Gawain and Bertilak's 'Forbidden Friendship': The Masculine Subtext in 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'
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GAWAIN AND BERTILAK'S "FORBIDDEN FRIENDSHIP":
THE MASCULINE SUBTEXT IN SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT
The idea of "forbidden friendship" between men in
medieval and Renaissance literature has apparently been
haunting the minds of diverse critics for the last few
decades. The emergence and subsequent rapid development
of gay and lesbian studies, transformed into queer
studies in the 1980s, led to investigation of also pre-
modern texts from the perspective of non-normative
orientations and non-heterosexual desires. In his study
of Neo-Latin poems often read from those critical
perspectives Piotr Urbański, however, advises the readers
to refrain from mechanical application of the theoretical
tools any time a hypothesis about their homoerotic
background could be formulated. He firmly states that
determining the traces of hypothetic homoeroticism or
their lack in that poetry is insignificant (Urbański,
2001: 554-6). In the early Middle Ages all friendships
were deemed condemnable from Christian point of view, he
claims citing St Augustine, since, like other close
relations between humans, they supposedly isolated an
individual from the concerns of the spirit and impeded
perfecting one's piety (Urbański, 2001: 551). According
to Urbański we cannot determine whether the friendship
1
described in a literary text was understood in the
Aristotelian and Ciceronian mode (hence conceived as non-
erotic) or if it was rather Plato's amalgam of spiritual
affinity and erotic fascination (Urbański, 2001: 556).
Furthermore, in the Neo-Latin poems the imitation antiquorum
visible on all levels, not only that of the structure,
renders passing judgment on the nature of the (real and
imaginary) relationships presented there impossible
(Urbański, 2001: 557).
A similar debate on male friendship is discernible
in the criticism referring to the relation of the two
titular characters in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (since,
after all, Bertilak the lord of Hautdesert and the Green
Knight turn out to be one and the same character). The
multi-vocal quality of studies discussing their mutual
relations well reflects the overall reconsideration of
gender categories that occurred at the time when the text
was created, in the fourteenth century.1 Forbidden from
the orthodox Christian point of view, the friendship
between Gawain and Bertilak might also have been tinged
with that gender instability; consequently, the
potentiality was exploited in some late twentieth-century
interpretations of the poem. The possibility of erotic
attraction between the two characters was emphasized by1 Felicity Riddy writes the following about that transformation reflected in literature: “in the latter part of the fourteenth century there seems to have been a crisis of gender categories . . . The boundaries between masculine and feminine wereparticularly unstable and the meanings assigned to them particularlyproblematic’’ (Riddy, 1995: 220).
2
Sheila Fisher in Taken Men, Token Women in Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight (Fisher, 1989: 71-106),2 while queer desire was
diagnosed as subject to negation by Carolyn Dinshaw
(Dinshaw, 1994: 205-26). David L. Boyd took the thesis
about the unlikelihood of any erotic bonding between the
male characters even further by stating that same-sex
relationships were presented as impossible in the light
of the poem's ideology (Boyd, 1998: 77-113). The idea
does not appear as far-fetched as some might think, since
even such "conservative" readings of the text as Derek
Brewer's "The Interpretation of Dream, Folktale and
Romance with Special Reference to Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight" note the unusual nature of Bertilak's relations
with his wife, thus emphasizing the possibility of
Bertilak not being as devoted to his wife as he could
have been. To quote Brewer,
Taken naturalistically [Bertilak's] relationshipwith his beautiful wife must at least seem odd.What, in a naturalistic setting, should be madeof the apparently real possibility that Gawainshould be seduced? (Brewer, 1976: 570)
Brewer subsequently abandons the considerations on the
plot as naturalistic in favour of the psychoanalytical
perspective, suggesting folktale criticism as yet another
2 Fisher's study includes the following fantasy about another narrative turn: "If the bedroom scenes suggest the time-honoured butever-interesting equation of (hetero)sex and death, they also raise and elide a more interesting possibility: what if Gawain had slept with the Lady and honored the terms of his contract with Bertilak? What if he had repaid Gawain in kind?" (Fisher, 1989: 86).
3
option, but his question remains open. If indeed realism
blends there with fantasy resulting from the idea of
romance as a manifestation of the marvelous, as Ad Putter
insists, what then should be made of seduction by the
wife that the husband is fully aware of? (Putter, 1996:
45-71). Still, even if we abandon the suggestion of
homoeroticism in the narrative, the very nature of the
relation between Gawain and Bertilak needs further
investigation. The question should be asked whether their
friendship, regardless of the fact if it was erotically-
grounded or not, was friendship at all; perhaps they
simply put into practice the principles of courtesy that
were inalienably included in the rules of conduct usually
observed by aristocracy?
