Elements of Modernity in "Wife's Lament" & Beowulf

To again change the direction of the thread, the "Wife's Lament" stuck out to me as unique in a sea of heroic deeds. It seems to possess aspects of modernity due to its focus on individuality and personal feeling.  Because Anglo-Saxon culture so highly esteemed displays of strength and power, with emphasis on battle victories, impenetrable armor and the like, it seems abnormal to have a poem about emotion and grief.  The speaker, in displaying her miserable situation and her response to the status-quo, seems to question the ethos of her time and the uselessness of it all, and I think therein is an interesting connection to Beowulf.  I think that Beowulf himself also defies the stereotypical ethos of Anglo-Saxon culture and this can be seen towards the end of his life.  To have Beowulf's demise be in a state of passivity ("the old lord gazed sadly at the gold") and inability to proliferate his personal and cultural ideals, is quite ironic.