Medieval Marx: A Marxist Criticism of Medieval Works
Though the age of Marxist theory is commonly associated with the Industrial Age and the following eras, Marxism has a wealth of social commentary that can be usefully applied to works that came before Marxism. Indeed, though the Marxist ideology came after the medieval era by centuries, the tenets of Marxism, according to eminent Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton, “Developed primarily as a way of examining historical, economic, and social issues” (Eagleton 551). Beowulf, produced by an unknown author, is one such medieval work that reveals crucial information about the medieval era and the dominant notions of hierarchy, class structure, and class struggle. The Wife’s Lament, another medieval literary work of unknown authorship, demonstrates similar sociopolitical phenomenon. However, whereas Beowulf’s titular character reaps the benefits of societal structure, the speaker in The Wife’s Lament finds herself on the other side of fortune. Scrutinizing these two works using passages from The German Ideology, The Communist Manifesto, Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, as well as a number of secondary sources, reveals the values of the medieval social order as they pertain to both the ruling class and the common people.
One of the core tenets of Marxist literary theory, as elaborated in much of Terry Eagleton’s work, is the idea that literature tends to reflect the social order -- in his words, that “literature is a vital instrument for the insertion of individuals into the perceptual and symbolic forms of the dominant ideological formation” -- as such, the accepted notions of authorship and production behind Beowulf become integral, as they can affirm the ideological agenda of the work itself (Birchall).
The social order dominant at the time of Beowulf’s production was a bizarre union of Christianity and the heroic code. Beowulf occupies a niche in the timeline of England that sees the country being immersed Christianity, in an elite ideological system with the power to produce documents. Christianity was rapidly unseating the previous system of the heroic code, whose cultural productions relied largely on impermanent oral traditions. Estimated to have been composed orally in the pre-Christian era, and then modified by monks between the eighth and tenth centuries, Beowulf stands at the crossroads of these two dominant ideological systems -- the waning ideological system of the heroic code, and the waxing ideological system of Christianity (Maryanow). Beowulf reflects the duality between the two systems fairly explicitly in a number of places in the text. For instance, the narrative describes Grendel as “kindred of Cain” and indeed uses this Biblical image consistently in order to demonize Grendel (Beowulf II-56). Parallel to this writing laden with Biblical imagery, however, there is writing that reflects Anglo-Saxon culture and mythology, such as the deification of warriors, “Then glory in battle to Hrothgar was given,/Waxing of war-fame” (Beowulf II. 12-13) As a result, the analysis of Beowulf from the Marxist perspective will draw conclusions about these two systems and their structure.
Because the author of Beowulf must have been literate, a Marxist criticism must question what role the authorship of Beowulf played in the perceptual framework that Beowulf espouses, especially given that literacy was an elite privilege. The estimated dates of Beowulf’s being written down range from about the 8th century to the 10th century, though some arguments vary; this effectively rules out a significant portion of the population as potential authors, including, realistically, all of the common people. During the given time frame, few were literate aside from the formally learned, and formal learning was a privilege of the clergy and few others at this time. Taking into account the significant religious imagery present in the poem, the poet was likely a monk, or perhaps several monks. Regardless, from this we can make several conclusions about the perceptual and relative framework which produced Beowulf (Authorship of Beowulf).
Because the author of Beowulf was, with our accepted facts, a member of the clergy, Beowulf tells us little about the laymen, and Beowulf becomes an ideological production of the ruling, or at least learned, classes. This is not to say, of course, that Beowulf does not contain popular elements -- quite the opposite, as Beowulf contains many elements of popular Anglo-Saxon mythology (Authorship of Beowulf). However, the poem focuses almost exclusively on highborns. Hrothgar, “Woke in the world” “in succession” of the great Scyldings, and Beowulf himself, whose father married into the Geat royal family, “‘His father long dead now was Echtheow titled,/Him Hrethel the Geatman granted at home his/One only daughter” was raised by the Geat king Hrethel (Beowulf II. 7-8. VII. 3-5). At the end of Beowulf, however, the poem does give us a slight picture of the laymen, in this case the Geats under Beowulf’s rule. After Beowulf’s death, the laypeople worry about what will happen to them; it was only Beowulf’s fame and the intimidation associated with his image that prevented surrounding lords from moving in to overwhelm the Geats. As described by Wiglaf, “The folk now expecteth/A season of strife when the death of the folk-king/To the Frankman and Frisians in far-lands is published” (Beowulf. XL 19-21).
