Amended Texts, Emended Ladies: Female Agency and the Textual Editing of Sir Gawain

and the Green Knight

Author(s): PAUL BATTLES
Source: The Chaucer Review, Vol. 44, No. 3 (2010), pp. 323-343
Published by: Penn State University Press
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 Amended Texts, Emended Ladies: Female
Agency and the Textual Editing of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
by paul battles

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has been fortunate in its editors. Their
painstaking labor has given us a lucid, intelligently glossed, and helpfully
annotated text, and every critic who works on the poem is indebted to their
efforts. A list of the poem’s editors reads like a “who’s who” of Middle English
textual criticism, and their work fully deserves the praise that has been
bestowed upon it. Yet the judgment of even the best editors is not infallible,
and it behooves literary critics to scrutinize their decisions, particularly when
it comes to emendations that affect the interpretation of the poem. There is
always the danger, to borrow A. E. Housman’s phrase, of not correcting the
scribe but revising the author.1
One problem that has received surprisingly little attention is how
editorial decisions have shaped readers’ perceptions of women in Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight. Even as feminist critics have, especially in the past two
decades, convincingly shown that women are central to the poem’s action,2
editors have obscured or even erased their role in the text. Such is the case
not only in older editions, where it might be expected if not condoned, but
also in the most recent and authoritative ones. Significant editorial changes
are often passed uncritically from one edition to the next, with little evi-
dence that the rationale and evidence for emending have been carefully

I would like to thank Dominique Battles, without whose encouragement this essay would not have
been written, and who also offered feedback on successive drafts of the manuscript. The helpful
comments of The Chaucer Review’s two anonymous readers are also gratefully acknowledged.
1. A. E. Housman, Selected Prose, ed. John Carter (Cambridge, U.K., 1961), 29.
2. See, especially, Geraldine Heng, “Feminine Knots and the Other Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight,” PMLA 106 (1991): 500–14.

the chaucer review, vol. 44, no. 3, 2010.

Copyright © 2010 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

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324 The Chaucer Review

weighed. The result of these interventions, though no doubt unintended,

has been to seriously misrepresent the text and to distort the poem’s atti-
tude toward women. To illustrate the persistent and far-reaching nature of
these changes, I will examine three representative cases of editorial interven-
tion in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Each involves a different type of
intervention and concerns a different woman or group of women. The com-
mon denominator for these changes is that they all reduce women’s agency
and subordinate them to men, even when the poem implies—or expressly
states—that the opposite is true.

I
On the first day that Lady Bertilak visits Sir Gawain in his chamber, she urges
him to woo her because Gawain excels all other knights. She extols his beauty,
humility, honor, and courtesy, and says that, if she had to choose a husband,
it would be him. Gawain claims to be unworthy of her praise and reminds the
Lady that she is already married. As their conversation draws to a close, she
reflects on her inability to sway Gawain: she cannot tempt him “‘Þaʒ I were
burde bryʒtest,’ þe burde in mynde hade” (“Though I were the most beauti-
ful of ladies,” the lady thought) (1283), because—as the text continues—he
is completely preoccupied with his impending fate (1284–87). Most editors
attribute this thought to Gawain by altering I to ho and changing the second
burde to burne, so that the emended line reads: “Þaʒ ho were burde bryʒtest,
þe burne in mynde hade.”
This verse remains one of the most-discussed in the poem. Doubts about
the emendations were already voiced by Oliver F. Emerson in 1922, and
shortly thereafter the changes were rejected as unnecessary by J. R. R. Tolkien
and E. V. Gordon.3 In 1973, George Sanderlin made a detailed and persuasive
argument for retaining the manuscript reading, as did Sharon M. Rowley
some thirty years later.4 Nevertheless, most editors continue to emend.5 The

3. Oliver F. Emerson, “Notes on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Journal of English and
Germanic Philology 21 (1922): 363–410, at 384–85; J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, eds., Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight (Oxford, 1925).
4. George Sanderlin, “‘Thagh I Were Burde Bryghtest’—GGK, 1283–87,” Chaucer Review 8 (1973):
60–64; Sharon M. Rowley, “Textual Studies, Feminism, and Performance in Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight,” Chaucer Review 38 (2003): 158–77. See also Gerald Morgan, “The Action of the Hunting
and Bedroom Scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Medium Ævum 56 (1987): 200–216, at
200–201.
5. Editions that emend include Israel Gollancz, ed., with Mabel Day and Mary S. Serjeantson,
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, EETS o.s. 210 (London, 1940); J. A. Burrow, ed., Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight (Harmondsworth, 1972); Theodore Silverstein, ed., Sir Gawain and the Green

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 pau l b attl e s 325

following analysis will reinforce and extend the case against emending. At
stake in this debate is the role critics attribute to Lady Bertilak: What are
her motives for seducing Gawain? How much does she know about her hus-
band’s plans? Is she his obedient pawn or his co-conspirator?
Since some of the reasons for emending involve the immediate context of
line 1283, it will be helpful to quote verses 1280–89. In order to defer, for the
moment, questions about how best to punctuate these verses, they are cited
from the facsimile:6

þus þay meled of muchquat til mydmorn paste

and ay þe lady let lyk as hym loued mych
þe freke ferde with defence and feted ful fayre
þaʒ i were burde bryʒtest þe burde in mynde hade
þe lasse luf in his lode for lur þat he soʒt
boute hone
þe dunte þat schulde hym deue
and nedeʒ hit most be done
þe lady þenn spek of leue
he granted hir ful sone

A literal translation, again eschewing punctuation, may facilitate the discussion:

thus they spoke of many things until mid-morning passed

and always the lady acted as if she loved him greatly
the knight defended himself and behaved very properly
though I were the most beautiful lady the lady thought
the less love he [brought] with him7 because of the blow that he
sought without delay
the blow that would kill him
and it must need be done

Knight: A New Critical Edition (Chicago, 1984); James Winny, ed., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:
Middle English Text with Facing Page Translation (Peterborough, Ont., 1992); J. J. Anderson, ed.,
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Patience, Cleanness (London, 1996); W. R. J. Barron, ed.,
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 2nd edn. (Manchester, 1998); and Malcolm Andrew and Ronald
Waldron, eds., The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight, 5th edn. (Exeter, 2007).
6. Israel Gollancz, intro., Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain, Reproduced in Facsimile
from the Unique MS. Cotton Nero A.x in the British Museum, EETS o.s. 162 (London, 1923), fol. 108r.
Abbreviations have been silently expanded, and the bob has been moved into its appropriate place;
line 1281, a hym has been emended to as hym.
7. Literally, ‘in his tow’; see MED, lōd(e), n., 2b.

