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Mother's Role In Beowulf

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In the stories of Theseus and Beowulf, there is a mother role present, but this mother plays different role in the story. In Beowulf, the archetype of an evil mother comes into play with Grendel’s “mother; she, a foul sprite, whom the peasants had sometimes seen walking with her son over the meadows. From her dwelling-place she now came forth to avenge the death of her son, and snatched away from the group of sleeping Ring-Danes the good Æschere” (Rabb 4). Grendel’s mother represents the evil mother because she decapitated one of Hrothgar’s mightiest thanes to avenge the death of her son. This use of the evil mother is not very common in other tales because usually the evil mother is the mother of the protagonist and the mother also usually

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