a Monster Woman

A Monster Woman, a Seductress
Beowulf is much more than an epic tale of heroes and monsters, which origins lay in oral story-telling or singing for an audience in several nights of feasting. Beowulf is a tale that offers many insights into the beliefs and customs of the seventh century Anglo Saxon culture. Among these insights is the Anglo Saxon view of women and their role in society. GoodAnglo Saxon women are peaceful and unassertive, greeting guests and serving drinks to the warriors. Wealhtheow, the queen of the Danes, represents a typical subservient Anglo Saxon woman. Contrastingly, Grendel’s mother is a strong and combative monster whom Beowulf must kill. By analyzing these two characters in Beowulf, we can understand the treatment and mistreatment of women in Anglo Saxonsociety. Nevertheless, it is also considered that Grendel’s mother could belong to another tribe in the Norway. In this case, women were really different from the typical “good Anglo-Saxon women”.
Anyway, very little is written about Grendel’s mother in the epic poem. She has no name and only appears on the scene to avenge her son’s death. She takes Grendel’s arm, which Beowulf has torn off and hungfrom the rafters in Heorot, kills Aeschere, Hrothgar’s closest friend – a life for a life – and leaves Beowulf and his warriors track her down, finding Aeschere’s head on a stake. Beowulf then accomplishes his second feat of swimming, echoing the contest with Breca as a youth. This time he has to dive into the mere in order to get to the cave to find “ the mighty water witch” (Raffel 1963:71, line1519). Although many translators and critics have depicted this woman as cowardly or inferior to her son, she nearly kills the hero, so fierce does she fight. Beowulf wins the battle by luck when he happens to lay his hands on a “heavy Sword” (line 1556-1557).
Other than that, what may the lost epic tradition have had to say about Grendel’s mother? How has she been portrayed in the Hollywoodretelling of Beowulf? Was Grendel’s mother really a monster, or was something else — a warrior perhaps?
Although certainly women in Norway or Scandinavian society (Norse), from it is considered Grendel’s mum came, did fill the roles of “peace-weavers,” they also lived their lives in other contexts as well. Norse women, in that times, were farmers, traders, leaders and in certain circumstances, evenwarriors. The sagas give examples of women acting outside of traditional gender roles and they specifically mention woman warriors. The latter were queens who had their own armies and commanded men. Both sorts of women are portrayed as acting outside of socially defined gender roles for their sex. The warrior women are described as dressing like men, which appears to have raised some eyebrows.Although Norse society wasn’t comfortable with people—men or women—who stepped outside of their assigned roles, this wasn’t something that was so unusual as to disrupt the society. According to scholars such as Lena Norrman, even within the cross-dressing/acting standards, there is bias “where the distinction is made between the negative moral of a man behaving or dressing like a woman, whilefemales dressing like men are not considered to be as negative” (Norrman). One must take into account that “the sex gender system in general is rather different in the Germanic, and above all in the Scandinavian culture, as compared to other cultures in the Christian Middle Ages” (Norrman). In this way, because the story of Beowulf in manuscript form has been filtered through the British Christianlens, several images have been distorted.
There are pictures of women carrying spears, indicating they are warriors, on the tapestry of the Oseberg ship burial and that is good evidence of altered gender roles, there are actual graves that contain both men and women who had atypical gender roles. In Denmark there is a grave of a woman buried with a male sacrificial victim. Also, a number of...