After reading the three Gawain romances, I realized that the othering done in these stories isn’t really based on Christianity, like it was in the Song of Roland. Rather, it is more based on beauty and being the ‘norm’ in terms of a physical human being. Anyone who enters the castle of Camelot that is physically different from them is ‘othered’ because they just aren’t as beautiful. Even Jeffrey Cohen notes this in his article, “Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages,” that the giants that exist in the story are an other in themselves. This ‘othering’ based on physicality does not coincide with Christian moral values, however, the agency of being Christian is not prevalent in these stories. In every story, it begins with describing Arthur, Gawain and the people of Camelot, in a manner to make them the initial subjects to the reader, and to make any other characters seen in the story ‘othered’ to them.
In “Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle,” we have a man who is associated with untamed beasts and appears dangerous. The story begins with a hunt, and while listing the knights who are with Gawain and Arthur, we have one knight named “Syr Ferr Unkowthe” (ln 61). Even though we don’t know who this knight is, he is described as being fair nonetheless. However, once we enter the castle of Carle and meet the host, he is described as a large broad man with a turned up nose and great height. Carle seems to pay his way out of his otherness by giving away his beautiful daughter to Gawain. In this “peaceweaving” move, Carle is able to join the knights of the Round Table and lose his ‘otherness.’
In “The Turke and Sir Gawain,” the Turke is othered by his description as, “like a Turke he was made” (ln 14). Here, the othering is based on ethnicity, and surely he is of darker complexion. The Turke is never described as ugly (just ethnically different), so he is still able to join Camelot in the end. Though the Turke does convert to Christianity in the end, he is the bridge leading Gawain to the other world of the King of Man and his giants. The Turke embodies the othering of the nether country they travel to.
In the story of Dame Ragnelle, we once again have a woman who is depicted as very ugly. However, once Sir Gawain weds her and the spell or broken, all is well. Ragnelle is noted to be one of the most beautiful women in the kingdom. Ragnelle from then on refrains from being an ‘other’ by her beauty and can be seen as a noblewoman in the court. Never is there any look into the character of Dame Ragnelle. Once she is beautiful, she is associated with the fair ladies of Camelot and loses her title as an ‘other’ (in the sense of physicality). There can be argument for her othering as female, but I do not wish to address it in this post.
As we have noted the mirroring of the opposing sides in Song of Roland, perhaps the use of beauty versus lack of beauty is a mirror as well. Like the book The Picture of Dorian Gray, it is a mirror for the people in Camelot to see who they really are. However the story can be read, it seems that the only way to break free from the ‘othering’ is for a spell to be broken or you provide beauty (a.k.a. a beautiful daughter) to the hegemony.
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While Ragnelle becomes beautiful/normalized within the constructs of Camelot culture, I feel her othering does not end with her simply being included into the fold. You're right in pointing out that her otherness is far more apparent when she is hideous, but regardless of her outward physical appearance, as Wenthe pointed out in class, Ragnelle is always "withoute mesure."
Also, Ragnelle is the only character in these three romances to actually change Gawain. He doesn't joust after he marries Ragnelle, which actually kind of makes Ragnelle's beauty and femininity a little bit frightening. Arthur has a wife, but he doesn't become a "coward" because of Guenevere. It's the degree to which Ragnelle's appearance is either attractive or repulsive that others her more that any other character.
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