your honor, or someone else’s? If so, you are not alone. You have a lot of company in that particular Venn diagram. Among the people in that category would be King Arthur’s nephew Gawain. We met him reading Geoffrey of Monmouth and got a little sense of his hot-headedness there. If you remember, he was sent on the journey to meet envoys from Rome near the end of the book. He allowed himself to be provoked by the Romans and ended up cutting off the head of a Roman officer (an action he seems to repeat from time-to-time). His zeal for the honor of Arthur and Camelot led to the sacking of Rome by Arthur.

Geoffrey of Monmouth is not the only place we can hear stories of Gawain. In a lot of the medieval Arthur stories, Gawain is pictured quite often, and typically as a model of knighthood. This may strike us as odd; especially when we see the mess he gets himself into in the book we are about to read, but the medievals liked Gawain a lot and sung about him often. The stories that we are likely most familiar with about Arthur, those of Sir Thomas Malory and Alfred Lord Tennyson, do not picture Gawain as the model of the knight. Rather they tend to picture him as a scoundrel and a traitor. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight lets us see a little of the alternate tradition that pictured Gawain as a true hero.

We know that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written in the fourteenth century but we do not know who wrote it. This may be because the author did not want to be known (out of a sense of humility) or because the name was accidentally lost. Oftentimes, tales told in the medieval world were more about preserving the deeds of the hero than the fame of the author. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was also a poem. It was written in a style known as alliterative poetry. We typically think of poetry as rhyming lines. Some poetry does rhyme, but by far most poetry in the world does not work like this. This can make poetry a little inaccessible to some people unless they read a lot of it. We are going to be reading a prose rendition of the poem. It preserves the story, but some details are necessarily lost. A very good verse translation exists by J.R.R. Tolkien (of Lord of the Rings fame).

Some of the features of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are worth examining a little by way of preview. Gawain is a knight and is bound by a code of chivalry. Chivalry essentially meant honorable conduct. It originally meant honorable conduct between warriors, but as Europe turned into what some scholars call Christendom (a concept we’ll deal with in a minute) this code of chivalrous behavior began to reflect the values of Christianity and the ethics it demanded of believers. This gives us a picture of Gawain in which honor, virtue, and truth are very important. Courtly romances, like Sir Gawain, often played up the situations that this code could bring into existence if all the aspects were not kept in their proper place.

A well-balanced worldview is like a clean room. Everything has a place and stays in its place. If it is left out of its place, the room is no longer clean and distortions are bound to occur (like leaving a school picture someone gave you out when everyone else’s is put neatly away, thus creating the distortion that you have feelings for this person when you do not). Courtly romances tended to capitalize on the distortions that could take place when honor or truth take a higher place than they deserved and at the expense of other components of the worldview. Sir Gawain shows us what can happen when honor is taken too far and at the expense of virtue or truthfulness.

Europe began as an influx of pagan Germanic tribes into Christian Roman territory. As time went on, many of these tribes converted to Christianity and began to establish legitimate kingdoms based, in part, on Christian teachings of morality and justice. By the time of Charlemagne (800 ad) most of Europe could have been called Christian. The invasions of the Vikings in the ninth and tenth centuries disrupted this general tendency, but even they were eventually won over by the power of the Gospel. Scholars often call this general saturation of European culture and society with Christianity, Christendom. Christendom means that the structure of society in Europe was Christian. The kings swore allegiance to the pope in many cases, and were often crowned by priests or had coronation ceremonies in churches. Sir Gawain gives us an accurate picture of the effect of Christendom on literature and folklore in Europe. The Church is always in the background of everything that is done. Masses are said every day, more than that in the castle Gawain stays at over Christmas. Lords often have their own private priests and chapels to have mass said in. Gawain visits the chapel often, as do most other characters in the story. Holy days and portions of the ecclesiastical calendar, like Michaelmas and All Hallows Day, are an essential part of how the passing of time is told in the story. We may object that masses are said but we must remember that Roman Catholicism was the only version of Christianity open to England, France and most of Western Europe at that time. The influence of Christianity in creating a Christian state, or Christendom, is monumental and this story exhibits it front and center in a very unapologetic way.

Finally we will notice that Sir Gawain takes a particular view of masculinity and femininity. The lord and his band go out hunting all day while the ladies remain at home and do feminine tasks. This may strike us as sexist or chauvinistic in our modern culture. Before we write Sir Gawain off, we should consider whether our notions are wrong. Medieval civilization attached some very definite roles to men and women that we have discarded for some poor reasons. Nonetheless, we do not have to accept the roles attached to the sexes in this story simply because they are medieval. As always, our standard should be Scripture and its teaching on the subject. We will find, for instance, that the picture of women as constantly trying to woo or be wooed by a knight, even if they are married, is a very unbiblical role.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a work of lasting beauty and creativity. It is short and fun to read. Enjoy!