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326 The Chaucer Review

the lady then spoke of leave

he granted it her very quickly

This admittedly inelegant rendering attempts to avoid disambiguating key

phrases, and the somewhat disjointed syntax in the latter half of the passage
mirrors that of the original.
Few editors bother to specify their reasons for emending line 1283. Richard
Morris, who first proposed doing so in 1864, states only that “the sense requires”8
the change, and Sir Israel Gollancz echoes him in noting that “the sense requires
us to read thus.”9 To date, no one has made a detailed case for the emenda-
tions, which leaves skeptics in the awkward situation of having to construct one
before being able to critique it. One can do this by explicating the telegraphic
comments made by some editors in their notes, although it would obviously
be preferable to have the ipsissima verba of a proponent for emending. With
this caveat in mind, objections to the manuscript reading revolve around three
points: that the repetition of burde in line 1283 indicates textual corruption; that
it is better to keep a uniform point of view in the passage; and that the Lady
would not have known the goal of Gawain’s quest, or else that the revelation of
such knowledge to the reader at this point would ruin the suspense about her
role in the story. Each of these concerns will be examined below.
Of the reasons mentioned above, the same-line repetition of burde has
been raised least frequently. The most explicit discussion I have been able to
find is Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron’s brief observation that emend-
ing burde to burne avoids “the difficulty of the repeated burde.” But, as Rowley
points out, there are other examples of such repetition in the poem, includ-
ing two close to line 1283.10 It is also difficult to see why, if the subject were
masculine (burne, ‘man,’ instead of MS burde, ‘lady’), the preceding pronoun
is clearly I, not ho. On its own, the supposed substitution of burde for burne
is plausible enough, but how do we get from “I” to “she”? Editors have been
curiously silent on this point. Only J. J. Anderson ventures an explanation:

It is possible that the copyist of the MS was confused by the similar

forms burde and burne; having mistakenly copied burne as burde he
then tried to make sense of the whole line by changing ho to I.11

8. Richard Morris, ed., Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, 2nd edn. rev. Israel Gollancz, EETS
o.s. 4 (London, 1912).
9. Burrow and Winny (both cited in note 5) also register the emendations without explanation.
10. Lines 1301 and 1338; see Rowley, “Textual Studies,” 162–63. Other notable examples
include lines 1007 and 2354.
11. Anderson, ed., Sir Gawain, 311.

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 pau l b attl e s 327

This is highly improbable. In the first place, it simply does not square with the
scribal usus of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. There is no evidence that the
scribe was reading along while copying the text. On the contrary, the most
likely explanation for the poem’s pattern of obvious errors involving easily
confused letters—f and s, h and l, o and e—is that the scribe paid little heed to
the sense of what was being copied. For example, so becomes MS fo in lines
282, 384, 1304, and 1344. It is unlikely that fo is an error of haste, for f takes
longer to write than long s (the two forms are identical except for the cross-
stroke on the f ).12 There are many such errors in the manuscript. Moreover, the
theory outlined above requires not so much a conscientious “reading” scribe
as one who muddles along and “corrects” one mistake by introducing another
one. If the scribe were conscious of having made a mistake in copying burde
for burne, why not simply correct it? Why would the copyist not consult the
source text rather than try “to make sense of the whole line” by introducing still
other alterations? And finally, if such a change were made, it should be visible
in the manuscript; burde comes after I, and so changing ho to I after writing
burde for burne would require a correction. Not only is no correction evident,
but the space between þaʒ and were is not big enough to accommodate ho.
The more one reflects about the putative chain of events leading from ho . . .
burne to MS I . . . burde, the more implausible the whole scenario becomes.
A second argument in favor of emending involves the passage’s shift in
point of view. Andrew and Waldron mention the “momentary inconsistency
in the narrative point of view,” which is explained more fully in the intro-
duction to Waldron’s earlier edition of Sir Gawain. There, Waldron notes
that Gawain is the poem’s viewpoint character and that the reader’s percep-
tion is largely “limited to what Gawain might have been able to observe.”13 It
is true that critics have noted this limited viewpoint, but they have generally
restricted their analysis to Fitts II and IV.14 The point of view in Fitt I is not
12. All editors except Vantuono emend; see William Vantuono, ed., The Pearl Poems: An
Omnibus Edition, 2 vols. (New York, 1984). Vantuono’s rendering of fo as ‘hostile’—a form always
spelled foo elsewhere in the poem (lines 716, 1430, 2326)—leads to very awkward readings. For
example, when the Green Knight dismisses Arthur’s suggestion of a “batayl bare” with some knight
of the Round Table with the comment, “Here is no mon me to mach, for myʒteʒ fo wayke” (282),
this would literally mean ‘for might hostility weak,’ which Vantuono translates without comment
as ‘so mighty am I.’ I believe that the traditional reading for myʒtez so wayke, ‘because [their] might
[is] so weak,’ is to be preferred.
13. R. A. Waldron, ed., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Evanston, Ill., 1970), 4.
14. Gawain’s approach to Castle Hautdesert is analyzed by Alain Renoir, “The Progressive
Magnification: An Instance of Psychological Description in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,”
Moderna Språk 54 (1960): 245–53, and Sarah Stanbury, “Space and Visual Hermeneutics in the
Gawain-Poet,” Chaucer Review 21 (1987): 476–89; see also my “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
Stanzas 32–34,” The Explicator 67 (2008): 22–24. The description of the Green Chapel through
Gawain’s eyes is also discussed by Renoir, as well as by Bart Veldhoen, “Psychology in the Middle

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328 The Chaucer Review

predominantly Gawain’s; he is not even differentiated from the crowd—except

for the notice that he sits at the high table—until over two-thirds of the way
through, in lines 339 and following. Meanwhile, the narrative technique of
Fitt III involves a continual shifting back and forth between the hunting, bed-
room, and hall scenes; each of the three subsections repeats the same general pat-
tern, which could be described as “hunt-bedroom-hunt-hall.” How can Gawain
be the exclusive viewpoint character in Fitt III when he is not even present for
long stretches?15 During the hunts, the point of view switches rapidly from the
hunters to Bertilak and sometimes even to the animals being hunted. If there
is one quality that Fitt III does not possess, it is consistency in point of view.16
Perhaps the chief reason for emending, however, is that the Lady should
not know about the beheading game. This reason is what early editors like
Morris and Gollancz seem to have meant by stating that the “sense” of the
passage requires emendation; at least, it is how Norman Davis interprets their
statements.17 He explains that if the passage

were taken, as it sometimes is, as part of the lady’s thought, it would

imply that she knew that Gawain was obliged to face the blow from
the Green Knight. The story as presented so far has given her no
opportunity to know this, so that it would be a serious flaw in the
handling of the plot.

