A to Z Blogging Challenge 2020: G Is For Guinevere, Gawain and the Green Knight

Today’s Arthurian characters are Guinevere, Gawain and the Green Knight, who appears with Gawain in Sir Gawain And The Green Knight. 

Guinevere, Gwenhwyfar, Guenhumara... or Jenny! That last is what Arthur calls her in The Once And Future King. She appears in so much modern fiction that I will have to be selective, but I will mention it. 

Public domain

She gets one mention in Culhwch And Olwen, where Arthur tells his young cousin he can have anything he asks except... and “Gwenhwyfar, my wife” is on the list. She is Guanhumara in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account(Latin) 

Basically, she is the female in the love trio of Arthur, Guinevere and his best friend, whoever that might be in the individual account, but also carries on with Mordred while Arthur is off on his Roman campaign; he arrives home from his successful war to find that his son has taken his wife and his country! 

There are some theories about a connection with an Irish story, “The Wooing Of Etain.” I can’t see the connection, myself, but I’m not a scholar. Here is a link. https://bardmythologies.com/midir-and-etain/

She gets quite a few portrayals in modern fiction, probably just as well, because the mediaeval Guinevere is not very sympathetically portrayed. She not only betrays her husband - which is pretty much okay with the authors during the era of courtly love - but makes her lover’s life miserable with her jealousy and demands. 

Let’s have a look at some portrayals of this lady. 

My favourite is Parke Godwin’s(Firelord). She is a strong, intelligent woman who comes of a matriarchal tribe and is used to ruling, herself. Arthur forgives her brief  romance with Ancellius(Lancelot) which she has when stressed out by her loss of her child and inability to bear more, and still having to do all the work of Queen(no embroidery here!). What makes him angry is her murder of Morgana, his first wife, who is a decent, gentle woman and whose only crime is giving Arthur a child. (In fact, that murder, along with Arthur having left his mother, is what sets Medraut off). She gets her own novel, Beloved Exile, after Arthur’s death, living among the Saxons as a slave, but learning to see their point of view.

I also liked Bernard Cornwell’s version. She starts off as a poverty stricken Princess who elopes with Arthur from his very engagement party where he is getting betrothed to someone else! She, too, is strong, and her passionate wish is to make her beloved husband King. He isn’t, only a regent for Mordred, his nephew, who really isn’t fit to be king. She even sleeps with Lancelot as part of the process! 

An unusual portrayal is in Arthur, King by Dennis Lee Anderson. In that one, Arthur pursues Mordred into the 20th century, during World War II. Mordred had stolen Excalibur and Merlin’s diary, which goes to the end of the war(he is living backwards, like T.H White’s Merlin). Arthur has three months to get these back. While there, he becomes an Air Force pilot(he has to learn to fly very quickly!)and meets and loves a beautiful doctor called Jenny, who goes back with him. 

Rosemary Sutcliff’s Guenhumara(Sword At Sunset) is another favourite. Artos the Bear, leader of the British forces, fighting the Saxons, is honest when he tells her he is marrying her for the men her father will give him to fight at his side as her dowry. But there is, eventually, love between them, although she never quite forgives him for leaving her to give birth in a village of the Old People, convinced that her own child died early as a result of their spells. 

I’ll leave you to look up these and many others while I continue on to Gawain. 

Gawain, or Gwalchmai, “Hawk of May”) is one of Arthur’s earliest companions, as I have mentioned in an earlier post. He is a bit of a boor in Malory, but other than that he is known as the Knight of the Lady(or Knight of the Goddess in John Matthews’ book of the same title), and is a decent, honourable young man who is courteous to all women, including a Loathly Lady I will be mentioning in my R post. He carries a shield with the pentangle representing the Virgin. When he is tempted by Bertilak’s unnamed wife in Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, he has a hard time resisting her, but tries not to be rude. 

Public domain

Sir Gawain And The Green Knight is  a 14th century poem. It has the motif of the Beheading Game and the exchange of winnings, both of which appear elsewhere, but it’s a sweet story in how its characters are presented. 

So, it’s New Year in Camelot. New Year in the Middle Ages was when gifts were exchanged, not Christmas. The knights and ladies have been partying for days, but Arthur won’t eat dinner till something unusual has happened(another motif, which also appears in a later poem, the Geste Of Robin Hood, and was used in an episode of the 1950s TV series).  

