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Girdle or Garter? A Knight in Literature By Lilly Porter
There they stand. A line of knights poised on the annals of history, armor sparkling, their horses shifting impatiently as they await the next quest filled with honorable causes and chivalrous deeds. One of the knights—Sir Gawain—bears an emerald girdle symbolizing rot at the Round Table’s core. This rot is embedded in the stanzas of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a medieval romance penned in Middle English by an unknown author during the late 1300s. (The Broadview Anthology of British Literature) Before the poem’s inception, the Black Death struck. The disease was devastating, killing “probably between one-third and one-half of the population” of England, and becoming the catalyst of social upheaval in the fourteenth century. (A W Sloan) Despite the challenges facing them, knights survived the deluge of change: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight utilizes Arthurian cannon to examine how the knights fit into this shifting, cultural landscape. Through contemporary connections, the poem suggests that as long as knights are careful not to stray too far from their traditional values, knighthood will endure. Sir Gawain undergoes many trials in this work and often responds dishonorably. His choices signal that even a knight of the Round Table whose “high fame and honour [are] told everywhere” is not immune to the corruption. (Kline stanza 60) In fact, Gawain repeatedly reacts out of fear of the consequences of cutting off the Green Knight’s head rather than honor. For example, he opts to take the green girdle and keep it secret, prizing his own life over the rules of the exchange game, and thus acting as a poor guest. Similarly, Gawain flinches away from the first two blows from the Green Knight. In this moment, the Green Knight states, “for now you flinch for fear ere you feel harm. Such cowardice of that knight have I never heard.” (Kline stanza 91) In both of these instances, Gawain’s fear drives him, rather than knightly chivalry or honor. It is not until the end of the work that he accepts the girdle and the flaws in his character that it represents. Gawain states, in relation to the girdle, that “this is the hurt and the harm that I have learned through the cowardice and covetousness I caught there. This is the token of the untruth I am taken in, and I must needs it wear while I may last.” (Kline stanza 101) This shows that he has come to understand the fault in his earlier actions, intending to regain his knightly honor by taking responsibility for his mistakes. To understand the meaning of this character arc, one must step outside of the Arthurian literary canon into the Gawain Poet’s world. The poem of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has a similar formula to “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. This work tells of an Arthurian knight who is tried for rape by the Arthurian court. Guinevere pardons him under the condition that he can discover over the course of a year what women most want. (Chaucer) The knight makes a deal for this information resulting in him being pardoned and forced into marriage. (Chaucer) As a piece of societal criticism, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” uses the knight’s sudden reformation at the end of the work to make commentaries on class, and possibly even the relationship between men and women of the time. Similarly, Gawain’s transformation exposes how deep corruption can run amongst knights, by representing how even one of the best of their number can still allow fear to rule him. Another contemporary of the Gawain-Poet, Anglica Historia by Polydore Vergil outlines a historical narrative with strong ties to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It speaks of the beginning of the Order of the Garter, a group of knights begun by King Edward III and upheld through the modern day. (Vergil XIX) It is said that the order was founded in the name of a garter that fell down around a lady’s ankles during a dance with the king and then was upheld by him as a sign of honor rather than shame. (Vergil XIX) The garter can be connected to the use of the green girdle in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. By utilizing a girdle as a mark of Gawain’s shame, the Gawain-Poet contrasts the use of a clothing item born out of shame as a mark of honor. However, the characters in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight who first describe the girdle as a mark of honor are the other knights in Arthur’s court. These knights completely ignore the dishonorable deeds the girdle represents, laughing at his mistakes and stating “that each born to the brotherhood, a baldric should have, a belt, oblique him about, of a bright green.” (Kline stanza 101) The brotherhood shown surrounding this garment is very similar to that of the Order of the Knights of Garter, thus implying a connection between Arthur’s dismissal of Gawain’s dishonorable deeds and similar corruption in contemporary orders like that of the Order of the Garter. The entire social criticism of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is best summed up by the use of the Order of the Garter’s motto—“Shame on him who thinks evil”—as its closing line. (Vergil XIX) This line reflects the mistakes Gawain has made over the course of the work, suggesting that modern knights must be careful not to let fear lead them into the same trap of dishonor that led to the fall of Arthur’s round table. The work as a whole suggests that if modern knights—like the Order of the Garter—face their flaws and uphold the chivalric code, they will remain both relevant and true to their ancient values. The use of a knight who was—as a member of the Round Table—meant to uphold chivalry and honor, allows for poignant criticism of the surrounding society, similarly to “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale.” Additionally, the use of a girdle to summarize both Gawain’s failings and ultimate attempt to return to the path of honor, weaves together contemporary orders and Arthurian tales. By telling this story during the late 1300s, the Gawain-Poet reminds contemporary knights to remember what their true values are.
This New Historicist analysis of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight relies on contemporary texts such as the Anglica Historia by Polydore Vergil and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to structure its arguments. This falls strictly in line with the themes of New Historicist literary theory. For example, the connection between the girdle and the garter in the third paragraph represents New Historicism. It utilizes a contemporary account of a contemporary occurrence to add context to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and clarify the themes of the piece through a historical lens. Another example of New Historicist criticism is in the connection between the plot lines in “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale” and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, because this informs the reader as to what types of social criticism being used at the time. This makes it easier to fit the Gawain-Poet’s work into the literary expectations of the period.
For further reading on these topics, I have included a links to the section of Anglica Historia by Polydore Vergil containing information on the Order of the Garter and to Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale.” This is the link to the section of the Anglica Historia by Polydore Vergil concerning King Edward III and the Order of the Garter that is written in English: https://philological.cal.bham.ac.uk/polverg/19eng.html This is the link to “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale:” https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/wife-baths-prologue-and-tale-0
Lilly Porter just finished her freshman year of college at The University of New Mexico, where she studies as a viola performance and English double major. |
Figure 8, Illustration from the original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight manuscript (British Library)
Figure 9, Illustration of Polydore Vergil (Vergil)
Figure 10, Illustration of the Wife of Bath. (Chaucer) |