Davis himself does not advocate emending line 1283; he proposes another
way to get around the problem, which will be discussed shortly. Still, he puts
his finger on the crucial issue. What does the Lady know and when does she
know it? When the Green Knight finally informs Sir Gawain that he had sent
his wife to tempt the knight—“I wroʒt hit myseluen” (2361)—does this mean
that she was blindly following orders and that Sir Bertilak would not see fit to
inform his own wife of the reason for her “wowyng”? This line of reasoning is
hard to credit. As Sanderlin points out, the Lady is “the companion of Morgan
le Fay, who masterminds the plot against Sir Gawain—who directs Bercilak
in his shapechanging. How can Lady Bercilak not be aware of a campaign of

English Romances,” in Henk Aertsen and Alasdair A. MacDonald, eds., Companion to Middle
English Romance (Amsterdam, 1990), 101–27.
15. Changes in point of view are also not uncommon elsewhere in the poem; see Sanderlin,
“Thagh I Were Burde Bryghtest,” 61–62.
16. For a different critique of the point-of-view argument, see Morgan, “The Action,”
200–205.
17. See J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, eds., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 2nd edn.
rev. Norman Davis (Oxford, 1967), 110 (note to lines 1283–85).

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 pau l b attl e s 329

which she herself is a pars magna?”18 A clear indication that the Lady does
know about Gawain’s fear of losing his life comes when she offers him the
green girdle. Whoever wears it, she says, cannot be “cut down” (the verb is
tohewe [1853]) by any means. Why should she mention this—as the clinching
argument—if she did not know about his coming ordeal? Of course, she does
not let on how useful the belt might be to Gawain; doing so might arouse his
suspicions, and the temptation is all the more effective for being presented so
innocuously. But in hindsight there can be no doubt that she did know, and
that this knowledge determines the nature of her final testing of Gawain.
A slightly different objection remains to be addressed. Perhaps she does
know, but would the poet let the audience realize this so early? Davis believes
that doing so would “spoil the suspense.” His solution is to restrict the Lady’s
thoughts to line 1283, punctuating:

“Þaʒ I were burde bryʒtest,” þe burde in mynde hade.

Þe lasse luf in his lode for lur þat he soʒt
boute hone . . .

He glosses line 1283, “‘Even if I were the most beautiful of ladies,’ the lady
thought (‘still he would resist’)”; although “not very satisfactory,” punctuat-
ing thus preserves both the manuscript reading and the story’s suspense. But
precisely how does the Lady’s knowledge about the impending blow ruin the
surprise ending? As Rowley notes, “Logically, the clue at lines 1283–87 alone is
not enough to tell the reader that Bertilak is the Green Knight.”19 These lines
certainly do indicate that the Lady has ulterior motives for seducing Gawain,
but, as Sanderlin and Rowley show, there are also other passages that do so.
One comes at the end of the second bedroom scene—just as lines 1283–87
conclude the first one—where the narrator comments on the Lady’s efforts:

Þus hym frayned þat fre, and fondet hym ofte,

For to haf wonnen hym to woʒe, what-so scho þoʒt ellez;
Bot he defended hym so fayr þat no faut semed,
Ne non euel on nawþer halue, nawþer þay wysten
bot blysse.20
(1549–53)

18. Sanderlin, “Thagh I Were Burde Bryghtest,” 61–62.

19. Rowley, “Textual Studies,” 163.
20. Cited from Tolkien and Gordon, eds., Sir Gawain, rev. Davis, 43. Unless otherwise noted,
quotations of Sir Gawain are from this edition.

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330 The Chaucer Review

Here woʒe is either a noun, ‘harm, evil, sin,’ or else a verb ‘(to) woo.’ The
former is more likely, for the suggestion of harm is repeated later, in a very
similar context: “Þay lanced wordes gode,/Much wele þen watz þerinne;/Gret
perile bitwene hem stod,/Nif Maré of hir knyʒt mynne” (1766–69). But what-
ever the meaning of woʒe, Sanderlin and Rowley rightly point out that the
poet encourages us to question the Lady’s intentions by adding “what-so scho
þoʒt ellez.” This may or may not mean that she “has misgivings about her
task of seduction,”21 but it certainly suggests an ulterior motive.22 I would add
that other aspects of the passage also encourage us to scrutinize her inten-
tions. Her attempt to seduce Gawain is phrased not as an effort to win his
love, but to test him: she “fondet hym ofte.” The word fonde(n)—‘to try, test,
tempt’—implies that the Lady purposely attempts to bring Gawain into “gret
perile,” and it also anticipates Bertilak’s revelation that the seduction was an
attempt to asay, ‘test’ (2362) Gawain. Something like this is even hinted at
in lines 1280–89, where we learn that the Lady always “let lyk as hym loued
mych.” Here let lyk as means ‘to behave as if, to pretend.’ If we were not meant
to question her motives, why are we not simply told that she loves Gawain?
To say that she “behaves as if ” she did certainly begs the question!23 There
are other suggestions in Fitt III that the Lady is acting a role (e.g., in lines
1733–3424). Cumulatively, these hints create an air of sustained mystery about
her. It is clear that she is driven by considerations other than the obvious ones,
but her true motives remain hazy until Bertilak reveals them to Sir Gawain.
Punctuating lines 1283–87 in the most natural way, so that they articulate the
Lady’s thoughts, is thoroughly consistent with the narrator’s treatment of her
throughout Fitt III.
There is a persistent strain in Gawain scholarship that minimizes the
Lady’s role in testing the hero. She is often characterized as either meekly car-
rying out her husband’s commands or blindly obeying her lust, and the emen-
dations to line 1283 are rooted in such oversimplified interpretations of her
character.25 Restoring the manuscript reading, and allowing the punctuation
to bring forth—rather than curtailing—the passage’s most likely meaning,
acknowledges her centrality to the poem. This reading does not mean that she
is entirely admirable. Like her husband—who admits to testing Sir Gawain but
still claims to desire his friendship—the Lady is a fundamentally ambiguous
character. Beneath their effortless charm and gaiety, both conceal a potentially

21. Sanderlin, “Thagh I Were Burde Bryghtest,” 62.

22. Rowley, “Textual Studies,” 168.
23. Compare Morgan, “The Action,” 201–2.
24. On this passage, see Rowley, “Textual Studies,” 169–70. Rowley reads the Lady’s (and
Gawain’s) identity as “purely performative” (159).
25. See Rowley, “Textual Studies,” 165–67.