In the laypeople’s reaction to Beowulf’s death, we can see the physical consequences of Beowulf’s death on the lower classes. In fact, Vladimir Lenin predicted this type of behavior in his seminal work Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. In this work, Lenin notes that because of unequal development, it is not “‘conceivable that in ten or twenty years’ time the relative strength of the imperialist powers will have remained unchanged,” noting the cycles of violence and conquest endured by violent states (Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism). After the flourishing of Beowulf’s kingdom during his reign, his people are left with little save for the fear that surrounding lords will move in to conquer Geatland. Marx suggested that in the medieval period, the surplus of wealth was allotted to the lords at the expense of the serfs, and that “The hierarchical system of land ownership and the armed bodies of retainers gave the nobility power over the serfs” (The German Ideology 110). The text of Beowulf confirms this quite explicitly and in fact this was a grounded tradition in the era of the heroic code. In the text, Hrothgar’s kingly actions illustrate this principle, “His promise [of wealth to his thane] he brake not, rings he lavished,/treasure at banquet” (Beowulf II. 28-29). Here, Beowulf discusses how Hrothgar fulfilled his duties by bestowing the warriors in his thane with great wealth and “treasure” (Beowulf II. 28-29).
Given this ideological framework, we can begin to examine the perceptual ideology that Beowulf reflects, and consider, in relation to reality and in relation to The Wife’s Lament, the implications of Beowulf for medieval society. In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx identifies what he saw as the classes of the “Middle Ages” -- “feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs” (Marx 159). A superficial examination of Beowulf would place the Lord Hrothgar in the position of a feudal lord, and Beowulf in the position of a vassal. Beowulf’s eventual rise to the position of King of Geatland, then, would constitute a refutation of class struggle, as Beowulf has, in modern terms, upward mobility. In this scenario, the feudal structure does not oppress Beowulf or, by extension, the lower classes.
However, a closer analysis demonstrates that both Hrothgar and Beowulf belong to the upper strata of their society, and indeed always have. Hrothgar’s lineage entails lengthy explanation in the poem; a descendant of the great Shield Sheafson, Hrothgar is thus a prosperous and beloved king. Beowulf’s father, Ecgtheow, was highborn, as discussed before and communicated in section VII of Beowulf. This type of lineage was essential to Anglo culture, and enabled the highborns, such as Echtheow, Beowulf, and Hrothgar, to behave as a proto-bourgeoisie, or a ruling class. In fact, in Beowulf, Grendel displays many of the character traits of the oppressed and is said explicitly to experience extreme alienation and jealousy, “Bore it bitterly, he who bided in darkness,/That light-hearted laughter loud in the building/Greeted him daily; there was dulcet harp-music,/Clear song of the singer” (Beowulf II-34-37). Grendel finds himself belittled to the state of animalism; he seems, as illustrated by the lines above, driven by primitive instinct rather than, as Marx would say, “an object of will and consciousness” (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts 63). He becomes a being defined by his instinctive hatred of the thegnly class, rather than a being defined by conscious will.
If we examine Beowulf’s character throughout the poem, it becomes apparent that, though as a famed warrior Beowulf has great merit, Beowulf reaps all of the advantages of the ruling class and none of the disadvantages of the lower class. When Beowulf arrives at Hrothgar’s lands, a guard asks what his purpose is, and remarks, “Never a greater one/Of earls o’er the earth have I had sight of...No low-ranking fellow (Beowulf IV. 59-61). Even to a stranger, Beowulf wears his class, and this stranger does not mistake him as a common man. Beowulf takes advantage of the structure of Anglo-Saxon social structure. With his impressive lineage, Beowulf is predestined to become a warrior and, as such, he is able to count himself part of the classes with the controlling share of wealth and material goods. In the earlier passages, this manifests in the lavish rewards that Hrothgar bestows on Beowulf (Beowulf). This was the exclusive privilege of the thegnly class, to which Beowulf belonged before his assent to King of Geatland (“Anglo-Saxon Social Organisation”). In the later passages, this manifests in Beowulf’s lordship, where as a king he occupies the position of lord, controlling the distribution of goods and wealth to his subjects (Beowulf). Again, however, the control of wealth and material goods rests firmly in the hands of the ruling class, as within the framework of medieval society, the lower classes were excluded from receiving the gifts that the members of thanes had access to. In Beowulf, this constitutes structural violence against the common people. In fact, while the thengly class could achieve “elevation to eorl or eolderman [the king’s ‘viceroy’],” the lower classes were excluded from this privilege (“Anglo-Saxon Social Organisation”).
