Good Essay About The Wife’s Lament

The context, The Wife’s Lament, is a 53-line poem written in Old English, extracted from Exeter Book. Readers and writers treat is as an elegy due to the German fraunelied, woman’s song, manner of its writing. Throughout the years, the poem has been through several changes such as simplifying the English for current readers to understand it. Old English or ancient English had a thick and deep meaning behind it. In the past, readers were in a position to comprehend what the writer’s context since the language was familiar to them. However, throughout the years, scholars have come up with various versions as to how they view the article. Some see it as the wife stating her problems; others view it as the wife regretting her choices. Different variations bring about issues among the readers. They tend to sit on the middle of the fence and wonder whether there is sufficient truth in any of the two sides. The Wife’s Lament has undergone a few changes for the purposes of reaching more readers across the globe.
The poem talks of unrequited love or someone who mourns about lost loved. A better understanding of the poem expresses how men dominate over women and how they are made to live in subservient existences (Lawrence 387). The poem shows a woman grieving because of her separation with her lover or husband. The man in question seems like a ruler or king as one reads the poem. The man forgot about his woman and people, forcing them to live as refugees after being evicted from their homes. From the predicament, she attributes the shortcomings to her husband’s relatives, who had a secret plot that will divide the people. The situation led to her feeling heartbroken.
Another complaint that she makes is her husband orders for them to move to another settlement in an unfamiliar area. She felt lost and lonely because she has no friends, and the one to keep her company is not around (Lawrence 387). While, in the new area, she makes friends with a new man and time, she felt as if he can be a great companion. However, time took a different route for the two after she had realized the new ‘love’ was a fraud/ criminal. The other men around her were suspicions of her new lover, and when the truth came out, the forced the woman to live in the grave. The grave in modern English might be a cave because it is not possible to bury someone and still be alive.
While at the grave, the woman reminisces about her husband and what might be going on with him. She had a feeling that the husband was in a similar predicament as her. The poem ends by saying owe unto those people who live in love as she did with her lover/husband (Lawrence pg. 388). There is another side to the poem; a man’s perspective of the story. The woman might be thinking of how he fell in love with a man and now regrets as to why she did. She might be seeing herself as a failure, and her major weakness is falling in love with a man. She seems to hate love since it makes her make a decision and do various things for people she loves yet they do not feel the same for her. For instance, she gave her heart to the stranger only for him to crush it in the end. Her husband, on the other hand, seems not to care of how the wife/lover is coping with life. All he does is to order her around.
Orton, an author, comes up with a different perspective to Doane’s (Luyster par.5). He grounds the poem to the general context of paganism from the Scandinavian religion and mythology. He is shy of using the material as one of his sources. He disagrees in accepting his position towards the poem under the collorary by saying the wife might be a great German goddess like Freyja or impersonation by another being.
In conclusion, the old English seems to be a bit tricky for people to interpret it effectively. From the examples, there are more than two interpretations of the poem and each looks true in its context. Trying to simplify the true meaning of an old English context might not be since no one has the true idea behind the writer’s perspective. All people can do is speculate whether they got it right, or they are close to it.

Work Cited

Lawrence, William Witherle. "The Banished Wife's Lament." Modern Philology (1908): pp. 387-405. Web. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/432455?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents>
Lench, Elinor. "The Wife's Lamemt: A Poem of The Living Dead." Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (1970): pp. 1-21. Web. <https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3hm5w1q2#>
Luyster, Robert. "The Wife's Lament in the Context of Scandinavian Myth and Ritual." Philological Quarterly (1998). Web. <https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-56184417/the-wife-s-lament-in-the-context-of-scandinavian-myth>