Beowulf - Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia

Their peaceful role in general and the fact that they have been deprived of their
social origin is a handicap in the goodness game. Ultimately it is their complementary
relation with their husband and the fact that they are withdrawn from the public that
make it difficult and perhaps impossible for upper-class women to be or to become
good.
From a formal point of view it can be argued that since the wife or the queen has
already reached the state of being complementary to her husband, there is no need
either for her or for him to be good to each other. They are past that stage in life. The
social sphere of women becomes unreasonably narrow in this perspective and for a
modern mind it is obviously difficult to accept that a sword or tactics are more likely
to be good than women. Nonetheless, Beowulf applies tactics which make it possible
for matter to behave in accordance with the ideal of the good and men and
swords meet each other, so that they may engage themselves in the goodness game.
It is, moreover, easy to imagine that now and then a sword gives us its unconditional
support when we strike our blow, and also to feel that this support is the result of the
care and goodness we have bestowed upon it.
Goodness is a matter of civilised action, and the good verify themselves through
their actions. It is characteristic of the society that there is a latent need for someone
to take action in order to solve some problem or other. The good should take some
of the initiative to solve the problem in a way that corresponds to the end product of
the good, namely the peaceful society. It is thus not for one person to decide what is
the good action in a given case. If goodness cannot be discussed as in Beowulf,
follow an administrative line as in the Lupus case or be taken for granted as in
Byrhtnoth’s situation, then the good cannot take action. This shows itself in a most
subtle way when Vifil asks for Aud’s generosity, since the very asking a favour or
demanding it, as Vifil does, results in conflict. Instead of bringing friendship into the
picture or a new contract of goodness between Aud and Vifil it brings up a quarrel
between Vifil and his superior Hord, who is Aud’s shipmate. Whether on purpose or
not, the story tells us that women are not good, since they cannot form contracts of
social goodness.
The point is that we are allowed to be good only when the good actions are the
result of a social contract based on the free will of members of the same sex. Even in
cases where it ought to be fairly obvious what is good and what is not good, decisions
may be difficult to reach. Wealhtheow hopes that Hrodulf will remember the
good done to him in his youth and pay it back to the Queen’s children, her sons, if
Hroðgar should die, but these very hopes suffice to tell us that there may be competing
relations of goodness which could lead to the death of her sons.
It is characteristic of the good action that it is a contract imposed upon a man by
his superiors, but also that he may himself engage his inferiors in another similar of
contract. A contract must be honoured, but within the upper classes a lack of goodness
does not lead to a man being defined as evil; instead the man loses honour. In
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