The Wife's Lament
Over the years, there have been many interpretations of who the speaker of The Wife’s Lament could be. These range from very interesting ideas to ones that seem a little rough around the edges. It is obvious that no sure answer can be found due to the fact that whoever wrote this poem is dead and that the answer will always be in speculation even if it is correct. Hopefully, at the end of this quest I will be slightly more enlightened as to who the true speaker may really be.
There are some things that we do know about this poem. It is most often referred to as an elegy because of the mood of mourning and regret. Upon further reading I discovered that this poem is like others of its time period. Many parallels can be seen between The Wife’s Lament and The Wanderer. The Wanderer is a poem about a man that is exiled due to war and details his miserable life in the wintry wilderness. Another poem that resembles The Wife’s Lament is Wulf and Eadwacer. In both of these poems, the speaker is interpreted to be a woman unlike other poems of the time. Wulf and Eadwacer is about a woman who has been involved with two men, the dreaded love-triangle. When the woman was separated from her lover, Wulf, she is taken into the comforting arms of another man, Eadwacer. This causes her much happiness but also pain over the lost love of Wulf. Thus the lament of this woman is very similar to the speaker in The Wife’s Lament.
The various interpretations of The Wife’s Lament may argue on who the speaker is, but there is one thing that can not be denied. There is no doubt that this poem is about lamenting exile and the trials the speaker must face due to this exile. No matter who the speaker is, he/she is wroug...
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... I think that anyone that reads this poem should be told about this interpretation so that they can at least consider it.
The question of who is speaking in The Wife’s Lament will never be answered because there are too many facts that aren’t provided. It would have been wonderful if the poet would have stated straight away that the speaker was a woman or a goddess or any of the other possible people or things. The only thing that readers of this poem can do is take all of these interpretations into consideration and use them to form their own idea of who the speaker is. I am very glad that I was introduced to this work and that I had the possibility to examine the various arguments of who is speaking. I think that when reading any piece of literature it should be looked at in a similar fashion as trying to pick apart who is speaking in The Wife’s Lament.
The components of marriage, family and loss has played a big role in Anne Bradstreet’s writing of “Before the birth of One of Her Children”, “In Memory of Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet”, and Edward Taylor’s “Upon Wedlock and the Death of Children.” In, these writings both authors Puritan culture and their faith plays a big role. In these poems one author starts questioning their God and the other to take honor in their God throughout their grieving process, while both showing different aspects of their everlasting union with their spouse, and the love for their children.
The speakers and audience in poem are crucial elements of the poem and is also the case in these poems. In the poem Untitled, it can be argued that the poem is being written by Peter based on what his father might say to him...
...ouse wives, and mothers who are fragile and insignificant. Instead, she is to remain in a “closed pot” (228), just as she is expected to do. As a result, she cries at the truth that she will always be reminded, that she is a “weak” and “useless” woman, which only increases her frustrations and dissatisfactions about her marriage (238).
The poem is written in the father’s point of view; this gives insight of the father’s character and
‘The woman’ of the poem has no specific identity and this helps us even further see the situation in which the woman is experiencing, the lost of one’s identity. Questions start to be raised and we wonder if Harwood uses this character to portray her views of every woman which goes into the stage of motherhood, where much sacrifice is needed one being the identity that was present in society prior to children.
Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and the Mythology of “Elysian fields” in lines one through three, she leads the reader to the assumption that this is a calm, graceful poem, perhaps about a dream or love. Within the first quatrain, line four (“I wove a garland for your living head”) serves to emphasise two things: it continues to demonstrate the ethereal diction and carefree tone, but it also leads the reader to the easy assumption that the subject of this poem is the lover of the speaker. Danae is belittled as an object and claimed by Jove, while Jove remains “golden” and godly. In lines seven and eight, “Jove the Bull” “bore away” at “Europa”. “Bore”, meaning to make a hole in something, emphasises the violent sexual imagery perpetrated in this poem.
The story begins in a rural house where a man and woman live without children, near a walled garden tended by a frightening witch. The first line of the story tells us that they yearn for a child. It is clear that there exists in this house an almost tangible feeling of desire to produce offspring. The Freudian concept of the libido or the life force explains this desire as a product of the unconscious id(Guerin 129). To show further the prevalence of the id in this house, which in itself is a symbol of the human mind, the wife covets a vegetable, rampion, which she sees in the neighboring garden from her tiny window to the outside. "I shall die unless I can have some of that rampion to eat."(Grimm 514) The wife comes to represent this selfish element of the mind, and this is her primary function in the story. When she speaks, both times she is only asking for something that she wants. She has no name, as she does not function as a full character.
