Green Knight Symbolism

Sir Gawain and The Green Knight and its underlying symbols
Sweeney, Michelle. “Chapter 11 Lady as Temptress and Reformer in Medieval Romance.”
Essays in Medieval Studies, vol. 30, 2014, pp. 165-178. Project MUSE, doi: 10.1353/ems.2014.0011.
In Sweeney’s article she’s expressing that in many romances women serve as a piece of a formula to drive heroes away or towards their salvation. She evaluates other poems where this is an issue, but I’m only going to talk about when it is relevant to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. She evaluates three necessary female relationships that Gawain has in the poem. She first discusses Gawain’s relationship with Lady Bertilak and says that she was used as a part to tested Gawain’s chastity. Sweeny says the
These items are the mantle, capados, hood, and bleaunt. Beginning with the mantle, he says it’s described in four separate places. These places are on the Green knight, on Gawain at Bercilak’s castle, as the lady is dressing herself for her third encounter with Gawain, and when the lady reaches for the girdle to give Gawain. Douglas further elaborates that the mantle appears at the four points that move Gawain closer to his test and after that the word disappears. Moon then goes to discuss the capados, which he says, next to the girdle, attracted the most critical attention. He describes it as a hood and says that Gawain is the only one who wears a real capados, which he wears as he’s preparing to leave for the Green Chapel. It’s not mentioned again, says Moon, but a noble hood is described in the scene where the Green Knight is about to strike Gawain. Moon says these are most likely the same hood (the capados). He says the capados is only mentioned twice, but a hood does appear five other times. Moon says these five times are during the description on the Green Knight’s mantle, the second mention of the mantle, when Bercilak offers Gawain a hood as a reward, before Gawain fails to fulfill his final covenant with the host, and in the second beheading scene. The last thing Moon says is a symbol, is the bleaunt. He mentions the bleaunt is the color blue, a color not mentioned anywhere else. He says blue is traditionally the virgins color and in the poem
He says he doesn’t know what the poem means or why it’s significant, but he does know it is significant. He believes it’s set up to engage our interest and provoke frustration. Pearsall then proves his point by stating the obstacles he has come across. His first example of confusion is when Arthur takes the Green Knights axe and begins swinging it in the air. He says the problem arises when we realize Arthurs shorter than the Green Knight by a couple of feet or more. Arthur wasn’t testing the axes heft, he was already taking his chance at the Green Knight, says Pearsall. Next Pearsall further proves his main point by discussing Gawain’s speech given to take place in the challenge. Why would Gawain give such a speech if he thought chopping the Green Knights head off would work and he wouldn’t have to go find the Green Knight a year later? A series of problems concerning the exchange of winnings agreement are then questioned by Pearsall. If Gawain did give in to the lady, how would he handle the exchange when it came time to give up his winnings? Also questioned is if Gawain did truly confess to the priest, why didn’t the priest demand Gawain make restitution for the theft. If he didn’t confess, why does the poet truthfully say he was shriven by the priest as clean as if he were about to die? The assumption is made by Pearsall that the poet didn’t actually know what Gawain’s confessed. Pearsall then reveals the biggest plot hole by pointing out that the girdle is