The Wife's Lament Essay

“The Wife’s Lament,” translated by Ann Standford, uses numerous literary devices to convey the pain and emotion of an exiled wife. The author of the poem uses a metaphor to compare the cave the wife has moved into to an empty hall, “under an oak tree in this den in the earth. / Ancient this earth hall.” (Stanford 28-9). Comparing the cave to an empty hall shows the loneliness and isolation the abandoned wife is feeling. Another device used by the author in “The Wife’s Lament” is juxtaposition. In lines 42-43, the author writes, “May that young man

“It only take one person to change your life.” It could be a spouse, a long lost family member, or maybe even a baby. Change is never a bad thing. You will always have to face change, whether it’s changing schools, having to adjust to a new sibling, or even having to adjust to a new job.

Elegies are serious poems of a ruminative nature. First written in the Middle Ages, they offer a view into the medieval psyche, which was largely influenced by Christianity. Some of the Christian attitudes found in the famous elegies “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer” include the finiteness of earthly goods, the broken nature of the world and humankind, and the goodness of knowing God. Both of these elegies feature eponymous narrators discussing the temporariness of the world. In “The Wanderer,” the wanderer laments the death of his lord, and reflects on how time brings death or destruction to everything. "

1972 was a monumental year for women and their rights. On March 22, 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment was passed by the Senate and was added to the United States Constitution; this amendment banned discrimination based on sex. The subject of the unfairness between the roles of men and women was approached in a sarcastic and opinionated way in several forms of media. The controversy was addressed daily because this was the historical movement of that time period. Judy Brady published “Why I want a Wife” in Ms. Magazine, addressing the issue of what women are expected to live up to by using ethos, logos, and pathos.

The Wife’s Lament is a suspenseful, short elegy that leaves the reader in confusion and awe at the same time. The poem deals with hardship, sadness, and frustration while intentionally or unintentionally leaving the audience confused at the end. In the story, a young woman is at a point of no return causing a sad ending that is up for the reader to interpret. The storytelling throughout the elegy seems to be well written for the time period that it was transcribed. While most old English poems don’t feature a female lead character, this story is centered around a woman is going through immense struggle (Johnson). We get to see this woman’s perspective on her miserable life throughout the story that leads to an ending that does not close as many would hope. Along with this, we get strong insights on her emotions throughout the story with love and sadness driving the plot. The Wife’s Lament is an emotion driven story that utilizes feelings of the narrator at any point she deems is necessary.

The Comedy of Errors is a significant work of Shakespeare, because it was his gateway to works with more significance, depth, and characters with definite characteristics. In The Comedy of Errors, the character of Adriana is presented. Adriana is best known for being wife of E. Antipholous, but Adriana is also Luciana’s sister. Adriana is so significant in this play, because although this play was a comedy, Adriana’s role in this play is highly emotionally based. Adriana challenges the roles of the standard woman at the time and of a woman in her marriage. Adriana is outspoken and is not afraid to be very opinionated. Throughout the course of the play, she focuses

This is the message in this poem because in the beginning of this poem they start to talk about how her husband made her go exile. In the article The Wife’s Lament Robert argues, “I suggest that the story told in The Wife's Lament may be derived from a myth about an abandoned fertility goddess or Terra Mater who weeps (like Freyja) for a departed husband or lover, wanders in search of him, and is finally condemned by his withdrawal (like Gerdr) to a lonely, sterile, death-like existence in a primitive, elemental world.” (Luyster) She had to go exile to some where in the middle of nowhere, and she would sit under a tree all day. While she was under the tree she experienced sadness because she wants her husband to come back. As well as the wife wanting her husband coming back she also wanted him to become exiled as well because of what he had done to her. In the poem they state, “may that young man be sad minded always hard his heart’s thought while he must wear a blithe bearing with care in the breast a crowd of sorrows.” (lines 42-45) The author states this in her poem because she wants her husband to feel the sadness that she has been going through for so long. This is a big message in the poem because of the way she just wanted her husband to go away because of what he did to her. Clearly, the message in this poem is that she had to suffer through sadness since her husband left

Elegy: (Kirszner, & Mandell, 2012 p. 352) a sad poem that grieves a subject death, but ends in consolation. For example, in the story of Emily Rose, she was grieving for her father, but the story did not end with the grief related to her father but the pain of never finding the right guy to marry or suitor.

