"Alle Openly": Identity and Discourse in "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle"

I'd like to follow in the footsteps of a couple of earlier postings and discuss "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle," which of these three colorful pieces I found the most interesting. To begin with, it was refreshing to read an Arthurian romance in which Arthur actually participates as a character - and not in the context of either his rise to power or his decline and death (although this latter, for a large segment of the story, seems a distinct possibility). In (presumably) the long heyday of his reign, the royal cipher gets to decend from his throne and walk around and talk with the other real people. Seeing him in the flesh like this was, to me, a pleasant surprise.

My point, beyond how nice it was to witness Arthur get his day in the sun, is that "Dame Ragnelle" is a far more narratively complex poem than the other two. "The Turke" and "The Carle of Carlisle" keep a relatively tight focus on Gawain himself and his dealings with the monstrous other in various manifestations, most importantly the other whom he will eventually help transform back into "one of us." Despite occasional excursions into the head of the Turke, the Carle, or ancillary figures like Kay, the narrative in these poems stays predominantly unilinear. In "Dame Ragnelle," by contrast, we have at least four central figures, all of whom have a hand in weaving the complex and multi-stranded plot: Arthur, as I've mentioned; Sir Gromer Somer Joure; and of course Gawain and Dame Ragnelle themselves. Obviously Gawain and Ragnelle are indispensable, but subtract even Arthur or Gromer and the story would lose a lot of the underlying network of criss-crossing oaths, claims, and obligations which give it such vigor and depth.

Closely related to this poem's multiplicity of character and motivation is one of its other unique characteristics: the fact that so much of it is related by characters themselves. First-person discourse plays a much larger part here than in "The Turke" or "Carle of Carlisle." Most significant incidents in the poem, after being described by the narrator, get told again, sometimes at nearly equal length and detail, by one character to another. In fact, these first-person discourses, and the ways in which they are controlled, concealed, recounted, and pieced together, relate closely to the overarching themes of identity and otherness.

Before releasing Arthur after their initial encounter, Sir Gromer admonishes him to "kepe alle thyng in close" (111). Arthur is not to tell the story of this meeting and of the deadly obligation he is now under to anyone. Of course, Arthur immediately turns around and recounts the whole tale to Gawain, which also helps establish the close trust and fidelity existing between the two of them. Arthur's second encounter in "Yngleswod Forest," with Ragnelle herself, ends with precisely the opposite command: "'Welle,' sayd she, 'nowe go home agayn / And fayre wordes speke to Sir Gawen, / For thy lyf I may save'" (297-299). Ragnelle then permits, indeed exhorts revelatory speech a second time, when supplying Arthur with the answer to Gromer's question, which Arthur paraphrases to Gromer in virtually identical language. The poet constructs a provocative contrast here by juxtaposing this correct, feminine-supplied, oral response with the "bokes twayne" (449) assembled by Gawain and Arthur and curtly dismissed by Gromer. The male compendia of literate knowledge prove useless, but verbally quoting feminine first-person discourse succeeds.

To cut to the chase of all this, I think we can draw a direct line between Ragnelle's free speech, and her desire (even her will) to have others speak freely, with her physical transformation at the climax of the poem. Unlike her brother, Ragnelle has no interest in making others "kepe alle thyng in close." She has been "kept close" herself, and consequently does not want to conceal things but to publicize them and have others publicize further. Witness how adamant she is that everything at her wedding and her feast proceeds "alle openly" (575).

The resolution of the concatenation of obligations and dilemmas making up the plot of the poem occurs in the most elaborate of all its scenes of first-person discourse. After Arthur and his entourage have discovered the transformed Ragnelle in Gawain's room, a succession of characters, speaking to a succession of audiences, piece together the whole story from first to last so that everybody involved knows everything: "Sir Gawen told the Kyng"; "the Kyng them alle gan telle"; "the Kyng told the Queen"; "Gawen told the Kyng"; "she [Ragnelle] told the Kyng" (752, 760, 763, 772, 775). In other words, the revelation of Ragnelle's real identity leads to the revelation of the complete plot of the poem. Moreover, this scene of mutual public narration follows from Gawain's publication of Ragnelle's true appearance, when he "opynyd the dore fulle fayre" to present her "in her smok" to the male gaze (741-742). As a side note, I don't remember anything like either of these scenes occuring in Chaucer's version of this story; as I recall (not having read it since freshman year), "The Wife of Bath's Tale" ends in the bedroom, without the transformation being publicized. This difference only underscores how, in this version, speech and identity, and the concealment or revelation thereof, are connected.

Ragnelle's transformation is secured when Gawain gives her "the sovereynte" which she needs and which, apparently, all women desire. However, in another sense, Ragnelle has been in control all along in this poem. She has all the answers; she commands the discourse of the poem, letting others know what to say and when to say it. Indeed, by the end we get the sense that everything after Gromer's ambush of Arthur has been part of one giant plot spun by Ragnelle to regain her true identity. To this end she manipulates her brother's grievance, Arthur's dilemma, and Gawain's loyalty to his sovereign and courtesy to his wife. Ragnelle is the spider at the center of this web. Hence, the Other here occupies the central position of the poem, but her position, like her identity, lies concealed. Gawain's recognition of the sovereignty which she already essentialy wields brings this position and identity into the open. In "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle," the Other is the unacknowledged form of the Self.