It would be a truism to discuss at length the thesis
that the Camelot that Gawain leaves in search of the
Green Knight is a visible site of perfection, chivalric
and other. The superlative forms obsessively appear in
the primary description of Arthur's court, so often
quoted in the criticism perhaps also due to its fairy-
tale quality which leads to the impression of the romance
marvelous suffusing the setting:3
With all the wele of the worlde thay woned ther
samen,
3 For a discussion of the romance as a genre revolving around the idea of the marvelous see L. O. Aranye Fradenburg's study (Fradenburg, 2004: 1-27).
4
The most kyd knyghtes under Krystes
selven,
And the lovelokkest ladies that ever lif haden,
And he the comlokest kyng that the court
haldes.
(50-3)
[With all the bliss of this world they abode
together,
the knights most renowned after the name of
Christ,
and the ladies most lovely that ever life
enjoyed,
and he, king most courteous, who that court
possessed] 4
The idyll occurs to be entirely artificial, as the
fatherly Arthur proves unable to protect the members of
his entourage from the supernatural peril that
materializes in the Green Knight, decapitated by the
king's nephew Gawain only to demand the same in return in
4 All the quotations from the original will be taken from J. J. Anderson and A. C. Cawley's edition (Cawley, Anderson, 1976), while the subsequent translation will be by J. R. R. Tolkien (Tolkien, 1990).
5
a year's time. The initial bliss metamorphoses into a
nightmarish perspective, hilarious as it simultaneously
is due to the surrealistic image of a green warrior whose
head, separated from the body, still speaks to the
awestruck observers. Gawain has to set off for another
quest, this time to protect the good name of Arthur, and,
perhaps even more urgently, his own, so far renowned for
valiancy and honour.
Strangely enough, the place he arrives at,
Hautdesert, is not inhabited by the ladies whose role is
purely decorative, as it was the case at Camelot; at this
point we could cite Geraldine's Heng observation on
Guenevere, who in the first scenes of the poem "evok[ed]
the puissance and grandeur of the Arthurian court, by
being set in state on her dais, a royal jewel and other
gorgeous treasures" (Heng, 1991: 501). In the castle
remote from Camelot Gawain is almost literally hunted by
sexually assertive Bertilak's Lady, before the encounter
with him an admirer of his fame and now a figure
determined to lure him to practicing courtly love ideals,
customarily expressed in language only, in his own
6
bedroom. As Heng once noticed, what is at stake at
Hautdesert are "the sedimentations of female desire: a
desire always plural in nature, accommodated in a tracery
of spaces in the poem coded as feminine, and signaling
its presence through a medley of practices, figures, and
signs" (Heng, 1991: 501).The female desire is focal here
instead of the male one, in other Arthurian texts too
often satisfied through rape.5 Feminine desire in SGGK is
aimed at diverse objects, to mention only speech, which,
according to Heng, plays a crucial role in the
seduction/temptation of Gawain (Heng, 1992: 104).6 Also
the relationship between Gawain and Bertilak hinges on
linguistic premises: what stands at its heart is their
mutual contract, while the courtesy of the language used
in the interchanges between the two leads to confusion
about the nature of their relations that we discuss here.
What we will look into is that part of the narrative
5 Rape as a topic in medieval literature has a number of functions and its complexity deserved separate studies, to mention only the collection Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature (Rose, Robertson, 2001).6 Further considerations on the linguistic aspect of seduction scenes in the light of feminist theories can be found in Sharon M. Rowley's article (Rowley, 2003: 158-77).
7
which might be termed, paraphrasing Heng's catchy phrase
from the study devoted to Malory's Le Morte Darthur, "the
masculine subtext" of the poem: the relationship of the
two aristocrats rather than Gawain's defense against the
Lady's advances or his fear of the subsequent encounter
with the Green Knight (Heng, 1990: 283-300). The term
"subtext" is arguably more pertinent to the subtle
(linguistic and other) play that the two men are involved
in than the hypothesis that what happens between them is
central to the plot.
The issue of the masculine subtext is related to the
case of a (broken) chivalric contract, a topic frequent
in Arthurian romance and also often discussed in the
criticism. The agreement here involves exchange of
everything that is gained during the whole day, at the
time when the two, the host and the guest, act
independently from each other. In the case of Gawain the
gain is one kiss on the first day, two on the second, and
three on the third. Even though when the two men meet
first their exchange of embraces is merely ritualistic,
their further relations acquire a certain warmth. The
8
description below only reflects the conventionality of
gestures that Gawain and Bertilak initially use in
relation to each other:
He sayde: ‘Ye ar welcum to wone as yow lykes.