The only detailed pictures that Beowulf communicates of a being outside of the dominant ideological framework are Grendel and Grendel’s mother, and the poem makes their disadvantages explicit. Though demonized as beings of misery and hatred, Grendel and his mother display a surprisingly vibrant characterization. In particular, the token-evil characterization of Grendel’s mother reveals the disadvantages of being outside of the dominant ideological framework as displayed in Beowulf.
The idea of tokenism is especially important in the characterization of Grendel’s mother, and in her necessary relation to the dominant ideological notions of the heroic code and, further, the dominant ideological notions of Christianity; the latter in particular necessitates her token evil. The poet does not attribute any concrete crime to Grendel’s mother before her introduction in part XX, and even her physical descriptions are notably ambivalent. The poet describes Grendel’s mother as a, “Devil-shaped woman,” but a woman nonetheless (Beowulf XX. 9). This differs from her son, who is, as noted in the scholarly community, relatively formless throughout all of his descriptions in the poem (Kiernan). Already, Grendel’s mother begins to appear more human. Before the events of Beowulf, her evil was token: she possessed the “mark” of Cain, the first murderer in Biblical terms which, according to the word of the poet, makes her evil (Beowulf XX. 14). This is fitting with the perceptual framework of Christianity, which codifies Cain as evil and, by extension, Grendel’s mother as evil. Given the lack of substantive evil on the part of Grendel’s mother, however, this evil is token.
Observing the rendering of Grendel’s mother, in fact, she fits quite well with the heroic code ideological framework. According to the scholar Kevin Kiernan, Grendel’s mother possesses a number of parallels to Hrothgar,
She appears to have accepted the mode and manner of heroic society with all of its outward trappings. She has held court in ælwihta eard, “the land of monsters,” for hund missera (1500-1502), the same fifty years Hrothgar has ruled over Heorot. Her retainers...are ineffective in their light skirmishes with Beowulf, but then then neither Hrothgar’s nor Beowulf’s thanes are in a position to cast stones at them...keeping pace with Hrothgar, she is surrounded by “maðmæhta...monige, ‘many treasures’” (Kiernan).
And according to Kiernan she again shows parallels to a hero -- Beowulf himself; she, unlike Grendel, knows the use of weapons and Beowulf seems to acknowledge this as he, before engaging her, equips himself with his own weapons, unlike his previous voluntary disarmament before his fight with Grendel (Kiernan). In spite of Grendel’s mother’s abundant characterization in a humanizing direction, however, ultimately the Christian ideological system overrides and the concept of token evil once again condemns her. On this, David Williams says that “‘the cause of the enmity that the tale depicts is not given, but...it was in some way attributable to the ‘eotens,’” giants, that the poet relates to Cain (Kiernan). In the end, the poet’s ideological agenda dominates the characterization of Grendel’s mother.
This leads to an interesting parallel in medieval literature, that of The Wife’s Lament. Like Grendel’s mother, the speaker in the poem The Wife’s Lament is an exiled woman; however, unlike Grendel’s mother, the speaker of this poem has no agency, and serves not as a counterpart to a member of the elite, but a complement. In Beowulf, the exclusion of the common people and women is conspicuous; The Wife’s Lament demonstrates the other side of the medieval class strata -- specifically, the alienated.
