Monstrum

(host) Beowulf-- it's one of the most important and influential texts of all time, An epic poem detailing the life and exploits of the titular character, the story begins with a fight against Grendel, a monster that's been attacking a kingdom for 12 years.

Little does Beowulf know that killing the creature would result in angering a much greater threat: his mother.

In adaptations of the tale, of which there are many, Grendel's mother is almost always depicted as a hideous monster, but when not, she's a beautiful seduces with animalistic attributes.

Which of these most accurately reflects the original text?

What Grendel's mother symbolizes, what she is, has been hotly debated for centuries.

An ogress, a demon, the manifestation of evil itself?

What kind of monster is Grendel's mother?

Spoiler: she's not.

But that doesn't make her any less important.

Quite the opposite.

[thrilling orchestral music] I'm Dr. Emily Zarka, and this is "Monstrum."

It's clear that Grendel and his mother are antagonists in the poem.

The poem references that they are descended from Cain, the biblical figure who committed the first murder.

If you look at the original Old English text, there are stark differences between Grendel and his mother.

Grendel is decidedly a monster.

He is called "God's enemy" and "an enemy from hell."

He is described as "in the form of a man with hideously glowing eyes."

He is massive in size.

It takes four men to carry Grendel's decapitated head.

In some translations, he is clawed and scaled.

Grendel is associated with darkness.

He attacks his victims at night and is himself slain in the hour before dawn.

The text refers to him by words that usually apply to human men, but he is also called "demon" and "devil."

His mother, on the other hand?

Those words are never applied to her.

Grendel's mother is defined and described in the terms of a warrior.

She is less gruesome, and large but not a giant.

She is perhaps even beautiful.

As the text says, "She appears with the likeness of a powerful lady."

She possesses some supernatural traits, like skin impervious to regular weapons.

She has uncanny strength and can survive underwater.

But Beowulf has these same traits and is the hero of the story.

So what makes her monstrous?

Grendel's mother is compelled by anger to avenge her son's death by killing Beowulf.

When the protagonist hears he must battle the warrior woman, he puts on every piece of armor and arms himself with every weapon he has.

He is even lent a legendary infallible sword, Hrunting, to help him defeat her.

He, and the reader, assume they will be engaging in armed combat.

As the two grapple in her underwater battle hall, she almost bests him, wrestling him to the ground with her bare hands and striking him with her sword.

Beowulf is only able to defeat her with a giant sword that hangs in the hall.

The role of Grendel's mother in the poem is brief but significant.

Their battle is detailed, but her appearance is not.

There are a few clear takeaways about Grendel's mother-- she is a warrior, she is supernatural, and the Danes are afraid of her.

But why?

Grendel's mother and Grendel are both called "border stalkers," which traditionally puts them on the fringes of society as liminal beings often treated as monstrous.

This does associate them with the Nordic troll, but that was a very broad term at this point.

In their earliest appearances in folklore and legends, a troll was an evil, paranormal being that occupied the space outside of civilization and posed a threat to the living things within it.

Trolls often lurked at the boundaries of the community, just like Grendel and his mother, but their humanity is too often emphasized in the poem to mark them as this kind of monster.

The two also have wolf-like traits, perhaps an homage to the older sagas and the shape-shifting tradition of the Norse that would later influence werewolf legends.

At one point, Grendel's mother is called "merewif," which translates to "sea-woman" and "sea-wolf," and, in another instance, "brimwylf," meaning "she-wolf of the sea."

But these names only denote her as a formidable foe, not a shapeshifter or a monster.

The poem also calls her a word most translators say means "monster-woman," but it's meant to mark her as a skilled warrior, not a literal monster, per se.

In fact, some translators, including the dictionary of Old English, argue it means "female warrior, fearsome woman," and that brings us to the real thing that makes her seem like a monster-- the femaleness of it all.

