Stereotypes Of Women In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight

The concept of a male dominated patriarchal society is not a recent composition. As far back as the middle ages, literature is strongly sentimental towards a male dominant society in which the woman plays the part of a peacekeeper or an obedient beautiful object of desire – her role is prescribed and she is confined. While such a word may conjure images of forceful restriction; the confined woman of Middle Ages literature appears happy, gracious and thankful to live in such a role. “Beowulf” and “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” offer readers two distinctive stereotypes of women, those who are or are not confined to their role in society. By presenting extremely different illustrations of each a paradigm is set that a good woman is one who

is confined while a bad woman is not as they can to act according to their own will, which is an apparently dangerous in the eyes of the Middle Ages. “Macbeth” and “The Book of Margery Kempe” expand beyond such blatant antifeminism, exploring the abilities of how a woman can take advantage of these stereotypically confined “roles”, exploiting them for their own needs if need be. Through the lens of feminism, these latter texts serve to expand upon the concept of social conformity in itself and explore how conformity can be manipulated for self-gain.
In “Beowulf”, although women are relegated to tools of sexual duty and political function the writer also comments on the importance of such confinement.

“A queen should weave peace” describes that exclusively women in “Beowulf” must serve as mediators. Wealhtheow takes on this mediation in an almost sacred way. She enters the hall, “observing the courtesies / Adorned in her gold, she graciously saluted / the men in the hall, then handed the cup”, by “handing the cup”, she is confirming specifically male alliances by offering gifts. Similarly in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” the reader is illustrated the image of the ideal woman almost immediately through Guenevere, who is restricted to her role as a symbol of peace and an object to be stared at in contemplation by males. The author describes Guenevere in a similar way to Wealhtheow, “The goodly queen gay in the midst/ on a dais well-decked and duly arrayed / with costly silk curtains…all broidered and bordered with the best gems” illustrates the perfectly confined woman of the Middle Ages, she is very well-kept, clean, and highly decorous – relegated to an object by any standard – yet seems to accept such a role happily. As a result, at no point is she a contentious character with any form of development, rather she is relegated to an ornament. Thus, the confined or restricted woman reflected in the Middle Ages is well-liked, respectable and peaceful, causing no conflict throughout the story in the eyes of these authors

for through these eyes women are little more than tools and ornaments.
The free or unrestricted woman, however, tends to be the source of conflict and tension in her society.

If a woman is not confined to the role of a “peace weaver” or a functional “material” object, she is useless in an entirely male dominated society and is condemned to the seemingly horrible status of an “unconfined” woman. An unconfined woman is able to express herself, thus in the lens of the Middle Ages she can also be considered dangerous. In “Beowulf”, this unconfined woman can be culminated by the figure of Grendel’s mother who rather than conforming as feminine, follows the “male-based” system of warfare. She is the epitome of the unconfined woman, a “pointless, ridiculous monster crouched in the shadows, stinking of dead men, murdered children and martyred cows.” Grendel’s mother symbolizes an image of women that are allowed to express themselves without an observing male presence in the Middle Ages and thus the narrator makes certain to make her as grotesque as possible to naturally advocate conformity to antifeminism. Similarly in Beowulf, there is a direct contrast between a confined and unconfined woman in Sir Gawain. While Guenevere is obedient and restricted in nature and character, the text also presents a woman who contrasts this, an unconfined woman in the image of Lady Bertilak, who uses seduction to test Sir Gawain’s purity. The narrator clearly differentiates between both Guenevere and Lady, “For if one was fresh the other was faded”, illustrating the

clear contrast between the perfectly confined medieval woman and that who is less confined, as a result, just as in “Beowulf”, the reader is further enlightened to the medieval importance of the paradigm of “The crone and the coquette”. In the eyes of the Middle Ages, any women who fail to conform to this ideology of anti-feminism are considered a threat to a conforming society and the plot revolves around correcting them or eliminating them all together, especially in Grendel’s case as she serves to be one of the epic’s primary antagonists.