 Book cover of the first edition, published in 2018, designed by Miranda Meeks. | |
| Author | Maria Dahvana Headley |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Dystopian |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Publication date | July 17, 2018 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Novel |
| Pages | 308 |
| ISBN | 9780374208431 (1st ed hardcover) |
| OCLC | 1019836460 |
| 813/.6 | |
| LC Class | PS3608.E233 M47 2018 |
The Mere Wife is a book by Maria Dahvana Headley that is a retelling of Beowulf set in 21st-century America.
Dana Mills wakes up unsure of what has happened to her or why she is pregnant. She knows she is a member of the marines. She is interrogated and ends up in a mental hospital from which she escapes. She ends up near Herot Hall, a development built on top of the town where she used to live. She hides inside the mountain behind it, which has an abandoned train station and a lake; people think it is haunted. In it she gives birth to her son, Gren.
Despite his mother's instructions, as Gren grows older he wishes to meet the people in Herot and becomes friends with Dylan, a young boy in the town. Willa, Dylan's mother, is introduced. Her mother, Diane, forced her into a marriage with Roger Herot, a plastic surgeon and heir of the Herot development. She acts as the perfect housewife (hiding alcoholism, a likely eating disorder, an unhappy marriage, and copious quantities of stress) and quickly notices something is amiss when Dylan begins to talk about his "imaginary" friend Gren. At a disastrous house party Dana appears searching for her son who has run down to play with Dylan. Dylan runs away with Gren as Roger follows them toward the mountain. Roger shoots a bear, thinking it is what took Dylan, but Dana believes that he has shot Gren, and so she murders Roger in retaliation. Following this, police officer Ben Woolf goes searching for Dylan. He finds Dylan, and Dana's severed arm, but he claims he killed Dana and Gren. He is acclaimed as a hero and Willa marries Ben.
Years later, Dylan runs away from the boarding school he has been placed in due to rebellious behaviors to find Gren. Dana, who has been slipping further from reality, argues that the people of Herot are evil – they dug into the mountain and disturbed a graveyard where her mother was buried, turning it into a railway station and creating a museum full of her family's bones and belongings. Gren argues that Dylan was good and finally leaves, going to look for him. They meet and kiss but are found by Ben and, running back to his childhood home, Dylan is brutally stabbed and murdered by Willa. Gren vows for revenge and reconciles with Dana; together they attack Ben at Dylan's funeral. Gren is killed by Ben; everyone realizes he is a boy, not a monster. Dana kills Ben, committing suicide in the process. As Willa is put in handcuffs, she realizes all the people of Herot Hall are monsters.
Each of the sections begins with a possible translation of "Hwaet", the word that begins Beowulf. The sections are told from different perspectives: Dana narrates in first person, Willa and Ben in third, and the ancestors living in the mountain, mothers of Herot, and dogs in first person plural.
Headley makes many references to modern police violence (especially against African Americans), social media usage, class differences, and feminine stereotypes.
The New York Times claimed Headley brought Beowulf into the 21st century "in a curious way". [1] The Guardian noted, "The question in Headley's ambitious novel is why we need to cast anyone as a monster at all." [2] The Mere Wife was nominated for the 2019 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. [3]
Beowulf is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating is for the manuscript, which was produced between 975 and 1025 AD. Scholars call the anonymous author the "Beowulf poet". The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 5th and 6th centuries. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel for twelve years. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother takes revenge and is in turn defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a barrow on a headland in his memory.
Grendel is a character in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf. He is one of the poem's three antagonists, all aligned in opposition against the protagonist Beowulf. He is referred to as both an eoten and a þyrs, types of beings from wider Germanic mythology. He is also described as a descendant of the Biblical Cain and "a creature of darkness, exiled from happiness and accursed of God, the destroyer and devourer of our human kind." He is usually depicted as a monster or a giant, although his status as a monster, giant, or other form of supernatural being is not clearly described in the poem and thus remains the subject of scholarly debate. The character of Grendel and his role in the story of Beowulf have been subject to numerous reinterpretations and re-imaginings. Grendel is feared by all in Heorot but Beowulf, who kills both him and his mother.
Beowulf is a 1999 American science fantasy-action film loosely based on the Old English epic poem Beowulf. The film was directed by Graham Baker and written by Mark Leahy and David Chappe. Unlike most film adaptations of the poem, this version is a science-fiction/fantasy film that, according to one film critic, "takes place in a post-apocalyptic, techno-feudal future that owes more to Mad Max than Beowulf." While the film remains fairly true to the story of the original poem, other plot elements deviate from the original poem.
Beowulf is a 2007 American adult animated fantasy action film produced and directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, based on the Old English epic poem Beowulf, and featuring the voices of Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright, Brendan Gleeson, John Malkovich, Crispin Glover, Alison Lohman, and Angelina Jolie. The film depicts the rise and fall of the warrior Beowulf after he travels to Denmark to kill a monster. It was produced by Shangri-La Entertainment and Zemeckis's ImageMovers and features characters animated using motion-capture animation, which was previously used in The Polar Express (2004) and Monster House (2006).
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Grendel's mother is one of three antagonists in the anonymous Old English poem Beowulf, the other two being Grendel and the dragon. Each antagonist reflects different negative aspects of both the hero Beowulf and the heroic society that the poem is set in. Grendel's mother is introduced in lines 1258b to 1259a as: "Grendles modor/ides, aglæcwif".
In the Old English epic poem Beowulf, Unferth or Hunferth is a thegn of the Danish lord Hrothgar. He appears five times in the poem — four times by the name 'Hunferð' and once by the appellation "the son of Eclafes". The name Unferth does not appear in any Old English manuscript outside of the Nowell Codex, which contains Beowulf, and the meaning of the name is disputed. Several scholarly theories about Unferth have been proposed. Unferth is also the name of a character in the modern novel Grendel by John Gardner, based upon the Beowulf epic.
Grendel is a 1971 novel by the American author John Gardner. It is a retelling of part of the Old English poem Beowulf from the perspective of the antagonist, Grendel. In the novel, Grendel is portrayed as an antihero. The novel deals with finding meaning in the world, the power of literature and myth, and the nature of good and evil.
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Maria Dahvana Headley is an American novelist, memoirist, editor, translator, poet, and playwright. She is a New York Times-bestselling author as well as editor.
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The final act of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf includes Beowulf's fight with a dragon, the third monster he encounters in the epic. On his return from Heorot, where he killed Grendel and Grendel's mother, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats and rules wisely for fifty years until a slave awakens and angers a dragon by stealing a jewelled cup from its lair. When the angry dragon mercilessly burns the Geats' homes and lands, Beowulf decides to fight and kill the monster personally. He and his thanes climb to the dragon's lair where, upon seeing the beast, the thanes flee in terror, leaving only Wiglaf to battle at Beowulf's side. When the dragon wounds Beowulf fatally, Wiglaf attacks it with his sword, and Beowulf kills it with his dagger.
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