Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Top Gun Romance?
Unable to get the Geraldine Heng article to load, I frivolously summon the specter of queer theory anachronism: Is Gawain gay? The answer being “no,” what does his rejection of “courteous” adultery suggest about the English morality on display here?
From my Tolkien translation:
The lady in lovely guise came laughing sweetly, / bent down o’er his dear face, and deftly kissed him. (70)
The knight said: ‘By Saint John,’Â / and softly gave a smile, / ‘Nay! lover have I none, / and none will have meanwhile.’ (71)
Sighing she sank down, and sweetly she kissed him; (72)
She then the knight so good / a third time kissed that day. (74)
He clasps then the knight and kisses him thrice, / as long and deliciously as he could lay them upon him. (77)
For it is my weed that thou wearest, that very woven girdle: / my own wife it awarded thee, I wot well indeed. / Now I am aware of thy kisses, and thy courteous ways, / and of thy wooing by my wife: I worked that myself! (95)
sean wrote:
Heng should be available now. The web file sharing system appears to be back up.
Posted 15 Oct 2007 at 9:45 am ¶
BraveSirRobin wrote:
Much like I occasionally gnaw on my own hand, I’ll comment on my own post: I like Heng’s theory of the work as a kind of labyrinth of concentric gender signs, the outermost “girdle” consistently revealed as feminine, and if I understand it correctly, it adequately explains a suggestion by the Green Knight that I find deliciously ironic:
She put this magic upon me to deprive you of your wits, / in hope Guinevere to hurt, that she in horror might die / aghast at that glamoury that gruesomely spake / with its head in its hand before the high table. (iv 99)
That is, not only is the Green Knight a masculine puppet of Morgan, but the very action of Gawain’s test seems like the tangential fallout of a female-on-female death plot resembling a cheap “Boo!” scare.
On the other hand, this scare fails, with Arthur immediately comforting Guinevere, “Dear Lady, today be not downcast at all!” Perhaps Morgan’s ultimate feminine intention is foiled by masculine composure after all…
Posted 15 Oct 2007 at 5:54 pm ¶
sean wrote:
Following on BSR’s suggestion, I’ll just offer some bullet points on reading this thru “queer theory” – there is significant precedent for such readings in works by Carolyn Dinshaw and David Lorezo Boyd. I also think that QT is not necessarily an anachronism, as there is ample evidence for same sex desire and eroticism in the middle ages and earlier (penitential manuals in particular are a rich resources for this, as they go into great detail about the list of “prohibited” sodomitical acts).
Anyway, here’s my oversimplified list of the “evidence”:
Male Homoerotic or a Female (heterosexual) gaze in SGGK?
I. The opening objectifying description of the GK’s body: emphasis on his “thick thighs” “loins” and beautiful hair (though I personally don’t know what’s so darn attractive about hair!)
II. The delight in Gawain’s body as he is armed for his journey
III. Gawain’s “inner” femininity: the turtledove and periwinkle motif inside his helmet
and the VM on the inside of his shield.
IV. Gawain as object of the female gaze, and female desire, which he deflects, contrary to his womanizing reputation. He is the object of a feminine hunt, while Bertilak is out engaged in a “realistic” instantiation of masculinity – hunting (as opposed to the artificiality of romance with its emphasis on jousts, monsters, ogres).
V. The exchange of winnings: the kisses he gives Bertilak are of course socially acceptable gestures of loyalty and affection between men. But the exchange motif raises the possibility of male-male sex – after all, if Gawain had been seduced by the wife, what would Gawain have had to do in return?
VI. Beheading as a kind of symbolic emasculation. The “mark” on his neck as being a kind of wounded or compromised masculinity (or a symbolic castration?). The girdle and its significations causes Gawain to have a kind of meltdown. His masculinity questioned, his idealization of the feminine (via the VM) cannot remain intact?
VII. SGGK is a kind of metacommentary on “romance” as a genre: it dilates the mushy feminine stuff, and grounds masculinity in “real” things like hunting and armaments while basically skipping over the standard masculine signifiers of romance: adventure, dragons, monsters.
Posted 17 Oct 2007 at 2:10 pm ¶