First, it is essential to understand the nature of the speaker in The Wife’s Lament. The content of the poem focuses on one major topic, the relation of the speaker to her husband and, ambivalently, another man. This reduces the speaker to a commodity for use in the tradition of marriage -- and nothing more. She measures her own happiness by the failure of her marriage, and because of the social strata she belongs to, that of a commodified woman, she knows that the failure of her marriage and her subsequent banishment mean misery. There are several lines that characterize her greatly, revealing that she is miserable, tyrannized, and forced into a sense of asininity. Her misery, “I am able to tell/all the hardships I've suffered since I grew up,/but new or old, never worse than now --/ever I suffer the torment of my exile” (The Wife’s Lament 2-5). Further, she is tyrannized by her husband’s hostile kinsman, “a friendless exile, to find his retainers,/that man’s kinsmen began to think in secret that they would separate us” and by her husband himself, to some extent, “My lord commanded me to live with him here” (The Wife’s Lament 10-13/15). And finally, she lapses into a repetitive sense of asininity, where her personality is minimized to the longing for companionship, “They forced me to live in a forest grove/...This earth-hall is old, and I ache with longing;/...Here my lord’s leaving often fiercely seized me” (The Wife’s Lament 27-33).
In Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Marx defines the concept of alienated labor, which can be used to analyse the conditions that the speaker of the poem finds herself in. Marx says of alienation,
The more the worker exerts himself, the more powerful becomes the alien objective world which he fashions against himself, the poorer he and his inner world become, the less there is that belongs to him. It is the same in religion. The more man attributes to God, the less he retains in himself (Marx 60).
In the case of the speaker of The Wife’s Lament, Marx’s analogy to religion is especially helpful, if God is to be taken as a surrogate for the concept of authority. In The Wife’s Lament, we see the speaker objectified to the husband as, throughout the poem, she attributes more and more to the husband. For instance, the brief experience of happiness she relates in the poem, “Then I found that my most fitting man/was unfortunate...So often we swore/that only death could ever divide us” -- this experience she attributes to the man (The Wife’s Lament 18-22). She does not own this happy experience. Her alienation from her emotion, which she believes to be the product of the man, precludes her from replicating it without him. However, neither does she own her own misery, “My lord commanded me to live with him here;/I had few loved ones or loyal friends/in this country, which causes me grief” (The Wife’s Lament 15-18). Her man owns her grief as well, and as a result she does not possess the faculty to lessen it.
In a Marxist vein, the speaker’s emotions are external to her. On the question of the externalization of labor, Marx says, “Labor is external to the laborer -- that is, it is not part of his nature -- and that the worker does not affirm himself in his work but denies himself, feels miserable...develops no free...mental energy but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind” (Marx 62). Though in The Wife’s Lament the speaker demonstrates the capacity to think and feel viscerally, her mental faculties are limited to the paradigm of her authority, the husband, who achieved his power through the systemic coercion of Anglo-Saxon society. Again in Marx’s terms, through the speaker’s longing and her emotional output for the husband she, “produces beauty, but mutilation for the worker...It produces intelligence, but for the worker it produces imbecility and cretinism” (Marx 61).
A more optimistic yet still Marxist take on The Wife’s Lament might posit that the speaker finds herself at the end of cycles of systemic abuse, having been forcibly expelled from the system that was abusing her. In the beginning of the poem, she states, “I make this song of myself, deeply sorrowing,/my own life’s journey” (The Wife’s Lament 1-2). “Of” becomes the essential word in this section; the speaker makes the song of herself, recognizing her ownership, while also recognizing that it was she who labored to produce it. This sentiment contrasts to the rest of the poem where she elaborates on her misery. In the majority of the poem, she describes happiness or misery, created of and by the husband, but for her to feel.
Nonetheless, cretinism proves to be the most essential trait, and is a trait we do not see in the characters of Beowulf who are so privileged that the monotony of subjection to authority does not appear and certainly does not have the opportunity to destroy the mental faculties of Beowulf’s characters. In The Wife’s Lament, in fact, we can observe the language the speaker uses to describe her oppressors and draw some damning conclusions for the thegnly class. The speaker in The Wife’s Lament describes the man as “My lord,” which has direct usage in Beowulf as well (The Wife’s Lament). Queen Wealtheow addresses Hrothgar as “My lord and protector” though with the clear difference that the Queen has not been exiled and still reaps the benefits of the Anglo-Saxon hierarchy. The speaker in The Wife’s Lament uses this term to refer to her husband, presumably a member of the thegnly class who has coerced her into cretinism and misery (The Wife’s Lament).
