Essay On Chivalry In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight

Today there seems to be an underlying assumption that chivalry is all about men in armor riding around questing, jousting and conquering, while the women sit helplessly in their towers and castles with nothing to do but sigh and swoon. Apart from the favorable depiction of Arthur, Lancelot, Gawain and other knights, the retellings of the Arthurian legend pay much attention to Queen Guinevere who, in addition to being untrue to her husband and King, treats her devoted lover, Sir Lancelot, unjustly. On the other hand, she remains faithful to her lover for most of her life, what is more, when Arthur dies and the fellowship of the Round Table is destroyed, she becomes a nun and spends the rest of her days "in fasting, prayers, and alms-deeds, that all manner of people marveled how …show more content…
White describes this change in a vivid and convincing way, making her development a natural process of losing youthful illusions and discovering the "seventh sense" or "the knowledge of the world" (394). At twenty two, Guinevere is experiencing a chaos of mind and body – a time for weeping at sunsets and at the glamour of moonlight – a confusion and profusion of beliefs and hopes, in God, in Truth, in Love, and in Eternity – an ability to be transported by the beauty of physical objects – a joy. so joyful and sorrow so sorrowful that oceans could lie between them [...] restlessness or inability to settle down and stop bothering the middle-aged [...] lack of experience as to when truth should be suppressed in the deference of the middle-aged...(396). Twenty years later, when Lancelot returns from the Quest of the Holy Grail and meets Guinevere for the first time after his long absence, he realizes that she "had overdressed for the