Sir Gawain And The Green Knight Women

Improved Essays
In the Medieval Ages, there were numerous amounts of stories. These consisted of fighting knights that come back from dead to a voyage across the land. However, with all these stories, women are portrayed completely differently when compared to men. The stories “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, “LE MORTE D’ARTHUR”, and “THE BOOK OF MARGERY KEMPE” are the stories that I thought explained how women were depicted back then the best.
“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” showed that everyone, even knights, have their weaknesses. As the story says “the wife of the lord (Green Knight) approaches him (Gawain) romantically”, this could be said as having an affair. The lady is like temptresses, like Eve was, and got men to do wrong. The wife tempted Sir Gawain into breaking
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“So after the death of the duke, King Uther lay with Igrane (the widow) more than three hours after his death…” To understand better this is what happened, King Uther killed Igrane’s husband and then pretended to be the guy he just killed, just so he could sleep with Igrane. In other words, women in this story are only good for two things- sex and children, and as a political alliance. Women had no respect in this story and frankly, I’m not surprised.
“THE BOOK OF MARGERY KEMPE” was a tad bit nicer to women, but not by much. Margery Kempe was very prideful in the way she dressed and her ancestry. She also had very bad luck, especially with her attempt at running a horse mill because “…this horse would not drag a load in the mill no matter what the man did.” After Margery Kempe gave up her pride she ended up having 14 children by the time she turned 40. Women are very prideful and stubborn in this tale, but they’re not treated as property, instead as actual people.
The middle ages were not a good time for women; from being temptresses, to property, and even just a method to get children. Luckily, that’s all left in the

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