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Woman As Hero in Old English Literature
Book by Chance, Jane
- GenresMedieval
156 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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November 20, 2022
Back in the day, people (at least those situated in northern climes) did not have such terms as ‘patriarchy’ and ‘intersectionality’ to toss about with aplomb like a post-modern theorist or feminist. For life itself, mere survival under the terms of a harsh reality, posed an imposing enough challenge that they hadn’t the luxury to indulge in idle ideological lucibrations. As Jesus admonishes us in the gospel: Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof (Matthew 6:34). Accordingly, the men of old appraised the comparative merits of the two sexes realistically. Yes, women tend to have a more gracile skeleton and musculature and are less fitted for duty as heavy infantry, but they enjoy compensating advantages: certainly keener hearing and vision, greater facility in all things pertaining to language use and social interactions and, superior technical virtuosity, although through a sport of nature there may occasionally be a man who can equal the typical woman in technical skill. The archaeological record indicates that, among the Norsemen, their women could have fought in battles as mounted archers and numerous grave mounds have been excavated in which high-status women were interred alongside their weaponry.
Thus, one ought to approach the question of sex roles in pre-modern societies with an open mind rather than be enmeshed in popular stereotypes. Fortunately, Jane Chance, a long-established professor of English at Rice University, has done just this for us with respect to Old English literature and published a concise study of her findings in Woman as Hero in Old English Literature (1986).
Old English literature encompasses the scant textual remains from the long interval stretching from the eighth to the eleventh centuries in areas occupied by Anglo-Saxon tribes in England, up to the Norman conquest in 1066. From the scholar’s point of view, the confluence of Germanic custom and patristic sources, which of course during the period in question were determinative as to how Christians thought of their place in the world, makes for a fascinating avenue of investigation. Chance alleges a tension between what was supposed to be the medieval ideal for women and the actuality. For aristocratic women in particular were expected to play the role of peacemaker and, if so, one might surmise an expectation existed for them passively to accept the place assigned to them, when for instance, a male leader might marry off one of his female kindred as part of a deal to conclude a peace settlement with another faction [an institution known as Friedelehe – some of Charlemagne’s wives were of precisely this kind]. Yet, just because society assigns one a role does not mean that, in practice, it will be easy to fulfill or that one might not wish to rebel against it. Art, if it is not to devolve into persiflage or unctuousness, has to register the way things really are. Barbarians in general, and Germanic ones in particular, can be fiercely spirited and independent-minded and this would apply to womenfolk just as much as to menfolk. Thus, the conflict must have been a social reality and perceived as such for it to have become a staple of a good deal of the extant poetry in Old English.
Chance the English professor analyzes the possibilities for Anglo-Saxon women into a typology: first, there are the failures to live up to social expectation, often willingly so and possible adulteresses such as the protagonists in Wulf and Eadwacer and The Wife’s Lament, and, at the outer extreme, the mother of the monster Grendel in Beowulf. Second, a woman may, as it were, conquer the world in Christ and become a heroine and a saint, virginal or widowed or faithfully married (in any case chaste) – such as Judith from the Old-Testament apocrypha, and the original characters of Juliana and Elene.
