Chapter 2 - Becoming Useful

Summary

Constructions of adulthood tend to be under-studied and under-theorised. In the face of this challenge, this chapter focuses on three vernacular verse hagiographies – commonly known as Guthlac A, Juliana, and Andreas – as well as Judith, which centres on a deuterocanonical Old Testament figure. In different ways, these poems all depict maturity as associated with increased social usefulness. Masculine youthful waywardness seems to be more of a source of interest to poets than similar behaviour in women, but it is an underappreciated quality of Old English poetry that unruly youth in women is represented; in particular, St Juliana rebels against societal expectations in a manner that is explicitly linked with her youth. Nonetheless, the seemingly later poems, Andreas and Judith, both problematise – in different ways–the idea that growth through adulthood is always, or even commonly, a linear, teleological drive towards physical and intellectual excellence.