This past fall semester I took a class on Medieval Literature. I thought I was going to hate it, but it ended up being one of my favorite classes. For the final paper, we had the opportunity to participate in an undergraduate conference in Medieval studies (the Sixth Annual Undergraduate Conference in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Moravian College). I presented my paper on gender roles in Anglo-Saxon literature, specifically in Beowulf, “The Wife’s Lament,” and “Wulf and Eadwacer.” I put so much work into this paper, stressed about it for weeks, rewrote it a bunch of times, and was really nervous to read it aloud to potential experts. It was actually a pretty great experience and it wasn’t as scary as I thought it was going to be (I even answered questions, I felt so smart). I also got to listen to a bunch of other students present their papers on all different topics from medieval military tactics to diabolical orgies. It was an interesting day to say the least. You can read my paper below. Enjoy!
War and Peace: Conflicting Gender Functions in “The Wife’s Lament” “Wulf and Eadwacer” and Beowulf
The literature of Anglo-Saxon England is dominated by and remembered for grand depictions of war and glorified battle scenes. Men, in Anglo-Saxon culture, were revered for, and expected to posses, the qualities of bravery, strength, and fierceness in battle while women were meant to bring peace through marriages. Ideally, a marriage would end feuds between warring tribes, creating alliances among these now peaceful nations. Nevertheless, upon closer examination, poems such as “The Wife’s Lament,” “Wulf and Eadwacer,” and the epic Beowulf are texts that expose the flaws in such socially gendered roles. All three poems criticize women’s contradictory function as peacemakers in a war-centered culture, showing that the positions they are placed in within the society have devastating effects on the women immediately and ultimately on the society’s alliances in general. Each poem specifically highlights the loneliness, exile, and fear of failed peace-weavers to reveal the consequences of an unstable, violent culture.
Women are shown to be unsuccessful at keeping peace between tribes since the men of the society place greater importance on violence and loyalty to their own kinsman. The value Anglo-Saxon culture places on fighting is not a system of mindless violence, but is based on complex loyalties to kinsman and tribes, including vengenance and the protection of their lands and tribes from invaders and ancestral feuds. These traditions are so strong that Ashby Kinch has argued that “Germanic culture dictates that the king will value the bond of the comitatus over the peace-bride” (139). “The Wife’s Lament” exposes the dedication a man has for his tribe in his primary role as a warrior before the interests of his wife and family in his secondary role as husband. The speaker’s husband places his feud above his duties to his wife as he, according to the translation by Kevin Crossley-Holland, “forsook his family” (“The Wife’s Lament” 6). While the poem is ambiguous about where he has gone, it is clear that violence is his primary goal. The speaker, or the wife, discovers that throughout their marriage, the husband has been “plotting / murder behind a smiling face” (19-20). The husband’s violence in his role within the warrior society changes their relationship, making their “friendship as if it had never been” (23). Kinch claims that the wife’s situation shows how a man’s “clan politics weaken and ultimately destroy his connection with his peace-bride” therefore demonstrating the unavoidable failure of a woman’s function as a peace-weaver (137).
