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The Wife's Lament - Coggle Diagram
The Wife's Lament
THEMES
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STRUCTURE & FORM
53 lines in one stanza.
Considered an elegy and written in alliterative metre.
Use of trochees
No standard rhyme scheme or metrical pattern.
CONTEXT
Comes from the Exeter Book, 10th century
Female narrator = unusual. Interplay between story and emotion --> characteristic of female voice?
Lyric = relates to emotional expression
Lament = negative emotions, expression of loss or death
Both terms are frequently associated with women in contrast to masculine heroic culture
Words:
'"herh" and "eard" or "herheard" joined together
- multiple meanings = sanctuary and earth, or cruel
Large implications as to her dwelling = LINE 15
"Parallels and contrasts between past and present to emphasise both the timelessness and also the specificity of her story" = Quote from lecturer Venetia Bridges
Related poems =
The Husband's Message / Wulf & Eadwacer
Similar themes / also interpreted as a riddle, elusive narrative
PLOT
The speaker (probably the wife) expresses deep sorrow over her husband's departure.
Departure = 1) his death 2) his betrayal 3) travel to a different country
Grief is vaguely described. She’s alone, without friends or family, and eventually forced to live in a hole or cave in the ground.
"They" (her husband's kinsman) stop her from seeing him and in the last lines, it appears that she’s wishing the same sorrow on her husband.
- Suffering of a female narrator, exiled at the desire of her "lord"
- Met an "ill-fortuned" man but was separated from him by scheming relatives
- Forced to live in the wild, away from friends. Mourns her losses
- Poem ends with a gnomic statement about love and loss
How many lords does the poem refer to?
Does the female narrator express a 'gendered' and feminized experience, or is the poem more allegorical?
CRITICAL RESPONSES
Christian = Michael Swanton: allegory about Christ and the Church
Paganism = Robert Luyster: the woman is the Norse goddess Freyja abandoned by her husband Freyr
Riddle = Faye Walker-Pelkey