Where does the millennial woman's strength come from?

Connecting Then And Now, In Poetry

One of the things I admire most about my generation (millennials) is its refusal to be told what to do.

There’s a stereotype for what a mother should look like? I’ll create my own version of motherhood, thanks.

There’s a socially-defined beauty standard? I’ll find beauty in my own imperfections, thanks.

There’s an expected path for women as they journey through life? I’ll plot my own course, thanks.

We are the generation that has rebelled against the control that others have had over women’s lives, building on the liberating work done by our mothers and grandmothers.

What if I told you that this same spirit that has inspired so many millennials also indwelt our distant ancestors?

There is preserved in the written records, time and again, subtle hints of the frustration that early medieval women had at being pushed around by others more powerful than them; at having their lives controlled, and plans disrupted.

I’ve spoken often about this time as something of a golden age for women, and this was true. They lived before the crystallisation of the societal norms that so many of us have fought to deconstruct, so they were rebelling against these ideas as they found shape in their infancy. The battle of the sexes, though, was well and truly underway over 1,300 years ago, as women found themselves dissatisfied with the paths laid before them.

In this article, I’d like to share with you a poem that captures the experience of medieval female heartbreak and frustration in dramatic imagery. This theme of being ‘at the mercy of others’ (as I’ve often termed it) is something I have explored in my fiction writing; I find myself increasingly drawn to it.

We women are always at the mercy of others.

A Path Unchosen

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First, let’s read the poem in full. It is relatively short, and I think the whole narrative of the poem needs to be read in order to grasp fully the relatability of the narrator’s position.

The Wife’s Lament

I draw these words from my deep sadness,
my sorrowful lot. I can say that, 
since I grew up, I have not suffered
such hardships as now, old or new.
I am tortured by the anguish of exile.

First my lord forsook his family
for the tossing waves; I fretted at dawn
as to where in the world my lord might be.
In my sorrow I set out then,
a friendless wanderer, to search for my man.
But that man's kinsmen laid secret plans
to part us, so that we should live
most wretchedly, far from each other
in this wide world; I was seized with longings.

My lord asked me to live with him here;
I had few loved ones, loyal friends
in this country; that is reason for grief.
Then I found my own husband was ill-starred,
sad at heart, pretending, plotting
murder behind a smiling face. How often
we swore that nothing but death should ever
divide us; that is all changed now;
our friendship is as if it had never been.
Early and late, I must undergo hardship 
because of the feud of my own dearest loved one.
Men forced me to live in a forest grove,
under an oak tree in the earth-cave.
This cavern is age-old; I am choked with longings.
Gloomy are the valleys, too high the hills,
harsh strongholds overgrown with briars:
a joyless abode. The journey of my lord so often
cruelly seizes me. There are lovers on earth,
lovers alive who lie in bed,
when I pass through this earth-cave alone
and out under the oak tree at dawn;
there I must sit through the long summer's day
and there I mourn my miseries,
my many hardships; for I am never able
to quiet the cares of my sorrowful mind,
all the longings that are my life's lot.

Young men must always be serious in mind
and stout-hearted; they must hide
their heartaches, that host of constant sorrows,
behind a smiling face.

                                       Whether he is master
of his own fate or is exiled in a far-off land - 
sitting under rocky storm-cliffs, chilled
with hoar-frost, weary in mind,
surrounded by the sea in some sad place - 
my husband is caught in the clutches of anguish;
over and again he recalls a happier home.
Grief goes side by side with those
who suffer longing for a loved one.

The Wife’s Lament, tr. Kevin Crossley-Holland (1982: 56-7).

The complete meaning of this poem has been much debated, but its general story can be understood. A woman (the narrator) travels abroad to marry her lover, but his kinsmen conspire to separate them. She grieves for the life they could have had, seeing other loved-up couples living her dream, and she longs to see her husband again.

One thing that is unclear is the nature of their separation. Take the following lines of the poem, for example:

Men forced me to live in a forest-grove, 
under an oak tree in the earth-cave.

This is the translation given by Crossley-Holland (1982: 56-7). An alternative translation by Richard Hamer (2015: 71 and 73), however, is as follows:

So in this forest grove they made me dwell, 
under the oak-tree, in this earthy barrow.

And consider this even more recent translation by George Young (in Alice Jeffs 2022: 24):

A man (who else) made this canopied clearing 
my haunt: an earthen hollow at the heel of an oak.

The sassy-ness of the bracketed phrase in Young’s translation caught me off guard the first time I read it. What a modern sentiment capturing the narrator’s feeling that she and her female peers have been repeatedly let down by men! Unfortunately, my Old English is not good enough to rate the translation on its accuracy, but if it does capture well the essence of the poet’s mood, it is one that many women in the twenty-first century will resonate with I’m sure.

What is also unclear, to me at least, is the nature of her entrapment within this ‘earth-cave’ or ‘barrow’. A barrow is a type of funerary monument, consisting of a large earthen mound constructed over the top of the grave or cremation deposit. They were initially symbolic of status: the earliest Anglo-Saxon kings were buried in lavish wealth under these barrows, as were powerful seventh-century women (see here for a spectacular male example and here for a very recent female find). By the later Anglo-Saxon period, however, they had become sites of suspicion and superstition, believed to be inhabited by evil spirits and used as execution cemeteries.

Has she been murdered and is now ‘living’ (i.e., buried) in her final resting place, grieving as she witnesses the continued lives of her lover and other lovers still walking the earth?

OR is she comparing her existence while separated from her lover to the pain of death?

It’s likely we’ll never know the ‘true’ meaning of this phrase, and perhaps we aren’t meant to. Perhaps it’s supposed to have a liminal, hazy quality, that straddles the worlds of the living and the dead. Either way, we know that she’s mad about the situation - and her anger is directed towards those who have conspired against her.

And we know, from these words, that medieval people felt intense love and the pain of separation; felt disappointment in their ‘life’s lot’; and were jealous of others around them. We know, too, that men experienced heartbreak - otherwise why include the line about them needing to put on a brave face, hiding ‘their heartaches, that host of constant sorrows behind a smiling face’?

Aren’t they relatable experiences that many of us today have faced? (though I’ll admit we’re unlikely to have been buried beneath a barrow…)

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