Running comments
The Anglo-Saxon social ideal of the aristocratic woman, or ides, depended upon her role as a peacemaking queen, which was achieved fundamentally through her function as a mother. Child-bearing became a specific means of making peace between two tribes by literally mingling their blood; because of this political function, the aristocratic woman was often termed a ‘peace-pledge’ or friðusibb. [p. 1]
Tacitus’ Germania:
A woman must not imagine herself free to neglect the manly virtues or immune from the hazards of war. That is why she is reminded, in the very ceremonies which bless her marriage at the outset, that she is coming to share a man’s toils and dangers, that she is to be his partner in all his sufferings and adventures, whether in peace or in war. That is the meaning of the team of oxen, of the horse ready for its rider, of the gift of arms. [p. 6]
Chapter two on the Virgin Mary of Christ I [or Advent Lyrics], Genesis B, Christ and Satan II and chapter three on the brave Judith, Juliana and Elene:
The second biblical model for Anglo-Saxon women—in addition to the Virgin—was the Vulgate Judith, responsible for decapitating Holofernes and leading her Hebrew tribe to victory over the Assyrians. Although the actual Anglo-Saxon adaptation exists only as a fragment of the original, it has been seen as having a unity of its own as a ‘religious lay’ similar to the secular lays of the Finnsburg Fragment or the Battle of Maldon. Most likely it was a much longer poem resembling Juliana and Elene, the only two religious epics with women saints as their subjects….Further, all three illustrate women of military sanctity: B.J. Turner has noted that ‘Judith belongs to the type of poetry to which Juliana and Elene belong, the religious epic describing the deeds of a fighting saint’. Why would poets have selected women saints as the subjects of religious epics? Several reasons emerge: first, and most generally, when the Anglo-Saxons converted to Christianity, they inherited a spiritual heroic past contained within the lives of the various apostles, martyrs and confessors. These lives were bolstered by missionaries, relics, church dedications and, especially in the seventh century, through manuscripts of saints’ lives sent from Rome. [p. 31]
The general emphasis on chastity in Anglo-Saxon England seems to have derived from the patristic contrast between Eve and the Virgin as two women similar initially in their virginity but dissimilar in their obedience (or lack of it) to God. [p. 33]
The church fathers categorized three grades of chastity – virginity, widowhood and conjugality….:
It is interesting to note that Juliana, Judith and Elene seem to reflect these three categories of virginity. Juliana, who refuses to marry Heliseus, maintains her virginity (virginitas); Judith, a widow in the Vulgate and in Aldhelm’s account of her exploits, is praised especially for her chastity (castitas); and Elene, finally, mother of Constantine the Great, represents abstinence within marriage (iugalitas), although in reality she was divorced at the time of her quest. [p. 34]
Only when masculine support was obtained either through a literal male intermediary or more figuratively through the masculine trait of reason (or through God’s help) was a woman permitted to govern men and control wealth. The saints’ lives of this period corroborate this idea by describing women saints of heroic chastity and spirituality, a handful of whom literally don masculine disguise to hide a female form—and presumably ‘female’ desire. Similarly, when queens attained a reputation for chastity and sanctity, or when they became abbesses, which marked their intentions as socially or spiritually acceptable, their political power within the community increased. [p. 53]
Chapter five on Eve in Genesis B, anti-type of the peace-weaver and the Virgin Mary and exemplar of the disobedient wife.
The metaphor of the scop is chiefly conveyed through the use of the word giedd or gidd to describe what the narrator is reciting. Generally, the word gidd describes a metrical composition usually true and sad recited by the scop in a heroic setting or by some wise man at another ceremonial occasion. It can as well connote the prophetic and enigmatic. In The Lament the wife employs the word giedd to describe her own story, which involves her experiences with her lover or husband. [pp.82-83]
This concept of the woman narrator as a peace pledge whose social role has been inverted and of her lover as a failed lord who cannot, for whatever reason, afford to her, to their child and to her tribe the protection and wise guidance that he should, remains crucial to understanding her transformation into a scop who will describe their relationship as a giedd in the puzzling last two lines: ‘Þæt mon eape tosliteð þætte næfre gesomnad wæs, / uncer giedd geador. That one easily slits which was never bound, / our song together’. [p. 88]
If it seems ironic that a Germanic ideal that cannot exist in this world can exist in art, unifying the theme and structure of the poem, then Grendel’s Mother, warring antitype of harmony and peace, must seem doubly ironic. The structural position of her episode in the poem, like woman’s position as cup-passer among members of the nations, or as a peace pledge between two nations, is similarly medial and transitional but successfully so. [p. 108]
From Chance’s conclusion:
Taking up the role of ‘battle-queen’ is not always portrayed as ‘monstrous’ activity. Considered permissible behavior for an extremely chaste and saintly woman in historical documents and in literature, battle allegorically enables the ‘warriors of Christ’, whether male or female, to continue His work and thereby defeat His enemy. The ides ellenrof, guðcwen or sigecwen is metaphorically released from the social demand of peace-weaving because, as a symbol of the human soul or the Church itself she serves a higher ‘lord’ than a human husband. Thus, such figures as the historical Anglo-Saxon saint Aetheldryth, and the legendary saints Juliana and Elene, along with the Old Testament Judith, serve in these roles as types of the Virgin Mary, who, as Ecclesia, heroically exemplifies the Church Triumphant. Indeed, the Virgin Mary incarnates all the positive roles in which women are depicted in Old English literature, as we have seen in Christ I. Either appearing as the heroic virgin or the peace-weaving bride—roles one would consider mutually contradictory, if not impossible—she offers a flexible and creative range of possibilities to an Anglo-Saxon audience. She is the Germanic ring-adorned queen or the patristic and allegorical ‘gate’ into the garden of Paradise, the hortus conclusus; she is the maid giving birth and the militant Ecclesia stamping on the head of the serpent. One might almost suspect the poet of Christ I of being a woman, if not merely sympathetic to the often contradictory demands placed upon woman and to her use as a symbol of the political, cultural and religious tensions racking Anglo-Saxon society. [p. 110]
To which we append just a couple observations:
1) At just 135 pages, the book cannot cover everything. Chance does quote a number of block passages from church fathers such as Irenaeus, Jerome, Ambrose and Fulgentius, but this falls short of a full treatment of their ideas and the transmission of them to the Anglo-Saxons. In the present study, then, the patristic sources have an incidental role to play with respect to the main argument about heroines in Old English poetry itself. This aspect would seem to offer scope for an in-depth follow-up study. 2) What happened after the Norman conquest? As a medievalist, Chance is surely qualified to trace the development of the subject of her interest into subsequent history – just that limitations of space will not permit her to do so here. Again, something potentially worth following up on.
All around, not only do the Old English poems themselves certainly merit a five-star rating for their complex weaving of themes of the religious ideal together with psychological reality in the lives of women during early medieval times in England, the modern author’s competent handling of them would, standing alone, deserve five as well as an outstanding contribution to Old English studies. One comes away from a perusal of Chance’s work with a desire to learn Old English, just as many are prompted to acquire at least a reading knowledge of Italian so as to savor Dante’s Divine Comedy in the original. Salut!
Thus, one ought to approach the question of sex roles in pre-modern societies with an open mind rather than be enmeshed in popular stereotypes. Fortunately, Jane Chance, a long-established professor of English at Rice University, has done just this for us with respect to Old English literature and published a concise study of her findings in Woman as Hero in Old English Literature (1986).
Old English literature encompasses the scant textual remains from the long interval stretching from the eighth to the eleventh centuries in areas occupied by Anglo-Saxon tribes in England, up to the Norman conquest in 1066. From the scholar’s point of view, the confluence of Germanic custom and patristic sources, which of course during the period in question were determinative as to how Christians thought of their place in the world, makes for a fascinating avenue of investigation. Chance alleges a tension between what was supposed to be the medieval ideal for women and the actuality. For aristocratic women in particular were expected to play the role of peacemaker and, if so, one might surmise an expectation existed for them passively to accept the place assigned to them, when for instance, a male leader might marry off one of his female kindred as part of a deal to conclude a peace settlement with another faction [an institution known as Friedelehe – some of Charlemagne’s wives were of precisely this kind]. Yet, just because society assigns one a role does not mean that, in practice, it will be easy to fulfill or that one might not wish to rebel against it. Art, if it is not to devolve into persiflage or unctuousness, has to register the way things really are. Barbarians in general, and Germanic ones in particular, can be fiercely spirited and independent-minded and this would apply to womenfolk just as much as to menfolk. Thus, the conflict must have been a social reality and perceived as such for it to have become a staple of a good deal of the extant poetry in Old English.
Chance the English professor analyzes the possibilities for Anglo-Saxon women into a typology: first, there are the failures to live up to social expectation, often willingly so and possible adulteresses such as the protagonists in Wulf and Eadwacer and The Wife’s Lament, and, at the outer extreme, the mother of the monster Grendel in Beowulf. Second, a woman may, as it were, conquer the world in Christ and become a heroine and a saint, virginal or widowed or faithfully married (in any case chaste) – such as Judith from the Old-Testament apocrypha, and the original characters of Juliana and Elene.
