Reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight this week I immediately thought of the Green Man, who is popularly represented as a green face emerging from green leafy foliage. The Green Man appears in a wide variety of types of art and sculpture throughout history, and as early as 400 BCE (William 46). I initially wondered if discussing the Green Knight as a Green Man figure was too obvious for a blog post, but decided to explore it anyways because come on he’s a glowing green man, not blue, or red, or any other color. The Green Knight as a Green Man figure raises some interesting questions about England’s relationship to nature at the time, particularly in an Arthurian romance where Arthur and his knights represent idyllic views on ultimate goodness and chivalry. How does the natural world fit into that idealized concept of society? If Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a typical romance text wherein a hero goes on a quest and is thenceforth tested, how would understanding the Green Knight as a nature spirit play into the moral of the story? Gawain isn’t just tested by an envoy of Arthur’s devious sister Morgan La Fey, he’s tested by Nature itself. After his ordeal, Gawain then wears the green lace (or sash) as a “token of untruth…[which] never will it pass from him” (st. 101). What symbolic function then does the green sash serve when everyone in the court of the Round Table adopts it, if we see his ordeal as a bout with Nature? What opposition does this romance create between nature and the chivalrous codes of the idyllic Arthurian court?
In order to answer these questions, let’s first look at the specific reasons for my comparison of the Green Knight to a Green Man. He appears during Arthur’s Christmas feast as clad in green (even glowing green in Tolkien’s translation) on his green horse. The Green Knight is the “tallest of all men upon earth…half a giant” (st. 7). His attire and “vesture was of pure green, both the stripings of his belt, and the stones that shone brightly in his orgeous apparel, upon silk work, on his person and saddle” (st. 8). Here we see him as shimmering green personage atop a wholly green horse. His green appearance and suggests his symbolic function as a Green Man figure, and is further punctuated by the fact that he carries a “holly branch, that is most green when the groves are all bare, and in the other he held an axe” all engraved in green (st. 10). The fact that he carries a holly branch and is largely unarmed other than the the massive axe seems to suggest this treelike, nature spirit.
We further experience the presence of the Green Man, or the thematic importance of nature, in the romance as the poet notes the passing of the cycles of the seasons,
“Then the weather of the world doth fight with winter. The cold doth vanish and the clouds uplift, and the rain falls upon fair fields in warm showers, and the flowers appear on the ground, and in the woodlands their garments are green. Birds are busy in building their nests, and boldly they sing because of the summer’s soft solace that follows thereafter” (st. 22)
and
“After the summer season of soft winds, when zephyrs are sighing over seeds and herbs, and the damp dews are dropping from the green leaves, then are they glad thereat, the living things that grow there waiting for the blissful blushing of the bright sun. Then hastens the harvest and hardens them right soon, and warns them before the coming of winter to wax full ripe. And the dust by the drought is driven about from the face of the fields, and it bloweth full high. And the fierce winds of the welkins wrestle with the sun. And the leaves of the trees fall to the ground, and grey is the grass that was green erewhile. Then all ripens and rots that grew up before” (st. 23).
Noting here the passage of time from winter to winter as spring melts into “summer’s soft solace” and the harvest grows into “all that ripens and rots that grew up before” we see the thematic importance of nature in the romance and experience the presence of the Green Man as a proxy for the spirit of nature. Gawain’s dealings with the Green Knight are more emblematic of deep attitudes about the natural world and our place in relation to it. As Gawain eventually finds the Green Knight near the grassy mounds or barrows of the Green Chapel, which are reminiscent of the fairy mounds of Irish myth, we get the sense that the Green Knight, or Green Man, is not just a proxy for nature but an ancient sense of nature.
After his ordeal with the Green Knight, Gawain vows to wear the green lace as a warning against cowardice, against of acting outside of the knight’s code, as noted above. In actuality the Green Knight played a complex head-game with Gawain. If the Green Knight is a Green Man figure, the sash then represents something about nature. So is it a warning against something else, a warning against nature? The fact that the lords and ladies of the Round Table adopted the green sash “for the sake of Sir Gawain as long as they lived” (st. 101) highlights some enduring attitude about the oppositional relationship between courtly knights and natural world. I can’t help but see analogs in our societal attitudes about nature today. We often see ourselves as outside of nature, it seems. So why the enduring Green Man, the wry nature spirit? Is it possible to dissolve the oppositional conceptions around humans v. nature? Does it follow that this is a very man-centric romance? Where does that leave women in this opposition? What do you think?
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/sir-gawain-and-green-knight
Anderson, William (1990). Green Man. Harper Collins. p. 46
readingmedievalnature 
You end by asking where the man vs. nature opposition leaves women. We learn at the end that the Green Knight was working under the direction of the evil enchantress Morgan la Fey, and that Morgan was specifically trying to harm Guinevere. The “other” world in the dichotomy you establish in your blog post, is connected to nature, but also to magic, and it is ultimately presided over by a female figure (Morgan), while the civilized world is patriarchal – ruled by Arthur and his knights (who rule with physical, rather than magical force). Not sure what else to contribute to this line of thinking, other than to also add that the hunting scenes also reinforce the theme of the contrast/conflict between aristocratic culture and nature.
The first day of the year that tree’s buds burst into leaves, does get under my skin and creates some sentiment. Perhaps growth is a most-important use for the color in the Green Knight story. I’ve read that the ME middle class wore green robes to represent their social status. Color-coded clothing was a way for the common man who couldn’t read words, to read these symbols. The aristocracy was known to wear read. This made me curious about the colors worn by pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales. The only known paintings of 22 of them included the yeoman and the squire in green, and many in red though none were nobles. The green sash worn by Sir Gawain seemed to represent protection in the beginning, but shame in the end. I’ve learned green dye was difficult to make in Medieval times. It was made from saffron (yellow) and the woad plant (blue). Monks soaked copper in fermented wine to color medieval manuscripts – perhaps the two pilgrims I mentioned were painted in this way. Green’s also known to represent fertility, but that wasn’t made apparent for women in the story.
http://www.medieval-life-and-times.info/medieval-art