The author uses several types of poetic terms in this poem to develop the theme of a person accepting grief in their life. One poetic term she used was a metaphor. The metaphor is “Ah, grief, I should not treat you like a homeless dog.” Although grief is not a type of dog, the author wants us to think of grief in the same way that we would think about a homeless dog. The same phrase can also be considered a simile. The author intends for us to think of grief as being like a homeless dog. Another way that the author expressed her theme was by using a specific kind of repetition like anaphora. Several words are repeated at the beginning of two or more lines and sentences in the poem. These words are “you,” “your,” “my,” and “and.” There are also several phrases that are repeated throughout the poem. These phrases are “your own,” “I should,” and “you need.” She uses these repetitive words and phrases in the poem to describe a conversation that a person is having with grief.

Carefully understanding the text, it describes how the narrator lived in misery, torture, loneliness, agony and pain while she was a recluse. The whole poem is her pointing out how she felt worthless without her husband while he is God knows where (“I grieved each dawn as I wondered were my lord, my first on Earth might be”). The inequality on how a female was sent into reclusion because of not-exactly proven accusations of adultery is very unjust due to the fact that men weren’t punished as much, if they were even penalized at all. The job of a female consisted on being a house wife, taking care of kids, taking care of the house, while men were working. Girls were completely

Throughout the Wife’s tale men contain all of the physical, social, and intellectual power. When the old woman is scolding the knight, there is a lack of female intellectuals, instead men are quoted such as; Dante, Valerius, Boethius, Seneca and Juvenal, within the old woman’s rants. Social power is also another type that is shown, and is exampled within the courts. Men fill the courts, as that is how the style of government was, with the King being able to rule and make decisions on his own. Men also contain physical power over women, the most obvious point was how the maiden was raped by knight, which is the entire reason for the story being moved into motion. The description of him within the Wife`s tale was that even in “Spite of all she

In spite of the fact that neither Penelope nor Jocasta is the protagonist in the two great works Odyssey and Oedipus, the two characters both play important roles in driving the plots ahead, significantly contributing to the completely different fates of their husbands, Odysseus and Oedipus. Jocasta is a typical representative of the group of women who are passive and dependent. She inevitably falls victim to the male world, in that she fades into the background of the play and is marginalized under the masculine value system. Penelope, on the contrary, is a model of the active and dynamic female image. She is intelligent and courageous enough to act on her own free will and to display her talents at the center of the male stage. Instead of complying to the given adversity, she withstands the pressure of public opinions and takes initiative to convert her unfavorable situation. Consequently, the successful return of Odysseus and the miserable banishment of Oedipus are not unpredictable under these circumstances. The sharply contradictory decisions of Penelope and Jocasta illustrate evidently the remarkable influences the wives have on their husbands’ destinies.

The Anglo Saxon period of time was filled with a great deal of grief and lament. There were various kinds of writings about individuals facing arduous times in their lives. The poems “The Seafarer”, “The Wanderer”, and the “Wife’s Lament” are all examples of different pieces of writing of the Anglo Saxon period. Some of the poems focused on certain dispute, while the others included a wide variety of subject matter including religious beliefs. All of the poems are considered to be elegies expressing the sadness and sorrow over a loss or death.

What is exile? Exile is the action of one being kicked out of their home or native land, usually as a punishment. According to Anglo-Saxons, all exile is a model of the banishment of humankind from its rightful place in Heaven. Exile is a pretty frequent theme of Anglo-Saxon literature by symbolizing this in many different scenarios and using different characters and places. Since the religion of christianity was so important to the Anglo-Saxons, this was a scary thing for many of them to find in their literature. After one examines the lyrics in “The Seafarer,” “The Wanderer,” and “The Wife’s Lament,” one will notice that exile is included in all three of these Anglo-Saxon stories.

Milton covers the elegy angle by making this poem about his dead friend Edward King. An elegy is a poem mourning the death of someone, who is almost always a fellow poet. Done.