Rereading The Wife’s Lament with Dido of Carthage: The Husband and the Herheard

Abstract

The Old English poem in The Exeter Book titled The Wife’s Lament is about longing and loneliness; the woman speaking in the poem longs for her absent husband who has sent her to live in a “cave under an oak tree”. The husband’s attitude toward his wife is a major point of controversy among commentators on the poem: has he sent her there as a punishment or for her protection? This essay argues that he loves her and seeks to protect her in his absence. The argument supporting this view addresses the following three topics: the reason he must leave and his brooding silence preceding that departure, the culture of warrior oaths, and the nature of the “cave” where the speaker is located. The first two discussions assess and reframe previous scholarship, while the discussion of the speaker’s location introduces a new area of research, the archaeology of early medieval rock-cut buildings. Finding that the poet might imagine the Wife inhabiting such a constructed building invites us to think about her, her husband, the poem, and even the Exeter Book itself within a new and interesting real-world context.

Radegund and Amalfrid in The Wife’s Lament

“…19 The halfline bliþe gebaero has been seen to work in both directions, 20 but not all metrists accept the existence of apo koinou constructions in Old English verse, 21 and it seems better to read it as a hakenstil finale to the foregoing list of attributes. 22 If the formula bliþe gebaero looks back rather than forwards, it gives the new husband a debonnaire style which deceives his wife about the cruelty of his character and especially about his forthcoming role in a morþor.…”