Grendel's Mother In Beowulf

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In his essay Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, J. R. R. Tolkien argues that the dragon, and possibly all the monsters in Beowulf, is "a personification of malice, greed, destruction […] and of the undiscriminating cruelty of fortune that distinguishes not good and bad" (17). He also argues, however, that the dragon is not purely allegorical either. This essay will explore this argument on the example of Grendel's mother. Nowhere in the poem is it explicitly stated that Grendel is physically a monster. The poem lacks a physical description of him, other than that he is tall. He is also a descendant of Cain (line 1266 – 1267), who was undeniably human, at least as far as his body is concerned. By extension, if Grendel is at least part human, Grendel's mother must also contain a large number of human traits, …show more content…

She is given many attributes and names usually associated with warriors. She has a very strong sense of wergild (man-payment) and avenges her son herself instead of sending a man to do the job for her. She is a unique female character in the poem because she does things women at the time were not supposed to do and that we are not used to witnessing in epic poems. Her cruelty and cunning is visible in her clever choice of man she killed in the mead hall – the only literary man among the thanes. However, the sense of wergild is present throughout the poem and does not make Grendel's mother any more cruel than any other character driven by it. We have no proof of her being evil. Her monstrosity is the only trait of her that could potentially be described as evil. Since wyrd, or fate, is on Beowulf's side when he fights her, one could argue that in this fight Beowulf is the personification of "the undiscriminating cruelty of fortune that distinguishes not good and bad" (Tolkien 17). Since Grendel's mother kills only because of wergild (or at least there is no proof that she does this out of any

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