Gawain carries a reputation for being the perfect knight, so he is hard on him - self when he fails, especially when he feels that he has tainted his inner and outer character. Woods explains, “The man whose reputation and very being stands for compromise, a mediation between court and nature, or self and other, has finally crossed a boundary … reminding us that this courtly knight is wedded to the challenges the natural world poses for human nature” (220). Gawain’s consciousness reveals a man who is learning a lot about himself and growing as a person. He begins to acknowledge and accept that he is subject to his human nature and flaws but continues to strive to be a good knight and a good man. Louis Blenkner affirms that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is “a pro - foundly human poem …. [T]he fourteenth century English poet assumed that man was wounded by original sin, with mortality, concupiscence, and ignorance and encounters them within the realm of Nature, the flesh, the world, and the devil …. [H]e found it useful to structure his romance on a triad of redemption” (380). Gawain remarkably lays his life on the line to protect King Arthur from apparent evil only to find redemption and self-realization within himself through moral courage. Does Gawain function solely as the great romance hero? Or does he present to the medieval audience as a different type of hero—a human hero—a man standing as a champion for the human race? During fourteenth-century feudalism, death is a constant looming threat and source of anxiety for both the “learned” noble class and the “illiterate” working class. The Hundred Years’ War, The Great Famine, The Black Death, and The Uprising of 1381 brought challenging life experiences to all social classes and resulted in overwhelming death and economic upheaval. Because of that, the medieval audience “reading” or “hearing” Sir Gawain and the Green Knight will be accepting of Gawain’s fear of dying as a natural and innate human response. Bertilak’s “tests” place Gawain in “natural” situations; therefore, the universality of the romance lets the audience decide for themselves the nature and extent of Gawain’s faults. The poem blurs the boundaries between an exterior chival - ric reach and an interior domestic experience, with Woods corroborating, “This would not have been unfamiliar to the poet’s audience given the obsolescence of chivalry in the late-fourteenth century” (211). Gawain’s transcending of fail- ure creates a relatability for medieval and modern audiences who have likely grappled with their very own moral dilemmas. Noted critic Hollis extrapolates, “While Gawain still thinks of himself primarily as a knight, the acceptance of him -
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