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Jackie Sullivan

Ms. Winter

British Literature Period 1

21 October, 2016

Women of the British Isles

As J.S.B Morse once so eloquently said, The story of humanity can be written as the

struggle to acknowledge all human beings as human beings. Whether the struggle be over the

color of one's skin, or the beliefs of ones mind, or most commonly, the parts with which one was

born with, it is a struggle all the same. During the times of Anglo-Saxons, when the epic poem

Beowulf was a staple of literature and told far and wide, women were not commonly seen, but

given a gentle and kind depiction, yet not quite four hundred years later, as Chaucer penned The

Canterbury Tales women were portrayed in a much different light. In comparison between the

cultural values and religious beliefs of the Anglo-Saxon period and the Middle Ages, the

treatment of women, both in literature and life, degrades over time, as their roles changed from

being respected helpers and ordainers of warriors, to being considered evil and the root of all

corruption.

In Beowulf, women are given two very different representations, in the form of Queen

Welthow and Grendels Mother. Queen Welthow is introduced in the middle of the epic, shortly

after the boasts between Unferth and Beowulf, her entrance taking place amidst the sound of

laughter and the cheerful clanking/ Of cups, and pleasant words.(Beowulf 344-345) She is

called a noble woman who knew/ what was right,(Beowulf 347-348) and as the banquet in

Beowulfs honor progressed,she went from warrior to warrior/ pouring a portion from the

jeweled cup/[until she] had carried the the mead-cup among them, ( Beowulf 349-356) and
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had saluted the [Geats]... [thanking] God for answering her prayers.(Beowulf 357-358) Not

long after, the only other female character makes her first appearance, and it as not as graceful as

Welthows, as Grendels Mother attacks Herot, carrying off a Dane as well as the arm of her son

in a fit of grief. She is befitted the titles of a greedy she-wolf[a] mighty water witch

[which] no sword could slice her evil/ skin,(Beowulf 575-600) and she is even more monstrous

than her son as she tears through Herot to reclaim her sons arm, and takes another warrior to his

grave.

The contrast between the two women in the epic is quite clear, one of good and one of

evil, but there is more to it than that. As Beowulf was told orally for generations, the epic was

first of Pagan origins. However when it was anonymously penned in 1000 AD by who most

believed to be a Catholic monk, many elements of the Christian faith were integrated into the

poem. These two differing ideologies blended together in the epic, and the only two women

portrayed represented the shifting of those religious ideals. Queen Welthow is the embodiment of

Anglo-Saxon ideals; a Pagan, kind and respectful queen, who nobly serves her king and

honorably does her duties; overseeing her home and hall and ordaining her guests. Grendels

Mother, on the other hand, is demonic and monstrous in nature, her description of being one of

the pair of those monsters born/ of Cain...banished/By God. (Beowulf 20-21) She most

accurately fits how the Catholic Church, which was becoming more predominant at the time,

viewed women as the root of all evil, temptation, and corruption.

In contrast to the mighty Beowulf, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are not as kind to

those of the female sex, and while a good majority of the tales display this blatant sexism, no two

tales are as good as displaying it as the tale of the Wife of Bath. The Wife of Baths Tale in one

interpretation, is a tale told with a male audience in mind, as it describes a knight who was a
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lusty liver(Chaucer 59) who rapes a woman, is sentenced to death by beheading, saved by

Queen Guinevere, who gives him a task to find what it is that women want most and to return in

a year and a day. He finds his answer from a crone, who makes him promise that he will do

whatever she wants if he answers the Queen correctly, and answer correctly he does, as he tells

the Queen and an assembled court a woman wants the self-same sovereignty/Over her husband

as over her lover/And master him; he must not be above her. (Chaucer 215-216) He survives his

encounter, and the crone asks for him as a husband, and he quite reluctantly agrees. On their

wedding night they argue in bed about the appearance of his new wife, how she is old and ugly.

She gives him an ultimatum to either be old and faithful, or young and deviant. He lets her

decide and she is so pleased with him she turns lovely and promises to stay faithful.

The story, while told by a woman, is meant to be told to a male audience, and in the time

that it was told, was a revolutionary and dangerous tale thats values held such unpopular opinion,

that the teller herself forwards her story with a warning that she should speak as fantasy may

move [her]...and please dont be offended at [her] views/Theyre really only offered to

amuse.(Chaucer 28-30) Her story touches upon the radical notion that women are actually

people as well, and while it is drowned out heavily by the knight, who not only gets away with

rape, but in the end gains a beautiful and loyal wife for his troubles, it is still very much

present, as the crone-turned-dame speaks long and hard about the subject. She confuses him, so

much so that he either gives her his answer out of exasperation or simply because he has figured

out what she wished to hear as hethought long, and with a piteous groan/At last, he said with all

the care in life(Chaucer 404-405) and told her to pick whichever she wanted. In the end, the

tale caters to the male notion of superiority.

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It is easy to see what difference a few hundred years can make when we look at how we

treat different types of people. In the Anglo-Saxon period women and wives were helpers and

benevolent presences, but not long after became malicious tricksters in the Middle Ages. This

change in mentality is mostly due to the changing religions and cultures of the eras, and the

shifting ideals of creation and life. Yet while this is just one time in history where these events

have happened, think of how many more are just like it, how many women, because of changes

in their religion or life, experienced similar circumstances, and just imagine how many stories

like theirs are lost because of those changes.

Works Cited

Beowulf. Trans. Burton Raffel. Literature of Britain with World Classics. Ed. Richard Sime et al.

Sixth Course ed. Austin: Rinehart, and Winston, 2000. 21-46. Print.
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The Wife of Baths Tale. The Canterbury Tales. Trans. Nevill Coghill. Literature of Britain

with World Classics. Ed. Richard Sime et al. Sixth Course ed. Austin: Rinehart, and Winston,

2000. 138-47. Print.