for a reciprocal relationship exists as well: The wife
uses dual pronouns in her expression of grief to convey
the relationship with her husband: unc (us two, l. 12b)
and wit (we two, l. 13). The usage of these pronouns,
which are no longer found in English, increase the pri-
vate, inanimate nature of their relationship.
Another, less common, interpretation of the poem
relies on ALLEGORY. In this reading, the wife is read as
the church (the bride of Christ) who has been exiled
from her lord (Christ in heaven). A similarly unusual
reading sees the wife as someone speaking from
beyond the grave, relying on her description of being
sent to live in an underground cell, which might be a
grave.
As an elegy, “The Wife’s Lament” shares many char-
acteristics with the other Old English poems of like
construction such as “The SEAFARER” and “The WAN-
DERER.” There is a solitary fi gure speaking in the fi rst
person about being exiled, there is a sea journey, and
the speaker faces hostile forces. Whether or not it is an
elegy, most critics agree that the poem is an expression
of mournful longing and female desire. Feminist critics
have especially appreciated it as one of the only fi rst
person female-authored (or at least female-voiced)
poems to come out of early British literature.
FURTHER READING
Battles, Paul. “Of Graves, Caves, and Subterranean Dwell-
ings: Eordscraef and Eordsele in the Wife’s Lament.” PQ
73, no. 3 (1994): 267–286.
Gameson, Fiona, and Richard Gameson. “Wulf and Eas-
wacer, the Wife’s Lament and the Discovery of the
Individual in Old English Verse.” In Studies in English
Language and Literature: “Doubt Wisely,” edited by M. J.
Toswell and E. M. Tyler. London: Routledge, 1996.
Harris, Joseph. “A Note on Eoroscrœfl eorosele and Current
Interpretations of the Wife’s Lament.” ES 58, no. 3 (1977):
204–208.
Straus Barrie, Ruth. “Women’s Words as Weapons: Speech
as Action in the Wife’s Lament.” In Old English Shorter
Poems: Basic Readings, edited by Katherine O’Brien
O’Keeffe, 335–356. New York: Garland, 1994.
“WILL AND TESTAMENT” ISABELLA WHIT-
NEY (1573) ISABELLA WHITNEY’s “Will and Testa-
ment” is perhaps her best-known poem, and it forms
the last section of her second book, A Sweet Nosegay.
Throughout the book, Whitney emphasizes her pov-
erty as an unemployed maid, and in her “Will and Tes-
tament” she explains that she must leave London
because she can no longer afford to live there. She
compares the city to a cruel lover and says that she
therefore has no reason to mourn her departure. Nev-
ertheless, she admits that she, like many other women,
loves those who are cruel to her. Having recalled that
London has never helped Whitney when she needed
assistance, she says farewell to the city and writes her
fi nal will, a mock testament in which she makes Lon-
don her executor, bequest, and benefi ciary; in other
words, she asks London to supervise the distribution
of London to London.
Whitney begins her will in an unusual manner, not-
ing not, as writers of wills generally do, that she is of
sound mind but ailing body, but rather that she is
“whole in body, and in mind, / but very weak in purse”
(ll. 37–38). Whitney’s only illness, it seems, is fi nan-
cial, but this is a fatal failing in the commercial envi-
ronment of 16th-century London. She then proceeds
to will away to London all the things that London
already contains and all the things that she must leave
to London since she cannot afford to take them with
her. Her will therefore becomes a map of London, but
it is a map that focuses on the stores and the merchan-
dise they sell and on the poorhouses and debtors’ pris-
ons in which those who are too poor to buy and sell
are incarcerated. In fact, Whitney admits that she was
saving one of these debtors’ prisons for herself, but she
decides to give it away when she realizes that she will
never be in debt since she is so poor that nobody will
lend her money. She thus describes London as an
entirely commercial community in which one must
have money to survive.
Whitney’s map of the city points out both the great
wealth of London and the inequity with which this
wealth is distributed. Having left London all the things
that “needful be” (l. 257), she asks that they “with con-
science... disbursed be” when she is gone (ll. 259–
260). It seems unlikely that this latter request will be
fulfi lled, however, since Whitney asks FORTUNE to be
London’s aid in distributing the goods, suggesting that
it will, as usual, be a matter of luck that determines
who gets what. She wryly admits that she has not left“WILL AND TESTAMENT” 471