The Wife's Lament

Mark Strand’s poem, “Poor North” depicts the life of a married couple facing countless struggles during a harsh winter. It tells of a man working in an unsuccessful store while his wife sits at home, wishing for her old life back. The way the wife copes with her sadness is both intriguing and perplexing. She misses her old life, even though it is described to have not been special; however, the wife may be a person who never feels satisfied or fulfilled by the external world due to internal conflict. Despite the wife’s obvious misery, she stays by her husband’s side and they stroll in the cold together, bracing the wind. As a means of escape from life, she peers into her past in order to find hope in the present.

In The Wife’s Lament, the wife is forced to exile. The wife reveals the feelings of suffering, regret, and loneliness. The wife’s misery began when her Lord left her behind. The Wife set out to find him but her Lord’s Kinsmen didn’t want them together anymore, and this is when the forced exile takes actions. “My man’s kinsmen began to plot by darkened thought to divide us two so we most widely in the world’s kingdom lived wretchedly and I suffered longing.” (Lines 11-15). The wife believes she will one day be reunited with her Lord so she moves away to new land. The wife then finds out her Lord wants to commit a crime. “Hiding his mood thinking of murder” (Line 20). This scares the wife and forces her to move into the woods under an Oak Tree. This shows the wife as weak which is not an Anglo-Saxon belief. The wife also believes a man who is weak should never show it, should always pretend to be fine. She believes this because men have the upper hand, they hold more power. A man who shows he’s weak has no belief as Anglo-Saxons. Anglo-Saxons think nobody should ever be weak, they should always be brave. It shows how she’s scared of her lord, so scared she runs into the woods and stays under an oak tree. This exile shows women have no power.

       As the tale begins we immediately can sympathize with the repressive plight of the protagonist.  Her romantic imagination is obvious as she describes the "hereditary estate" (Gilman, Wallpaper 170) or the "haunted house" (170) as she would like it to be.  She tells us of her husband, John, who "scoffs" (170) at her romantic sentiments and is "practical to the extreme" (170).  However, in a time

The Seafarer, The Wanderer, and The Wife’s Lament all contains faith verses fate. The three poems are very similar and very different. The three poems ranging from a lonely man, to a lost soldier, to a wife’s bedrail. The medieval poems show hurt, confusion, and loneliness.

(253). The death of a woman’s husband receives similar treatment, as Lady Bracknell tells us of “dear Lady Harbury”: “’I hadn’t been there since her poor husband’s death. I never saw a woman so altered; she looks quite twenty years younger’” (261); Algernon pipes in that “’I hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief’” (261).

This personal confession shows that Mrs. Mallard, though she will mourn at first, now is free to “live for herself,” (228) not for her imposing husband. Before her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard believed she was in a healthy, normal marriage. This death revealed to her how while she cared about her husband, she despised the lack of freedom her marriage had given her. All of the realizations that Mrs. Mallard reaches during her time of reflection shows the readers exactly why she will no longer mourn the death of her husband.

In the poem “The Wife’s Lament” there is a transfer to a female point of view which was rare during times of a patriarchal society. A theme seen is this poem is exile. The wife who faces exile from her lord later reaches a state of bitter unhappiness. The wife expresses her longing for her husband through use of ubi sunt:

Literary representation of marriage and the response to the cultural conditions of said time are expertly demonstrated in “The Dead,” “The Odor of Chrysanthemums,” and “To Room Nineteen.” There is a tendency of marriage and the family to stultify individual desire in these three works. Through subliminal details and the understanding of relationships during this time period of the middle 20th century, it is evident how marriage, family life, and death are all important characteristics when looking at the motivations and values of the main characters of “The Dead,” “The Odor of Chrysanthemums,” and “To Room Nineteen.” A unifying factor between the three works is the inauthentic love of marriage that occurs within each family in these literary

Over the years, there have been many interpretations of who the speaker of The Wife’s Lament could be. These range from very interesting ideas to ones that seem a little rough around the edges. It is obvious that no sure answer can be found due to the fact that whoever wrote this poem is dead and that the answer will always be in speculation even if it is correct. Hopefully, at the end of this quest I will be slightly more enlightened as to who the true speaker may really be.

Women are taught from a young age that marriage is the end all be all in happiness, in the short story “The Story of An Hour” by Kate Chopin and the drama “Poof!” by Lynn Nottage, we learn that it is not always the case. Mrs. Mallard from “The Story of an Hour” and Loureen from “Poof!” are different characteristically, story-wise, and time-wise, but share a similar plight. Two women tied down to men whom they no longer love and a life they no longer feel is theirs. Unlike widows in happy marriages Loureen and Mrs., Mallard discover newfound freedom in their respective husband’s deaths. Both stories explore stereotypical housewives who serve their husbands with un-stereotypical reactions to their husband’s deaths.

Isolation from society can evoke a deep loneliness and self-reflection. The poem "The Wife's Lament" from the Exeter Book expresses the desolation of exile. The dominant theme is the contrast of a happy past and a bleak present of isolation. The anonymous author of "The Wife's Lament" uses setting, tone, and conflict to develop the theme of great loss. He/she augments a situation in which meditation on life's past joys is the only redemption in a life sentenced to confinement. “The Wife’s Lament” is an excellent example of nostalgia, resentment of the present, and hopelessness about the future.

Views on the “Husband's Message” and the “Wife’s Lament” range from the two are a pair or they are not a pair. These two anonymous Old English elegiac poems are both 53 lines long and is found only in the Exeter Book,but some translations have between 45 and 55 lines, mainly depending on whether the translator includes the last lines of the husbands message, which carry the cryptic Viking Rune characters. These poems were both composed in c.650. Are these poems a pair or not?

In "A Sorrowful Woman" the wife is depressed with her life, so much so, "The sight of them made her so sad and sick she did not want to see them ever again"(p.1). This wife and mother has come to detest her life, the sight of her family,

It's fair to say that both of these poems portray very similar situations. Each tells a story of a man, exiled from his homeland, struggling to accept their fate and put their old lives behind them. It shows their struggle while traveling alone, and gives you a deeper look into their emotional states. In the end, they both preach their faith in the lord, reflecting the anglo-saxon society, who had christian values. On the other hand, while the wife in “The Wife’s Lament” isn't setting out to sea herself, she is left behind by those she loved. “I a woman tell since I grew up never more than now. The dark of my exile.” It's clear that she still feels the same effects and misery of exile as the Wanderer and the narrator in “The Seafarer”. In relation to these poems, I believe it makes sense to compare the sea to human existence. In the poem’s the moods of the speakers are never certain and constantly changing. They all tell their stories of being exiled, yet continue to dwell on the life that they once had. They all experience up and downs, the same way we do everyday. They eventually come to realize that the good times won't last forever, and that they must accept the fate that man has given to them. The speakers are showing that it's okay to question the world and the amount of power that god holds, but that we should accept the fact that out fate has already been chosen for us.

“The Seafarer” and "The Wanderer” are both poems that describe the hardships of the average Anglo-Saxon warrior. These stories show that life during the times of the Anglo-Saxons is not pleasant. In fact, it appears to be tough, fearful, and depressing. In “The Seafarer”, a man describes his horrid life on the sea, and in "The Wanderer”, a man tells his tale of being put into exile and losing all his fellow warriors and lord. Both men feel physical and emotional pain while going through their adventure. The seafarer claims that the sea itself is torturing him by saying “...the sea took [him], swept [him] back and forth in sorrow and fear and pain.” (2-3) The seafarer also explains that coldness is much more than just a feeling but a