The Wife's Lament

The first passage reveals the parallel suffering occurring in the lives of different members of the family, which emphasizes the echoes between the sufferings of the father and the narrator. The narrator’s father’s despair over having watched

The wife of Bisclavaret was once fully dedicated and loved her husband very dearly. She was surely happy to be beside her husband and the couple mutually did not keep secrets from each other. However, people change over time in marriages; unfortunately, the static person in marriage has difficulty in swaying their partner in the right direction. In this case, the wife continuously stayed the loving and devoted wife was while Bisclavaret changed. For example, the wife expresses her concern for her husband here: “Husband and fair, sweet friend, I have a certain thing to pray of you. Right willingly would I receive this gift, but I fear to anger you in the asking”. In this quote, the wife expresses worry and fee, an example of pathos,

It says in the text “ You’ve let this room and this house replace you and your wife in your children’s affections.” (8) This shows that if parents give their children false love, and false care, then the children will become attached to that false love and care. Then they will not care for their parents and will only care for the creature comforts. They will try to push the parents out of their lives, and the parents want to be part of the children’s lives, so they give them even more creature comforts, letting the children know that they are the ones that give them the things they like. But the children will get attached to these

Throughout the poem, the speaker used the man’s loneliness to describe the feeling of loss. The title of the poem, “Where is She?”, clearly shows the man’s need for this woman to come back into his life so he can move on with her. The man does not want to have to think about what it would be like if she is still in his life, he would rather have her with him in that moment of loneliness instead of experiencing it alone and be able to live their lives together, not separately. “It got to the point where my imaginings no longer included her.” (Line 6-7) Once the woman disappears this causes the man to come to a conclusion that she may be gone forever, and makes him overthink the question of her return and eventually exclude her from his future through his strong imagination. As the

Finally, the reader is introduced to the character around whom the story is centered, the accursed murderess, Mrs. Wright. She is depicted to be a person of great life and vitality in her younger years, yet her life as Mrs. Wright is portrayed as one of grim sameness, maintaining a humorless daily grind, devoid of life as one regards it in a normal social sense. Although it is clear to the reader that Mrs. Wright is indeed the culprit, she is portrayed sympathetically because of that very lack of normalcy in her daily routine. Where she was once a girl of fun and laughter, it is clear that over the years she has been forced into a reclusive shell by a marriage to a man who has been singularly oppressive. It is equally clear that she finally was brought to her personal breaking point, dealing with her situation in a manner that was at once final and yet inconclusive, depending on the outcome of the legal investigation. It is notable that regardless of the outcome, Mrs. Wright had finally realized a state of peace within herself, a state which had been denied her for the duration of her relationship with the deceased.

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

“shadow” of her husband. The narrator feels like she is living in the “shadow” of her

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.

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 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

While there has been much ambiguity surrounding the exact setting in the elegy, the author uses imagery of the speaker's environment to further emphasize the dismal realities of exile. The harsh land in which the wife is required to live mirrors the passionate longing and loneliness that she displays. "This earth-hall is old, and I ache with longing; the dales are dark, the hills too high, harsh hedges overhung with briars, a home without joy" (Exeter Book 29-32).

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,

“The Wife’s Lament” by an anonymous Anglo –Saxon scop depicts personal exile and longing for lost love. The elegy focuses on grief, mourning, and longing. The speaker feels alone and afraid that her husband will never return. Though she is terrified, she reminisces about the former days.

She is realizing that she will have freedom through her husband death and whispers over and over, “free, free, free!” Her unhappiness is not with her husband, it is her rankings in society and becoming a widow is her only chance she has to gain the power, money, respect, and most of all freedom.