The Mere Wife Gives Grendel’s Mother Her Due
The Mere Wife is Maria Dahvana Headley’s second adult novel, following the two YA fantasies, Magonia and Aerie, and it arrives on a wave of critical acclaim. “Beowulf in suburbia” is the intriguing log line, but it does little to capture what the book is really about—it is so much more than a simple retelling of an Old English epic. It is the story of the fierceness of a mother’s love, delivered with a full-throated feminist roar, a highly literary sensibility, and characters who straddle the line between reality and fantasy.
The Mere Wife: A Novel
Hardcover $27.00
The Mere Wife: A Novel
Hardcover $27.00
The notion of a feminist retelling of Beowulf is novel, but according to Headley, an important mistranslation of an adjective used to describe Beowulf and his antagonists (aglæca/æglæca), along with years of oversights by male translators, might be at the root of the common understanding that Grendel and his mother are monsters, rather than merely “formidable” foes fighting an equally formidable “hero.” The idea of telling the story from Grendel’s mother’s point of view is very rare, per the author; it’s certainly intriguing to reexamine with her this word, æglæca, to rethink it in terms of Grendel’s mother, and to place her in a modern context.
The notion of a feminist retelling of Beowulf is novel, but according to Headley, an important mistranslation of an adjective used to describe Beowulf and his antagonists (aglæca/æglæca), along with years of oversights by male translators, might be at the root of the common understanding that Grendel and his mother are monsters, rather than merely “formidable” foes fighting an equally formidable “hero.” The idea of telling the story from Grendel’s mother’s point of view is very rare, per the author; it’s certainly intriguing to reexamine with her this word, æglæca, to rethink it in terms of Grendel’s mother, and to place her in a modern context.
Enter Dana Mills, war veteran and mother, battling severe PTSD that has led her to give birth in a cave above a shining gated community called Herot Hall. Many of the names from Beowulf are preserved, and the overall structure and general character types are echoes of the original text, but you don’t need to be a scholar to enjoy it, though I imagine those more than glancingly familiar with the epic poem will uncover more layers of meaning than the surface-level reader. Dana is Grendel’s mother, and she was the fiercest of warriors, surviving an attempted beheading and a pregnancy of unknown origin, a fugitive of the military untrusting of everything and everyone.
Dana’s greatest enemy is civilization, and no one more perfectly personifies that concept than Willa, a woman of suburbia, and the de facto master of Herot Hall. Ben Woolf, policeman, acts as Willa’s sword and shield against the monsters of the forest around her home. When Gren, Dana’s son, comes down from the mountain and dares to make friends with Willa’s son Dylan, the world tilts for both women, as each must confront the “otherness” that disrupts their separate peaces. It’s a sensitive, often harrowing telling of post-war trauma and its deeply felt effects on both those afflicted and everyone around them, to perhaps catastrophic effect. At the same time, it is an evisceration of the rigid and unwelcoming practices of white middle- and upper-class Americans who can and do unthinking damage to those around them.
Queen of Kings: A Novel of Cleopatra, the Vampire
eBook $11.99
Queen of Kings: A Novel of Cleopatra, the Vampire
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eBook $11.99
The story of these two very different, very fierce women fighting to maintain their lives is wrapped in Headley’s elegant prose. Beowulf is an epic poem, and while the novel is not told in verse, it rings with musicality. It is, perhaps, a rhythm that takes getting used to, but there is magic in it, and only once you’ve modulated to its frequencies does it truly begin to sing. Take, for example, this excerpt:
“Listen,” someone whispers into my ear. I move, looking around, trying to find a way out of here.
The story of these two very different, very fierce women fighting to maintain their lives is wrapped in Headley’s elegant prose. Beowulf is an epic poem, and while the novel is not told in verse, it rings with musicality. It is, perhaps, a rhythm that takes getting used to, but there is magic in it, and only once you’ve modulated to its frequencies does it truly begin to sing. Take, for example, this excerpt:
“Listen,” someone whispers into my ear. I move, looking around, trying to find a way out of here.
“Listen to me. Listen. In some countries, you kill a monster when it’s born. Other places, you let it go, out into the forest or the sea, and it lives there forever, calling for others of its kind. Listen to me, it cries. Maybe it’s just alone.”
“What monster?” I ask. “Who’s the monster?”
She’s with me, my truck-stop saint, chest open, candle inside it lit for Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and anyone else.
She’s smoking two cigarettes, flicking sparks, her stringy hair, her sweaty T-shirt, her skin so smooth it glows, like she’s a thing on fire herself, like she can jump water and hit the other side.
Maria Dahvana Headley is herself a formidable woman, and a formidable writer. Her prose takes no prisoners, and her musings on myth and magic and feminism hit like a welcome punch to the face (consider also, her fantastical take on another woman of legend: Queen of Kings: A Novel of Cleopatra, the Vampire). Read The Mere Wife, and look forward to her forthcoming translation of Beowulf, which will further shift our understanding of what makes a monster, a hero, a woman.