Beyond abjection: The problem with Grendel's mother again

Traditional critical paradigms have generally failed to come to grips with the character of Grendel's mother in Beowulf. As a monster in the heroic order, and as a female in a masculine world, she confounds simple definitions and crosses the boundaries that define the limits of agency. Grendel's mother functions as a nexus for the representation of the many dialectical tensions - male/female, human/ monster, hall/wilderness, feud/peace, symbolic/semiotic - that both underwrite and critique the poem's symbolic order. As a result, the character offers insight into the symbolic process and the ways in which readers approach the distant world of the medieval text.