The Role of the Great Mother in Beowulf

The Role of the Great Mother in Beowulf

Grendel's dam is not simply a "wandering fiend" (1621), a "swamp thing from

hell" (1518), or a "troll-dam" (1391). She is an example of what Erich Neuhmann in his

book, The Great Mother, calls an embodiment of the Great Mother in her "negative

elementary character" (147). Her realms are the underworld, a cave below a lake, both

symbols of the unconscious. She is begetter and child bearer, creator and destroyer of

life; she nourishes and ensures the fertility of the land and people through her thirst for blood and sacrifice as a ritual for rebirth. As a pre-Christian goddess, she is not

categorized as evil, but rather as a necessary power to balance light and dark, life and

death. Her son, Grendel, is also not so easily defined as a monster-demon, for he is a

manifestation of her male properties (though neither Grendel or his dam are purely male

or female). Both 'creatures' are aspects of the one Great Mother, the archetypal female

symbol, as Destroyer, or 'Terrible Mother'(147). Her Terribleness springs not from her

monstrousness, but from her ability to live outside of patriarchy. Her presence in the

text, Beowulf, depicts the battle over authority between patriarchal Christianity and the

matriarchal pagan religion as she tries to reestablish her sovereignty as ruling deity in

the land of the Danes.

Grendel's dam is the embodiment of the Great Mother in her negative aspect. The Great Mother is an archetypal symbol of female powers. Her positive aspect includes her powers of procreation, fertility, nourishment, the earth as womb - that which contains all, and creativity. In her negative aspect, the Great Mother inspires awe and dread as a destructive, r...

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... Beowulf confronts a dragon, and is killed, finding his sword, (or logos), incapable of the dragon's destruction. War then threatens his land and people and great wailing is heard in his kingdom. Doomsday approaches as great trials are prophesied to await Beowulf's people. The battlefields will be littered with their bodies, to be made "short work of" by the eagle and the wolf(3026-3027). The Terrible Mother has risen, as "disease, hunger, hardship, war above all, are her helpers" (Neuhmann 149). She will exact the delayed wergild due her, and no Beowulf remains to again suppress her awesome powers.

Works Cited

David, Alfred, Donaldson, E. Talbot, Smith, Hallett, et al. eds. The Norton Anthology of

English Literature. New York: Norton, 2000.

Neuhmann, Erich. The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype. Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1991.