Sir Gawain And The Green Knight Gender Roles

In Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, I noticed many themes, but the themes that stuck out at me were chivalry, gender roles, sin, the color green and game. However, the biggest theme of the poem I believe it to be gender roles. Unlike most stories, the gender roles in Sir Gawain and The Green Knight are flipped.
Throughout Gawain, you see Lady Bertilak is more dominant and Gawain is more feminine. You see this in the bedroom scenes the most. Bertilak is the one trying to seduce Gawain, which shows her being more forward and making her more blunt than most women were in that time.
I think a reason Gawain could have been unwilling to accept Lady Bertilak’s advances at first was because of his honor and loyalty to the King. But when Gawain learns

about the game the King was playing on him at the end to find out about his loyalty, Gawain tries to put the blame on Lady Bertilak. “and be wiped of his wits by womanly guile-/ it’s the way of the world. Adam fell because of a woman,/ and Solomon because of several, and as for Samson,/ Delilah was his downfall, and afterwards David/ was bamboozled by Bathsheba and bore the grief./ All wrecked and ruined by their wrongs;” ( 2415-2420) I really enjoyed this quote, it is the quote Gawain uses to explain him and Lady Bertilak. I used this quote because it goes with what I was saying before, about how Bertilak has a dominance to her and because of this she seduces Gawain. The quote talks about many men who were seduced like Gawain, and who failed to resist. The quote shows how we perceive women to be under men, but in reality, they can be the ones with more power.
From the very first time we meet Lady Bertilak, we learn that she is the most beautiful woman that Gawain has ever seen. He describes Bertilak as “ She was the fairest amongst them--her face, her flesh,/ her complexion, her quality, her bearing, her body,/ more glorious than Guinevere,” (943-945) I think this shows that right from the first meeting that Gawain is attracted to Lady Bertilak. In most stories Guinevere is the most beautiful woman in the story, but in Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, it is Bertilak. I think by making Bertilak so beautiful shows that from the start, that Gawain would not be able to resist her advances, making Bertilak more powerful than Gawain.
You can see how smart Lady Bertilak’s is and how she is able to tempt Gawain when she says “‘A good man like Gawain, so greatly regarded,/ the embodiment of courtliness to the bones of his being,/ could never have lingered so long with a lady/ without craving a kiss, as politeness requires, or coaxing a kiss with his closing words’” (1297-1301) When Lady Bertilak says this to Gawain, it shows how she is great at being sly.

Bertilak is able to be polite, but also threaten Gawain’s reputation of courtesy and his name. Not only does what Lady Bertilak take skill, but it also takes guts. Throughout the poem you see Bertilak become more brazen as she tries to seduce

Gawain.
When the author uses parallelism for the bedroom scenes and the hunting scenes, it shows how Lady Bertilak tried harder to get Gawain to make a move on her.

The author writes these two scenes where they connect and go together. The juxtaposition used is symbolic with the bedroom and hunting scene. It shows how the hunting probably mirrors what is happening in the bedroom, with the Lord’s prey becoming the metaphor for Lady Bertilak trying to trap Gawain. When the author starts the two scenes the Lord is getting ready to go hunt deer, whereas Gawain is laying in bed, being the prey of Lady Bertilak. You can get a sense of the hunting scene when Gawain calls himself a prisoner and Bertilak says Gawain is the man she has pinned. On the second day, the Lord goes to hunt boar. Because bores are tougher than deer, it goes back to the bedroom and how Lady Bertilak tried even harder in day two to seduce Gawain. When Bertilak starts to tease Gawain, which makes her the hunter again, because at the same time, the hunters are goading the boar. On the third day, Bertilak hunts a fox, and foxes are known for being very tricky. This lets the reader infer that because of what Lord Bertilak is hunting, that Lady Bertilak will act the same way towards Gawain. Lady Bertilak becomes more forceful towards Gawain. She pushes him to decide if wants to keep his knightly code, she becomes very crafty. Gawain has to approach the situation like Lord Bertilak will have to approach his hunt,

carefully.
Throughout Sir Gawain and The Green Knight Lady Bertilak shows how much power she has over the men of the poem. She shows more dominance than most women did in that time. She makes the gender roles flip in this poem because of how she is in the story. Lady Bertilak is smart, beautiful, and brazen. She uses her beauty and intelligence to insult Gawain and to get what she wants. She is very brazen because she come on to Gawain, which wasn’t what you usually hear of back then. She makes Gawain question his knightly code of courtesy many times throughout, and makes him lie about what happens in the bedroom, even though Lord Bertilak already knows. Lady Bertilak makes men question themselves and shows her dominance wherever she goes. She is the dominant character throughout the poem, and Gawain is more feminine, and almost her puppet that she is able to manipulate to get to do whatever she wants, and it shows when Gawain lies to Lord Bertilak about the girdle at the very end of the poem.