The Wife's Lament
The Wife's Lament is written in first person persona from the eyes of a wife whom
claims the words come from a "deep sadness". She explains to the reader that her despair
began when her husband left she and their family behind. She was filled with worry for her
beloved and his journey and made the decision to undertake a quest to find him, setting
out as a lonely and "friendless wanderer." However, her husband's family did not want the
couple to be reunited and devised plans to keep them on opposite sides of the globe. The
continued separation left the wife heartbroken and longing for her husband.
The wife shares with the reader that her husband ultimately requested her to live with
him in a new country and
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out of love for him, she moved to this foreign place where she had no friends and knew no one aside from her husband. Though, she quickly discovered that her husband had been plotting behind her back. Despite his declarations of love, he was actually planning to commit mortal crimes which the reader can only assume were to be against the wife.
She remembers the good times of their marriage when they had sworn
to each other that only death could part them with resignation and laments the love that
once was. She sadly relay's that she could never feel fondness for this man again. The
friendship which was the beginning of their love affair no longer existed within the eyes of
either party.
The Wife continued to face hardship at the hands of her husband and his ongoing
schemes. To stay safe, she went into hiding in a forest grove in a cave under an oak tree,
and that is the location from which she is writing her lament. The cavern leaves the Wife
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filled with longing for her home and the presence of her loved ones.
The location around the Wife is very similar to the feelings in her own heart in that they
are desolate and depressing. The Wife describes her surrounding area using the
following imagery: "This earth-hall is old, and I ache with longing; the dales are dark, the hills too high, harsh hedges overhung with briars,a home without joy." (Lines 29-32) It is deduced from this that the wife is very unhappy with her current location and yearns for her home land. The Wife describes her despair over the love lost between she and the man she believed that would love her forever. She thinks of happy lovers who lie together in bed on summer days while she lives alone in the earth-cave under the oak tree and is filled with envy. She is unable to rid her mind of thoughts of her husband and the happiness that they once shared. She resents the fact that young women are supposed to be serious and courageous, hiding their heartaches behind a smiling face to save their antagonists from having to feel any regret or guilt over the ways that they failed their marriage. She finishes her lament by once again invoking her husband. She does not know if he has conquered his fate, or if he is exiled in another land. The Wife feels and somewhat hopes that her husband is also filled with anguish and constantly reminded of the happy home he has lost. She theorizes that grief is always present for those who are separated from a loved one. As is always pertaining to literature, there have been many interpretations of The Wife's Lament some which many scholars agree upon and some which are rarely agreed with. Many scholars believe that the Wife is a peace-weaver whom was living with a hostile Ashley Guffey Page 3 tribe and chose to sever ties with her family and traveled to a new land where she feels isolated and alone. It is obvious to readers that she misses her husband profoundly but the reader is left unclear as to whether or not the reciprocates her feelings. He may still love his wife and could possibly have turned against her due to his family's disapproval. Another theory is that the husband may still have love in his heart for his wife but was forced to take action against her because of the tribe. It is easy to deduce from the intimate tone of the poem that husband and wife still love one another. This is supported through the use of Old English dual pronouns which make the lament feel private and sincere. A less popular interpretation is that the poem is actually an allegory. In this interpretation, the Wife represents the Church and is lamenting her exile from Jesus Christ, her Lord and Savior. An even more rare interpretation is that which the Wife's description of an underground cell signifies that she is deceased and is speaking from the grave. The prevalent theme in The Wife's Lament is the tragedy of losing a beloved one and the despair which accompanies it. The Wife's sadness is a very personal thing which she has chosen to share with the reader in desperation of finding a relief from her pain. It is unclear whether the Wife intended for her lament to be read but it feels to the reader as if her sadness is very sincere.
Previously, the narrator has intimated, “She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own.” Her thoughts and emotions engulf her, but she does not “struggle” with them. They “belonged to her and were her own.” She does not have to share them with anyone; conversely, she must share her life and her money with her husband and children and with the many social organizations and functions her role demands.
In “The Yellow Wall-paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the unnamed female protagonist is going through a rough time in her life. (For now on, this paper will refer to this unnamed character as the “the narrator in ‘Wall-paper,’” short for “The Yellow Wall-paper. The narrator is confined to room to a room with strange wall-paper. This odd wall-paper seems to symbolize the complexity and confusion in her life. In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard must also deal with conflict as she must deal with the death of her spouse. At first there is grief, but then there is the recognition that she will be free. The institute of marriage ties the two heroines of these two short stories together. Like typical young women of the late 19th century, they were married, and during the course of their lives, they were expected to stay married. Unlike today where divorce is commonplace, marriage was a very holy bond and divorce was taboo. This tight bond of marriage caused tension in these two characters.
faced society only to protect and be close to the man she still loved. The
She proclaims her husbands love throughout the story, I feel, in an attempt to bind the disconnection she feels with her husband.
forfill her dream. Three months after her mom died, her father got a letter in the mail. It was
, how it drowns to his attention how much he had longed for his sister/future wife to be. Yet he never felt so lonely whilst within her company. Whether it was the fact that the burning desire driven him away. Or just his sheer highly intelligent curiosity got in the way of settling for second best.
