" (Confessions, Book IX, 21)
It is certainly true that Monica was patient and long-suffering with her arbitrary son. The pitiful story depicted in Confessions describes how she pursued her rebellious son to Rome, to find he had already left for Milan. She continued to follow him (a model of bravery in itself) and found St. Ambrose, who helped her with the conversion of her son, Augustine, to Christianity.
After six months in Cassiacum,
Augustine was baptized in the church of St. John the Baptist at Milan. Then he and his mother started out on a trip to Africa, stopping at Civita Vecchia and at Ostia, where death claimed Monica. Mourning for his mother, Augustine penned the finest pages of his Confessions. Monica was a good mother, but Augustine regretted that, as a young man, he did not follow her example of Christian faith. However, Augustine credited Monica with planting the seeds of faith in his heart. He called his conversion a return to the faith she had instilled in him as a child. "So be fulfilled what my mother desired of me -- more richly in the prayers of so many gained for her through these confessions of mine than by my prayers alone" (Confessions, Book IX.13.37)
Augustine's rose-colored memories of his mother as a peace-maker and submissive wife to his abusive father caused him to set her up as the example which Christian women should follow, and still follow today. The "warrior-woman" and "peace-maker" roles of pagan times were done away with when Augustine's Christian traditions and precepts entered the picture. Any spirit that might be shown by a woman, any sign of dominance or balking at obeying abusive husbands or authorities began to be considered sinful by the Church after the Christian conversion of the Germanic tribes.
Middle Ages: Summary. " the Norton Anthology of English Literature, retrieved June 6, 2007 at http://www2.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/middleages/review/summary.htm#3
Yeager, Robert F. Why Read Beowulf?" Humanities, March/April 1999, Volume 20/Number 2 Retrieved June 6, 2007 from http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/1999-03/yeager.html.
Alfano, Christine. "The...
23, 1992. Article 1. http://repositories.cdlib.org/cmrs/comitatus/vol23/iss1/art1
Damico, Helen. Beowulf's Wealhtheow and the Valkyrie Tradition. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.
Hill, John M. The Anglo-Saxon Warrior Ethic: Reconstructing Lordship in Early English Literature. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2000.
Bloomfield, Josephine. "Diminished by Kindness: Frederick Klaeber's Rewriting of Wealhtheow." Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 1994; 93/2: 181-203.
Porter, Dorothy C. "The Social Centrality of Women in Beowulf: A New Context" the Heroic Age. Issue 5, Summer/Autumn 2001. Retrieved June 6, 2007 at http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/5/porter1.html.
Hampl, Patricia. The Confessions by St. Augustine. Vintage, 1998.
Confessions. Kevin Knight, ed. New Advent, 2007. Retrieved June 7, 2007 at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/110109.htm.
NOTES
Translations call Grendel's mother a "monster woman," an "ogress," a "monstrous woman," a "witch of the sea" and a "monster-wife" in the phrase in the poem that introduces her. But Christine Alfano believes there is little evidence for this monstrous imagery in the actual Old English language that different translations employ. In Old English she is called an ides, "lady," and aglaecwif, "warrior-woman," not a "monstrous ogress," "witch of the sea," or "monster woman." This is the reader's first introduction to Grendel's mother, and Alfano believes these distortions are particularly pernicious. The initial appearance most likely influences subsequent impressions of this character, and it should have a more human reading of her character (Alfano 2). Alfano also bemoans the translation of "mother" to "dam," a word for an animal. This takes away the human and feminine aspect of Grendel's mother. Other words that describe her as a "rare sort of warrior" are translated arbitrarily by various authors into trans-gender words that take away her role as a woman warrior.