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 pau l b attl e s 331

deadly purpose. If the Lady had succeeded in seducing Gawain, Sir Bertilak
would not have checked his blows, and then “he that was ever doughty would
have been dead” (2264). But neither are the two evil. The Lady does not, for
instance, lie about failing to seduce Gawain, and Sir Bertilak shows mercy
where he need not have; by the terms of the beheading game, he is within his
rights to kill Gawain outright. In the end, the Lady remains a complex char-
acter. The poem’s conclusion makes clear that she is not a slave to her passion,
nor is there any reason for believing that she is only passively carrying out
Sir Bertilak’s orders, especially since both she and her husband ultimately act
at the behest of Morgan le Fay.
The arguments in favor of emending line 1283 are unpersuasive. Editors
have yet to construct a plausible scenario for how MS I . . . burde could have
come about from the source’s putative ho . . . burne. The shift in point of
view is not particularly remarkable. There are many such changes in Fitt III,
where the poem has no single viewpoint character. Nor is it difficult to believe
that the Lady would have known what Gawain’s appointment with the Green
Knight entailed; on the contrary, it is difficult to believe that she did not know.
Moreover, the revelation of such knowledge is entirely in keeping with the
poet’s depiction of her tempting of Gawain.

II
In addition to lessening Lady Bertilak’s role, editors have also circumscribed
the power of the poem’s other main female character, Morgan le Fay. Morgan’s
part in the testing of Gawain has long frustrated critics. Most have found
it difficult to accept that Gawain’s real opponent all along has been not the
mysterious Green Knight—or his alter ego, Sir Bertilak—but an ugly old
crone whom the hero casually dismisses almost as soon as he sees her. At that
moment in the story Gawain is doubly distracted: first by the Lady’s beauty,
and second by the assumption that his enemy is a (green) man. Like the
Gawain of Fitt II, critics have often passed over Morgan le Fay in their search
for his real antagonist. Early scholars like James R. Hulbert and George L.
Kittredge argued that she actually does not belong in the story, being added by
a late redactor of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight who tried to find a motive
for the testing and botched the job.26 Such views are echoed, for example,
by Albert B. Friedman in his influential essay on Morgan’s role in the poem:
“She bears all the signs and the numen of a dea ex machina, and in falling
26. See James R. Hulbert, “Syr Gawayne and the Grene Knyʒt,” Modern Philology 13 (1915):
433–62, at 454; George L. Kittredge, A Study of Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge, Mass.,
1916), 132–36.

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332 The Chaucer Review

back upon such a device the poet betrays his difficulty in articulating the
complex narrative framework of his poem.”27 This, incidentally, is the same
poet who patiently works intricate numerological patterns into every aspect
of the poem and who juxtaposes the hunting and bedroom scenes of Fitt III
with effortless ease. Today, the theory that Morgan le Fay is the inorganic and
supererogatory addition of a bungling poet is less frequently voiced, and a
number of important studies have emphasized her importance to the poem’s
overall design.28 However, the older view of Morgan continues to live on in
editors’ treatment of her character. This treatment becomes especially evident
in the crucial passage where we learn about her role in the testing and her
relationship to Sir Bertilak (2444–58). Almost all editors punctuate this pas-
sage so as to blunt its impact, turning a straightforward assertion of Morgan’s
power into a rambling digression made memorable mainly by its convoluted
syntax.
After the Green Knight has reproved Sir Gawain for accepting the green
girdle and has revealed that the Lady was sent to test him, Gawain asks the
Green Knight how he is called. Editors differ slightly in punctuating this
passage, but almost all place a period after line 2445, which makes the fol-
lowing sentence begin with a digressive preamble that arrives at its end only
eleven lines later, in line 2456. To cite Andrew and Waldron’s version of the
passage:

“Þat schal I telle þe trwly,” quoþ þat oþer þenne:

“Bertilak de Hautdesert I hat in þis londe.
Þurʒ myʒt of Morgne la Faye, þat in my hous lenges,
And koyntyse of clergye, bi craftes wel lerned—
Þe maystrés of Merlyn mony ho hatz taken,
For ho hatz dalt drwry ful dere sumtyme
With þat conable klerk; þat knowes alle your knyʒtez
At hame.
Morgne þe goddess
Þerfore hit is hir name;
Weldez non so hyʒe hawtesse
Þat ho ne con make ful tame—

27. Albert B. Friedman, “Morgan le Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Speculum 35
(1960): 260–74, at 269.
28. See especially Edith W. Williams, “Morgan La Fée as Trickster in Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight,” Folklore 96 (1985): 38–56; Heng, “Feminine Knots”; and Rubén Valdés Miyares,
“Sir Gawain and the Great Goddess,” English Studies 83 (2002): 185–206.

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 pau l b attl e s 333

“Ho wayned me vpon þis wyse to your wynne halle

For to assay þe surquidré, ʒif hit soth were
Þat rennes of þe grete renoun of þe Rounde Table.
(2444–58)

The accompanying prose translation renders this passage as follows:

“That I shall tell you truly,” said the other then: “I am called Bertilak
de Hautdesert in this land. Through the power of Morgan la Fay,
who lives in my house, and [her] skill in learning, [she who is] well
instructed in magic arts—she has acquired many of the miraculous
powers of Merlin, for she has formerly had very intimate love-deal-
ing with that excellent scholar, as all your knights at home know. Her
name therefore is Morgan the goddess; there is no one so exalted in
pride whom she cannot humble completely.
“She sent me in this array [i.e., as the Green Knight] to your
fair hall to make trial of your pride, [to see] if [the report] which is
current, of the great renown of the Round Table, is true.”

