The name for that hilted-sword was Hrunting. That was unique among ancient heirlooms. Its edge was iron, stained with venom stripes, hardened by battle-blood. It never failed in fights for any heroes, of those who with hands heaved it, who dared to go on grim ventures, to the folkstead of foes. This time Beowulf assumes that his battle will be with conventional weapons.
Grendel's mother, however, knew more of the manly arts than her lumbering son:. She wanted to avenge her son, her only offspring. For him on his shoulder lay a braided breast-net; that saved his life, against point and against edge it prevented entrance. The son of Ecgtheow, champion of the Geats, would have perished then beneath the spacious earth if his battle-corslet, his hardened war-net, had not performed its help.
It is then that Beowulf sees the ealdsweord eotenisc among the war-gear in the hall and uses the giants' heirloom to decapitate both Grendel's mother and then Grendel's corpse Though no one will regret this outcome, one cannot help noticing that Grendel's mother, living and dying by the sword, was memorably heroic in defeat.
More important than her acquisition of the accoutrements of heroic society, more important than her ability to fight like an epic hero, Grendel's mother accepted and adhered to the heroic ethic of the blood-feud, the main difference between Grendel's feckless feud with the noise at Heorot and his mother's purposeful one exacting retribution for the death of her son.
A feondes lahwita would be indeed remiss not to emphasize such authorial support for viewing his client as a law-abiding citizen. Corroborative support comes from other unlikely sources. Even he recognizes that her attack is triggered by the customary terms of the world he inhabits.
Delegating duties in kingly fashion, Hrothgar offers to compensate Beowulf for taking on the consequences of this feud:. Beowulf, for his part, fully accepts the heroic code of the blood-feud.
If we admire both Hrothgar's and Beowulf's heroic resolution in this respect, why don't we admire Grendel's mother for enacting it the night before?
Because she is a monster? At first glance it may seem particularly monstrous that she singles out as a victim Hrothgar's favorite thane and then leaves his head, as a trophy, floating in the mere. But Hrothgar used her boy's arm as a trophy in his hall, and because she retrieved it Beowulf returned from the mere with Grendel's severed head as a gruesome replacement.
Her grief seems as real as Hrothgar's, and her response, swift life-for-life vengeance, is mutatis mutandis as heroic as Beowulf's. Our client has, in fact, both legal and textual precedent for her attack on Heorot.
The climax of the celebrations for Beowulf's victory over Grendel is the scop's telling of Finnsburh Beowulf might have fairly regarded this tale as somewhat irrelevant, and indeed Beowulf scholars tend to see it as episodic or digressive, but quintessentially heroic. Yet the trouble at Finnsburh provides, in many ways, the prototype for Grendel's mother's attack on Heorot.
Like Grendel's mother, Hildeburh. Then she beneath the skies she might see the killing of kinsmen. Hengest serves a complementary role by showing how heroes respond to the killing of kinsmen. Finn's terms for peace with the Half-Danes are extraordinary. Lincoln: University of Nebraska P, p. G H Giulia Hatton Author. Add to cart. Emphasis my own. Sign in to write a comment. Read the ebook.
Characterisation of Women in Maxim Go Representations of Women and Nature i The Concern of Women for Nature. Beowulf - Quellen und Analogien. Beowulf - Eine sprechakttheoretische The Concepts of Honour and Revenge in Beowulf - Film und Original im Vergleich. Die Dynamik der Rache im Beowulf-Epos. Warior Values in "Beowulf" Instead of cowering in grief, the mother seeks revenge. Although the Danes have heard that the swamp may harbor two ogres, they seem to believe that the problem is solved when Beowulf defeats Grendel.
On the night after that victory, the Scyldings celebrate with a great deal of food and drink. Many of the celebrants spend that night in Heorot while Beowulf sleeps elsewhere. The mother stalks up from her mere, retrieving her son's claw and murderously abducting one of the Scyldings from the mead-hall. When Beowulf comes after her, the mother has another advantage.
She is in her home territory, which she has ruled for a hundred years. As the Geat champion dives deep into the lake, the mother waits and attacks only when he nears the bottom.
He is virtually helpless as she drags him to the dry, eerily lighted cave for the kill.
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