No Sympathy for the Grieving Mother

No Sympathy for the Grieving Mother

Adaptations are revisions of works previously composed. Though the novel Grendel, by John Gardner, is a loose adaptation based on the Beowulf poem, elements of it reveal features of characters within the poem that may have been formerly overlooked. It is shown that Grendel’s mother is rather passive until her son is threatened, in the novel, or, in the case of the poem, killed. By way of a close reading of the poem through the literary lens of the novel, it is evident that Grendel’s mother’s violence is a direct result of Grendel’s death. If Grendel were not killed by Beowulf, his mother would have never attacked Heorot out of vengeance. This reading thus transforms Grendel’s mother from a horrible monster into a sympathetic character: a grief-stricken mother who failed to protect her son, so she tried to avenge his death. Because it was unacceptable at that time for women to seek revenge, she was killed, receiving no sympathy or understanding for the loss of her only child.

In the novel, Grendel’s mother is portrayed as very meek and mild until Unferth appears to slay Grendel, when she is shown to be very protective of him. The early descriptions of her render her rather pathetic and pitiful. She is described as “old, sick at heart” and as a “life-bloated, baffled, long-suffering hag” (11). She was obviously old and depleted, as if the years had drained her of her livelihood. Not only had she lost her stamina, but also her speech, as if she had digressed. She is portrayed as being a simple creature wanting nothing more than to care for her son. The novel says, “She whimpered, scratched at the nipple I had not sucked in years.

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She was pitiful, foul, her smile a jagged white tear in the firelight: waste. She whimpered one sound: Dool-dool! Dool-dool!, scratching at her bosom, a ghastly attempt to climb back up to speech” (55-6). Grendel’s mother wanted nothing more than to perform the most natural, instinctual function of a mother: to nurse her child, yet she couldn’t do that for him, just as she could not protect him, nor could she even convey in words her feelings toward her son. Her love for Grendel was evident even to him, though she could not verbalize her feelings. He says, “She loved me, in some mysterious sense I understood without her speaking it. I was her creation. We were one thing, like the wall and the rock growing out from it” (17). This intense love she had for Grendel was apparent when Unferth came to fight him. It is the only instance in the novel of Grendel’s mother acting even remotely violent, and it is simply the instinctual protectiveness of a mother. It says, “I saw my mother moving slowly and silently past me, blue murder in her eyes. I understood instantly, not with my mind but with something quicker, and I darted around in front to block her way. I pushed her back” (86). Because Grendel was able to stop her and defend himself, his mother had no need to commit any violent acts, though she was quite intent on protecting her son, and she made that fact apparent.

In the poem, though none of the above is presented, there is still evidence to suggest that Grendel’s mother acts solely as the protector of her child; she kills only as a way of avenging her son’s death. She is even portrayed as semi-pitiful in the poem, as she is in the novel. She is described as “desperate” and “afflicted” (35). Perhaps her desperation and affliction are a result of her failure to protect her son, and her longing to get retribution. The poem also says that she “brooded,” which suggests self-pity and being worrisome (34). These characteristics paint her character in the poem as very similar to her character in the novel. Perhaps she was not simply

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the same as Grendel: a ruthless killer, who kills for no other reason than to kill. Evidence suggests she has only killed for her son, and had made no attacks on Heorot prior to Grendel’s death. The poem says, “But now his mother / had sallied forth on a savage journey, / grief-racked and ravenous, desperate for revenge” (35). This shows that her “savage journey” is made out of her grief-induced rage, and had her son not been killed, she would have nothing to avenge. Had Grendel not been killed, the Danes may have never even known she existed.

Moreover, there is a passage in the poem that suggests that Grendel’s mother was not adept at attacking, as Grendel was, showing her attack was motivated purely by his death. It says, “The hell-dam was in panic, desperate to get out, / in mortal terror the moment she was found” (35). This not only shows that she was not simply a killer, but also that she had attacked on a whim, and once she was found out, she regretted making the journey. Not only did she regret it, but she was terrified. She was in a “panic” and “mortal terror” because she may have realized that, because of attacking Heorot, her life would too be cut short because women were expected to merely grieve their losses, not avenge them. Before she fled Heorot, after the attack, she retrieved Grendel’s hand, which is described as a “fresh blow” to her (35). So, although she had just killed a man, before the Danes could retaliate, just the reminder that her son was killed was a hard hit for her to take. Furthermore, when Beowulf arrives at her lair to kill her, Grendel’s mother puts up quite a fight in order to punish the man who killed her son. The poem says, “She pounced upon him and pulled out / a broad, whetted knife: now she would avenge / her only child” (41). Though she had already killed a man for revenge, she really would have preferred to kill Beowulf, the man who killed her only child. Her way of getting vengeance for her son, and

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relieving her grief, would have been to kill Beowulf: the ultimate retribution for her son. However, she never gets the justice she desires for her son, as she loses the fight with him.