Sir Bertilak here completely loses his train of thought. When the sentence
beginning “Through the power of Morgan la Fay” reaches the end of line
2447, it simply stops and begins anew. Two intervening sentences follow, until
the original sentence is continued. Andrew and Waldron explain their punc-
tuation with the comment that “the loose conversational structure of this
speech is comparable to that of 1508 ff.”
This comparison bears elaboration. Lines 1508–27, in which the Lady asks
Gawain why he is reluctant to flirt with her, have been expertly analyzed by
Cecily Clark in her classic study of syntax in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
These verses indeed contain a notable instance of anacoluthon and might
therefore be viewed as warranting the strained punctuation of lines 2444–58.
On closer examination, however, they actually argue against it. Through-
out the poem, the Lady’s speech is “always complex and nuanced and slyly
building up suspense in the hearer’s mind,”29 which contrasts strongly with
Sir Bertilak’s—and the Green Knight’s—mode of speech, which is consistently
“brusque and peremptory”:

29. Cecily Clark, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Characterization by Syntax,” Essays in
Criticism 16 (1966): 361–74, at 372.

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334 The Chaucer Review

[T]he syntactic features by which [Sir Bertilak’s] tone is created are

shortness of sentence, frequent use of the imperative and avoid-
ance of conditional and qualifying clauses—an indication of the
unconditional and unqualified assent the speaker demands to all his
propositions.30

Clark finds that the Lady’s style “bears no resemblance to her husband’s:
whereas his speeches are almost devoid of conditional elements, these are just
what hers abound in.”31 As a matter of fact, Clark specifically discusses the
anacoluthon in lines 1508–27 as something not found in any of Sir Bertilak’s
speeches: it “distinguishes the Lady’s style . . . very sharply from that of her
husband, who comes so briskly to every point.”32 (Interestingly, the only char-
acter whose syntax resembles the Lady’s is Gawain.) The punctuation of lines
2444–58 offered by most editors is completely at odds with Clark’s analysis of
Sir Bertilak’s discourse.
At any rate, there is no need to resort to tortuous punctuation when a
simpler and more elegant solution suggests itself. Here is how J. J. Anderson
renders the passage:

“That schal I telle the trwly,” quoth that other thenne,

“Bercilak de Hautdesert I hat in this londe,
Thurgh myght of Morgne la Faye, that in my hous lenges,
And koyntyse of clergye, bi craftes wel lerned.
The maystrés of Merlyn mony has ho taken
For ho has dalt drwry ful dere sumtyme
With that conable klerk, that knowes alle your knyghtes
at hame.
Morgne the goddes
Therfore hit is hir name;
Weldes non so hyghe hawtesse
That ho ne con make ful tame.

“Ho wayned me upon this wyse to your wynne halle

For to assay the surquidré, yif hit soth were
That rennes of the grete renoun of the Rounde Table.”

30. Clark, “Sir Gawain,” 362.

31. Clark, “Sir Gawain,” 372.
32. Clark, “Sir Gawain,” 370.

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 pau l b attl e s 335

By letting the sentence begun in line 2444 continue through line 2446,
instead of placing a full stop after the first line, the whole problem of the false
start and long digression disappears. Instead, the passage resolves itself into
a series of clearly articulated, logically structured ideas. Why, then, do so few
editors follow this approach?33
According to Howell Chickering, the answer is that it would upset
long-held assumptions about the relationship between Morgan le Fay and
Sir Bertilak. Chickering admits that punctuating lines 2444–46 as a single
sentence clearly yields excellent syntax, but rejects this approach because he
is uncomfortable with the meaning of the resulting sentence, that is, “In this
land I am called Bertilak de Hautdesert through the power of Morgan le Fay,
who dwells in my house.”34 Chickering concludes:

To omit the period at 2445 gives Morgan a power over Bertilak that
most readers are not ready to grant her. It makes him her cat’s paw
throughout the triple testing of Gawain in Fitt III, when his own
testimony at lines 2361–62 is that he himself sent his wife to test
Gawain.35

This reasoning implies that lines 2361–62 contradict lines 2444–46, but this is
not the case. The poet never claims that the chastity test was Morgan’s idea.
She did send Sir Bertilak to Arthur’s court in his green guise, but the latter
bargain is unlikely to have been part of this scheme; there would have been
no way to know that Gawain would show up at Hautdesert with three days to
spare, unless one credits Morgan with the ability to foresee the future (which
is nowhere suggested by the text). Why not simply accept the explanation
given by the text? The beheading game was Morgan’s idea; the exchange of
winnings, Sir Bertilak’s. However, it is certainly true that, with lines 2444–46
punctuated as a single sentence, the stanza emphasizes Morgan’s power and

33. Other than Anderson, only Vantuono avoids the traditional punctuation, but Vantuono’s
solution differs slightly. He places a period after “Hautdesert” in line 2445 and takes hat as meaning
‘to have command,’ which would yield: “Bertilak de Hautdesert. I command in this land through
might of Morgan le Fay.” This is an attractive suggestion, but the MED does not adduce a stative
form (‘to have command’) for the verb haten, merely the dynamic forms ‘to command (sth.),’ ‘to
give a command’ (MED, s.v. hōten, v. (1), 3a). Moreover, since a name comes immediately before
I hat, the whole line looks to be a conventional naming formula, as in lines 253 (The hede of this
ostel, Arthour I hat) and line 381 (In god faith . . . Gawan I hatte); see hōten, v. (1), 2b., for a long list
of Middle English passages that make use of this formula.
34. Howell Chickering, “Stanzaic Closure and Linkage in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,”
Chaucer Review 32 (1997): 1–31, at 23.
35. Chickering, “Stanzaic Closure,” 24.

