Cold and Green in Gawain and the Green Knight - Essay Example

In good time, Gawain travels far across the land in the middle of winter, until he finally finds a castle near to his rendezvous with the knight. The Lord of the castle makes a deal with Gawain: the knight will keep his Lady company during the day, and when her husband returns, the Lord will swap his hunting catches with whatever the Lady gives to Gawain. This goes well on the first two days, but on the third, the Lady hands him a girdle that will prevent Gawain from being harmed during the return blow. Gawain is tempted into keeping the girdle when he should have handed it over, and when the Green Knight comes to give the blows, makes two feints with the ax, and then strikes Gawain with the blunt end of the ax.

The poem itself contains a number of symbolic sequences, the most commonly noted being the number three (three nights at the castle, three kisses, and three swings with the ax). The beheading game itself is part of an older tradition that celebrates the symbolic killing of the Holly King by the Oak King, and the Holly King’s return of the favor with the next season. Indeed, although this is an outwardly Christian allegory, there are plenty of references to pagan and nature religions as well.

Many commentators have associated the Green Knight with one element of nature worship, the Green Man. Traditionally, this figure is a ‘wild man’ deity, closely tied to nature and the changing seasons. The Green Man represents all that is wild and awesome in nature. The Green Knight clearly symbolizes this element when he gatecrashes the King’s Christmas party to lay down his challenge:

          The butterflies and birds embroidered thereon

          In the green of the gayest, with many a gold thread…

          For much did they marvel at what it might mean

          That a horseman and a horse should have such a hue

          Grow green as the grass, and greener, it seemed

          Then green fused on gold more glorious by far.

                                       (Abrams, page 237-239)

However, as well as nature, ancient texts associated green with death and magic, two other unpredictable forces which the medieval audience would be familiar with. The Green Knight’s association with Morgan Le Fay emphasizes his connection with magic, as does his appearances during the Christmas period:

          During the twelve days of Yule the forces of death and chaos

          Were unleashed upon the earth….We see him…as the force

          Of both, life and death intrude into the human world.

                                                 (Rowan 1995)

In this interpretation, the beheading contest is a test of Gawain’s courage and mettle, a knightly adventure that ends with Gawain’s symbolic death and rebirth – a ritual with meanings in European societies far into the Christian period.

Green is mentioned more than fifty times in the poem and is the most frequent color used by the poet. The Green of the Green Knight would bring to mind all of these issues to medieval listeners and his role as a tester of Gawain in order to initiate him into the mysteries of life and death. Gawain returns to Arthur’s court wearing a green sash, emphasizing that he has passed the test and become a member of the Green Knight’s court.

In this interpretation, the meaning of Gawain’s journey through the winter wastelands is clearly associated with the test. If the Green Knight is the lord of Life and Death, then the wasteland is the symbol of Gawain’s moving from the reality of Arthur’s court into the Otherworld – the land of faeries and supernatural. Cold represents death – everything is barren, the land is devoid of warmth like a corpse:

          And if the wars were unwelcome, the winter was worse,

          When the cold clear rains rushed from the clouds…

          Near slain by the sleet he sleeps in his irons.

                                                           (Norton. 249)

The other world is a place of removal from the comfort and security, and can be seen as the foreground to the entry into Chapel Perilous, the fearsome place where, as a modern commentator has noted, ‘Everything you fear is waiting with slavering jaws in Chapel Perilous’ (Cosmic Trigger) – a place of individual recreation and development. The cold and wintry seasons which Gawain passes through are the necessary slumber that put him in the right frame of mind to enter the Green Chapel where he must face death.