Grendel's Mother In Beowulf

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,

even though she is described as a "swamp-thing from hell" (line 1518), an "aglæc-wif" or monster-woman (line 1259), and she is said to have talons (line 1504). So, unlike her son, there is a physical characteristic of hers that would suggest she is physically a monster. The first monstrous quality of hers we learn about in the epic poem is her dwelling. She lives in a mere (line 1363) where the water burns at night (line 1366). She is not immortal, but, according to Heaney's translation, "had scavenged and gone her gluttonous rounds for a hundred seasons" (line 1498 – 1499). However, she is also described as "ides" (line 1259), or noble woman, lady, which seems to suggest she is simultaneously both monstrous and noble.

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

other intentions), and wergild is one of the predominant rules of the world of Beowulf, followed by the good and the evil alike, there is no justifiable reason why Beowulf should triumph over Grendel's mother, other than that she is a monster and he is the protagonist. As for "malice, greed, destruction" (Tolkien 17), Grendel's mother does not really display any, at least not in the grand sense Tolkien attributes it to the dragon.
So, while Grendel's mother is physically a monster, she does not have any characteristic or does anything that is inherently evil. While Tolkien's argument may work for the dragon, it does not work for Grendel's mother. Like the dragon, she is not purely allegorical, but there is also nothing in the poem to support the claim that she is a personification of evil. Since Grendel's mother follows the rules of the world in which the epic is set, there does not seem to be a purpose to her monstrosity, other than to give the reader a reason to choose Beowulf's side over hers.