With the evidence showing that Grendel’s mother only attacked Heorot out of grief and vengeance for her son, perhaps she is a character more deserving of sympathy than an evil monster, as she was previously viewed. Because women were not meant to avenge the deaths of their kin at that time, she seemed monstrous to the men in Heorot, and she needed to be punished. However, had a man gone to avenge Grendel’s death, perhaps he would not have been killed in response, as it would have been accepted by the social mores of Heorot. Grendel’s mother is a sympathetic character in the poem, just as she is in the novel. Her death in the poem is even described in a way which provokes empathy from the reader. It says, “The wandering fiend / let go of her life and this unreliable world” (42). She is portrayed as “wandering” to suggest that she is lost without her son, and because she no longer had the purpose of being a mother. Also, the world is described as “unreliable” to her because she was left all alone, her only son taken from her. When she tried to avenge his death, it was not allowed; she again had to sacrifice, this time with her life because no one at that time would have had sympathy for a woman trying to fulfill a man’s duty of avenging the death of a kinsman.

Just because of the atrocities committed by Grendel in life, his mother should not have been punished for attempting to defend him. Regardless of the crimes he committed in Heorot, he was still her son that she loved. Any mother would be devastated by the loss of her child; however, Grendel’s mother decided to take revenge in a time when it was unacceptable for women to do anything but grieve for the loss of her kin. Despite the cultural mores of that time, it is still possible to sympathize with Grendel’s mother, as there is no evidence in the poem of her ever

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attacking prior to Grendel’s death. As any mother would receive sympathy for the loss of her child, so should Grendel’s mother, even though she would most likely not have during that time. Should the poem have taken place in a time period in which the social mores allowed retribution to be taken by women, she would not have been killed as a result.

After noticing the portrayal of Grendel’s mother as a rather sad, simple, and pathetic, yet protective mother in the novel by Gardner, it is evident upon a close reading of the original poem Beowulf that she is a character that should receive sympathy from the reader. She had no history of attacking Heorot prior to her son’s death, showing that it was simply a crime committed out of grief and seeking revenge for her only child. As any mother who has lost a child would be terribly grief-stricken, Grendel’s mother was only acting upon her feelings despite living in a time when doing so was unacceptable for women. She should not be regarded as the monster that Grendel was, just because she was his mother. Grendel had committed several crimes against the people of Heorot, yet she had not. Her only crime was avenging the death of her son at a time when women were forbidden to seek revenge.

Works Cited

Beowulf: A Verse Translation. Trans. Seamus Heaney. Ed. Daniel Donoghue. New York: Norton, 2002.

Gardner, John. Grendel. 1971. New York: Vintage, 1989.

Deadly Monsters = Deadly Sins?

Deadly Monsters = Deadly Sins?

In her critical essay, The Structural Unity of Beowulf: The Problem of Grendel’s Mother, Jane Chance asserts that each of the three monsters: Grendel, his mother, and the dragon, represent three of the Seven Deadly Sins in Christianity. According to Chance, Grendel represents envy, his mother represents pride, and the dragon represents avarice, or greed. Though it may be plausible that the dragon represents greed because he has a gold-hoard, it seems doubtful that Grendel symbolizes envy, or that his mother denotes pride. There is nothing within the poem that implicitly shows either that Grendel’s motivation is envy, nor that his mother’s motivation is pride, yet Chance goes as far as to say that Grendel’s mother “specifically epitomizes pride in Beowulf” (166). If Grendel was to signify one of the Cardinal Sins, it would more easily be proven that he represents either wrath or gluttony, as he eats his victims; his mother would, in the same way, more clearly epitomize wrath, because she angrily avenges her son’s death.

In the poem, there are passages that could be used to indicate the avaricious nature of the dragon, thus making it plausible that he signifies the Cardinal Sin of greed. Chance says, “The mock gold-king dragon avariciously guards his treasure” (166). In the poem, he is often referred to as the “hoard-guard” (64-5); the word “hoard” implies collecting or stockpiling, perhaps greedily. Not only does the dragon collect treasures, but he stores them away in a barrow he can easily guard. The poem says, “Into it the keeper of the hoard had carried / all the goods and golden ware / worth preserving” (57). The treasures the dragon collects are not only treasures to him (that he seemingly has no use for) but are materials valued by men. It is unknown why he