That here is, al is yowre awen, to have at yowre
wylle
and welde.’
‘Graunt mercy,’ quoth Gawayn,
‘Ther Kryst hit yow foryelde.’
As frekes that semed fayn
Ayther other in armes con felde.
(835-41)
[He said: ‘You are welcome at your wish to dwell
here.
What is here, all is your own, to have in your
rule
and sway.’
‘Gramercy!’ quoth Gawain,
‘May Christ you this repay!’
As men that to meet were fain
they both embraced that day.]
The ritualistic gestures accompany an utterance which
confirms the diagnosis of unconventional relations
9
between Bertilak and his Lady: if the lord of the castle
offers everything that is there to the guest, there
cannot be any doubt as to what position in the agreement
the wife has. She is also at Gawain's disposal; therefore
he is apparently granted authority over her by her
husband, or so it initially seems before the roles are
reverted.
Bertilak's virility is impressive, which to a
certain extent stands in contrast to the kissing
interludes that follow, regardless of the fact whether
they are a part of the game or not:
Gawayn glyght on the gome that godly hym
gret,
And thught hit a bolde burne that the burgh
aghte,
A hoge hathel for the nones, and of hyghe eldee;
Brode, bryght was his berde, and al bever-hwed,
Sturne, stif on the stryththe on stalworth
schonkes,
Felle face as the fyre, and fre of hys speche;
As wel hym semed for sothe, as the segge thught,
To lede a lortschyp in lee of leudes ful gode.
(842-9)
[Gawain gazed at the good man who had greeted him
10
kindly,
and he thought bold and big was the baron of the
castle,
very large and long, and his life at the prime:
broad and bright was his beard, and all beaver-
hued,
stern, strong in his stance upon stalwart legs,
his face fell as fire, and frank in his speech;
and well it suited him, in sooth, as it seemed to
the knight,
a lordship to lead untroubled over lieges trusty]
Bertilak appears to be a man of some allure, whose body
well matches his valiant nature and demonstrates his
physical strength and open character. An ideal of mature
masculinity, his portrayal initially differs from that of
his delicate wife, compared by the anonymous poet to
Guenevere, who at Camelot functioned as the model of
feminine perfection due to her outward and inner virtues.
To quote the description of the Lady, presented here as
superior even to Guenevere:
Ho was the fayrest in felle, of flesche and
of lyre,
And of compas and colour and costes, of alle
other,
11
And wener then Wenore, as to wyye thoght.
(943-5)
[She was fairer in face, in her flesh and
her skin,
her proportions, her complexion, and her
port than all
others,
and more lovely than Guenevere to Gawain she
looked.]
Appearances are highly misleading, since Bertilak's Lady
occurs to be almost predatory in her sexual advances and
too willing to abuse the metaphor of binding in her
discourse referring to what will happen to Gawain at
Hautdesert. The language of courtesy quickly
metamorphoses into the one suggesting another hunt, the
one implied by the other meaning of the term "venery"
that Chaucer used in order to characterize the Monk in
the General Prologue. The Monk was “an outridere, that
lovede venerie,/ A manly man” (I: 166-7) (Benson, 1987),
hence a lover not only of hunting for animals, but also
for ladies, as the pun suggests. As for the interest that
Bertilak's Lady shows in "venery", she thus declares her
intentions:
12
‘Now ar ye tan astyt, bot true uus may schape,
I schal bynde yow in your bedde, that be ye
trayst.’
(1210-11)
[‘Now quickly you are caught! If we come not to
terms,
I shall bind you in your bed, you may be
assured’]
There is no possibility of any true amicability in the
game of domination and forcible subjection that the Lady
plays with Gawain. Still, his relations with Bertilak
differ in that respect, even though the exact moment when
mere courtesy transforms into friendship cannot be
straightforwardly indicated. The first kiss, called
courteous by the narrator, unexpectedly makes Bertilak
similar to his Lady due to the fairness of his skin that
Gawain notices:
‘This is soth,’ quoth the segge, ‘I say yow
that ilke:
That I haf worthyly wonnen this wones wythinne,
Iwysse with as god wylle hit worthes to youres.’
He hasppes his fayre hals his armes wythinne,
And kysses hym as comlyly as he couthe
awyse.
13
(1385-9)
[‘That is true,’ he returned, ‘and I tell you the
same:
what of worth within these walls I have won also
with as good will, I warrant, ‘tis awarded to
you.’
His fair neck he enfolded then fast in his arms,
and kissed him with all the kindness his courtesy
knew.]
