Rin Tung, Period 6, 02/27/24

Looking at Grendel’s mother, the first depiction of her in Grendel by Gardner is that from Grendel’s perspective, his pale slightly glowing fat mother. The life-bloated, baffled, long-suffering hag. And later that she loved him but seemingly in a distant, strange way. It still describes her as “one thing” with Grendel — “like the wall and the rock growing out from it”, mentioning her physical attributes and behavior with “she would reach out her claws and seize me” or “smash me to her fat, limp breast as if to make me a part of her flesh again”, “she hurls herself across the void and buries me in her bristly fur and fat”, even.

And maybe how Grendel sees his mother is how Gardner interprets the character from the original Beowulf, or maybe even a projection. She is motherly but beast-like. Instinctual. She does not speak nor understand speech nor understand Grendel’s mind, only really knowing that he is her child, loving him in the most primitive of ways.

In the original Beowulf, Grendel’s mother’s identity and standing in the story remains unsolved. The ides aglæcwif has been painted mostly as a monster woman since Klaeber’s version. Ides is widely accepted and agreed to be the lady, so is the term dis. The Dísir, the fate goddesses of Norse mythology, are really simply “the ladies”. Dís has also been argued to be the original form of valkyrie. Both Wealtheow and Grendel’s mother are ides, possibly representing the different aspects of the valkyrie.

But yet, the aglæca is used to describe both Grendel, his mother, and Beowulf himself. In the case of the former two, the monster, the demon, the fiend. To Beowulf, the warrior, the hero. Arguably, aglæca is simply a warrior, a fierce fighter; making Grendel’s mother, the ides aglæcwif, a lady woman-warrior. If there were no differentiations between the depiction of the hero and the antagonists other than the sexes, then at no point is her monstrosity ever mentioned or described. And frankly, that may be all that she was in the original Beowulf — a fierce, female warrior.

Then where does the monstrosity, the beast-like aspects first emerge? Maybe it's simply the way that aglæca’s original meaning isn’t agreed on, forcing later renditions to build her entire image on what we know of her, a descendant of Cain. Maybe it's the same way Medusa has been slowly painted as a villain, a monster. Maybe it’s the way an unnamed strong and fierce woman, only fighting and killing for the sake of her child dying to her victims’ hands — maybe such characterization makes her monstrous. She is simple minded, unbothered and uncaring, except when it comes to her child, and at that point she would stop at nothing to protect him, to avenge him. Maybe it is that motherly instinct that paints her as a fearful figure to the patriarchal eye; maybe it is the way that she displays every aspect of a hero, but the fact that she is female takes away all of her benevolence.

But one thing is certain, she is always described as a motherly figure. Fierce, ruthless, but loving in her primitive and simple minded way. She simply runs on instinct, to protect her child and uncaring of everything else. If such is her character, then does it matter if she is a monstrous being? If being fiercely motherly, or even a strong woman automatically paints a character as a monster, then how many other female figures in our literature and mythology from a more patriarchal time are wrongly categorized as villainous or evil?