Compare And Contrast The Seafarer And The Wife's Lament

People one can never really tell how person is feeling or what their situation is behind closed doors or behind the façade of the life they lead. Two masterly crafted literary works present readers with characters that have two similar but very different stories that end in the same result. In Herman Melville’s story “Bartleby the Scrivener” readers are presented with Bartleby, an interesting and minimally deep character. In comparison to Gail Godwin’s work, “A Sorrowful Woman” we are presented with a nameless woman with a similar physiological state as Bartleby whom expresses her feelings of dissatisfaction of her life. Here, a deeper examination of these characters their situations and their ultimate fate will be pursued and delved into

Charlotte Mew explores the theme of lack of intimacy during the course of her poem, The Farmers Bride. Various techniques are used to represent the stilted relationship the speaker and his ‘maid’ succumb to. Likewise, The Manhunt, written by Simon Armitage uses various metaphors and semantic fields of war and anguish to illustrate the speaker’s yearning to ‘feel the hurt’ her partner is experiencing and take the pain away. Although, the ambiguous ending doesn’t satisfy this.

In the poem “The Wife’s Lament” there is a transfer to a female point of view which was rare during times of a patriarchal society. A theme seen is this poem is exile. The wife who faces exile from her lord later reaches a state of bitter unhappiness. The wife expresses her longing for her husband through use of ubi sunt:

The Seafarer, The Wanderer, and The Wife’s Lament all contains faith verses fate. The three poems are very similar and very different. The three poems ranging from a lonely man, to a lost soldier, to a wife’s bedrail. The medieval poems show hurt, confusion, and loneliness.

Mark Strand’s poem, “Poor North” depicts the life of a married couple facing countless struggles during a harsh winter. It tells of a man working in an unsuccessful store while his wife sits at home, wishing for her old life back. The way the wife copes with her sadness is both intriguing and perplexing. She misses her old life, even though it is described to have not been special; however, the wife may be a person who never feels satisfied or fulfilled by the external world due to internal conflict. Despite the wife’s obvious misery, she stays by her husband’s side and they stroll in the cold together, bracing the wind. As a means of escape from life, she peers into her past in order to find hope in the present.

The comitatus “stressed the loyalty of a thane to his chieftain and treated exile and outlawry as the most tragic lots that could befall one. This secular sense of loss is keen in The Wanderer.”6 Not only is the loss of a lord evident in “The Wanderer,” but in “The Seafarer” and “The Wife’s Lament” as well.

The Wife of Bath apparently attempts to emphasize female dominance over men. She contradicts many of the harsh customs and declares her own haughty assessment of women’s function in society and in relationships. In the story, Chaucer explains that what women want is sovereignty over their husbands. According to the tale, women desire to be treated as masters over their love. The story also suggests that

Isolation from society can evoke a deep loneliness and self-reflection. The poem "The Wife's Lament" from the Exeter Book expresses the desolation of exile. The dominant theme is the contrast of a happy past and a bleak present of isolation. The anonymous author of "The Wife's Lament" uses setting, tone, and conflict to develop the theme of great loss. He/she augments a situation in which meditation on life's past joys is the only redemption in a life sentenced to confinement. “The Wife’s Lament” is an excellent example of nostalgia, resentment of the present, and hopelessness about the future.

Wealth and property feature heavily in the wife’s portrayal of marriage and along with the issue of her independence is responsible for many of her marital conflicts. The first three husbands "riche and olde" were married each for "hir land and hir tresoor" then discarded as the Wife looks for other prospects. When one of these husbands tries to restrict the Wife’s spending she refuses to let him be both "maister of my body and of my good" so refuses sexual favours in return for her freedom as she will not become a mere possession. She generalizes that women "love no man that taketh or keepth charge" suggesting an element of independence and individualism in 14th century marriage. The wife resents being controlled; she

The first interpretation of who the speaker is in The Wife’s Lament is very shaky and not well accepted among scholars and even the average reader. This interpretation is that the speaker may be a male and not a female as we all believe. It was very common in Anglo-Saxon times for the lord of a group of people to be more to them than a ruler. Very often he would become a close friend to his people and they loved him like family. The relationship between lord and man was more than just a business arrangement and although they were working for the lord, he was respected much like a father figure would be. The problem with this interpretation is that the grammatical gender is feminine. This is the reason why everyone assumes that the speaker is a female. Supporters of this reading of The Wife’s Lament believe that somewhere along the line of translating the poem the translator made a mistake and changed the gender of the speaker. As I have already said, this interpretation is very rough around the edges and rather hard to believe. I believe that if the speaker were male then there would be no real reason for his being exiled in this fashion. It was not a custom for communities to allow “foreigners” in thus falsifying

One main message in “The Seafarer” translated by Burton Raffel, is exile. Exile plays a big role in all three stories by mainly in “The Seafarer” because the sailor is always talking about

As cultural critic Edward Said once wrote, “[Exile’s] essential sadness can never be surmounted.” Mariam, the daughter of an affair between a wealthy businessman and a lowly servant, is exiled from her home of fifteen years into a marriage with someone who she has never met. She is left heartbroken, melancholic, and feeling alienated. Before her forced marriage, Mariam is huddled into her father’s house where she spends a few weeks coping with her mother’s death. The narrator describes the events leading up to her temporary residency with her father Jalil, “Two days before, Mariam has slept on the sidewalk waiting for him. Two days before--when

In the novel “The Ballad of the Sea” that represents loneliness and unanswered love, can be related to the short story “The Domestic Dilemma”. Carson McCullers made a statement on having love for one another and be able to work out issues under certain circumstances. There is a conflict within the husband and the kids between the wife and her being a mother to her children. In comparison isolation and loneliness play a big part in both stories due to the addiction of alcoholism. The two novels relates to both women are emotionally unstable due to living in a southern town, being isolated from the community. All of Carson McCullers’s characters represent some type of love and affection towards each other, then ends up leaving with a hopeless

In the medieval period, the Old English elegies use unnamed speakers that offer similar descriptions of devastated landscapes and immense personal hardships. However, where the unknown authors’ of the Old English elegies often present smilier descriptions and themes across their respective works, they do not present similar opinions on larger concerns like religion and the role of community. This is a concept that is interwoven into the framework of the Old English elegies “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer”. By comparing and contrasting these two works, this paper will argue that the unnamed narrators’ vivid descriptions of landscapes, circumstances surrounding their exile, and climactic perspectives on the earthly community function solely

In the three poems “The Wife’s Lament”, “The Wanderer”, and “The Seafarer” from The Exeter Book, it’s clear that travel and exile are recurring and important themes. Is there a possibility that these themes and elements have a significance that goes above and beyond their literal meaning? Though they may experience it differently, all three of the speakers from these poems in The Exeter Book deal with the great pain of exile, or being driven out, resulting in the need or desire for travel. This takes place due to the fact exile was one of the most tragic fates that an anglo-saxon man or woman could endure at the time. It makes sense that these themes would play a huge part in these poems because during this time period, exile was the