Modthryth/Thryth

The Queen Who Refused to Be Seen:

Modthryth and the Paradox of Female Power in Beowulf

In the margins of Beowulf, tucked between the poem's grand battles and heroic triumphs, sits a story that troubles us still. It concerns a queen so violently proud that she would execute any man—save her father—who dared meet her gaze. Her name was Modthryth, and her tale, brief though it is, reveals something uncomfortable about how Anglo-Saxon culture understood female power: it had to be controlled, preferably by marriage to a strong man.

The story appears as a digression, a moment when the scop (the poem's bard) pauses to contrast the virtuous Queen Hygd with a cautionary predecessor. Yet this digression is no mere aside. It encapsulates the anxieties, ideologies, and contradictions that shaped medieval attitudes toward women in positions of authority—anxieties that, in various forms, persist today.

The Tyrant in the Hall

Modthryth's crime was simple: she looked at men, and they looked back. Or rather, she imagined they looked at her, and that was enough. The poem tells us she would condemn to death anyone who dared meet her eyes directly, or whom she even suspected of staring. This wasn't the measured justice of a ruler; it was the caprice of a despot, exercised with particular venom against those who had committed no offence beyond existing in her presence.

What makes this punishment so striking is its specificity. The poem doesn't describe Modthryth executing men for rebellion, theft, or breach of oath—the conventional crimes of the age. Instead, she punishes them for the act of looking. This detail has fascinated scholars for centuries, and for good reason. The gaze, in medieval literature, carries weight. To look is to acknowledge, to recognise, to potentially challenge. Modthryth's violent response to being seen suggests something more than mere vanity: it suggests a woman asserting absolute sovereignty over her own visibility, her own body, her own space.

Yet the poem frames this assertion not as autonomy but as tyranny. She violates the fundamental codes of hospitality and generosity that define proper queenship. A queen should welcome warriors into her hall, offer them mead, and bind them to her lord through acts of grace. Modthryth does the opposite. She turns the hall into a place of terror, where a glance can be fatal.

The Name as Judgment

The very name carries condemnation. "Modthryth" likely derives from mod (pride, courage, or spirit) and thryth (strength or power). But in her case, the prefix reads less like a name than a diagnosis: "Pride-Thryth," or perhaps "Excessive-Strength." Some scholars debate whether this is even her original name or a descriptive epithet applied by those who recorded her story—a judgment masquerading as nomenclature.

This ambiguity matters. If Modthryth is not her true name but a label, then the poem has already decided who she is before her story begins. She is not a person but a type: the bad queen, the cautionary tale, the woman whose nature requires correction.

The Transformation

Then comes the marriage. Modthryth weds Offa, King of the Angles, and undergoes a transformation so complete it borders on the miraculous. The cruel tyrant becomes a benevolent ruler. The woman who punished men for looking at her becomes generous, wise, and beloved. The poem presents this shift as natural, even inevitable—the result of a strong man's influence and the civilising power of marriage.

From a modern perspective, this narrative is deeply troubling. It suggests that female aggression, female assertion of power, female refusal to be objectified—all of these can be "cured" by the right marriage. It reinforces the patriarchal fantasy that women's unruly natures require masculine authority to guide them toward proper behaviour. Offa doesn't negotiate with Modthryth or persuade her through argument; he simply marries her, and she becomes what she should have been all along.

Yet scholars have offered more nuanced readings. Perhaps Modthryth doesn't so much surrender her will as learn to exercise power differently. Perhaps marriage to a respected ruler teaches her that authority can be wielded through generosity rather than terror, through wisdom rather than caprice. Perhaps her transformation is not a defeat but an education.

Still, the power dynamic remains unmistakable. Her change is attributed not to her own growth but to his influence. She becomes good because he is strong. The message is clear: female power, left to its own devices, tends toward tyranny. It requires male guidance to become legitimate.

The Gaze and Its Discontents

Contemporary scholars have found in Modthryth's story a more complex drama than the poem's surface suggests. Her violent response to being looked at can be read as a refusal of the male gaze—that objectifying stare that reduces women to objects of desire or judgment. In this reading, she is not a tyrant but a woman asserting control over her own visibility, her own body, her own space.

