Ancient Paragons and Contemporary Corruptions: Depictions of Female Aggression in Late Anglo-Saxon England

In Late Anglo-Saxon England, accounts of women whose aggressive behavior could have been depicted in a positive light, such as Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians or Emma of Normandy, are minimized, even when chronicle accounts are favorable to them and their families. Positive acts of violence by women from long ago and far away, however, were explored in poetry, homily and hagiography, though not without a squeamish need to explicate their actions in terms of the greater Christian good. Thus, while in the poem Elene, Queen Elene utilizes judicial torture on her Jewish captive, it is depicted as her right as Constantine’s agent and the justifiable means of finding the True Cross. In the poem Judith, the wealthy widow seduces and beheads her people’s enemy, but her violence is interpreted as the victory of chastity over lust. Similarly, Saints Juliana and Margaret are depicted as extremely physically violent towards demons, but this violence serves to protect their spiritualized virginity. None of these ancient examples of approved female aggression are accompanied by anger; but examples of bad females with bad tempers provide a counterpoint, and these can be more recent and politicized. For instance, Queen Modthryth in Beowulf (possibly meant to be Offa’s queen Cynethryth) is furious when she orders judicial punishments for imagined slights. Similarly, Asser, in his Life of King Alfred, writes with delight about the fall Queen Ethbur of Wessex (Offa’s daughter), who mistakenly poisons her husband, and is eventually put in a nunnery, where she caught in flagrante and ends her days begging.   The approved violence of ancient heroines was a goad to martial fortitude in men and spiritual rectitude in women, while conversely depictions of more contemporary women behaving aggressively are absent in the record, unless they were a politicized means of shaming an opposing regime.