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For one page I thought we were reading it in Middle English!

This version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight carries a deeper richness than the high-school tailored rendition I read last year. I am equally intrigued as entertained, and I found many correlations with our past readings, though my connections may not be nearly as insightful as other's interpretations or as crystalline as this poem's translation.

The vivid descriptions of the passing seasons struck me first. This poem is riddled with spirituality and guides the noblest of knights in each of their endeavors. Couple this with "sparkling rain in warming showers" as well as "smiling plains where flowers unfold" and "[f]ierce winds of heaven [which] wrestle with the sun," and you have yourself a spirituality and love of life that is so deeply interwoven with the wonders and beauty of nature that the two are inseparable (31). The original readers knew nothing of Darwin, but the beauty and intricacies of Nature serve as a testament of God's power and awesomeness, and this unadulterated version of Christianity deeply rooted with the trees and the earth is rosier than most present day forms which hardly reference the planet's precious greenery. I am only a little puzzled by the Green Knight himself, initially posing as a conniving and fierce threat. Also, the Green Chapel "looks evil, with grass overgrown" and "fittingly might the man dressed in green/ Perform his devotions, in devilish ways. (125)" This earthen chapel is seen as a center for satanic temptations, and directly contradicts the spiritual connection to nature that I derived from my earlier readings of the text.

In the spirit of Satan's temptations, there were distinctly lascivious undertones harkening back to Jude the Obscure and more recently The French Lieutenant's Woman. The lovely woman that so mercilessly tempts Gawain is in the likes of Arabella, Sue, and Sarah. All of these women use sexuality and manipulations to make their sought after men lust after them, just in the way that "Adam was beguiled by one (135)." The Lord's wife pleads and begs for Gawain's affections, but he "put to one side/ All the loving inducements that fell from her mouth. (99)" To fall for her trickery would have been sinful and would dishonor the Lord of the castle, and his success is a one-up for Gawain's knightly honor. Since her bleating and extolling wasn't enough to make Gawain roll over for her, she tempts him one final time with gifts. Here is where our brave knight does fall. Taking the belt was the "cowardice and covetousness that seized" him, and it was the archetypical femme fatale that tempted him to sully his honor, even if it was not a sexual failing (141). Though he was challenged several times along the way to ruin his reputation, mostly with the opportunity to turn tail and run, I found it interesting that not only was it the witchy woman who devised the whole Green Knight bit in the first place, it was at her hands that he failed. I don't understand the message that this is supposed to bring. Is it just a general undertone that woman are deceitful and manipulative, or was the female catalyst a negligible circumstance of this great tale? In the end, I know that Gawain's chivalry and examples of bravery are to be emulated and praised, but was it all despite the female? Like my conflict in understanding the role nature plays, I am not sure how I feel about the depiction of this powerful woman. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but I am more likely to take offense to this than simply write it off as inconsequential.