This inevitable failure leads to a state of pain for the wife. She first lives with her husband when he asks her to even though she has “few loved ones, loyal friends / in this country” (“The Wife’s Lament” 16-17). She not only gives up her tribal ties to be a good wife, but she also looks and worries for her husband when he leaves her, becoming a “friendless wanderer” to search for him (10). Without her husband, she is exiled, “forced to live in forest grove,” “choked with longings” (26, 28). Without a husband, without a function or meaning, the wife suffers “hardships” “miseries” and “longings” (“The Wife’s Lament” 38, 37, 40). The wife’s pain remains strong and constant throughout the entire poem, exposing and criticizing the flawed gender system. To stress the loneliness and pain of the speaker, the poet adopts a similar style and tone to that of the exiled warrior genre in poems such as “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer” (Kinch 145). The mimicry of a genre only concerned with the suffering of men emphasizes the wife’s agony in her situation, highlighting the failure of her contradictory function within society. While there is suffering in the exiled warrior poems, there is, at the same time, a celebration for the exile and a hope for heaven; “The Wanderer” claims that “it is best for a man to seek / mercy and comfort from the Father in heaven, the safe home that awaits us all” (114-15). “The Wife’s Lament” however, does not offer any hope. The despair of women is emphasized in a style reserved for warriors which questions and challenges the values important to warrior society.“The Wife’s Lament” not only shows the pain of the woman, because her husband’s loyalty to his kin is more important than her while she must remain in an unsuccessful and meaningless position, but also, in doing so, questions and critiques the values of the society. The poet shows the negative effects the feuds have on men as well. The wife is unsure where her husband is, but she is positive that he is “caught in the clutches of anguish,” demonstrating that the opposing gender roles have negative consequences for men as well. The poem uses this emphasis on the pain of both genders to question the gender system and its effect on society as a whole. The narrator’s bitter statement that men “must hide / their heartaches , that host of constant sorrows, / behind a smiling face” re-emphasizes the actions of her husband while applying them to men of the society in general. The characters in the poem are synecdochic of society as a whole. If all men are “plotting” behind a happy facade, the entire society will eventually fall into the same pain as the couple in the poem and the fighting will lead to the destruction of the culture. The poem illustrates that the contrasting roles that men and women are expected to uphold, while casting women into suffering, creates a world of constant violence and feuding that is ultimately devastating to the entire culture.
Just like “The Wife’s Lament,” “Wulf and Eadwacer” highlights the anxiety of women in Anglo-Saxon society to criticize the instability of a society because of conflicting gender roles. The poem is unclear, and, perhaps, purposefully ambiguous about the speaker’s relationship to the two men mentioned: Wulf and Eadwacer. The possibilities are endless; the speaker could be the wife of either, the mistress or lover of either, or maybe even the mistress of both. However, even though there is no definite evidence that she is even a wife, she still fulfils her expectations of her gender as if she were a wife and an unsuccessful peace-weaver. She is a part from Wulf, and, just like the wife in “The Wife’s Lament” seems to have been separated from him by the society as he is described in the Crossley-Holland translation to be in a “fen-prison” guarded by “fierce men” (“Wulf and Eadwacer” 5, 6). She laments their separation, just like the wife, stressing her “yearning” (13) for him. Her voice joins that of the narrator in “The Wife’s Lament,” stressing the lonely anguish women, as peace-weaving wives, face when a feud, or any type of fighting breaks out.
However, while the woman narrator here is lonely, there is a greater sense of anxiety and fear. She establishes her tone of restless anxiety in the first two lines: “prey, it’s as if my people have been handed prey / they’ll tear him to pieces if he comes with a troop” (1-2). These lines contain violent words and images, showing that her mind is solely focused on the violence she knows men of the society to be capable of. The knowledge that such violence is likely to happen disturbs the narrator, as evidenced by the emphasis she places on it with the repetition of the line “they’ll tear him to pieces if he comes with a troop” (7). She worries so much, “grieving” for his “wide wanderings,” that her anguish actually causes “sickness” (9, 14). Here, again, the poem is not only criticizing the contrasting gender functions as they are devastating to women but questions their effect on society overall by exposing and highlighting the instability of the culture.
The strongest point of criticism is seen in the last two lines of the poem; “Men easily savage what was never secure, / our song together” (18-19). Like the rest of the poem, these lines are suggestive. However, while what the speaker means by “our song together” is uncertain, the poet could be implying a greater meaning. He could mean that men, due to their violent functions as warriors, destroy marriages, a bond Anglo-Saxons recognized as insecure. The statement, therefore, could imply that the society, due to its nature, is unstable and easily thrown into turmoil by constant war. There is also the possibility that “our song” refers to the poem itself. The poem, in this meta-poetic statement, suggests that the duality of gender functions in the warrior society has severe consequences to the poetry of the culture. Both interpretations expose the poem’s criticism of a society built on contrasting values. Instead of glorifying war, the poem shows the negative effects through a voice seldom heard in Anglo-Saxon literature: a woman.
