Traditional equation of women with the feminine and men with the masculine is disrupted when Beowulf is read within the rubric of gender performance as determined by Judith Butler in Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter. Performativity enables a new way of interpreting the characters of Beowulf; specifically, in the world of the poem masculinity is power, most emphatically the power to control the actions of others. The violent queen Modþryðo illustrates the performative nature of the gender of power and shows that action, rather than biological sex, is the determinant of that gender. Modþryðo, though female, is ultimately masculine since she wields power in the way that Beowulf does.