Well, something unusual is  about to happen. A huge knight on his huge horse rides into the hall, carrying an axe. Knight, horse and axe are all green. The knight challenges Arthur and his men to use the axe to strike him a blow and take one in exchange. There is obviously something fishy about this, but Arthur leaps up to take the challenge. He is persuaded to allow his nephew, Gawain, to do it instead. Gawain grabs the axe and chops off the Knight’s head. Instead of dying, the dreadful man puts his head back on and leaves, telling Gawain he will see him in a year, at the Green Chapel. 

Several months go by and Gawain leaves Camelot on his beautiful horse, Gringolet, who is dapple grey, dressed in his best clothes, looking not unlike Culhwch in Culhwch and Olwen, too honourable to weasel out, despite having been cheated. He looks here and there and everywhere before finally, just before his appointment, arriving at a castle where he asks for hospitality from his jovial host, Sir Bertilak. “Of course!” Bertilak says. “The Green Chapel? It’s just down the road. You can even sleep in on the day. I’ll send someone to guide you. Stay till then.” 

So, for three days Gawain stays with the Bertilaks, Mr and Mrs, and each day his host goes hunting while he stays in the castle and sleeps in. Bertilak suggests an exchange of whatever each of them “wins” that day. All very well, but Mrs Bertilak drops into his room and tries to seduce him the first two days. In exchange for the animals Bertilak has hunted, all he can give is a kiss. Which he does, much to Bertilak’s amusement. Well, it is a castle, with staff and retainers, no reason to assume it’s his wife. 

But the third day is different. The lady offers him a green embroidered girdle which, she assures him, will protect him from injury. So, what does he do? Hand it to his host as his “winnings” or keep it to protect him from having his head cut off? 

He does what any normal human would do in the circumstances. He keeps it and passes on only the kiss the lady also gave him. 

The next day he is escorted to the Green Chapel. There are no priests or hermits there, and he hears the grinding of an axe on a whetstone. It’s more like a portal to the Otherworld than anything Christian. Still, he grits his teeth and proceeds, despite the pleas of Bertilak’s servant. 

The huge Green Knight appears. Gawain kneels to receive his blow, and when it comes he is startled to realise the knight has not hit him. “Just testing,” says the Green Knight. Again, he nearly, but not quite, swoops down with the axe. 

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, just get on with it!” Gawain cried.

The third time, there is a slight cut. Gawain, much relieved, leaps to his feet, grabbing his weapon. “Right, you’ve had your blow! That’s it!” 

But the Knight is grinning. “The first two were for the days when you gave me your winnings,” he says. “The third was for when you let my wife give you the girdle without passing it on.”

Gawain is absolutely appalled! Yes, he is alive, but ... that creature is Bertilak? And he is right, thinks Gawain, he ought to have handed over the green girdle. Sure, Gawain, feel bad about being human! 

It turns out that the whole thing was a plot by Morgan Le Fay to scare Guinevere to death. She did the magic that turned human Bertilak and his horse into creatures of the otherworld.

Gawain returns to Camelot, feeing depressed. He decides to wear that belt permanently as a sign of his shame. Nobody back home gets it. They make green belts a fashion statement instead of being annoyed with him. He is their Gawain, dammit! They love him, perfect or not. But Gawain is Gawain. He is one of those people for whom it’s a matter of honour. 

The belt turns up in Phyllis Ann Karr’s Idylls Of The Queen. More about it in the K post. 

The Green Knight is probably a vegetation god - that’s what he tells Gawain in the film Sword Of The Valiant, in fact, a not-very-good film that nevertheless had the involvement of Rosemary Sutcliff. He dies and turns into vegetation. The role was played by Sean Connery, who looked like a giant Christmas gift in his Camelot scene. As a result, anyway, Bertilak and the knight are different people. 

One of the elements of the early Gawain was that he became stronger until noon and then weaker by sunset; one theory was that he was a solar god before he became the knight of the Lady. 

This is turning into a longer post than I intended, but I hope you enjoyed it! I’m off to make some early dinner. See you tomorrow for H! 

By the way, I wrote a novella inspired by Gawain And The Green Knight. I’m still looking for a market for it, so I won’t put it up on my blog, but meanwhile I made it up into a little ebook on Creative Bookbuilder for my own benefit. If you want to read it, email me -  my address is under “Review and posting policy and Contact.” It comes in ePub and PDF, as CBB doesn’t do mobi, but you can convert it from PDF. I tested it on my Kindle App. I’ll be happy to give you a copy for free.