The Wife's Lament

A detailed Summary of The Wife's Lament

The poem "The Wife's Lament" takes the reader on a complex journey into the life of a woman living in the Old English world and struggling with both the frustration of being separated from her lover and the inability to rectify her situation. Throughout the poem the speaker reminisces on specific events from her past, and also periodically comments on her present situation with emotion, reflection and speculation. By doing this, she is able to illustrate to the reader the difficulties that women in the Old English time period were faced with and also how many women were victims of their own environment and defenseless in determining their fate.

Due to the complexity of translation, the poem can be interpreted in numerous ways. Women in Old English society were treated as objects and as property. While being owned by a certain lord they would often get passed around from one lord to another in attempt to make peace, even to be traded off or exchanged between lords and lordships. "The Wife's Lament" portrays a women who is

The wife seems to realize her hardships, but has an overall passive endurance to the situation that she is in.

"The Wife's Lament" is an example of a fraunleider genre of Old English poetry

, and several aspects of the poem illustrate this fact. To begin, the poem is a lyric and expresses personally concerned female emotions and an overall focus on pain, sorrow and frustration throughout the different stanzas. The first stanza describes the reasoning for the wife's anguish, her husband taking from her, "the tossing waves/ Taking my lord," and she is now left alone in a world that is totally unfamiliar and hostile. This aspect ....... The lives of women in Old England were completely centered around their lord. They had no other duty but to serve him and make him happy by entertaining in the hall and supplying many children to pass on his name from generation to generation. When the wife is separated from her husband, or lord, her world is turned upside down and she has no idea how to react, or even go on in life. Because her life was based entirely on the well being of her lord, the isolation that she feels once he is gone has consumed her, "I was left in the dawn/ Friendless where affection had been." The first stanza continues with a sorrowful manner and language that foreshadows a continuance in misery for the speaker,

In contrast to the first stanza, the second stanza is a reflection on the past by the speaker. The reader is able to learn that the wife has been exile

Some common words found in the essay are:
Wife's Lament, Women English, wife's lament, women english, women english society, , english society,

Approximate Word count = 879
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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The Wife's Lament

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