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336 The Chaucer Review

makes Sir Bertilak her representative (just as Gawain is Arthur’s); presumably,

he is called Bertilak de Hautdesert “through the power of Morgan le Fay”
because he holds Castle Hautdesert from her.36 This reading merely con-
firms what Sir Bertilak goes on to say in the remainder of the stanza. He
calls Morgan a “goddess” (2452), and he assures Gawain that there is no one
whose pride she cannot tame (2455). Bertilak also points out that Morgan
is Arthur’s half-sister and, as such, of royal blood; many Arthurian texts
depict Morgan as a queen in her own right, and the poet is well acquainted
with French Arthurian literature. Gawain furthermore makes Morgan and
Lady Bertilak—“myn honoured ladyez” (2412), as he bitingly calls them—
directly responsible for his downfall; it was hor kest, ‘their trick’ (2413), not
Sir Bertilak’s. Why is it so difficult for editors to accept what both Gawain and
Bertilak plainly tell us?
Punctuating a medieval text always involves an element of subjectivity.
But lines 2444–58 do not present a case where there are two equally plau-
sible ways of punctuating. Even those who favor the traditional approach
agree that it gives the verses a “jumbled” and “syntactically near-incoherent”
aspect, whereas placing a full stop after line 2446 lends the passage “a formal
neatness.”37 Editors prefer the awkwardly placed punctuation because they
are uncomfortable with the idea that Sir Bertilak is “Morgan’s agent,”38 even
though Bertilak unequivocally states that it was she who sent him to test
Arthur’s court. As with Lady Bertilak’s relationship to her husband, modern
editors feel the need to put the man in charge, even if the manuscript sug-
gests otherwise. It would be difficult to find a clearer example of tendentious
punctuation than the way lines 2444–58 have traditionally been edited.

III
In the final passage I would like to discuss, women are altogether erased from
the text. After Gawain has related to Arthur and the court his adventure at
the green chapel, he displays the girdle as a “token of vntrawþe.” They merely
laugh and

luflyly acorden
þat lordes and ladis þat longed to þe table

36. Compare Richard R. Griffith, “Bertilak’s Lady: The French Background of Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 314 (1978): 249–66, at 252–53.
37. Chickering, “Stanzaic Closure,” 23–24.
38. Chickering, “Stanzaic Closure,” 24.

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 pau l b attl e s 337

vche burne of þe broþerhede a bauderyk schulde haue

a bende abelef hym aboute of a bryʒt grene
and þat for sake of þat segge in swete to were
for þat watʒ acorded þe renoun of þe rounde table
and he honoured þat hit hade euermore after.
(2514–20)39

In 1972, J. A. Burrow questioned whether ladies could logically belong to

a “broþerhede” such as the Round Table.40 His solution to the apparently
oxymoronic manuscript reading was to emend ladis (ladies) to ledes (men,
knights), so that “lords and knights” may agree to wear a baldric in Gawain’s
honor. This emendation is enshrined in two of the most important editions
currently in print—the authoritative scholarly text by Andrew and Waldron,
as well as Burrow’s own edition—and also in W. R. J. Barron’s 1998 text.
Burrow’s many outstanding contributions to the study of Middle English
literature need not be rehearsed here; A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight remains one of the finest studies of the poem. Nevertheless, emend-
ing ladis to ledes is a clear example of unwarranted editorial intervention that
diminishes the importance of women. Removing the ladis from Sir Gawain’s
final scene is not just unnecessary but runs directly counter to the point of
the passage. I believe that the poet meant exactly what the manuscript says;
the ladis do indeed belong to the brotherhood. To show why this is the case,
it will be best to revisit Burrow’s arguments in favor of emending. These argu-
ments are of two kinds: philological and historical.
The philological evidence for banishing the ladis rests on the “masculine
suggestions”41 of the diction in lines 2516–20; these terms include burne and
broþerhede in line 2516, hym in line 2517, and he in line 2520. In short, after the
mention of “lordes and ladis” (2515), the remaining references to the courtly
society at Camelot seem to describe only men. Before taking a closer look at
these words, it must be said that the whole line of reasoning is unconvinc-
ing. Even if one were to grant the masculine connotations of the nouns and
pronouns in lines 2516–20, it does not follow that the poet could not also
have mentioned “ladis” in line 2515. Just because it follows “lordes and ladis”
does not necessarily make “burnes” a synonym for that phrase. When we
read that “Þe lorde watz lopen of his bedde, þe leudez vchone” (1413), we

39. Gollancz, Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain, Reproduced in Facsimile, fol. 124v.
40. J. A. Burrow, “Two Notes on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Notes and Queries 19
(1972): 43–45.
41. Burrow, “Two Notes,” 44.

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338 The Chaucer Review

silently supply the required “and”: the lord and his men leap up (the latter
presumably from their own beds, not from his). Editors do not assume that
the poet must have been referring either to the lord or to his men, but to both.
This is in keeping with the poem’s style, which is often additive not analytical.
Thus, even if the diction in lines 2516–20 has “masculine suggestions,” it does
not follow that ladis must be a scribal error. Moreover, the words singled out
by Burrow are less obviously masculine than they appear on first glance. The
pronoun hym denotes not only ‘him’ but also ‘them,’ and so proves nothing.
Likewise, burne can be a generic expression for ‘humankind’;42 it is so used
in Cleanness, line 288, where God considers destroying the whole world “fro
þe burne to þe best,” that is, from people to animals. Only one word in the
entire passage—coming at its very end—has an unambiguously “masculine
suggestion”: the pronoun he. But what about broþerhede? It would seem self-
evident that a society of “brothers” must by definition exclude ladis. Yet this
is not the case.
Investigating the meaning of broþerhede in Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight requires moving from philological to historical considerations. As
Burrow acknowledges, there is an obvious precedent for a fourteenth-
century fraternity to which women were admitted: the Order of the Garter.
Henry L. Savage, who first drew attention to this circumstance, implies that
women had no official status within the Order.43 Citing Savage, Burrow
asserts that “ladies could hardly have been said to ‘belong’ to the Order
of the Garter.”44 Burrow’s argument depends materially on this point: if
it is true that ladies could not belong to the Order, then the poet would
hardly have said so in line 2515; therefore, ladis must be an error. The mas-
culine diction of lines 2516–20—which, taken on its own, is not compel-
ling—would corroborate this theory. The crucial question, then, is whether
women could, or could not, belong to the most famous broþerhede of
medieval England.
The earliest history of the Order of the Garter is obscure. No fourteenth-
century records or statutes survive; even the year of the Order’s founding
remains unknown. Our understanding of the Order during the reigns of
Edward III and Richard II must be inferred from other contemporary docu-
ments, such as financial records of the royal household, particularly the

42. See MED, bērn, n. (1), 1a.

43. Henry L. Savage, The Gawain-Poet: Studies in His Personality and Background (Chapel
Hill, 1956), 196n1.
44. Burrow, “Two Notes,” 44.