In the Germanic tradition Beowulf comes from, Grendel's mother is made inhuman because of the dichotomy of woman-monster she inhabits.

She is crossing gender lines.

We know this not only because of her actions, but because of the masculine words often used to describe her.

The text uses masculine pronouns when discussing how she must be attacked immediately, to emphasize her as a threat.

Beowulf dons his helmet, full armor, and the famous battle sword.

While Beowulf is the one to slay her, her feminine threat must be aggressively matched; an entire army supports the hero.

Grendel's mother is also a ruler, acting more like a king than a queen in Anglo-Saxon society.

She, not her son, controls her territory for 50 years, a subversion of tradition.

Her attack is not only justified; it's expected.

In Anglo-Saxon culture, kings are the ones who carry out vengeance when a kinsman is killed.

So the fight she starts?

It's a retaliation.

In comparison to Grendel himself, who kills randomly, she acts more humanly and humanely than her son, even heroically by the genre's narrative traditions.

Part of her monstrosity is due to how the text has been translated over the years.

The Old English text has seen so many translations, it's hard to keep track, and that's relying on one written version of an oral tradition with numerous variations.

She's called an "awful woman," which some have translated to "monstrous woman."

"Avenger" becomes "monster."

Other dehumanizing choices are made in her description in these interpretations, calling her "dam," associated with animals, rather than "mother" for the word "modor," for instance.

Grendel's mother disrupts the patriarchal traditions Germanic tradition is grounded in, which is part of what makes her presence so disturbing.

It's not that she's a mother or even a female king that's the problem; it's that she is the one who is not easily defined and thus not contained.

She's a symbol of vengeance, a dark take on the expectations of society at the time and Beowulf's own actions.

She shows the audience that actions have consequences.

But give it a little etymological confusion, combined with some good, old-fashioned misogyny, and for many, she becomes a literal monster.

Many illustrators and artists depict Grendel's mother with exaggerated feminine features, and she often appears partially nude.

Many comic book artists, authors, directors, and even the BBC paint her as an inhuman figure.

The first comic based on Beowulf, called "Beowulf: Dragon Slayer," in 1975, for instance, illustrates Grendel's mother as a weak, wolf-like humanoid.

She doesn't even get to battle Beowulf.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's the 1999 "Beowulf" movie.

Grendel appears as a science-fiction demon that looks like a mash-up of the "Resident Evil" sea virus zombie and a really weird-looking dinosaur.

Grendel's mother?

She is played by an actress and former Playboy model before turning into this.

[guts squelching] In 2005's "Beowulf and Grendel," the monster antagonist is a human outcast whose otherness is marked by excessive hair growth and albinism.

His mother?

She's a human referred to only as "the sea hag."

[Grendel's mother shrieking] [Beowulf grunts] Then there's the 2007 version.

This one uses a basically nude version of Angelina Jolie to craft the character's appearance.

Grendel's mother is a shapeshifter who seems to have built-in stilettos and a braid so long it appears like a tail, which actually reads very alien queen to me and very odd.

Beowulf also has sex with Grendel's mother in this one.

The Grendel's mother-as-love-interest theme continues in the 2016 TV series "Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands."

Grendel is a monster species, a kind of troll.

Beowulf's seemingly human lover is ultimately revealed to be Grendel's mother, a skin shifter whose real form is horned and fanged.

J.R.R.

Tolkien famously ignored Grendel's mother in his scholarly translation and discussion of Beowulf, listing only Grendel and the dragon as the villains in the narrative, choosing to see her only as an extension of Grendel, an appendix to his story, when really she is the greater antagonist.

Made a monster by some and outright ignored by others, this incorrectly identified female monster archetype is an interesting example of how monsters are not born, they're made.

...whose otherness is marked by excessive hair growth... For instance, that they are descended from Cain, the biblical figure who f-- committed the first murder.

Life and exploits of the digital...

The life, yeah.

Okay.

I'm scared.

[laughing]