The Monsters and Their Mothers

When in his essay "The Monsters and the Critics" J. R. R. Tolkien moved the monsters of
Beowulf to centre stage and turned the spotlight on for the other critics to see them better, Grendel and
the dragon were positioned as "counterparts" (Tolkien 2006: 36): "If the dragon is the right end for
Beowulf ... then Grendel is an eminently suitable beginning. ... Triumph over the lesser and more
nearly human is cancelled by defeat before the older and more elemental" (p. 32). The "middle
monster," Grendel's mother, is mentioned only along with Grendel and is given no individual attention.
While this did not prevent Tolkien from transforming Beowulf scholarship (or was in any way
essential to his points), Grendel and his mother are significantly different. This essay will explore
these differences with the help of Tolkien's essay and his translation of Beowulf.
In the poem, both Grendel and his mother are, notably, described in terms applicable to human
and inhuman beings both. Tolkien points out that anthropomorphic monsters are a product of Christian
ideas of sin and spirits of evil; a disfigured human form "becomes symbolical, explicitly, of sin, or
rather this mythical element, already present implicit and unresolved, is emphasized: this we see
already in Beowulf strengthened by the theory of descent from Cain ... and of the curse of God" (p.
34). Grendel "approaches to a devil, though he is not yet a true devil in purpose ... Real devilish
qualities (deception and destruction of the soul), other than those which are undeveloped symbols,
such as his hideousness and habitation in dark forsaken places, are hardly present" (p. 34). Hardly any
other quality is present: Grendel is tall, strong, not skilled in the arts of war, and apparently governed
by malice, terrorizing Heorot time and again, lurking from bogs and fens. However, Beowulf is eager
to fight him; even though the notion of wyrd is what he ends his boast with, he is extremely confident
in his speech and plans on renouncing the use of weapons if Grendel "dare have recourse to warfare
without weapons" (Tolkien 2015: 557).
Grendel's mother, on the other hand, seems to have more layers to her and more gravitas. She
is ambiguous: both a noble-woman and a monster-woman, a she and a he, a mother and a warrior. Her
attack on Heorot is not governed by malice, but by grief and the notion of wergild, a notion she shares

with her human enemies, with whom she is again equated through: "An evil barter was that, wherein
they must on either side exchange the lives of men beloved!" (1087). When she gets her revenge and
realises that she is surrounded by woken Danes, she panics and escapes. This triggers another wergild,
and it is the Danes' turn to venture into the enemy's territory. The words spoken before the fight are
different this time. Hrothgar tells Beowulf: "The abode as yet thou knowest not nor the perilous place
where thou canst find that creature stained with sin. Seek it if thou durst!" (1150, emphasis mine), and
Beowulf, before the battle, changes his rhetoric: he constructs a comitatus relationship and
thoughtfully acknowledges death as a possible outcome. In her underwater cove, Grendel's mother
"did bestride the invader of her hall, and drew her knife with broad and burnished blade: she thought
to avenge her son and only child" (1292). If this sentence were taken out of context, she would seem
not only human, but a devastated, proud mother whose territory is invaded. As Beowulf kills her with
a mighty blade, the sky brightens up and "the confused waves, those regions vast, all were purged,
now that the alien creature had given up the days of life and this swift-passing world" (1358).
Tolkien suggests a two-part structure of the poem: the first one focused on Beowulf as a
young, strong man and his fights with Grendel and his mother, and the second on Beowulf as an old,
wise man and his fatal fight with the dragon. The Beowulf that fights Grendel's mother is the same
Beowulf that killed Grendel, with only one additional day of experience, but a drastically changed
approach. She is weaker than her son, and her maliciousness is seemingly less "pure" because she feels
a range of other strong emotions, she is, finally, I would argue, seemingly more human than her son. It
is her death that clears the waters and brings the sun out, and even if not her death as much as hers and
Grendel's, she is significant. Her very name (or the lack of one) can be interpreted as her being the root
of it all. If there had been no Grendel's mother there would have been no Grendel, and if Beowulf had
not killed her, the waters would have remained infested with a wilderness of sea-monsters, wickedness
and/or sin.

Works cited

Tolkien, J. R. R. "The Monsters and the Critics" in The Monsters and the Critics and Other
Essays. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006. Pdf.
Tolkien, J. R. R.

Beowulf: a Translation and Commentary. New York: Houghton Mifflin

Harcourt, 2015. Pdf.