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and Wealhþeo in Beowulf as examples of women who participate in the
practice of “king-making” (22) to indicate that they have moved beyond
the simple role of acting as peace-pledges between tribes, establishing
them as community leaders and builders. Jamison contends that both
women understand the necessary bonds between men and use their
unique positions as mothers to “exert some influence” (23) in regard to
king-making.
Dorothy Carr Porter further focalizes the discussion by describing
the three kinds of symmetrically doubled women present in the
Beowulf narrative: queens, peaceweavers, and monsters. Porter argues
that understanding the women and their function in the text helps to
understand the poem as a whole and that an “investigation . . . uncovers
the possible matrilineal undercurrent in the culture of Beowulf” (n.pag.).
Porter does not qualify Wealhþeo or Hygd as ‘peaceweavers’ in the
same way that Jamison does, but rather sees them as relics from a prior
matrilineal and matrilocal Germanic society from which they locate their
authority in the hall. Stephen Glosecki offers a further examination of
the relationship of matrilineal kinship to Anglo-Saxon culture by looking
at the importance of the avunculate relationship (the mother’s brother
to her son). 2 The role of the peace-pledge would be further stabilized
by sending one of her sons back to her own family to raise—the peacepledges’
brother (as uncle) then becomes the primary masculine influence
in the son’s upbringing, as opposed to the child’s own father, cementing
the importance of succession through the maternal line.
The role of kings and queens in Anglo-Saxon culture is outlined in
Maxims I from The Exeter Book. In it, a brief passage reads:
Cyning sceal mid ceape cwene gebicgan,
bunum ond beagum; bu sceolon ærest
Geofum god wesan. Guð sceal in eorle,
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wig geweaxan, ond wif geþeon
leof mid hyre leodum, leohtmod wesan,
rune healdan, rumheort beon
mearum on maþmum, meodorædenne
for gesiðmægen symle æghwær
eodor æþelinga ærest gegretan,
forman fulle to frean hond
ricene geræcan, ond him ræd witan
boldagengum bæm ætsomne. (81-92)
[A king shall with trade, buy a queen / with cups and with rings;
Both shall first / be good with grace. War and battle shall grow
/ in the earl and the wife to prosper / beloved amid her people,
to be light of mood / to keep counsel, to be generous hearted, /
with horse and treasure, at every mead-drinking / feast, before
the band of retainers, / she first greets the protector of princes, /
quickly reach the cup to the hand of the lord first / and to know
how to advise him / as possessors of a hall, both together.] 3
This description speaks to the balance and partnership necessary in order
to be a good ruler. A king must not exclude his wife from decisionmaking;
he should, in fact, involve and seek out her counsel. They rule
as a unit: the king a leader in battle and the queen a leader and unifier
of her people. In Beowulf, we see this kind of partnership exemplified
in Hroþgar and Wealhþeo, though, aged, Hroþgar no longer engages
in direct battle (instead calling Beowulf in his place). Rather, Wealhþeo
performs the duties described in Maxims I when she weaves peace in
the hall after the disruptive, community dissembling argument between
Unferth and Beowulf:
Eode Wealhþeo forð,
cwen Hroþgares cynna gymyndig,
grette goldhroden guman on healle,
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