One of the most difficult ideas for students of English to grasp is that meaning is not located solely in events, but in how those events are described, framed, and judged. At GCSE level, this sits at the heart of language analysis: writers shape reader response not just through what happens, but through voice, viewpoint, and the circulation of opinion.

For many neurodivergent learners, this can also feel uncomfortably familiar. Social power often depends less on intention than on perception, and identity can be shaped – or dismantled – by how others speak about you. Old English literature makes this process unusually visible. In Beowulf, authority does not reside in inner conscience or private morality. It exists in public speech. Praise sustains power; judgment destroys it.

This article explores how two figures in the poem – Heremod and Modthryth – show what happens when reputation turns. Their stories help us see how shame in Beowulf is not a feeling, but a social event: the moment when the gaze changes and authority becomes impossible to sustain.

Honour as language: why reputation matters more than intention

In Beowulf, identity is not psychological. It is linguistic and social. A person exists as they are spoken of – in the hall, in poetry, in memory. Two Old English concepts make this clear:

• lof – praise, public acclaim
• dōm – judgment, reputation, what survives in speech

This is why the poem spends so much time on storytelling, boasting, and reputation. Deeds only matter if they are recognised and narrated. There is no private self that can compensate for public disgrace.

For English students, this is a crucial insight: Beowulf is not interested in what characters “really feel”. It is interested in how language constructs power.

Heremod and Modthryth are not cautionary tales about bad behaviour. They are case studies in what happens when the story changes.

Heremod: when the story stops praising the king

Heremod begins as a figure of promise. He is powerful, well-born, and admired. The poem suggests that people expected greatness from him – that his authority was initially secure because public esteem surrounded him.

His failure is not a single mistake but a pattern of abuse. He kills his own companions. He hoards wealth rather than sharing it. He withdraws from the communal life of the hall. These actions violate the expectations of kingship, but they do not immediately end his rule. Fear can sustain authority for a time, just as admiration can.

What changes everything is how he is spoken of.

The poem tells us that Heremod’s deeds are no longer praised. His name stops circulating as a symbol of kingship and begins circulating as a warning. This linguistic shift is the moment of collapse. There is no trial scene, no confession, no inner reckoning. Once the narrative turns against him, his power evaporates.

Heremod is exiled – removed from the hall, from the gaze, from the social space where identity exists. The poem does not describe his shame emotionally because it does not need to. In this culture, to lose praise is to lose the self that praise sustained.

For students, this is a stark example of how reputation functions as power – and how quickly it can disappear once language changes.

Modthryth: when naming becomes containment

Modthryth’s story is often misunderstood because modern readers expect to see repentance or reform. But the poem offers neither.

Modthryth begins with immense authority. She orders men executed merely for looking at her. These acts are public, repeated, and uncontested. Like Heremod, she rules through fear rather than consent – and like him, this works as long as her authority remains unquestioned.

The poem is clear: Modthryth knows what she is doing. Her power depends on silence, intimidation, and the control of how she is seen.

The turning point comes when her behaviour becomes spoken of. Once her actions circulate as story rather than command, they stop functioning as power. She is no longer an unquestioned sovereign figure; she becomes an object of judgment.

What follows is not moral transformation but social reclassification. She is married off, removed from autonomous authority, and re-described as a “good queen”. This does not mean she has changed internally. It means she has been contained. She no longer occupies the centre of power, and her story ends.

Like Heremod, Modthryth does not experience shame as guilt. She experiences it – structurally – as loss of position. Once she is named and judged, her authority cannot survive.

Why exposure matters more than wrongdoing

Seen together, Heremod and Modthryth show that Beowulf is not asking whether rulers feel bad about what they have done. It is asking something much colder:

How long can power survive once the story changes?

Both figures abuse authority. Both are confident. Both continue unchallenged for a time. What destroys them is not the wrongdoing itself, but exposure – the moment when admiration and fear give way to judgment.

For English teaching, this is a powerful way of showing students how:

• language shapes power
• narrative controls meaning
• judgment operates socially rather than internally

For neurodivergent readers, the distinction between intention and perception may feel particularly resonant. Heremod and Modthryth do not change who they are. The world’s reading of them changes – and that is enough to end their authority.

Conclusion: why this story still matters

Beowulf presents a world in which identity is fragile because it is public. Authority lasts only as long as praise holds, and when reputation turns, shame is not emotional or gradual but immediate and social. Power collapses not through private moral reckoning, but through a change in how a person is spoken of.

Heremod and Modthryth make this logic unmistakable. Their authority does not fail because they realise they were wrong, but because the gaze changes. Once admiration and fear give way to judgment, language does the rest – reclassifying them, containing them, and ultimately removing them from power.

For students learning to analyse texts, this offers a clear way of understanding how meaning is made: not simply through actions, but through narration, perspective, and public judgment. And for neurodivergent learners in particular, the gap between intention and perception may feel immediately recognisable. Reading Beowulf through figures like Heremod and Modthryth helps articulate something many students already sense – that stories do not merely reflect power. They make it, sustain it, and, when the narrative turns, unmake it.

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If you’re interested in how these ideas connect to inclusive English teaching in practice, you may also like my post on supporting autistic girls in the classroom, or the resources I’ve developed for teaching neurodivergent learners.