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author photo by Beowulf Sheenan,
no really that's his name, I checked
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This last Wednesday, I was lucky enough to catch Maria Dhavana Headley in a talk at North Western with Dr. Barbara Newman. Part of One Book One Northwestern (they're doing Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), Headley and Newman talked about The Mere Wife, Headley's recent novel. A modern, feminist take on Beowulf, The Mere Wife was one of my favorite reads of last year. Dream-like, nightmare-like, lyrical: highly recommended.
After some introductory remarks by Juan Martinez, they jumped into a discussion of The Mere Wife, Beowulf, and Headley's forthcoming translation. Brief notes below! Possible spoilers! Good ideas theirs, errors mine:
- Barbara Newman: Gives a brief summary of Beowulf. Talks about the play on "mere" in Headley's novel, asks about what led her to write this.
- Maria Dhavana Headley: First ideas for this novel came from reading, and not being impressed with, Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road. Being from rural Idaho, suburban/commuter vision of America didn't click, and unimpressed with vision of women characters as wholly subservient to male interests. Had encountered Grendel's mother before encountering Beowulf--in a kid's bestiary kind of thing. When she did read Beowulf, intrigued by women's role as peaceweavers. I thought about all the times in women's lives that we're asked to "do it nicely", and thought about women supporting Trump in the 2016 election, signing up to support their own oppression. "Mere" wife as both "water wife" of Grendel's mother, and "little wife" of "unimportant" women, wanted to write about them both as important.