The problem, from the poem's perspective, is that she asserts this control through violence. She doesn't simply refuse to be seen; she executes those who see her. This escalation transforms what might be read as an assertion of autonomy into an abuse of power. The poem seems to suggest that there is no middle ground: either a woman accepts being looked at (and thus objectified), or she becomes a murderer.

This binary—submission or tyranny—reveals the constraints placed on female power in Anglo-Saxon culture. A queen could exercise authority, but only within carefully prescribed limits. She could be generous, wise, and influential. But she could not be independent, assertive, or resistant to male authority. The moment she stepped outside these bounds, she became monstrous.

The Bad Queen Archetype

Modthryth belongs to a tradition of "bad queens" in medieval literature—women whose violation of social expectations marks them as dangerous. These queens are characterised by pride rather than humility, cruelty rather than generosity, and the assertion of inappropriate power.

What makes them "bad" is not merely their actions but their refusal to accept the constraints placed on female authority. They want power without the mediation of male approval. They want to be seen without being objectified. They want to rule without deferring to masculine authority.

The poem's solution is always the same: reform, replacement, or punishment. Modthryth is reformed through marriage. Other bad queens are replaced or destroyed. The message is consistent: female power that operates outside patriarchal structures is illegitimate and must be corrected.

Yet by presenting Modthryth's story, the poem inadvertently reveals something else: the possibility of female agency, however constrained. She is not a passive victim but an active agent—cruel, yes, but powerful. Her transformation is not imposed upon her but negotiated through marriage. She learns, adapts, and becomes a different kind of ruler. The poem intends this as a moral lesson about the virtues of submission. But it also testifies to the capacity of women to exercise power, to change, and to shape their own destinies, even within the narrow confines of medieval patriarchy.

Why She Endures

Modthryth's story appears not only in Beowulf but in other Anglo-Saxon texts, suggesting she was a figure of cultural significance. The basic outline—cruel youth, marriage to Offa, transformation into a virtuous queen—recurs across sources. This consistency suggests that her story served an important ideological function, a kind of cultural shorthand for "the queen who was reformed by marriage."

But why did this story matter so much? Perhaps because it addressed a genuine anxiety: what happens when women hold power? The Anglo-Saxon answer, encoded in Modthryth's tale, was reassuring: they will be reformed by marriage to strong men. Female power, left unchecked, tends toward tyranny. But female power, properly channelled through marriage and male authority, can become a force for good.

This ideology served a purpose. It allowed women to hold positions of influence—as queens, as advisors, as peace-weavers—while ensuring that this influence remained subordinate to male authority. It acknowledged female agency while constraining it. It recognised that women could rule, but only if they ruled "properly," which meant ruling in service to their husbands and the patriarchal order.

The Shadow Side of Queenship

In the end, Modthryth's story tells us as much about Anglo-Saxon culture as it does about her. It reveals what the culture feared in female power: independence, assertion, the refusal to be objectified or controlled. It shows us the narrow path that women in positions of authority were expected to walk—generous but not assertive, wise but not independent, powerful but always subordinate to male authority.

By presenting Modthryth as a cautionary tale, the poem reinforces these constraints. But by telling her story at all, it also testifies to the possibility of female power, however troubling the culture found it. She is the shadow side of queenship, the dark mirror in which Hygd and Wealhtheow see what they must avoid becoming.

Yet there is something almost defiant in her story. She refuses to be invisible. She refuses to accept the male gaze without consequence. She asserts her power, however brutally. And though the poem condemns her for it, though it celebrates her transformation into a "proper" queen, her original defiance lingers in the text—a reminder that female power, even when constrained and condemned, leaves its mark.

This is Part Five of a Six-Part series on The Ladies of Beowulf

Part One - Wealhtheow

Part Two - Freawaru

Part Three - Grendel’s Mother

Part Four - Hygd

Part Five - Modthryth/Thryth

Part Six

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