These two medieval poems, Beowulf and The Wife’s Lament, contain compelling reflections of medieval class structure when exposed to theories in Marxist literature. Beowulf, primarily concerned with the lives of the ruling class, socio-normative elements in society, reveals the key concerns of the dominant ideology and the role of the ruling class in the medieval hierarchy. The Wife’s Lament takes a different approach, coming from the perspective of a social outsider and an economic and mental cretin. Ultimately, in both of these poems, Marx’s writings have enormous predictive potential; aside from his direct writings on the medieval era, Marx’s theories of human interaction, especially those of materialism and alienation, stand strong when these works are subjected to his theories, and his theories are, by extension, tested by these works.
One of the core tenets of Marxist literary theory, as elaborated in much of Terry Eagleton’s work, is the idea that literature tends to reflect the social order -- in his words, that “literature is a vital instrument for the insertion of individuals into the perceptual and symbolic forms of the dominant ideological formation” -- as such, the accepted notions of authorship and production behind Beowulf become integral, as they can affirm the ideological agenda of the work itself (Birchall).
The social order dominant at the time of Beowulf’s production was a bizarre union of Christianity and the heroic code. Beowulf occupies a niche in the timeline of England that sees the country being immersed Christianity, in an elite ideological system with the power to produce documents. Christianity was rapidly unseating the previous system of the heroic code, whose cultural productions relied largely on impermanent oral traditions. Estimated to have been composed orally in the pre-Christian era, and then modified by monks between the eighth and tenth centuries, Beowulf stands at the crossroads of these two dominant ideological systems -- the waning ideological system of the heroic code, and the waxing ideological system of Christianity (Maryanow). Beowulf reflects the duality between the two systems fairly explicitly in a number of places in the text. For instance, the narrative describes Grendel as “kindred of Cain” and indeed uses this Biblical image consistently in order to demonize Grendel (Beowulf II-56). Parallel to this writing laden with Biblical imagery, however, there is writing that reflects Anglo-Saxon culture and mythology, such as the deification of warriors, “Then glory in battle to Hrothgar was given,/Waxing of war-fame” (Beowulf II. 12-13) As a result, the analysis of Beowulf from the Marxist perspective will draw conclusions about these two systems and their structure.
Because the author of Beowulf must have been literate, a Marxist criticism must question what role the authorship of Beowulf played in the perceptual framework that Beowulf espouses, especially given that literacy was an elite privilege. The estimated dates of Beowulf’s being written down range from about the 8th century to the 10th century, though some arguments vary; this effectively rules out a significant portion of the population as potential authors, including, realistically, all of the common people. During the given time frame, few were literate aside from the formally learned, and formal learning was a privilege of the clergy and few others at this time. Taking into account the significant religious imagery present in the poem, the poet was likely a monk, or perhaps several monks. Regardless, from this we can make several conclusions about the perceptual and relative framework which produced Beowulf (Authorship of Beowulf).
Because the author of Beowulf was, with our accepted facts, a member of the clergy, Beowulf tells us little about the laymen, and Beowulf becomes an ideological production of the ruling, or at least learned, classes. This is not to say, of course, that Beowulf does not contain popular elements -- quite the opposite, as Beowulf contains many elements of popular Anglo-Saxon mythology (Authorship of Beowulf). However, the poem focuses almost exclusively on highborns. Hrothgar, “Woke in the world” “in succession” of the great Scyldings, and Beowulf himself, whose father married into the Geat royal family, “‘His father long dead now was Echtheow titled,/Him Hrethel the Geatman granted at home his/One only daughter” was raised by the Geat king Hrethel (Beowulf II. 7-8. VII. 3-5). At the end of Beowulf, however, the poem does give us a slight picture of the laymen, in this case the Geats under Beowulf’s rule. After Beowulf’s death, the laypeople worry about what will happen to them; it was only Beowulf’s fame and the intimidation associated with his image that prevented surrounding lords from moving in to overwhelm the Geats. As described by Wiglaf, “The folk now expecteth/A season of strife when the death of the folk-king/To the Frankman and Frisians in far-lands is published” (Beowulf. XL 19-21).
