The second feast closes shortly after Wealhtheow’s speech. Men continue to drink for some time, but the hall is converted into a sleeping-room once again. This was the general custom, but in the opening lines we had learned that warriors were becoming afraid to sleep at Heorot. Now, with relief, they flock back into the hall and set out their bedding.
There are two notable exceptions. Hrothgar does not sleep in the hall; perhaps because he is old, now he goes to his own house. This may be a smaller building nearby. Beowulf, too, is given “guest of honor” chambers in a separate building, along with his men.
Through line 1250, there is every reason to suppose that the story is over, except for one ominous line. “Wyrd,” the Old English word for Fate, enters the room in 1233. There is something unpleasant looming in the near future, bringing a “cruel fate” to many an earl, and waiting only “once evening came, and Hrothgar departed to his own dwelling” (1234-6) What is out there in the dark?
Of course, the new monster is Grendel’s mother. And here’s where modern adaptations get really snarled.
As Grendel had little physical description, it is the same with his mother. The narrative of the poem assumes that we know what she looked like, or, conversely, that it doesn’t really matter. She is called three words as soon as she is introduced. She is “modor,” mother, “ides,” lady, and “aglæca-wif,” as Grendel had been “aglæca.” The three concepts seem hard to integrate, at first. We know she is the mother of Grendel, although Hrothgar says there was no father, and the narrative says that both sprang from Cain. The term “lady” as applied to this slime-covered fen monster seems startling; the word “ides” has only been used to describe the royal (human) women up to now. That the she-monster is a “terrible female,” the approximate meaning of “aglæca-wif,” seems less difficult. The three together are hard to see as a unity. Is Grendel’s mother a bestial female, like a she-bear robbed of her cub, or is she a regal figure demanding justice for her feud?
Modern movie adaptations believe firmly that she’s a mostly-human figure demanding justice for the murder of her son. As with Grendel, the modern mind can’t accept that something is just plain evil, because so often during the 20th century, that charge was leveled at human beings. I think most people still agree that Adolf Hitler was evil, but after all, he tried to persuade the world that the Jews were evil. We rightly balk at the idea that an entire group of human beings could be “evil.” We know that humans operate from mixed motives and it’s a tiny minority that commit harm just because they want to.
When movies present Grendel, they show him as having an understandable motive. In the poem, he just sees and hears the hall full of innocent joy and is filled with hatred. But in movies, he was previously wronged by someone in Hrothgar’s band, perhaps the king himself. Without that prior offense, he would not be attacking.
In the case of Grendel’s mother, part of that is true even in the poem, because as long as Grendel was free to kill and eat humans, she left them alone. She only shows up because now he is dead. Would the mother of an organized crime boss order hits to take revenge for his death? Perhaps so. We can understand this, even if we feel that in both cases, revenge isn’t appropriate because they were killers. Killing a killer saves lives, and saving lives is our highest good.
Whatever Grendel’s mother was like, she certainly could never have been played by a beautiful actress like Angelina Jolie.