Even though it is partly a clichéd part of chivalric
characterization, the remark about fairness of Bertilak's
complexion testifies either to his attractive physicality
and the observation is objective at this point, or to the
onset of affection between the two (or at least some
warmth arising in Gawain's treatment of his host). The
emotions are mutual: the time spent together is replete
with (rather heavy) drinking, merrymaking, and displaying
friendship rather than merely customary respect showed to
the newcomer, especially the one as famous for his
courtesy and valour as Gawain. As for the kissing, what
belonged to the domain of the "public kissing",
traditionally practiced in ceremonies of homage and of
greeting, rather rapidly transforms into what should be
termed "private kissing", the one done by lovers and by
friends (Burrow, 2004: 50-1). Using the terminology
14
coined by Alfred of Rievaulx, a twelfth-century English
monk, the kiss "as a sign of Catholic unity", on
receiving a guest, becomes the kiss "as a sign of love",
not only between lovers, but also friends (Burrow, 2004:
50).
Citing Burrow, we have to remember that in medieval
culture kisses are acts of communication and, despite
their being "actions of a more formal or ceremonious
kind", they "also carry messages" (Burrow, 2004: 4). What
the anonymous author of SGGK indicates is the gradual
abandonment of formal kissing between Bertilak and
Gawain. It gradually becomes enthusiastic kissing on the
third day, even though the enthusiasm clumsily masks the
lack of honesty, resulting from Gawain's decision to keep
the Lady's girdle as a talisman against sudden death:
Then acoles he the knyght and kysses hym thryes,
As saverly and sadly as he hem sette couthe.
(1936-7)
[He clasps then the knight and kisses him thrice,
as long and deliciously as he could lay them upon
him.]
Insincerity ruins any friendship, the narrator seems to
suggest in that scene, where paradoxically the warmth
displayed by Gawain is the greatest. The question of his
15
instrumental treatment of Bertilak could be considered.
Still, here he rather displays his appreciation of
Bertilak's hospitality and amicability, but without
proper observance of the agreement they decided upon.
Nevertheless, it is obvious that friendship requires not
only sincerity, but also observance of all that has been
settled among friends. Here Gawain visibly does not come
up to that ideal and thus ruins what has already been
created between the two of them.
The ruin is, however, not ultimate. In a den called
the Green Chapel the Green Knight, exposing his double
identity, of the Knight and Bertilak, reveals his agency
(with the words "I wroght hit myselven") [I worked that
myself] (2361). He saves Gawain's life by merely nicking
his neck instead of beheading him in return for what
happened to him a year before. Again the boundaries
between courtesy and friendship seem blurred: does
Bertilak/ the Green Knight save Gawain's life because he
magnanimously demonstrates his Christian forgiveness or
does he do that in remembrance of all the time they
merrily spent together? He reproaches Gawain with the
words "lewté yow wonted" [of loyalty [you] came short]
(2366), but the reproach again nears a benign critical
remark on the part of a friend rather than amounts to the
ruthless judgment by the enemy intent on destroying
Gawain's reputation. If the Gawain-Poet asked the same
question as Chaucer in The Franklin's Tale, "which was the
16
mooste fre" (V: 1622) (Benson, 1987), "Bertilak" would
surely be the appropriate reply. Yet, again the subplot
of friendship between men has to give place to
considerations on the ultimate agency in the intrigue:
‘That schal I telle the trwly,’ quoth that other
thenne,
‘Bertilak de Hautdesert I hat in this londe.
Thurgh myght of Morgne la Faye, that in my hous
lenges,
And koyntyse of clergye, bi craftes wel lerned.
The maystrés of Merlyn, mony ho has taken,
For ho has dalt drwry ful dere sumtyme
With that conable klerk, that knows alle your
knyghtes
at hame.
Morgne the goddess
Therefore hit is hir name;
Weldes non so hyghe hawtesse
That ho ne con make ful tame.
(2444-55)
[That I will tell you truly,’ then returned the
other.
‘Bertilak de Hautdesert hereabouts I am called,
(who thus have been enchanted and changed in my
hue)
17
by the might of Morgan le Fay that in my mansion
dwelleth,
and by cunning of lore and crafts well mastered;
for deeply in dear love she dealt on a time
with that accomplished clerk, as at Camelot runs
the fame;
and Morgan the Goddess
is therefore now her name.
None power and pride possess
To high for her to tame.]
