Grace+Chen's+Satire

A Critical Analysis of Fashion in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

From the moment of its conception in the fourteenth century, the literary masterwork Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has remained a central tenet in the pantheon of English literature. Literary critics, however, have frequently made the error of focusing their intellectual capacities on the analysis of such minor features of the work, such as the poetic meter, plotline, or thematic development. In their misguided enthusiasm, they miss the central value of the poem. In this essay, I will examine the anonymous poet’s keen analysis of fabulous fashion sense in the sphere of modern societal concerns as presented so perspicaciously in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The first clear instance of fashion is introduced in the description of the green knight’s garb, eloquently captured with the words “his hands were green, and his face. And his armor, and his shirt, were green, all green” (61). The writer goes on to elaborate in exquisite and novel detail the knights embroidery, “decorated in green,” his feet, which were “green” and his saddle horn, “gleaming with green,” demonstrating the author’s masterful understanding of visual imagery. The overall effect of the knight’s garment choice is succinctly captured with the phrase, “everything about him was an elegant green” (62). Based on these ambivalent hints, as well as minute analysis of the title, there has arisen a general consensus among the foremost scholars of this work that the knight’s attire and complexion was of a predominantly verdant hue, though it is still subject to ongoing debate.

Fashion, as any subscriber to scholarly magazines such as Vogue knows, reflects the wearer’s intimate secrets and compatibility with specific celebrities of interest. The richly detailed descriptions of the Green Knight’s attire thus reveals a complex web of character development that may not be evident to the untrained eye, based on the depth of historical allusion. Green is the color of many low-growing shrubs and grasses of the angiosperm family, a prominent member of which is the clover. Better known to many populations as the shamrock, this green plant has taken on the profound symbolism of national pride of the Irish, who descended from the Gaelic people, who the anonymous poet would have been intimately familiar with. The Irish people have many traditions which the Green Knight could be alluding to in his selection of verdurous garb, but their foremost cultural contribution comes in the form of the lacteal and benumbed beverage, known colloquially as the Shamrock Shake. Yet the scarcity of the Shamrock Shake, available only once per annum, has served to ignite underlying conflicts between socioeconomic classes possess inequitably distributed access to the valuable green libation, a trend critically examined by Marxist scholars. The anonymous poet, with remarkable foresight and prescience, thus utilized the Green Knight’s viridescent garb as a form of silent, abstract criticism of looming socioeconomic crises.

However, the knight’s attire was representative of something far more significant in the realm of fashion. The author was clearly a connoisseur of high fashion, so he would have known that red was the “it color” of the late winter fashion lines of the medieval age. Red, ranging in hue from dried blood crimson to lady’s slipper pink to Celtic hair scarlet, was in high demand for boldly cut girtles, scarves, tunics, and more. Even horse gear was fashionably accessorized with red, to complement their riders’ color palette. Thus the choice to dress the titular knight in green seems to cut across the grain. Why this deliberate defiance of societal norms? Why this headstrong resistance to accepting the dominant style of dress? Why the obscure name, “Bertilak,” which certainly could not be pronounced on the first try by any reasonably fluent English speaker? It is clear, therefore, that the Green Knight was the first recorded instance of the human specimens now known as “hipsters.”

Reflection