...ptions of women and their roles as wives. Rather than opposing binary oppositions, she engages with them, using skilful language and exploiting her sex in order to disprove patriarchal thought. In particular, the Wife argues for experience over authority, demonstrating the biases that coincide with authoritative scripture and doctrine. By undermining the validity that is associated with authoritative arguments, the wife ironically is able to make dominating arguments, and propose new interpretations of masculine texts and label them as experienced opinions. She does not necessarily overturn masculine supremacy, but rather transforms it absoluteness into relativity. Through her prologue and her tale, the Wife of Bath promotes the re-interpretation of gender customs and marriage dynamics using feminized language, successfully giving a prevailing voice to women.
For the most part of the poem she states how she believes that it is Gods calling, [Then ta’en away unto eternity] but in other parts of the poem she eludes to the fact that she feels more like her granddaughter was stolen from her [or sigh thy days so soon were terminate]. One of the main beliefs in these times was that when someone died it was their time; God needed them and had a better plan. Both poets found peace in the idea that God had the children now and it was part of the plan, but are also deeply saddened and used poetry as a coping mechanism.
The Wife's Lament, A poem with so many angles it becomes overwhelming yet powerful at the same time. The sorrow, passion and strength was so powerful making my mind open and wander in thought of how the poem displayed feelings I have experienced in my life. A female must have been the one create such deep and passionate work, "How often we swore that nothing but death should ever divide us; that is all changed now; or friendship is as if it had never been"(20). Sharing heart break and trying to teach others about love or how hurtful it can be,"Grief goes side by side with those who suffer longing for a loved one",(51) shows great strength yet sorrow at the same time. I was surprised that when i finished reading I wished there was
During the early seventeenth century, poets were able to mourn the loss of a child publicly by writing elegies, or poems to lament the deceased. Katherine Philips and Ben Jonson were two poets who wrote the popular poems “On the Death of My Dearest Child, Hector Philips”, “On My First Son”, and “On My First Daughter” respectively. Although Philips and Jonson’s elegies contain obvious similarities, the differences between “On the Death of My Dearest Child” and “On My First Son” specifically are pronounced. The emotions displayed in the elegies are very distinct when considering the sex of the poet. The grief shown by a mother and father is a major theme when comparing the approach of mourning in the two elegies.
This poem is a firsthand account of how Anne Bradstreet was feeling when she experienced the loss of her granddaughter, Elizabeth. Although Bradstreet's attitude on Elizabeth's death seems to reflect her belief in God's plan, the diction suggests otherwise.
Aesop’ depicts a marriage in which the female feels trapped, this is evident in the opening line, ‘By Christ, he could bore for purgatory.’ The use of words selected by Duffy highlights the entrapment felt by the persona, furthermore suggesting the male was dominant in the relationship and the use of modern idioms suggest how long this has been going on as Mr. Aesop told fables many centuries ago. Through the use of internal rhyme, ‘didn’t prepossess…to impress’, we get the sense that there is a lot of resentment within the marriage as some may interpret this line to be a shaming in regards to his sexual ability- this is previously hinted at previously as it is stated ‘He was small’, a reference to his love making skills and his need to over-compensate for not being well endowed. The poem continues with the persona of Mrs. Aesop contorting Mr. Aesop’s famous fables and using them as a weapon of battle, ‘the bird in his hand shat on his sleeve’ moreover highlights her absolute bitterness towards
Not attempting to hide, Mrs. Mallard knows that she will weep at her husbands funeral, however she can’t help this sudden feeling of seeing, “beyond [the] bitter moment [of] procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely” (Chopin, 16). In an unloving marriage of this time, women were trapped in their roles until they were freed by the death of their husbands. Although Mrs. Mallard claims that her husband was kind and loving, she can’t help the sudden spark of joy of her new freedom. This is her view on the release of her oppression from her roles of being a dutiful wife to her husband. Altogether, Mrs. Mallard claims that, “there would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature” (Chopin, 16). This is the most important of Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts, as she never officially states a specific way when her husband oppressed her. However, the audience can clearly suggest that this is a hint towards marriage in general that it suffocates both men and women. Marriage is an equal partnership in which compromise and communication become the dominant ideals to make the marriage better. It is suggested that Mrs. Mallard also oppressed her husband just as much as he did to her when she sinks into the armchair and is, “pressed down by a physical exhaustion
Katherine Philips is desperately trying to renew her faith in life, but she is struggling to do so because of the death of her son. She is attempting to justify the loss of her child as a form of consolation, while keeping somewhat emotionally detached to the later death of her stepson in “In Memory of F.P.” The differing phrases, words, and language contrast the two elegies and emphasize the loss and pain in “Epitaph” while diminishing the pain in “Memory of FP.”