With the waxing popularity of Christianity in late fourteenth-century England, the culture’s expectations had evolved to encompass new, more complicated views on human interrelations and the world view in general. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight represents a new conception of the heroic ideal, women, nature, and narrative technique. A juxtaposition with Beowulf illustrates these changing ideals.

Gawain and Beowulf are very different heroes. The pre-Christian Beowulf is ultimately concerned with glory, while Gawain’s concern lies with his immortal soul. Yet, the genesis of the knight’s code of honor and fidelity are found within Beowulf’s comitatus. This agreement shared between a lord and his followers is expounded upon in Gawain, having been influenced by Christianity. The issue of religion now presents the hero with ubiquitous moral challenges to face on top of the physical; the latter is now not as dangerous to the knight for it can only end his worldly life while the former may result in damnation. The hero must now concern himself with goals of a metaphysical nature: things like chastity (purity of mind and heart) and a loyalty and obedience to a higher power than even that of his lord or king. Gawain’s plights prove that he has more subtle monsters to contend with than Grendel, namely woman.

Women in Gawain, unlike those placid, amenable supporters of the male he-men in Beowulf, are more dubious and by no means as harmless. The woman have become both the symbol of goodness and purity (represented by the virgin Mary) and the evil temptress (Eve-like, or similar to Grendel’s mother in Zemeckis’ recent film). According to Gawain, the life of a knight would be easier if it were not for women who trap “their true knight in their trammels so quaint” (iv.2413). His attitude is to him justified by his recent experience in the realm of Morgan le Fay. Yet, Gawain fails to see, without those temptations the challenge of life would be no challenge at all; therefore, life would be dull and meaningless. At the close of Gawain’s vituperation against women, he states: “And one and all fall prey / To women that they had used; / If I be led astray, / Methinks I may be excused” (iv.2425-8). Perhaps women are disgusted with being used, Gawain, and this duplicity of action and thought is a retaliation for Beowulf-like treatment. While there remains a negative aspect to the image of women in Gawain, she is no longer just a place setting in Hrothgar’s court.

Along with the development of more-than-two-dimensional women characters came the courtly love convention. Instead of being generally unimportant as in Beowulf, women were now idealized and worshipped. Courtly love’s elements include humility, courtesy, and especially adultery; since marriage was a business transaction (similar to Beowulf), love had to be sought elsewhere. Here we have another paradox: the knight’s mistress was the earthly manifestation of the Virgin Mary, yet there is a breach of chastity. Therefore, while indulging in worship, there is also the sin of adultery. There is additional niche of complexity within Gawain. Gawain has pledged his troth to the lord of the castle, in which they would both exchange what they received during the day. For two days this is faithfully executed — the hunt of the lord paralleling Gawain’s bed-chamber plight. However, on day three, Gawain swears his troth to the lord’s wife that directly contradicts his agreement with her husband — Gawain, like the fox, tries to elude the inevitable. Gawain keeps the girdle (Hey, Gawain, the girdle’s green, man — take a hint!) hoping that his small breach of fidelity will save his life and go unnoticed. His infidelity does not go unnoticed, but it is not a crime punishable by death. Good and evil, right and wrong are no longer as evident as they were in Beowulf — this is a new world of intricacies and subtle perils.

Along with the nature of women and their relationship to men, the view toward nature has also changed in Gawain. There is a hostile representation of the outside in both poems: the outside is cold and foreboding, ominous and deadly while the inside is safe and comfortable with the hearth and friends; evil comes from the outside while what is good is contained within. Beowulf sanctifies the Heorot (heart) again by removing the outside evil, Grendel. Gawain laments having to leave Arthur’s court during Christmas — he must leave his hearth companions and enter the cold and dangerous outside world. Yet, like women, nature has changed. Indeed, the outside still contains physical danger as it did in Beowulf, but the inside is the more perilous to Gawain’s soul. Ostensibly, Gawain is safe inside; yet, his soul is at sake — the temptation is Gawain’s Grendel. Yet, while Gawain’s world view has become more complicated, the narrator’s outlook is less grim.

Nature in both poems is cyclical. Yet, Beowulf’s cycle is pre-Christian and is therefore a hopeless cycle of misery and contention. Gawain’s Christian world is one of danger as well, but it contains hope of the after life. This perhaps accounts for the former’s grim, dark narrative style, while the latter is more humorous and capricious. While both worlds are subject to mutability, at least the denizens of Gawain’s world can laugh.

Finally, unlike Beowulf, Gawain opens and closes with references to the Trojans, specifically Brutus, the legendary founder of Britain. Perhaps, like Virgil’s Aeneid, the Gawain poet is linking the glorious history with the Greeks and Trojans for a broader and richer historical context, both temporarily and spatially. Like Aeneas, Brutus founds a great Western empire: “It was high-born Aeneas and his haughty race / That since prevailed over provinces, and proudly reigned / Over well-nigh all the wealth of the West Isles” (i.5-7). And, like Romulus, Brutus lends his name to his newly-found kingdom. Therefore, Brutus’ scions are descended from a heroic stock, beginning with the Trojans and the gods. Gawain ends restating Britain’s heroic beginnings, thus completing the allegorical cycle of the poem. While the spring sun will soon shine upon the new hero Gawain, ushering in a rebirth and a continuation of the heroic tradition, Brutus and his heroic, god-like progeny are again alluded to revealing a hopeful continuity in this great land and in God’s worldly design.