Running comments
The Anglo-Saxon social ideal of the aristocratic woman, or ides, depended upon her role as a peacemaking queen, which was achieved fundamentally through her function as a mother. Child-bearing became a specific means of making peace between two tribes by literally mingling their blood; because of this political function, the aristocratic woman was often termed a ‘peace-pledge’ or friðusibb. [p. 1]
Tacitus’ Germania:
A woman must not imagine herself free to neglect the manly virtues or immune from the hazards of war. That is why she is reminded, in the very ceremonies which bless her marriage at the outset, that she is coming to share a man’s toils and dangers, that she is to be his partner in all his sufferings and adventures, whether in peace or in war. That is the meaning of the team of oxen, of the horse ready for its rider, of the gift of arms. [p. 6]
Chapter two on the Virgin Mary of Christ I [or Advent Lyrics], Genesis B, Christ and Satan II and chapter three on the brave Judith, Juliana and Elene:
The second biblical model for Anglo-Saxon women—in addition to the Virgin—was the Vulgate Judith, responsible for decapitating Holofernes and leading her Hebrew tribe to victory over the Assyrians. Although the actual Anglo-Saxon adaptation exists only as a fragment of the original, it has been seen as having a unity of its own as a ‘religious lay’ similar to the secular lays of the Finnsburg Fragment or the Battle of Maldon. Most likely it was a much longer poem resembling Juliana and Elene, the only two religious epics with women saints as their subjects….Further, all three illustrate women of military sanctity: B.J. Turner has noted that ‘Judith belongs to the type of poetry to which Juliana and Elene belong, the religious epic describing the deeds of a fighting saint’. Why would poets have selected women saints as the subjects of religious epics? Several reasons emerge: first, and most generally, when the Anglo-Saxons converted to Christianity, they inherited a spiritual heroic past contained within the lives of the various apostles, martyrs and confessors. These lives were bolstered by missionaries, relics, church dedications and, especially in the seventh century, through manuscripts of saints’ lives sent from Rome. [p. 31]
The general emphasis on chastity in Anglo-Saxon England seems to have derived from the patristic contrast between Eve and the Virgin as two women similar initially in their virginity but dissimilar in their obedience (or lack of it) to God. [p. 33]
The church fathers categorized three grades of chastity – virginity, widowhood and conjugality….:
It is interesting to note that Juliana, Judith and Elene seem to reflect these three categories of virginity. Juliana, who refuses to marry Heliseus, maintains her virginity (virginitas); Judith, a widow in the Vulgate and in Aldhelm’s account of her exploits, is praised especially for her chastity (castitas); and Elene, finally, mother of Constantine the Great, represents abstinence within marriage (iugalitas), although in reality she was divorced at the time of her quest. [p. 34]
Only when masculine support was obtained either through a literal male intermediary or more figuratively through the masculine trait of reason (or through God’s help) was a woman permitted to govern men and control wealth. The saints’ lives of this period corroborate this idea by describing women saints of heroic chastity and spirituality, a handful of whom literally don masculine disguise to hide a female form—and presumably ‘female’ desire. Similarly, when queens attained a reputation for chastity and sanctity, or when they became abbesses, which marked their intentions as socially or spiritually acceptable, their political power within the community increased. [p. 53]
Chapter five on Eve in Genesis B, anti-type of the peace-weaver and the Virgin Mary and exemplar of the disobedient wife.
The metaphor of the scop is chiefly conveyed through the use of the word giedd or gidd to describe what the narrator is reciting. Generally, the word gidd describes a metrical composition usually true and sad recited by the scop in a heroic setting or by some wise man at another ceremonial occasion. It can as well connote the prophetic and enigmatic. In The Lament the wife employs the word giedd to describe her own story, which involves her experiences with her lover or husband. [pp.82-83]
This concept of the woman narrator as a peace pledge whose social role has been inverted and of her lover as a failed lord who cannot, for whatever reason, afford to her, to their child and to her tribe the protection and wise guidance that he should, remains crucial to understanding her transformation into a scop who will describe their relationship as a giedd in the puzzling last two lines: ‘Þæt mon eape tosliteð þætte næfre gesomnad wæs, / uncer giedd geador. That one easily slits which was never bound, / our song together’. [p. 88]
If it seems ironic that a Germanic ideal that cannot exist in this world can exist in art, unifying the theme and structure of the poem, then Grendel’s Mother, warring antitype of harmony and peace, must seem doubly ironic. The structural position of her episode in the poem, like woman’s position as cup-passer among members of the nations, or as a peace pledge between two nations, is similarly medial and transitional but successfully so. [p. 108]
