Gawain and Bertilak's 'Forbidden Friendship': The Masculine Subtext in 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'

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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