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Dishonest In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight

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Throughout Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the poet characterizes all women as dishonest. The first woman encountered in the story, Queen Guenevere, seems to be trustworthy and an upstanding character. Her beauty and power in the kingdom is highly renown and respected among all people. Later in the story, the Green Knight reveals that one of the reasons that Morgan Le Fay wanted to set up the test of the beheading game was in hope that it would have “caused her to die” in fear of the Green Knight (Winny 2460). Guenevere appears to be perfect, but she caused Morgan Le Fay to be so angry with her that Le Fay went to great lengths to try to kill her. She herself was not dishonest, but the poet makes her character dishonest by initially characterizing …show more content…

She constantly attempts to seduce Gawain and “never ceased to remind him of his reputation” making her seem like she cares about preserving his upstanding reputation (Engelhardt 221). When she later tells Gawain about her green belt that could save his life, he believes her lie, accepting and keeping the belt even though it would not actually make him invincible. At the end of the story, the Green Knight, the lord, reveals that he “sent her to test [Gawain]” to see if he was truly noble (Winny 2362). Gawain thought that the “gift of her body which the lady pressed upon Gawain” initially was her honest affection towards him, but her affection towards him was not real (Engelhardt 221). Her dishonesty in her affection caused Gawain to commit a sin which was against his reputation. The poet of this story thinks women use beauty as a form of seduction. Just like the lady seduces Gawain into sin, the poet believes any man can be lead into sin by a beautiful woman. In his mind, women can not be trusted since they usually have something else that they want from a man besides love. The lady wanted to test if Gawain was as noble as he was supposed to be, but seduced him with her love in order to test

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