The Wife's Lament Analysis

The Anglo-Saxon poem, “The Wife’s Lament” is written in a first person narrative, which gives it more depth than if it had been simply written in the third. The poem is the lament of a titular wife because she is “tortured by the anguish of exile” (5). She feels forsaken by her lord, who she also refers to as her husband, who has left her alone to sail the ocean blue. Even though the author is unknown, it is my impression that the poem was written by a woman because of the intuitive way in which the author conveys her depth of loneliness and the total isolation of which the author speaks. If the author was merely a casual observer, he or she would not be able to speak with the sorrowful depth of which the exiled wife speaks with. For instance,