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 pau l b attl e s 339

great wardrobe accounts.45 One of the most important and visible duties for
members was to attend the annual Garter Feast at Windsor on St. George’s
Day. On this occasion, members wore the Order’s elegant garments: robes,
mantles, hoods, and garters. Because the keeper of the great wardrobe sup-
plied these garments—or the money or materials for them—the great ward-
robe accounts contain the most detailed information about the Order during
the fourteenth century. In these accounts women are not only issued garments
and insignia, but they are specifically described as members of the Order. The
first such reference occurs in 1376,46 but there is ample reason to believe that
women played a prominent role in Garter Feasts from the outset.47
Although the earliest surviving statutes of the Order contain no refer-
ences to its female members, these statutes were probably drawn up during
the reign of Henry V, a monarch who affected a “clear reduction” in the role
of women in the Order.48 By contrast, Richard II and Henry IV encouraged
female membership in the Order and made lavish provisions for their gar-
ments. These garments were generally of the same material and value as those
of the male companions (and in some cases superior); the primary distinc-
tion was that ladies wore the Garter around the left arm, as opposed to the left
calf.49 Richard II was especially committed to the ladies of the Order, grant-
ing robes of the fraternity to no less than thirty-six women.50 By contrast,
Henry V inducted only a single new female member to the Order—his queen,
Catherine—and also took steps to reduce the prominence of women within
the Order.51 This trend would continue under his son, Henry VI, and soon

45. On this point, see Lisa Jefferson, “MS Arundel 48 and the Earliest Statutes of the Order
of the Garter,” The English Historical Review 109 (1994): 356–85. Concerning the great wardrobe,
see T. F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England: The Wardrobe, the
Chamber and the Small Seals, 6 vols. (Manchester, 1920–28; repr. 1967), esp. 1:44–54 (on wardrobe
accounts), 4:349–437 (on the great wardrobe), and 6:33–37 (a list of the keepers and clerks of the
great wardrobe). The importance of the great wardrobe accounts for the history of the Order of
the Garter is discussed by George Frederick Beltz in Memorials of the Most Noble Order of the
Garter (London, 1841; repr. New York, 1973). On the women members of the Order, see James L.
Gillespie, “Ladies of the Fraternity of Saint George and of the Society of the Garter,” Albion 17
(1985): 259–78.
46. Kew, The National Archives (formerly, the Public Records Office), E 101/397/20 (roll of
liveries by John de Sleford, keeper of the great wardrobe).
47. Beltz, Memorials, 244; Gillespie, “Ladies,” 259–63.
48. Jefferson, “MS Arundel 48,” 371; see further 370–73, on the probable period during which
the Order of the Garter’s earliest surviving statues were produced.
49. Beltz, Memorials, 244–46; Gillespie, “Ladies,” 265–68.
50. Gillespie, “Ladies,” 268. For a complete list of ladies of the Garter during this period,
see Hugh E. L. Collins, The Order of the Garter 1348–1461: Chivalry and Politics in Late Medieval
England (Oxford, 2000), “Appendix IV,” 301–3.
51. Jefferson, “MS Arundel 48,” 370–73.

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340 The Chaucer Review

culminate in the exclusion of women (except monarchs) from the Order.52

The absence of contemporary statutes makes it impossible to say what role
women played in the Order of the Garter during the fourteenth century.
However, the surviving records do not treat women as mere appendages
to the male members, and they do not suggest that ladies were not “real”
members of the Order. On the contrary, they explicitly describe them as
Dominae de Secta et Liberatura Garterii53 or de Secta Militum de Garterio.54
Ladies could and did belong to the Order of the Garter. Thus, it is perfectly
plausible that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight would refer to ladies as
members of a chivalric brotherhood.
Of course, the fraternity in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is not the
Order of the Garter but the Round Table, but there is ample reason for con-
necting these chivalric societies.55 When Edward III first conceived the idea
for creating a chivalric association of the leading English knights, it was as
a new Round Table. According to D’Arcy J. D. Boulton’s authoritative study,
virtually all contemporary chroniclers “identified the Order absolutely . . . as
the ultimate product of Edward’s project to revive the Round Table.”56 Since
the Order of the Garter was founded shortly before Sir Gawain was likely
written, an association between the Order and the Round Table is inher-
ently probable. Moreover, certain details show that the poet is specifically
alluding to the Order, and these suggestions are strongest precisely in lines
2514–20. The decision by the “lordes and ladis” of the Round Table to wear
a green baldric in honor of Gawain obviously parallels the practice of the
Order. The salient similarities between Gawain’s belt and the Order’s garter
can be summarized as follows: both are articles “of civil dress that became
the badge of a royal British order of knighthood; and if tradition is true, both
were ladies’ favors either bestowed or taken up by a gentleman.”57 Some critics
have objected that Gawain’s girdle is green whereas the garter is blue, and
that the two articles are worn differently. But these minor differences cannot
obscure the fundamental congruencies between the Order of the Garter and
the Round Table in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. These similarities are
52. Gillespie, “Ladies,” 270–73.
53. See, for example, Kew, The National Archives, E 101/401/4 (account of Alan de Stokes, keeper
of the great wardrobe).
54. The National Archives, E 101/397/20.
55. See, most recently, Francis Ingledew, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Order of
History (Notre Dame, 2006).
56. D’Arcy J. D. Boulton, Knights of the Crown: The Monarchial Orders of Knighthood in
Later Medieval Europe, 1325–1520 (New York, 1987), 103.
57. W. G. Cooke and D’A. J. D. Boulton, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Poem for
Henry of Grosmont?,” Medium Ævum 68 (1999): 42–54, at 48–49.

