The Wife's Lament Analysis

The Wife Of His Youth is a short story written by Charles Chesnutt in the late 1800’s. The story starts with the introduction to the Blue Veins society; A society where a small group of colored people formed up in the Northern City after the Civil War. Blue Veins society distinguished a person’s social standing but basically geared only toward those of light complexion where you could visibly see one’s Blue Veins. Mr. Ryder a handsome bachelor, and dean of the Blue Veins society is soon to end his bachelor status and marry Miss. Molly Dixon. That was soon to change when he is approached by a face of his past, the wife of his youth. Mr. Ryder a past apprentice during the Civil War was previously married to Liza Jane. Liza Jane spent 25 years in search of her love Sam Taylor or known now as Mr. Ryder. Late into the story Mr. Ryder throws a ball for the Blue Veins society in honor of Molly Dixon his “soon to be” wife. During the Blue Veins ball, Mr. Ryder reaches out to the crowd with hypothetical question about the wife of his youth; in regards to advice on what he should do. Mr.Ryder brings Liza Jane to the ball and introduces everyone in the crowd as the wife of his youth. This short story really makes one question the certain aspects of race.

When it comes to exile it’s being banished from your everyday way of life away from civilization. While being used in Beowulf, “The Wife’s Lament”, and “The Wanderer” it gives the reader a somewhat sympathetic insight of what’s going on. In Beowulf, Grendel was born into exile because of his family evil doings. “The Wife’s Lament” is separated from her lover and banished to exile to live without her lover. In “The Wanderer” a battle begins and he loses all of his kinsmen and then he becomes living in exile.

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:

The three poems show exile and keening, but the poems also show tactile imagery. The Wanderer show tactile imagery in line three, “wintery seas,” describes the setting is in this poem along with the tone. The Seafarer show’s tactile imagery as well, in line nine, “in icy bands, bound with frost,” the tactile imagery in this line describes the coldness of the thoughts in the lonely man’s head. In The Wife’s Lament the tactile imagery is shown in line forty seven, “That my beloved sits under a rocky cliff rimed with frost a lord dreary in spirit drenched with water in the ruined hall.” The wife in this tactile imagery is show how her husband is suffering just

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.

Both the ‘Odyssey’ and ‘1001 Nights’ feature male protagonists who traverse the seas, and the concepts and themes of men seafaring is common throughout most canonical texts. For example, the allusion of Odysseus’ difficult journey is made when a minor male character in Apuleius’ ‘The Golden Ass’ describes his seafaring adventures as being ‘positively Ulyssian’ (‘Ulyssian’ thus being a reference the Roman naming of Odysseus) (pg 29). Furthermore, both texts share themes, such as: seafaring, the supernatural, trials and tribulations, tradition, belief systems, and the geographical setting and pride in the protagonist’s home city play a key role to the overarching plots of the texts in the sense of the protagonist’s endurance and motivation to both leave and return home. Likewise, the supernatural is used to further the plot of both texts.

The Other Wife is a short story written by Sidonie Gabrielle Colette. Colette is credited for challenging rigid attitudes and assumptions about gender roles. “The Other Wife” is about a French aristocrat and his second wife has a brief encounter with his ex-wife in a restaurant. The story’s point of view is 3rd person omniscient. An analysis of how France 20th century gender roles influence the multiple personalities of a husband, wife, and ex-wife.

The comitatus “stressed the loyalty of a thane to his chieftain and treated exile and outlawry as the most tragic lots that could befall one. This secular sense of loss is keen in The Wanderer.”6 Not only is the loss of a lord evident in “The Wanderer,” but in “The Seafarer” and “The Wife’s Lament” as well.

Exile is a similarity linking "Beowulf" and "The Wanderer" to one of the causes of life existence. Life existence in their lives deal with being banished, deported, and punished. The events of being exiled in these two poems add up to the reasoning behind life existence. The experience of exile, teaches them about life and to come across the importance of them suffering.

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.

The first interpretation of who the speaker is in The Wife’s Lament is very shaky and not well accepted among scholars and even the average reader. This interpretation is that the speaker may be a male and not a female as we all believe. It was very common in Anglo-Saxon times for the lord of a group of people to be more to them than a ruler. Very often he would become a close friend to his people and they loved him like family. The relationship between lord and man was more than just a business arrangement and although they were working for the lord, he was respected much like a father figure would be. The problem with this interpretation is that the grammatical gender is feminine. This is the reason why everyone assumes that the speaker is a female. Supporters of this reading of The Wife’s Lament believe that somewhere along the line of translating the poem the translator made a mistake and changed the gender of the speaker. As I have already said, this interpretation is very rough around the edges and rather hard to believe. I believe that if the speaker were male then there would be no real reason for his being exiled in this fashion. It was not a custom for communities to allow “foreigners” in thus falsifying

It’s easy to tell that the ocean is a mysterious and isolating place from all of the tragic tales we hear from sailors both real and fictional. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and an anonymous author’s “The Seafarer” are quite similar in that they both revolve around said tragic tales told by sailors. However, there seem to be more commonalities between their themes, tones, and messages rather than their seaward-bound settings. But before we can discuss these similar settings and deeper themes, we have to tackle their origins.

Unlike the wandering narrator, the seafaring narrator focuses his descriptions of the community that is present in nature. The seafarer the utterly rejects the notion that a “sheltering family / could bring consolation for his desolate soul” (25-26). This “sheltering family” (25) that the seafaring narrator alludes to in this line is the exact form of close-knit family that the narrator in “The Wanderer” laments for desperately. While the seafaring narrator offers striking similar descriptions of the landscape being “bound by ice” (9), he does not focus on these descriptions to dwell on the loss of an earthly community. Instead, the narrator in “The Seafarer” finds the landscape that he inhabits wonderfully abundant with natural — even spiritual — elements that are commonly associated with an earthly community. In the barren landscape, the seafaring narrator discovers “the wild swan’s song / sometimes served for music” (19-20) and “the curlew’s cry for the laugher of men” (20-21). These vibrant and vivid descriptions of the natural world that the narrator discovers in the harsh,

Throughout the history of British Literature, there have always been the themes of loneliness, torment or exile. Many times authors speak from their experiences and at times those experiences have to do with misery and discomfort with their lifestyles. In the Renaissance age, times were not always happy and people chose to pass on stories generation to generation to reveal their feelings and experiences. Poems made a great impact in easing the pain. In the poems, "The Seafarer" and "The Wanderer", the themes of loneliness and exile exist throughout both of the poems. The unknown authors portray the two themes through detail and emotion.

“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