As the story begins, the character of the husband has a negative personality. He lacks compassion, is narrow-minded, and is jealous of his wife’s friendship with a blind man named Robert. His constantly complains that “a blind man in my house was not something [he looked] forward to” (362). The close outside friendship between the narrator’s wife and Robert provokes his insecurities. This friendship has lasted for ten years and during those years, they have exchanged countless tapes regarding experiences they have gone through. Because of this, her husband feels “she [has] told him everything or it so it seemed” (363) about their relationship.
“The Faithful Wife”, written by Barbara L. Greenberg, uses first-person narration to depict the style, language, and theme of the poem. By using first-person narration, Barbara Greenberg was able to portray events and ideas very persuasively to the reader. In addition, this first-person narrator creates dramatic irony concerning the title in reference to the body of the poem.
The narrator is forbidden from work and confined to rest and leisure in the text because she is supposedly stricken with, "…temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency," that is diagnosed by both her husband and her brother, who is also a doctor (1).
The narrator’s wife knew Robert for a long time because she used to work for him and his wife had died so she was the one who was taking care of him since he was all alone. “I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit” (Carver 2) said the narrator. The narrator did not like the blind man because he was extremely close with his wife and they were always sending each other tapes in the mail to keep in touch. Since the narrator was not such a big fan of the blind man, he did not understand why it was such a important time when Robert had asked to touch his wife’s face during her last day working with him. She was working with him all summer but he was blind so he did not even know what she looked like so when he touched her face, she wanted to write a poem about it since it was an important time during her summer job helping him. A while after the narrators wife worked with Robert, they ended up communicating again and she sent him a recording of her talking about her recent life. “She loved her husband but she didn’t like it where they lived and she didn’t like it that he was a part of the military-industrial thing” (Carver 2). The narrator was getting jealous of this relationship between the two of them because it seemed to be going better then his and his wife’s relationship. Since the blind man moved into their house for a period of time,
Marriage can be seen as a subtle form of oppression, like many things which are dictated by social expectations. In Kate Chopin’s The Story of An Hour, Louise Mallard finds herself in distress due to the event of her husband’s death that makes her question who she is as a person. The author cleverly uses this event to create the right atmosphere for Mrs. Mallard to fight against her own mind. As the short story progresses, we see that Mrs. Mallard moves forward with her new life and finds peace in her decision to live for herself. This shows that marriage too is another chain that holds oneself back. Not wanting to admit this to herself, Louise
Her thoughts and decisions are anything but just and ethically correct. She has not been fully experiencing the joy that marriage should have brought. She felt the death of her husband as the beginging of her new world. Her dream and excitement of entering
The bleak tone of this story takes a particularly sad and disturbing tinge when the wife illustrates a scene from early on in her marriage where she tries to get her husband to satisfy her desire and provide her with mutual satisfaction, only to have him rebuke and reprimand her. In fact, the husband responds in such a particularly brusque and hysterical manner that the reader can see how traumatized the wife would have been at ...
The short stories “Souls Belated” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” have in common ‘Marriage’ as main theme. However, the marriage is treated quite differently in both short stories. In "Souls Belated", Lydia chooses to take control of her destiny, to deviate from conventions and to choose what is good for her. She is the strongest character of the couple. Whereas, in "The Yellow Wallpaper", the name of the main character who is also the narrator of the story is not known. She is identified as being John’s wife. This woman, contrary to Lydia in "Souls Belated" is completely locked up in her marriage. This essay will first describe and compare the characters of Lydia and John's wife in the context of marriage, and then it will look at how marriage is described, treated and experienced by couples in these two short stories.
In the story “To Room Nineteen” written by Doris Lessing the protagonists, Susan Rawlings, privacy was intruded which lead to her suicide. Before Susan married she had a comfortable life with a great career however she was forced to give that all up. In her commentary “In Room Nineteen-Why Did Susan Commit Suicide? Reconsidering Gender Relations from Doris Lessing’s Novel, Wang Ningchuan and Wen Yiping Write: “Marriage for Susan had become a turning point from equality to subordination. The first fault that Susan made after marriage was her voluntary dispossession of her private property, the flat. And then she renounced her job for being expectant. The both symbolized her unintelligent relinquish of material or economic independence, withdrawing her into an inferior or subordinate social position. Nominally, it is due to Susan's reconciliation toward marriage. Ontologically, the reconciliation was surrender to her gender identity, that it was natural for a marital woman not being an individual” (67). She would stay at home and take care of her children, yet she longed for them to grow up so she can have some time of her own. She would tell herself “Soon the twins would go to school, and they would be away from home from nine until four. These hours in Susan's eye; would be the preparation of Susan’s own slow ema...