page_title: Grendel's mother
section_title: Function in and structure of the poem
hierarchical_section_title: Grendel's mother / Function in and structure of the poem
caption_attribution_description: This is a public domain image from Kip Wheeler's homepage at Carson-Newman College. Kip Wheeler declared its status thus: "The original image of the Beowulf manuscript comes from the anonymous Anglo-Saxon scribe who wrote the 'Nowell Codex', Cotton Vitellius A.x.v. 129 r. It appears here as reproduced in Julius Zupitza's Beowulf: Autotypes of the Unique Cotton MS Vitellius A.xv. in the British Museum with a Transliteration and Notes. E.E.T.S. O.S. 77. London: Trubner &amp; Co., 1882. This image is public domain."
context_page_description: Grendel's mother is one of three antagonists in the anonymous Old English poem Beowulf. The other antagonists are Grendel and the dragon, all aligned in opposition to the hero Beowulf. She is introduced in lines 1258b to 1259a as: "Grendles modor/ides, aglæcwif".
  Grendel's mother, who is never given a name in the text, is the subject of ongoing controversy among medieval scholars. This is due to the ambiguity of a few words in Old English which appear in the original Beowulf manuscript. While there is consensus over the word "modor", the phrase "ides, aglæcwif" is the subject of scholarly debate.
context_section_description: Some scholars have argued that the female characters in Beowulf fulfill certain established roles such as hostess (Wealhþeow and Hygd) and peace-weaver (Freawaru and Hildeburh). Grendel's mother and Modthryth (before her marriage to Offa), who challenge these roles, represent "monster-women".
  Jane Chance argues in "The Structural Unity of Beowulf: The Problem of Grendel's Mother" that there are two standard interpretations of the poem: one view which suggests a two-part structure (i.e., the poem is divided between Beowulf's battles with Grendel and with the dragon) and the other, a three-part structure (this interpretation argues that Beowulf's battle with Grendel's mother is structurally separate from his battle with Grendel). Chance stated that, "this view of the structure as two-part has generally prevailed since its inception in J. R. R. Tolkien's Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." In contrast, she argued that the three-part structure has become "increasingly popular". She later developed this argument in Woman as Hero in Old English Literature.
caption: The first page of the Beowulf manuscript.
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