The poem "The Wife's Lament" takes the reader on a complex journey into the life of a woman living in the Old English world and struggling with both the frustration of being separated from her lover and the inability to rectify her situation. Throughout the poem the speaker reminisces on specific events from her past, and also periodically comments on her present situation with emotion, reflection and speculation. By doing this, she is able to illustrate to the reader the difficulties that women in the Old English time period were faced with and also how many women were victims of their own environment and defenseless in determining their fate.
Due to the complexity of translation, the poem can be interpreted in numerous ways. Women in Old English society were treated as objects and as property. While being owned by a certain lord they would often get passed around from one lord to another in attempt to make peace, even to be traded off or exchanged between lords and lordships. "The Wife's Lament" portrays a women who is
The wife seems to realize her hardships, but has an overall passive endurance to the situation that she is in.
"The Wife's Lament" is an example of a fraunleider genre of Old English poetry.
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