The failure of the peace-weaving function in Anglo-Saxon society and literature is so common and accepted that both men and women expect these marriages to fail. The epic poem Beowulf, in contrast with its depictions and praises of war and violence, reveals the expected failure of attempts at peace through marriage and the consequences of the resulting feuds. The hero Beowulf himself expects such a failure with the marriage of Freawaru and Ingeld. Their marriage, in the Michael Alexander translation, is meant to “end all the feud and fatal wars / by means of the lady” (Beowulf 2027-28). However, Beowulf believes that “seldom the slaying-spear sleeps for long /…dear though the bride may be” (2029-30). He then, for more than thirty lines, describes in detail his predictions for how “both sides then will break the pact” (2062). He claims that “biting words of rebuke and reminder” of past fighting will cause “Ingeld’s vengefulness” to grow and “his wife-love to cool” (2056, 2063, 2065).
The character Beowulf differs, however, from the narrators of “The Wife’s Lament” and “Wulf and Eadwacer” as he is not concerned with the peace-bride Freawaru, but focuses on the men. The poem uses Beowulf’s speech to show that not only are there obvious consequences of war such as death, but there are other problems for men in the society. Beowulf’s doubts that the “friendship is sound” between the Heathobards and the Danes shows the doubts of any lasting bonds in the society. In a culture constantly at war, what relationships can be counted on as firm? The details and length in which he describes the possible falling apart of the friendship of tribes and of the marriage suggest that Beowulf had seen many situations that ended in war and was very familiar with the pattern. The poem, therefore, points out the commonality of failed marriages and alliances between men. The questions the poem raises are perhaps even stronger here since they come from, not only a man, but, a great hero. Not only is Beowulf’s voice one of authority, but he also embodies the culture and traditions; a hero questioning the values he is meant to uphold sends a grave message. These doubts from Beowulf, as Gale Owen-Crocker notices, challenge “the previous assumptions that all is right in a heroic world” (12). Beowulf , instead of using the seldom heard voice of the woman, uses the authority of a hero to expose and criticize the consequences of the gender functions within Anglo-Saxon society to men and to the culture as a whole.
Contrasted with the negative effects of the gender roles within the society are the depictions of the ideal queens, Hygd and Wealhtheow. Both queens, as the model wife, adopt the customs and traditions of a queen in their husbands’ mead-halls. Hygd is called “lover of the people” as she dutifully carries the mead-cup around the hall and presents the “wine-bowl / to the hand of each Geat” (Beowulf 1980-81). Wealhtheow is “mindful of courtesies,” while being “gracious to [Hrothgar’s] people” making her “complete in all virtues” (613, 618, 623). However, the poem warns that these queens, by adopting the appropriate customs, are only delaying the inevitable war. The story of Hildeburgh, told by the scop in Hrothgar’s hall, foreshadows the likely war-filled future of the queens. Hildeburgh, another queen, suffers “guiltless” the “loss of her closest ones, / her son and her brother” in a great “clash” (1071, 1072-73, 1072). The guilt or goodness of the woman has no effect on her failure as a peace-wife. The contrast between the images of the ideal queens with the reality of their functions in society, allegorized by Hildburgh, serves to stress the harshness of the reality. The poem, therefore, purposefully contrasts the ideal function of women with the actual results of such a position to expose and criticize the failure of the gender system. Wealhtheow herself acknowledges the fragility of her ideal position in her speech to Beowulf, pleading him to “be a gentle guardian” to her sons (1219).
The questions and criticisms that “The Wife’s Lament” “Wulf and Eadwacer” and Beowulf raise about the consequences of the peace-weaving function within a war-centered society are echoed in the final scene of the epic, where, at Beowulf’s funeral a “woman of the Geats in grief sang out / the lament for his death” (3147-48). The cries of this anonymous woman emphasize the fear women feel in such an unstable society in which they are expected to fail in creating peace (Owen-Crocker 15). This haunting scene also stresses all three poems’ criticisms of a society in constant war, foreshadowing the invasion and destruction of the Geats after the death of their king. All three poems, therefore, while criticizing the gender system also warn against the ultimate consequence of the contrasting values; the end of their society.
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