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The Grieving Woman- Caroline Tucker

 I enjoyed reading Beowulf and discussing the text in class. There are several interesting questions and thoughts that come from reading an awesome work of poetry like this one. While reading, I noticed a few random things that I do not necessarily understand why they are in the text. They seem to be added in randomly with little to no point. If they are in the text, they must be of some importance. However, I do not understand the importance. 

The main time I saw this was near the end of the text where it says, “A Geat woman to sing out and grief; /  with hair bound up, she unburden herself / with her worst fears, a wild litany / of nightmare and lament: her nation invited, enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles, slavery and abasement” (3150-3155). This quote is after Beowulf has died and they have had his funeral. I was surprised to see this quote. It seems random. The author does not express who this woman is in specifics, only that she is a Geat. Initially, I did not understand why it was included. It did not make sense to randomly mention someone grieving. But, what pushed my curiosity further was the fact that it is a woman. Why did the author put a woman as the figure of grief in this section of the text? Why an individual woman instead of a group of people? Why do you think the author put this section in?


P.s. I commented on Jamie’s and Braylan’s posts.

Comments

  1. Emmett BryantMarch 1, 2021 at 4:42 PM

    When I read it, I imagined that it was the mother or relative of someone who had lost someone they loved. I also figured the author probably portrayed a woman this way is because men tend to hide their feelings because of a sense of "manliness." That woman was expressing how many actually felt I think.

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  2. Haylee LyndMarch 1, 2021 at 7:56 PM

    I think by giving the detail that she is a women, one can see that she was not close to Beowulf in terms of being either his relative or a close soldier. She was an ordinary citizen who understood that the loss of her king could mean the loss of her whole nation and way of life. The death of their leader was an invitation to other nations to attack. She expresses what I believe everyone is fearing.

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