Throughout Beowulf I was mostly interested in the character of Grendel's mother. This was going to be an entire post about her humanism, but when I started, I noticed something I couldn't stop thinking about so I'm going there instead. Take this post with a grain, it's mostly fleshing out ideas and it's going to be clunky.
I think the question of man or monster actually hinges on these few lines -
"...The second of them,
as far as they could discern most clearly,
had the shape of a woman; the other, misshapen
marched the exile's path in the form of a man,
except that he was larger than any other;
in bygone days he was called Grendel."
(94)
Reading this over and over again, I cannot help but notice how the line breaks run into one another and when read slowly, these are the most confused lines in the play.
"The second of them...had the shape of a woman; the other, misshapen/ marched the exile's path in the form of a man" can be read two ways when you take the line breaks into account. It can be read first that there is Grendel's mother and another figure with her. However, when you cut the line at "misshapen", you are left with a reading closer to "The shape of a woman which is the other and which is misshapen." Of course you read down one line and get to the correct reading, but the breaks here basically cause Grendel's mother and her as yet unnamed companion to bleed into one another.
Now, examining her companion who "marched the exile's path in the form of a man,/ except that he was larger than any other" this seems fairly straight forward within these five lines or so. However, let's go back to the first sighting of Beowulf which reads "I have never seen a greater earl on earth" (61) which the class agreed was that Beowulf looked like a man...just bigger. This sounds eerily like the next two lines, when taken on their own sounds like Grendel's mother is walking with Beowulf.
It's only at the final line, "in bygone days he was called 'Grendel'" that the categories become somewhat clearer, but there's no way to erase the confusion brought about by the breaks. There's also no way to erase the confusion of the categories here. Who is the good guy? Who's the human? Who's the monster? Is there any way to possibly answer that?
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2 comments:
I really liked your analysis of the lines and line breaks that describe, “The second of them…had the shape of a woman; the other, misshapen,” and how you stated how the breaks in this particular stanza ‘cause Grendel's mother and Grendel himself to bleed into one another.’ They do seem to take an almost androgynous appearance in this respect, or perhaps in this instance exist as the image of a hermaphrodite figure, as a single person or thing where two opposing qualities are combined, such as their gender. I think that perhaps what you’ve noted foreshadows and reinforces the masculinity that’s later illustrated in Grendel’s mother. This makes her even more ‘monstrous’ though, no? Precisely because she possesses both feminine and masculine qualities, and does this not also transform her into an ‘other,’ if she defies fixed notions of gender? Also, on a different note, the line, ‘March the exile path,’ implies Grendel’s active alienation (‘marched’ and ‘exile’) from dominating society. The word ‘misshapen’ implies how Grendel’s appearance does not adhere to what we or the people at the time consider ‘human,’ hence it illustrates his monstrous physicality. Yet, if your analysis is correct, and if Grendel and his mother morph into one single image, even for an instance, she gains all of the attributes her son possesses, and I think our working definition of what can be considered ‘monstrous,’ gains a new dimension and includes possessing simultaneously a feminine and masculine nature.
I am in total agreement with you both. "Misshapen" means to have a deformed or unpleasing shape, and both these lines and these characters meet that criteria. As the poet fuses these two monstrous characters, we are intentionally forced to triangulate those ideas with Beowulf himself. I am beginning to think that the real value of this particular story is in the way it forces us to do exactly that, compare and contrast. With Roland, it was different. But in Beowulf, and in the Lais of Marie, we deal with things/people that are so classically defined as monsters that it make us look at the heroes with the same critical eye. What I am beginning to wonder is if, as we define monstrosity, we become forced to add human nature to that list of characteristics. Beowulf could be physically just as misshapen as Grendel, but he is viewed as being noble in this perception rather than evil or ugly. Are we really learning that any extreme marches the path of the exile?
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