In the laypeople’s reaction to Beowulf’s death, we can see the physical consequences of Beowulf’s death on the lower classes. In fact, Vladimir Lenin predicted this type of behavior in his seminal work Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. In this work, Lenin notes that because of unequal development, it is not “‘conceivable that in ten or twenty years’ time the relative strength of the imperialist powers will have remained unchanged,” noting the cycles of violence and conquest endured by violent states (Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism). After the flourishing of Beowulf’s kingdom during his reign, his people are left with little save for the fear that surrounding lords will move in to conquer Geatland. Marx suggested that in the medieval period, the surplus of wealth was allotted to the lords at the expense of the serfs, and that “The hierarchical system of land ownership and the armed bodies of retainers gave the nobility power over the serfs” (The German Ideology 110). The text of Beowulf confirms this quite explicitly and in fact this was a grounded tradition in the era of the heroic code. In the text, Hrothgar’s kingly actions illustrate this principle, “His promise [of wealth to his thane] he brake not, rings he lavished,/treasure at banquet” (Beowulf II. 28-29). Here, Beowulf discusses how Hrothgar fulfilled his duties by bestowing the warriors in his thane with great wealth and “treasure” (Beowulf II. 28-29).
Given this ideological framework, we can begin to examine the perceptual ideology that Beowulf reflects, and consider, in relation to reality and in relation to The Wife’s Lament, the implications of Beowulf for medieval society. In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx identifies what he saw as the classes of the “Middle Ages” -- “feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs” (Marx 159). A superficial examination of Beowulf would place the Lord Hrothgar in the position of a feudal lord, and Beowulf in the position of a vassal. Beowulf’s eventual rise to the position of King of Geatland, then, would constitute a refutation of class struggle, as Beowulf has, in modern terms, upward mobility. In this scenario, the feudal structure does not oppress Beowulf or, by extension, the lower classes.
However, a closer analysis demonstrates that both Hrothgar and Beowulf belong to the upper strata of their society, and indeed always have. Hrothgar’s lineage entails lengthy explanation in the poem; a descendant of the great Shield Sheafson, Hrothgar is thus a prosperous and beloved king. Beowulf’s father, Ecgtheow, was highborn, as discussed before and communicated in section VII of Beowulf. This type of lineage was essential to Anglo culture, and enabled the highborns, such as Echtheow, Beowulf, and Hrothgar, to behave as a proto-bourgeoisie, or a ruling class. In fact, in Beowulf, Grendel displays many of the character traits of the oppressed and is said explicitly to experience extreme alienation and jealousy, “Bore it bitterly, he who bided in darkness,/That light-hearted laughter loud in the building/Greeted him daily; there was dulcet harp-music,/Clear song of the singer” (Beowulf II-34-37). Grendel finds himself belittled to the state of animalism; he seems, as illustrated by the lines above, driven by primitive instinct rather than, as Marx would say, “an object of will and consciousness” (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts 63). He becomes a being defined by his instinctive hatred of the thegnly class, rather than a being defined by conscious will.
If we examine Beowulf’s character throughout the poem, it becomes apparent that, though as a famed warrior Beowulf has great merit, Beowulf reaps all of the advantages of the ruling class and none of the disadvantages of the lower class. When Beowulf arrives at Hrothgar’s lands, a guard asks what his purpose is, and remarks, “Never a greater one/Of earls o’er the earth have I had sight of...No low-ranking fellow (Beowulf IV. 59-61). Even to a stranger, Beowulf wears his class, and this stranger does not mistake him as a common man. Beowulf takes advantage of the structure of Anglo-Saxon social structure. With his impressive lineage, Beowulf is predestined to become a warrior and, as such, he is able to count himself part of the classes with the controlling share of wealth and material goods. In the earlier passages, this manifests in the lavish rewards that Hrothgar bestows on Beowulf (Beowulf). This was the exclusive privilege of the thegnly class, to which Beowulf belonged before his assent to King of Geatland (“Anglo-Saxon Social Organisation”). In the later passages, this manifests in Beowulf’s lordship, where as a king he occupies the position of lord, controlling the distribution of goods and wealth to his subjects (Beowulf). Again, however, the control of wealth and material goods rests firmly in the hands of the ruling class, as within the framework of medieval society, the lower classes were excluded from receiving the gifts that the members of thanes had access to. In Beowulf, this constitutes structural violence against the common people. In fact, while the thengly class could achieve “elevation to eorl or eolderman [the king’s ‘viceroy’],” the lower classes were excluded from this privilege (“Anglo-Saxon Social Organisation”).