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 pau l b attl e s 341

so obvious that the Order’s motto—“Hony soit qui mal [y] pence” (Shame to
him who thinks evil of it)—has been prominently inscribed at the end of the
poem. It is immaterial whether this explicit was added by the Cotton Nero
A.x scribe or by a later hand.58 Either the poet or the scribe, or a later reader,
was sufficiently struck by the parallels to make the Garter motto speak to
Sir Gawain’s adventure.
To sum up: contemporaries identify the Order of the Garter with the
Round Table; specific details in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight link the two
chivalric societies; and the Order’s motto is found at the end of the poem.
Surely the practices of the Order are relevant to the present discussion, all
the more so since Arthur’s court in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is obvi-
ously anachronistic. Just as Gawain wears fourteenth-century armor and
Sir Bertilak lives in a fourteenth-century castle, so members of the Round
Table enjoy fourteenth-century activities like jousting and making caroles
(line 43). If, then, Edward III and Richard II extended membership in the
Order to women and conferred garters upon them, does it defy belief that a
contemporary poet had ladies belong to the Round Table and that they wore
green baldrics in token of their membership? Surely not. There is no reason
to remove the ladis from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Their presence is
authorized not only by the manuscript, but by the poem’s persistent narrating
of the distant Arthurian past in terms of the fourteenth-century present.

***

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells two stories.59 One is the tale that unfolds
up until Gawain has received his nick: when the Green Knight tests the brav-
ery of Arthur’s knights, Gawain takes up the challenge and, after a difficult
journey, reaches a castle whose lord offers to show Gawain the way to the
Green Chapel; on the appointed day, Gawain redeems his pledged word and
thereby upholds both his own honor and that of his lord, King Arthur. The
second story amounts to a rewriting of the first: when Morgan le Fay sends an
emissary to Camelot to test its surquidré, ‘pride’ (2457), and to harm her rival,
Queen Guinevere, Sir Gawain takes up the game and reaches the site of his
real test, the chatelaine’s sexual temptations; the Virgin Mary intercedes for
her knight (1768–69), and Gawain accepts only a belt from the Lady, for which

58. Authorities are divided on this point. Gollancz believes that the inscription was added
later (Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain, 8), but Malcolm B. Parkes finds that it was exe-
cuted by the same scribe that copied the manuscript (cited in Ingledew, Sir Gawain, 224n10).
59. On this point, see Heng, “Feminine Knots,” 501–2.

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342 The Chaucer Review

he later receives a cut on the neck (the seat of pride60), but his life is spared.
This alternate tale, which hovers at the edges of the reader’s perception until
it snaps into sudden focus with Sir Bertilak’s explanation in lines 2331 and
following, inverts the importance of gender to the plot. The masculine quest
suddenly becomes subsumed within an elaborate drama whose main actors
are women. Like Sir Gawain, whose reaction to Bertilak’s revelation runs the
gamut from shock to anger to denial, editors have found this a difficult pill
to swallow. In the passages discussed above, their interventions insistently
attempt to reprioritize the first, male-centered plot. Morgan le Fay and Lady
Bertilak are safely subordinated to the Green Knight/Sir Bertilak, and the
ladies of the Round Table are erased from the text, preventing them from a
having a voice in Gawain’s judgment.
It is not easy to determine the poet’s ultimate stance on the “woman
question.” Guinevere and the Virgin Mary certainly have positive roles, but
the part played by Morgan le Fay and Lady Bertilak is harder to assess. Some
have argued that Gawain’s sojourn at Hautdesert teaches him to sin, and that
his failure foreshadows the ultimate destruction of the Round Table;61 such
readings cast Morgan and the Lady as villains. Other critics, however, see
their actions in a positive light, contending that Gawain’s realization of his
imperfections makes him wiser and humbler.62 Since the poem offers three
conflicting perspectives about the significance of Gawain’s adventure—
Gawain’s, Sir Bertilak’s, and the Round Table’s—and since none of these is in
the poet’s own voice, both the positive and the negative readings of Morgan
and the Lady can be justified. And this is surely the point: the ending encour-
ages debate.63
The passages discussed above reveal a pattern of editorial interven-
tion that distorts Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’s attitude toward women.
60. See Paul F. Reichardt, “Gawain and the Image of the Wound,” PMLA 99 (1984): 154–61;
and Judith S. Neaman, “Sir Gawain’s Covenant: Troth and Timor Mortis,” Philological Quarterly 55
(1976): 30–42.
61. To cite only two among many studies here, see Gordon M. Shedd, “Knight in Tarnished
Armour: The Meaning of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Modern Language Review 62 (1967):
3–13; and Alfred David, “Gawain and Aeneas,” English Studies 49 (1968): 402–9.
62. See, for example, Charles Moorman, “Myth and Mediaeval Literature: Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight,” Mediaeval Studies 18 (1956): 158–72; Ralph Hanna III, “Unlocking What’s Locked:
Gawain’s Green Girdle,” Viator 14 (1983): 289–302; Nedra C. Grogan, “Mulier est Hominis Confusio:
The Green Knight’s Lady,” Emporia State Research Studies 32 (1984): 15–27; Williams, “Morgan La
Fée as Trickster”; and William F. Woods, “Nature and the Inner Man in Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight,” Chaucer Review 36 (2002): 209–27.
63. Compare A. C. Spearing, The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study (Cambridge, 1970), 235–36;
Wendy Clein, Concepts of Chivalry in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Norman, Okla., 1987), 3–14;
and C. Stephen Finley, “‘Endeles Knot’: Closure and Indeterminacy in Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight,” Papers on Language and Literature 26 (1990): 445–58.

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 pau l b attl e s 343

Indeed, these changes persistently foreclose the very kinds of debate that
the poem explicitly encourages. To point out these lapses is not to devalue
the work of textual critics, but rather to participate in the ongoing debate
about the text and meaning of the poem. In D. C. Greetham’s memorable
formulation, “being a textual critic [means] being a mistruster of texts”; that
is, “It means using a critical attitude to all evidence that a text brings with it,
not taking anything merely on faith and not believing that anyone is com-
pletely free from error.”64 In my view, this attitude is also important for those
who rely on the work of textual critics. The literary critic must, at times, be a
“mistruster of editions”—not in a spirit of rancor, but simply out of the recog-
nition that, for all their appearance of rigor and scientific objectivity, critical
editions always “involve a speculative, personal, and individual confrontation
of one mind by another.”65 Editors’ attitudes towards gender have played and
continue to play a powerful role in how the text of Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight is fashioned and how it is presented to readers. Carefully scrutinizing
their decisions will allow literary critics to develop a better understanding of
the women as they are depicted in the text.

Hanover College
Hanover, Indiana
([email protected])

64. D. C. Greetham, Textual Scholarship: An Introduction (New York, 1992), 296.

65. Greetham, Textual Scholarship, 295.

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