Analysis Of The Wife's Lament

Analysis of “The Wife’s Lament” The Wife’s Lament by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon scop. The literary work is contained in The Exeter Book. This elegy explores the concept of exile, sorrow, helplessness, betrayal, loneliness, and confusion. The speaker of this elegy will speak about how she is out to search for a way to relieve her pain. She feels alone and ignored, and she just wants to be happy and not sad. The first section is when the speaker talks about how her pain and hardship in the past, is nothing compared to what she is going through or about to go through. The speaker says, “in those days it was not worse than now”(4). The speaker talks about how she grieves, she grieves because of her hardships in the past and the present. The speaker
She then becomes philosophical to the reader in order to be happy. She is just telling herself to let go, don’t listen to people, to ignore society, and to go find her happiness again. It seems like she is giving up, or she is losing hope. The speaker says, “The young man must rely on himself for all he gets of the world’s joy”(45). She feels that he’s out in a distant country. She has basically lost hope. The last section of The Wife’s Lament she is talking about how her husband is out in the freezing cold. She says, “That friend of mine suffers great sorrow of heart”(51). She is saying that he is lonely and in sorrow just like her. They are both in deep lament. There love was not meant to be broken, they have shared lots of good memories, and it all has been sucked down a drain. The speaker states, “Unhappy is anyone who must longingly wait for a lover”(53). The speaker is right with this statement. If you wait a long period of time for someone you are in love with, wouldn’t you be unhappy? After all the hurt, pain, and sorrow she never finds her husband. If it was true love, and it was meant to be, he would not have left. She should give up, and move on to something new and better, than to be