The only detailed pictures that Beowulf communicates of a being outside of the dominant ideological framework are Grendel and Grendel’s mother, and the poem makes their disadvantages explicit. Though demonized as beings of misery and hatred, Grendel and his mother display a surprisingly vibrant characterization. In particular, the token-evil characterization of Grendel’s mother reveals the disadvantages of being outside of the dominant ideological framework as displayed in Beowulf.
The idea of tokenism is especially important in the characterization of Grendel’s mother, and in her necessary relation to the dominant ideological notions of the heroic code and, further, the dominant ideological notions of Christianity; the latter in particular necessitates her token evil. The poet does not attribute any concrete crime to Grendel’s mother before her introduction in part XX, and even her physical descriptions are notably ambivalent. The poet describes Grendel’s mother as a, “Devil-shaped woman,” but a woman nonetheless (Beowulf XX. 9). This differs from her son, who is, as noted in the scholarly community, relatively formless throughout all of his descriptions in the poem (Kiernan). Already, Grendel’s mother begins to appear more human. Before the events of Beowulf, her evil was token: she possessed the “mark” of Cain, the first murderer in Biblical terms which, according to the word of the poet, makes her evil (Beowulf XX. 14). This is fitting with the perceptual framework of Christianity, which codifies Cain as evil and, by extension, Grendel’s mother as evil. Given the lack of substantive evil on the part of Grendel’s mother, however, this evil is token.
Observing the rendering of Grendel’s mother, in fact, she fits quite well with the heroic code ideological framework. According to the scholar Kevin Kiernan, Grendel’s mother possesses a number of parallels to Hrothgar,
She appears to have accepted the mode and manner of heroic society with all of its outward trappings. She has held court in ælwihta eard, “the land of monsters,” for hund missera (1500-1502), the same fifty years Hrothgar has ruled over Heorot. Her retainers...are ineffective in their light skirmishes with Beowulf, but then then neither Hrothgar’s nor Beowulf’s thanes are in a position to cast stones at them...keeping pace with Hrothgar, she is surrounded by “maðmæhta...monige, ‘many treasures’” (Kiernan).
And according to Kiernan she again shows parallels to a hero -- Beowulf himself; she, unlike Grendel, knows the use of weapons and Beowulf seems to acknowledge this as he, before engaging her, equips himself with his own weapons, unlike his previous voluntary disarmament before his fight with Grendel (Kiernan). In spite of Grendel’s mother’s abundant characterization in a humanizing direction, however, ultimately the Christian ideological system overrides and the concept of token evil once again condemns her. On this, David Williams says that “‘the cause of the enmity that the tale depicts is not given, but...it was in some way attributable to the ‘eotens,’” giants, that the poet relates to Cain (Kiernan). In the end, the poet’s ideological agenda dominates the characterization of Grendel’s mother.
This leads to an interesting parallel in medieval literature, that of The Wife’s Lament. Like Grendel’s mother, the speaker in the poem The Wife’s Lament is an exiled woman; however, unlike Grendel’s mother, the speaker of this poem has no agency, and serves not as a counterpart to a member of the elite, but a complement. In Beowulf, the exclusion of the common people and women is conspicuous; The Wife’s Lament demonstrates the other side of the medieval class strata -- specifically, the alienated.
First, it is essential to understand the nature of the speaker in The Wife’s Lament. The content of the poem focuses on one major topic, the relation of the speaker to her husband and, ambivalently, another man. This reduces the speaker to a commodity for use in the tradition of marriage -- and nothing more. She measures her own happiness by the failure of her marriage, and because of the social strata she belongs to, that of a commodified woman, she knows that the failure of her marriage and her subsequent banishment mean misery. There are several lines that characterize her greatly, revealing that she is miserable, tyrannized, and forced into a sense of asininity. Her misery, “I am able to tell/all the hardships I've suffered since I grew up,/but new or old, never worse than now --/ever I suffer the torment of my exile” (The Wife’s Lament 2-5). Further, she is tyrannized by her husband’s hostile kinsman, “a friendless exile, to find his retainers,/that man’s kinsmen began to think in secret that they would separate us” and by her husband himself, to some extent, “My lord commanded me to live with him here” (The Wife’s Lament 10-13/15). And finally, she lapses into a repetitive sense of asininity, where her personality is minimized to the longing for companionship, “They forced me to live in a forest grove/...This earth-hall is old, and I ache with longing;/...Here my lord’s leaving often fiercely seized me” (The Wife’s Lament 27-33).
In Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Marx defines the concept of alienated labor, which can be used to analyse the conditions that the speaker of the poem finds herself in. Marx says of alienation,
The more the worker exerts himself, the more powerful becomes the alien objective world which he fashions against himself, the poorer he and his inner world become, the less there is that belongs to him. It is the same in religion. The more man attributes to God, the less he retains in himself (Marx 60).
In the case of the speaker of The Wife’s Lament, Marx’s analogy to religion is especially helpful, if God is to be taken as a surrogate for the concept of authority. In The Wife’s Lament, we see the speaker objectified to the husband as, throughout the poem, she attributes more and more to the husband. For instance, the brief experience of happiness she relates in the poem, “Then I found that my most fitting man/was unfortunate...So often we swore/that only death could ever divide us” -- this experience she attributes to the man (The Wife’s Lament 18-22). She does not own this happy experience. Her alienation from her emotion, which she believes to be the product of the man, precludes her from replicating it without him. However, neither does she own her own misery, “My lord commanded me to live with him here;/I had few loved ones or loyal friends/in this country, which causes me grief” (The Wife’s Lament 15-18). Her man owns her grief as well, and as a result she does not possess the faculty to lessen it.
In a Marxist vein, the speaker’s emotions are external to her. On the question of the externalization of labor, Marx says, “Labor is external to the laborer -- that is, it is not part of his nature -- and that the worker does not affirm himself in his work but denies himself, feels miserable...develops no free...mental energy but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind” (Marx 62). Though in The Wife’s Lament the speaker demonstrates the capacity to think and feel viscerally, her mental faculties are limited to the paradigm of her authority, the husband, who achieved his power through the systemic coercion of Anglo-Saxon society. Again in Marx’s terms, through the speaker’s longing and her emotional output for the husband she, “produces beauty, but mutilation for the worker...It produces intelligence, but for the worker it produces imbecility and cretinism” (Marx 61).
A more optimistic yet still Marxist take on The Wife’s Lament might posit that the speaker finds herself at the end of cycles of systemic abuse, having been forcibly expelled from the system that was abusing her. In the beginning of the poem, she states, “I make this song of myself, deeply sorrowing,/my own life’s journey” (The Wife’s Lament 1-2). “Of” becomes the essential word in this section; the speaker makes the song of herself, recognizing her ownership, while also recognizing that it was she who labored to produce it. This sentiment contrasts to the rest of the poem where she elaborates on her misery. In the majority of the poem, she describes happiness or misery, created of and by the husband, but for her to feel.
Nonetheless, cretinism proves to be the most essential trait, and is a trait we do not see in the characters of Beowulf who are so privileged that the monotony of subjection to authority does not appear and certainly does not have the opportunity to destroy the mental faculties of Beowulf’s characters. In The Wife’s Lament, in fact, we can observe the language the speaker uses to describe her oppressors and draw some damning conclusions for the thegnly class. The speaker in The Wife’s Lament describes the man as “My lord,” which has direct usage in Beowulf as well (The Wife’s Lament). Queen Wealtheow addresses Hrothgar as “My lord and protector” though with the clear difference that the Queen has not been exiled and still reaps the benefits of the Anglo-Saxon hierarchy. The speaker in The Wife’s Lament uses this term to refer to her husband, presumably a member of the thegnly class who has coerced her into cretinism and misery (The Wife’s Lament).
These two medieval poems, Beowulf and The Wife’s Lament, contain compelling reflections of medieval class structure when exposed to theories in Marxist literature. Beowulf, primarily concerned with the lives of the ruling class, socio-normative elements in society, reveals the key concerns of the dominant ideology and the role of the ruling class in the medieval hierarchy. The Wife’s Lament takes a different approach, coming from the perspective of a social outsider and an economic and mental cretin. Ultimately, in both of these poems, Marx’s writings have enormous predictive potential; aside from his direct writings on the medieval era, Marx’s theories of human interaction, especially those of materialism and alienation, stand strong when these works are subjected to his theories, and his theories are, by extension, tested by these works.