When does Sin deserve Blame?

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight proves to be quite an elaborate ploy designed to establish the purity and chivalric standard knights are supposed to uphold.  The religious context the story thrives on is crucial to recognize the implications of Sir Gawain’s apparent success and failure on the social and cultural level. 

            We begin with Christmas celebrations with all of Arthur’s court partaking in a great feast.  We must take note that the figure of Christ is at the forefront of everyone’s mind.  When the Green Knight makes his strange entrance in his mystifying verdant appearance, he presents a seemingly fair challenge to any knight who would accept.  As all are dumbfounded by the Green Knight’s appearance, Arthur is the only one with the mental wherewithal to take up the Green Knight’s offer.  So we have Arthur, the fated King, accepting what one of his many noble Knights should have the courage to undertake.  As a result, it is Sir Gawain who claims, “I am the weakest of your warriors and feeblest of wit;… / Such a foolish affair is unfitting for a king, / so, being first to come forward, it should fall to me” (354, 358-9).  Sir Gawain explicitly professes his own weak and untested status as a Knight of the Round Table.  I think this harkens to the weakness, the purity and innocence of a child – a child of God.  Sir Gawain takes it upon himself to play the game of the Green Knight and receive a single strike in one year’s time.  He will in a sense “sacrifice” himself for the sake of the others, namely the king.  Sir Gawain is even described in direct relation to Christ as he was flawless in “his faith [which] was founded in the five wounds / Christ received on the cross” and “the fortitude he found in the five joys / which Mary had conceived in her son, our Savior” (642-3, 646-7).  The character of Sir Gawain firmly echoes the ideals of Christ’s image. 

            Once Sir Gawain sets upon his journey to find the Green Knight’s abode, he comes across a castle where he takes refuge for a time.  It is here where his worthiness as a Knight is tested by the physical and verbal advancements by the Lord’s wife.  Three times she attempts to have Sir Gawain commit adultery but twice he only allows a kiss and on the third time, he accepts the gift of her green girdle in secrecy (1857-1860).  However, he had agreed to trade with the Lord anything he “won” in the castle with anything the Lord eon outside.  As such, Sir Gawain commits this singular act of unfaithfulness and hides the fact he won the girdle.

            Of course, the Lord turns out to be the Green Knight all along with the help of Morgan Le Fay and he recognizes the girdle Sir Gawain adorns.  So he strike at Sir Gawain thrice, twice missing and the third only grazing his neck.  The Green Knight reveals the trickery Sir Gawain had succumbed to, undergoing the trials of sexual advances by his wife in the castle.  Sir Gawain is revealed to have faltered once when he accepted the girdle prompting our hero to recall many biblical figures that had been wrecked and ruined by the lies of women (2416-2428).  So, it is ultimately established that women are indeed the source of all of man’s faults.  We have Morgan Le Fay coordinating the entire scheme with her magic and the Lord’s wife tempting Gawain with adultery and sin. 

            However, once Gawain returns to Arthur’s court, he is not met with chastisement.  Instead, the whole court rejoices in his safe return.  When they see Sir Gawain’s scar and girdle, marking his sin, the court just laughs and opts to wear a similar green belt (2516).  There appears to be a complete reversal of the symbols Gawain wears.  The court recognizes but brushes aside the unfaithfulness Gawain commits.  It is difficult to discern where this lighthearted response arises from.  Gawain failed to live up to his Christly standard of chivalry, so why do they celebrate so profusely?  Do they perhaps recognize the foolishness of solely blaming women for their own misdeeds?  Or perhaps, they all wear the girdle to symbolize they are all guilty of sin?   What does this final act reveal about the chivalric standard to which Knights are supposed to strive?  It is certainly a strange ending to a strange tale.