Women emerge as ultimate agents in the narrative, hence
theirs is not a subplot at all, but the dominating vein
that does not need any "subtextual reading". Unusual as
the ending is, it well demonstrates what Heide Estes
summarize as "various challenges to 'normal' sexual
identity" that occur at Haudesert (Estes, 2000: 66). Ad
Putter in turn insists that the ending exposes the true
heart of the narrative. He writes about
the ending of the hero's ordeal at the GreenChapel, which is deceptively presented as theclimax of the story, but which, in the end,unexpectedly reduces itself to a statementabout an earlier episode in the poem. (Putter,1996: 38)
The Green Knight teaches Gawain a painful lesson, as
friends have to teach us at times: to evoke Putter's
18
words again, "Bertilak's 'news' merely restores to
Gawain's consciousness what deep inside he always knew
himself: the girdle should have been returned to the
host" (Putter, 1996: 98). The pleasant dimension of
friendship as it was practiced at Hautdesert
metamorphoses into a relationship perhaps more
difficult, but undoubtedly more valuable. Gawain
undergoes, at least partly, a spiritual regeneration,
as if to question the alleged uselessness of friendship
for the spirit that St Augustine once preached in his
Confessions. Friendship should not be forbidden, rings one
of the messages of the poem, since it may lead to
overcoming one's flaws. The poem in its open-ended
structure that A.C. Spearing discussed is also open to
the possibility of Gawain living his life better in the
future and ultimately, like in Malory's Morte, becoming
the paragon of chivalry (Spearing, 1987: 201).
I would ultimately argue that what is born between
Bertilak and Gawain is friendship, without necessarily
treating it as a homoerotic relationship. The
association between the two men transcends mere
courtesy rules and cannot be read as "forbidden
friendship" from Confessions, since it is more conducive
to spiritual perfection in the case of Gawain than it
would have been otherwise, if he indeed had been
confronted with a real adversary and not Bertilak, a
teacher of humility and modesty. Despite the attempts
19
of some critics involved in queer studies, the poem
cannot be straightforwardly read as narrating same-sex
erotic fascination rather than difficult friendship
that changes lives.7.
Obviously it remains a matter of some controversy if
Gawain learned his lesson well. Andrzej Wicher rightly
calls him "slightly unbalanced and childish" in his
avoidance to become "reconciled to his imperfect
nature" (Wicher, 2006: 91). That is another lesson,
taught directly by the poet this time: friendship has
to be accepted with all its wealth and not regarded
only as an element of the life lived pleasurably.
Genuine friendship has been shown to Gawain with all
its complexity, regardless of whether he is willing to
accept the gift or not.
Summary
In the article it is argued that, contrary to what suchcritics as Sheila Fisher, Carolyn Dinshaw, and David L.Boyd claimed, the relation between the titular charactersof Sir Gawain and the Green Knight does not necessarily have tobe "forbidden friendship" in the sense of beinghomoerotic. St Augustine's formula of friendshipforbidden due to distracting a man from the concerns ofthe spirit is also evoked. The question whether Gawain
7 I am not arguing, however, that such readings are altogether inadequate; I would not claim, either, that no medieval texts involve homoerotic desire; an example of the text that focuses on the same-sex devotion is the Old French Prose Lancelot.
20
and Bertilak were friends at all is investigated, ascourtesy rules are initially at play between the twocharacters. The kisses that they exchange metamorphosefrom the "public" to the "private" ones. Bertilakultimately teaches Gawain a lesson, despite the latter'sinability to comprehend it fully. Consequently, the poemdoes involve a subtext about friendship between theknights.
Streszczenie
Autorka artykułu sugeruje że, przeciwnie niż twierdząSheila Fisher, Carolyn Dinshaw i David L. Boyd, relacjapomiędzy tytułowymi bohaterami poematu Sir Gawen i ZielonyRycerz nie musi być postrzegana jako przyjaźń ,,zakazana",czyli o podłożu homoerotycznym. Przywołana jest takżeidea ,,zakazanej przyjaźni" w Wyznaniach świętegoAugustyna, zakazanej, jako że przyjaźń ma oddalać odspraw ducha. W niniejszym studium rozważa się, czy Gaweni Bertilak byli w ogóle przyjaciółmi, gdyż początkowoprzestrzegali jedynie reguł związanych z dwornymzachowaniem. Pocałunki, jakie bohaterowie wymieniająmiędzy sobą, są najpierw ,,publiczne", a dopiero potemzmieniają się w ,,prywatne". Pod koniec Bertilak udzielaGawenowi lekcji, pomimo tego, że Gawen nie jest w staniejej w pełni zrozumieć. W rezultacie można stwierdzić, żepoemat rzeczywiście zawiera mniej wyeksponowany wątekprzyjaźni pomiędzy rycerzami.
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