Psychoanalytic Approach to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight :: Sir Gawain Green Knight Essays

Its easy to associate Sir Gawain and the Green ennoble with one of Jungs archetypal motif patterns the hoagy and the quest. Through lots of difficulties or challenges, Sir Gawain reaches the high ground of knighthood, and also proves himself worthy of a courtly masculine identity. It stable seems quite daring and risky to apply psychoanalytic approach into the textbook itself, especially it comes with the Oedipus complex. But if we put Freuds three psychic zones and Sir Gawains conflict together, or related his fear of castration with his fear of world beheaded, the applying of psychoanalytic approach is acceptable. Within the connections mentioned above, we tooshie see how the start disclose figures prove out and how a knights masculinity is maintain by abstaining from familiar desire in medieval period. Sir Gawain is similar to any other hero we see in mythology, who is predisposed to response any obstacles coming upon them, and is thus getting mature both physically and mentally. So the process of being a real knight is similar to the process of being a real man in FreudStheory of child development. A boy in the process of being a man will confront a threat of being castrated by his father for to engaging in sexual relation with his Mother. Submitting to the reality principal, the boy represses his incestuous desire, identifies with his father, and is take to the manhood. One of the father figures within this text obviously is the Green Knight, who appears as the authority of the nature power to test Sir Gawains ability in masculinity and ability in abstaining from sexual temptation. Before the Green Knight is qualified to test Sir Gawain, he must prove that he is much a man than Sir Gawain. If we assume that being beheaded here is the some other form of castration. That he lets his head cut off by Gawain inaugural is the showing of his superiority in masculinity. After Green Knights head is cut off, he seized this splendid head and strai ghtway get up it. From the passage, we see he is not less a man, and is never aghast(predicate) of being castrated by his son, which reinforces the Green Knights father figure. Since the Green Knight, a father authority is under the disguise of Bertilak, we can assume that his mistress becomes the mother figure. While the Green Knight is out there hunting, Sir Gawain has to decide whether to put aside his fear of castration and give in the sexual seduction or to repress his own desire.