The Household Outsider: the Gawain Poet

At one point in the Middle English poem Cleanness, God (in his three persons) is dining with Abraham. As in Genesis, the Middle English Abraham bustles around serving, and the three persons tell him that he will be the father to the Israelites. ‘Bihinde the dor’, however, the elderly and childless Sare hears God and ridicules the idea that she and Abraham could have a child: Then the burde bihinde the dor for busmare laghed, scorn And sayd sothly to herself Sare the madde: perverse, foolish ‘May thou trow for tykle that thou teme moghtes!* – And I so high out of age, and also my lorde!’ advanced in age *What an absurd idea thatKnow that it’s unlikely you could produce any children [here]! God then shows something of his omniscience by revealing that he knows that she was laughing and doubting him behind the door; he adds that he can do anything he wants. When Sare denies that she laughed, God again insists that she ‘laghed alow [quietly]’ (line 670). Although this scene follows the biblical narrative quite closely, we can see some distinctive features in the poet’s reworking of it. Despite Sare’s attempt to identify with Abraham (‘And I so high out of age, and also my lorde!’), the poet foregrounds the masculine communality and courtly talk between Abraham and God’s three persons: And God as a glad gest made good chere, That was fayn of his frende and his fest praysed. pleased Abraham, al hodles, with armes up folden, bare-headed Mynystred mete before tho men that myghtes all weldes. weilds all powers Then thay sayden as thay sete samen all thrynne, together When the mete was remued and thay of mensk speken: made polite conversation ‘I schal eft here away, Abram,’ thay sayden… after this The poem also treats Sare more negatively than the scriptural text. Where in Genesis she laughs ‘secretly’, in the Middle English she laughs ‘for busmare’ (‘scorn’), and in the next line she is called madde (‘perverse’, ‘foolish’). The poet also attributes a kind of independent spiritedness to Sara, so whereas in Genesis when God tells her she laughed she is ‘afraid’, in the poem she simply denies it, swearing bullishly: ‘T hen swenged forth Sare and swer by her trauthe came out swiftly That for lote that thay laused ho laghed never’. words, spoke God and Abraham, moreover, scarcely react–—a rather effective way of signalling her relative insignificance; God calmly, though not unbenevolently, contradicts her and then leaves together with Abraham. There is no further clarification of what all this means, and Sare–—along with the audience/reader–—is left in the dark as to what God ‘thinks’ of it all.