Without a doubt, the Old English poem “The Wife’s Lament” is an elegiac poem: the speaker in the poem is contemplating her heavy fate as a social outcast, exiled from her beloved husband. But although the lamenting tone is a characteristic central to the interpretation of the poem, it is also obfuscating the important feminist message this poem is propagating. ​With this paper, I am arguing for a feminist reading of the poem in which the speaker’s voice as a woman is of paramount importance. The poem’s main purpose is not to passively wail over the wife’s betrayal by the family she married into; instead, the wife’s lament is to be understood as a protest of her dreadful fate. Her lament is a powerful attempt to reclaim her dignity despite her vulnerability. As such, her lament is not a piece of evidence for the powerlessness of Anglo-Saxon women; in fact, it is highlighting the agency of the speaker and all the women in the warrior culture of the Anglo-Saxons.

A strong statement for its main subject is already made in the first lines of the poem. From the very beginning, the speaker establishes that this beautiful work of poetry is not primarily about her husband, but about her own feelings and thoughts. She declares: “Full of sorrow I shall make this song about me, my own fate” (1-2). This passage implies that she consciously made the poetic choice to make this piece of poetry about her. The perspective that matters is the speaker’s, and the speaker’s perspective only. Opening with these two lines, the audience is being asked to direct their sole attention to the speaker and not to the other figures appearing in the poem such as her husband, deviating from the majority of other texts with a male at their center. This direct demand for the audience’s attention indicates a certain level of self-confidence and assertiveness in the speaker, establishing the notion of her agency and strength from the very beginning on. As Old English was an inflectional language, the pronouns she is using in these opening lines were female. Thus, the emphasis on the speaker’s voice being female is even stronger in the original version of the poem. This strong emphasis on the femininity of the speaker corresponds with the role of women in Anglo-Saxon culture. In their society, women were not only allowed to own property, they were also highly educated (Emmerichs n.p.). This makes an intentionally increased focus on the voice and agency of the female speaker of this specific poem more likely than it would be in other medieval cultures that did not encourage the education of women.

Immediately after setting the focus of the poem, the speaker begins with establishing her strength of character. She does so by referring to the hard times she has endured in her life already: “Surely I can tell what sufferings I endured since I came of age, both the new and old, never more than now” (2-4). Ever since she has been considered an adult woman in her culture, she has had to face a lot of adversity, and at the moment she is speaking, this adversity is even worse than it has ever been. She has not had an easy life, and by communicating this openly, she is telling her audience that she has already lived through a series of hardships. This further establishes her strength of character; despite having had a difficult life, she has not lost her voice and agency yet.

Despite this demonstration of her strength of character, one might still argue that the speaker appears to be in a rather weak position and therefore has little power and agency. Concerning the situation of the female speaker in the poem, the audience learns she has been tricked and betrayed by her husband’s family: “My husband’s kin had hatched a plot conspiring secretly to separate us so that we widest apart in the world’s realms lived in most misery” (11-14). But though she has been defeated in her pursuit of marital happiness, her ability to speak out for herself has not been diminished by this defeat. Her very function as the speaker of the poem underlines this. She cannot be silenced -- and reclaims her dignity by powerfully uttering the protest of her fate through the poem. The text itself is proof of the reach of her voice and her ability to take control of her life even in the moments she appears to be most vulnerable.

Considering the state of women’s education in Anglo-Saxon society, one can also claim that the speaker here exploits the tools given to her by her education with great intentionality. She is facing a fate similar to imprisonment; yet she still manages to utilize her refined intellect to create a beautiful piece of poetry. Physically imprisoned, she is being forced to live in a dark cave by the family of her husband: “I was told to live in a grove of trees under an oak in an earthen cave” (27-28). Only during the day, she dares to leave her physical prison; but even when she leaves her physical prison, her thoughts are constantly revolving around the loss she suffered, so she just sits outside the cave pondering her fate (35-36). This makes her fate a uniquely female experience. Unlike maybe the males in the Anglo-Saxon warrior culture, she does not have the opportunity to physically resist the injustice she experiences and is not necessarily free to wander and explore the rest of the world. However, her education provided her with other tools: her intellect and poesy, which she uses to make her voice heard and protest her unchangeable fate. The intentionality with which she exploits these tools given to her is again highlighting her strong voice and agency as reflected in the text.