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collects and guards the treasure, but his attempts to protect his hoard are in vain, as a man robbed him of a gold-plated cup. The poem says, “He is driven to hunt out / hoards under ground, to guard heathen gold / through age-long vigils, though to little avail. / For three centuries, this scourge of the people / had stood guard on that stoutly protected / underground treasury, until the intruder / unleashed its fury” (58). Though he had stalwartly protected his treasure for three hundred years, he failed to stop “the intruder” from robbing his hoard. Even though it was only one article that was stolen, his fury was “unleashed,” which certainly suggests the greedy nature of the dragon. With such an extensive gold-hoard (“the old dawn-scorching serpent’s den / packed with goblets and vessels from the past, / tarnished and corroding. Rusty helmets / all eaten away. Armbands everywhere, / artfully wrought” (69)) the dragon should not have even noticed the missing cup, unless his avarice controlled him. Because of this evidence, Chance may be correct in her presumption that the dragon is symbolic of avarice.

There is insufficient evidence, however, to support Chance’s assertion that Grendel is symbolic of the Cardinal Sin of envy. She assumes Grendel’s motivation when she says that Heremod is “impelled by envy like Grendel,” but there is inadequate evidence in the poem that would confirm that assumption (166). Nonetheless, there is evidence that wrath and/or gluttony could be Grendel’s motivation, which could support the idea of him symbolizing one of the Seven Deadly Sins. In the poem, it says, “Grendel / struck again with more gruesome murders. / Malignant by nature, he never showed remorse” (6). Because he is “malignant by nature,” wrath seems likely to be his motivation for his attacks and subsequent murders.

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However, upon close examination of the poem, it seems that gluttony is more likely Grendel’s motivation. Many times, he is described as “greedy” during his attacks, grabbing “thirty men” and rushing back with their “butchered corpses” (6). The word “butcher” is often used when livestock is slaughtered for consumption. Grendel is certainly gluttonous if he greedily butchered thirty men and rushed back to his lair to eat them. Later, the poem says that he went “hunting for a prey in the high hall” and he “saw many men in the mansion, sleeping… / And his glee was demonic / picturing the mayhem: before morning / he would rip life from limb and devour them, / feed on their flesh… / he grabbed and mauled a man on his bench… / and gorged on him in lumps” (20). This quote undoubtedly shows Grendel’s gluttonous nature, as he was gleeful upon seeing many men to “devour,” and then he gorged himself on a man “in lumps.” The word “devour” implies he ate hastily, and “gorged” suggests that he ate to the point of distension; both of these points to gluttony. The most obvious evidence supporting Grendel as symbolic of gluttony is in the speech Beowulf makes before their fight. He says, “If Grendel wins, it will be a gruesome day; / he will glut himself on the Geats in the war-hall… / he will run gloating with my raw corpse / and feed on it alone, in a cruel frenzy” (13). Because Beowulf uses the word “glut” to describe Grendel’s eating the Geats, it only makes sense to symbolically attribute gluttony to him. Therefore, there is a much more cohesive case to be made for Grendel representing gluttony, as opposed to him symbolizing envy, as gluttony is his only identifiable motivation presented in the poem.

Similarly, there is inadequate evidence to show Grendel’s mother being driven by, or representing, pride. Chance describes her as “the monster that specifically epitomizes pride in Beowulf,” without providing a sufficient explanation of this bold statement (166). Instead, she

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seems to epitomize wrath, if she is indeed the embodiment of any of the Cardinal Sins. The poem says she was on a “savage journey” to avenge Grendel’s death, while she was “grief-racked and ravenous, desperate for revenge” (35). The words “savage,” “ravenous,” and “desperate” together suggest that she was violent, predatory, and frantic in her behavior, which can all be attributes of wrath. “Wrath” can also refer to vengeance, which is what she is seeking: vengeance for her fallen son. The poem says she is “driven to avenge her kinsman’s death” (36) and later she pulls out a knife to “avenge her only child” (41). Grendel’s mother’s only motivation appears to be the rage and sorrow she feels from losing her son, thus it only makes sense that, if she represents any of the Seven Deadly Sins, she would most closely symbolize wrath. It is unclear why Chance would associate Grendel’s mother with pride, when nothing in the poem seems to suggest it.

Chance may be correct in her interpretation that the monsters in Beowulf each represent one of the Cardinal Sins. If that is indeed that case, then her association of the dragon with avarice can be quite convincingly proven with evidence from the poem. Her associations for the other two monsters, however, do not have apparent connections within the poem. The other two monsters may very well represent two of the Seven Deadly Sins, but instead of Grendel representing envy, and his mother representing pride as Chance argues, a more convincing argument can be made for them representing gluttony and wrath, respectively.