From Chance’s conclusion:
Taking up the role of ‘battle-queen’ is not always portrayed as ‘monstrous’ activity. Considered permissible behavior for an extremely chaste and saintly woman in historical documents and in literature, battle allegorically enables the ‘warriors of Christ’, whether male or female, to continue His work and thereby defeat His enemy. The ides ellenrof, guðcwen or sigecwen is metaphorically released from the social demand of peace-weaving because, as a symbol of the human soul or the Church itself she serves a higher ‘lord’ than a human husband. Thus, such figures as the historical Anglo-Saxon saint Aetheldryth, and the legendary saints Juliana and Elene, along with the Old Testament Judith, serve in these roles as types of the Virgin Mary, who, as Ecclesia, heroically exemplifies the Church Triumphant. Indeed, the Virgin Mary incarnates all the positive roles in which women are depicted in Old English literature, as we have seen in Christ I. Either appearing as the heroic virgin or the peace-weaving bride—roles one would consider mutually contradictory, if not impossible—she offers a flexible and creative range of possibilities to an Anglo-Saxon audience. She is the Germanic ring-adorned queen or the patristic and allegorical ‘gate’ into the garden of Paradise, the hortus conclusus; she is the maid giving birth and the militant Ecclesia stamping on the head of the serpent. One might almost suspect the poet of Christ I of being a woman, if not merely sympathetic to the often contradictory demands placed upon woman and to her use as a symbol of the political, cultural and religious tensions racking Anglo-Saxon society. [p. 110]
To which we append just a couple observations:
1) At just 135 pages, the book cannot cover everything. Chance does quote a number of block passages from church fathers such as Irenaeus, Jerome, Ambrose and Fulgentius, but this falls short of a full treatment of their ideas and the transmission of them to the Anglo-Saxons. In the present study, then, the patristic sources have an incidental role to play with respect to the main argument about heroines in Old English poetry itself. This aspect would seem to offer scope for an in-depth follow-up study. 2) What happened after the Norman conquest? As a medievalist, Chance is surely qualified to trace the development of the subject of her interest into subsequent history – just that limitations of space will not permit her to do so here. Again, something potentially worth following up on.
All around, not only do the Old English poems themselves certainly merit a five-star rating for their complex weaving of themes of the religious ideal together with psychological reality in the lives of women during early medieval times in England, the modern author’s competent handling of them would, standing alone, deserve five as well as an outstanding contribution to Old English studies. One comes away from a perusal of Chance’s work with a desire to learn Old English, just as many are prompted to acquire at least a reading knowledge of Italian so as to savor Dante’s Divine Comedy in the original. Salut!
May 23, 2018
Read a few chapters of this for my dissertation on Anglo-Saxon gender. It was quite interesting in illustrating what are 'acceptable' deviations from the 'ideal' Anglo-Saxon/medieval woman and how that can be contextualised within what may be seen as 'heroic' or 'monstrous' behaviour.
December 25, 2025
Am I the target audience for this book? Not by a long shot. Am I stubborn enough to read it anyway? Yes. Yes I am.
I found this book very interesting. It discusses the instances where Anglo-Saxon literature uses heroic language to describe women, and through that it shows us the ways women were expected to act. Breaking from the normal female mold could only be done under certain circumstances, and the way women are presented in stories illustrates when this was allowed and when it wasn’t.
That said, this book is highly academic. It reads like a paper or a thesis, with pages upon pages of citations. If you’re reading this as someone who isn’t a professional in the field (like I am), it’s a good idea to be aware of what you’re getting into. On the plus side, it’s short.
I found this book very interesting. It discusses the instances where Anglo-Saxon literature uses heroic language to describe women, and through that it shows us the ways women were expected to act. Breaking from the normal female mold could only be done under certain circumstances, and the way women are presented in stories illustrates when this was allowed and when it wasn’t.
That said, this book is highly academic. It reads like a paper or a thesis, with pages upon pages of citations. If you’re reading this as someone who isn’t a professional in the field (like I am), it’s a good idea to be aware of what you’re getting into. On the plus side, it’s short.
June 27, 2011
This was difficult for me. The OE poetry was beautiful but hard to work out the relation of the words to the ModE translation. So I had to take it a bit at a time. And it is difficult to think of women's lives a being so constricted by society. I didn't quite understand which woman's role was "heroic", aside from Judith beheading Holofernes and saving her people.
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