The strength behind this intentionality carries over to the speaker’s refusal to give up, despite the adversity she is up against. Though the wife acknowledges her suffering and laments it bitterly, she never mentions an unwillingness to continue her life. Instead, she seems to be determined to tolerate her fate to the best of her abilities. This determination is reflected in her language: she proclaims she “must endure without end the misery of exile” (5) and that she “must bear the malice of the man [she] loved” (25-26). The verbs to endure and bear she uses here are not words of surrender or relinquishment but of resilience and perseverance. These resolute statements here thus leave no doubt that she is going to attempt to battle through her personal misfortunes, not even considering the possibility of ending her own life. This is particularly remarkable since the Anglo-Saxons considered the fate she is suffering -- exile from her community -- to be far worse than death (Emmerichs n.p.). The firm proclamation of her willingness to suffer through her fate no matter how miserable it might get for her indicates an extraordinary strength of character and therefore supports the notion of the speaker’s strength running through the entire poem.

But the speaker is not only strong and courageous enough to endure her miserable fate: she is also willing to conceal her inner turmoil and suffering from the rest of the world. Taking the notion of her strength even further, she expresses her intention to pretend to be content no matter how much pain she is actually feeling. 

If ever anyone should feel anguish, harsh pain at heart, she should put on a happy appearance while enduring endless sorrows - should she possess all the world’s bliss, or be banished far away from her homeland, the elegy reads (42-47).

Putting a happy face on despite her anguish requires even more strength than just sitting through the anguish. Hence this passage of advice again bespeaks of the speaker’s unusual strength and controlledness; though she is in deep lament, the lament is dignified and more internal than external, which allows the speaker to simultaneously display the strength of her voice and agency. Although some literary critics are divided on the topic of the speaker of these specific lines, the newest scholarship on the poem suggests that it is the wife herself speaking in third person (Greenblatt 124). Still, even if it is not the wife speaking in these lines, the third person pronoun “she” still indicates that these lines here should be understood as a piece of advice specifically targeted towards women. As such, one can still argue that it supports the overall message of the poem which is highlighting female strength and agency in spite of severe grief and sorrow.

This medieval poem invites us as modern readers to challenge our perceptions of women and the sense of victimhood. Even though the female speaker has clearly experienced a dreadful betrayal by the family of her husband, she chooses not to be a passive victim but reclaims her voice and agency through her lament. The poem exemplifies the timeless power of literature and language to function as tools prompting shifts in perspective. They can be used to reclaim control, raise awareness, utter protest against injustices and sometimes even provide comfort in seemingly hopeless situations. The intentionality the speaker in the poem here displays with her language is something our society can definitely benefit from. For instance, in the past couple of years, there has been a demand for shift in the language concerning women who experienced sexual violence. Instead of being labeled as ‘victims’, many women prefer to be talked about as ‘survivors’ in order to resist the notion of passivity and helplessness connected to the term ‘victim.’ This demonstrates a functioning of language similar to “The Wife’s Lament.” Thus, it can be concluded that a feminist reading of the poem helps in understanding the timeless significance language carries, challenging us to be intentional with our language and to broaden our understanding of different perspectives (in this case of the female perspective).

Works Cited

Emmerichs, Sharon. “Anglo-Saxon Poetry: ‘The Wanderer’ and ‘The Wife’s Lament.’” University of Alaska Anchorage, 11 September 2019, Anchorage, AK. Lecture.

Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. ​The Norton Anthology of English Literature, ​10th ed., vol. A, 2018.

“The Wife’s Lament.” ​The Norton Anthology of English Literature,​ 10th ed., vol. A, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 2018, pp.123-125.

​​​​​​__________________________________
MARIE RIES is a senior pursuing Baccalaureate degrees in English and Journalism & Digital Media. This piece was selected by Professor Sharon Emmerichs.