Female characters in Beowulf
Posted: Tuesday, March 28, 2006
by John Nilson
http://www.essay-911.com
This work is purposed to examine the importance and significance of the female characters in Beowulf. We will analyse different social types of women: those of hostess, peaceweavers, and monsters. It is not really correct to affirm that the central idea of the poem is comitatus relationship romanticized in Beowulf. The poem is a deep historical investigation of heroic age with its impressive details. And the centrality in the poem belongs undouptedly to women. It is need to be emphasized that when read through an anthropological lens, Beowulf shows the female personages as being central both in the story itself and in the society presented in the poem. Such effect in the poem is reached by the ability of literature to absorb changes that strike society as a whole, adopting alien elements to entrenched manners of thought and giving expression to these new syntheses in symbolic form. What is interesting, the contrarines appears: entrenched manners assimilates to innovation, too. Now to the main task - women in Beowulf. Whether they are illegitimate monsters or with outstanding genealogical table peaceweaving queens, all are marginal, excluded figures. As it was stressed above the women are central and important to the poem as a whole thats why we will analize these women in a complementary, anthropological view. When read carefully, it becomes obviously that Beowulf perform the female characters as women central both to the story itself and within the society presented in the poem, and far from "marginal, excluded figures". Six main female personages play major roles: Wealhtheow, Hygd, Freawaru, Hildeburh, Grendel's mother, and Thryth, all of whom can be combined in corresponding pairs. In this way the role of these women will be analyzed. As was mentioned above? Such female type as queen is emited in poem. Wealhtheow and Hygd can be added to this cathegory. As hostesses, they both influence the hall. This situation spown the whoule complex of problems because such behaviour is usually typical for men and not for women,thus their influence does not always coincide with the wishes of their husbands. As these women create somthing like masculine enclave. Wealhtheow and Hygd at first can be presented as hostesses. Discussing their place in the structure of the court society shown in the poem we can see a society that focuses on the hall and the language that are spoken within the hall. As to Hildeburh and Freawaru they are may be called failed peaceweavers, with some difference: Hildeburh in the past time of the poem and Freawaru in the future. And that is quite interesting literary device. Lets see deeper what the term "Peaceweaver" means. In modern scholarship this term is used for a woman married into one group from another, in an attempt to weave peace among them. It may be deducted that mentioned types of women were logical outcome of the society devided into classes. To the contrary of relationships within a group that were performed by Wealhtheow and Hygd, Hildeburh and Freawaru demonstrate the relations between groups, that is an example of separatation of society of that period of time. Back to our second pare of female characters we see that being peaceweavers, these women have the potential to affect both groups. But unfortunately their potential does not come to fruition. The main reason of that is their forced position of being pulled between two loyalties :to tribe of marriage and to tribe of birth. And finaly we moved to the last pare - Grendel's mother and Thryth. This type of female personages is on my account the most interesting. Both women present a monstrous type they are completely "resigned", through death and marriage, respectively. The intrigue is that these monstrous women are actualy counter-examples of both the hostesses and the peaceweavers. Grendel's mother and Thryth are two very different types of monsters, rather than using words or marriage to get influence, they prefere physical strength and weapons. The difference between them lies in their Social statuses as Thryth is an evil woman, guilty of terrible crimes at the same time she is also described as a famous folk queen lady, and even peaceweaver, she is the daughter of a king, she has social status. Such descriptive words never may be used to Grendel's mother as she is described as an evil, masculine, monstrous woman. So in this paper we have seen three different types of female characters that lived in ancient times but still remains topical even in period of time contemporary to us. Their figures assist us understand the specific of social problems and contradictions of their society, compare their life conditions with our situations and finaly follow the evolution of social organization and correlation between women and men through centuries.
John Nilson is a senior writer at www.essay-911.com Custom Essays Writing Service. He is an experienced writer of custom essays and term papers and will be glad to share his experience with you.
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)wow, a really terrible essay. no text references, no character explications, no examples, no comparison to male archetypes, no gender implications or assumptions to either their time or ours. Lacking for a lot of reasons.
There are no references because it's plagiarized... and poorly so I might add. The essay was written by Dorothy Carr Potter of Western Michigan University. The 'author' of this should be banned from the site.
Absolutely ridiculous... If you're going to plagiarize, at least be smart about it. Change more than three words per sentence.
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