Reading the Middle Ages: Oral and Literate Cultures

Hills - Trees Finished - Wife Water by Mikayla Dickinson

The Wife’s Lament : A Modern Artistic Depiction

 

For my creative piece I decided to focus on representations of the poetic elegy entitled

The Wife’s Lament. To depict this poem, I created three pieces of digital art each showcasing

what I considered to be key components of the poem's narrative, and ultimately strived to display

the theme of isolation.

 

The theme of isolation is a major part of The Wife’s Lament, as the verses depict the

musings of a woman who has been separated from her husband, due to an altercation with his

kinsmen. Within the first stanza of the poem, the wife’s displeasure is made apparent as she

states, “I am tortured by the anguish of exile” (line 5), clearly using these specific terms to

describe the harm her separation from others is causing her. The most interesting component of

the elegy to me was the association presented between nature and the wife’s forced separation

from her love. As such, my art pieces focused on depictions of the correlation between nature

and isolation within the poem.

 

For instance, the wife initially professes, “First my lord forsook his family / for the

tossing waves;” (lines 6-7). I understood these lines to indicate that the couple were separated by

him being cast out to sea. As such, one art piece focuses largely on the downtrodden face of a

woman, as the vast ocean spreads out behind her with a ship sailing away in the background. In

this digital drawing, my main focus was trying to create a physical depiction of the wife’s

emotion, by focusing on drawing her facial expression and body language. Her feelings of

sorrow were the most important aspects of this drawing, and were largely inspired by the use of

the word “forsook” which denotes a sense of abandonment.

 

The poem continues with the wife stating, “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” (lines

26-28). To represent this description, I tried to encapsulate the wife’s perspective. As such, she is

not present in the piece, but rather the focus is centred on the expansive form of tall trees as they

stretch upwards. I tried to make a creative piece that represented the act of looking upwards at

the massive trees, in order to duplicate the sense of inferiority and isolation individuals often feel

in a forest. I placed the trees in circular configurations to try to imitate the sense of being

surrounded, and used the dark colours of grey and black in order to express the wife’s

depression. Her feelings in this environment are made clear by the last line which uses the phrase

“choked with longing”. The use of the word “choked” indicates that the wife is feeling

suppressed in her predicament, and the term “longing” indicates her displeasure, in how she

clearly wished to change her hopeless plight. As such, I left the trees barren in my image, in

order to depict the despair of the situation.

 

Finally, the wife additionally asserts, “Gloomy are the valley’s, too high the hills, / harsh

strongholds overgrown with briars: / a joyless abode” (lines 29-31). In my final piece I attempted

to depict this environment, relying on the imagery utilized in these lines, and once again placing

the wife in the image. Here she is placed to the side of the image, and is much smaller in the

environment of valleys, hills, and mountains. I made this decision, as I hoped to emulate the

feeling of isolation in the vastness of the environment surrounding the wife. In her small stature,

I hoped to convey how insurmountable the different elements of nature are to the wife, thus

cementing her inability to reconvene with her husband.

 

Furthermore, each of the pieces I created utilize an oil painting style, as I was influenced

by the work of Vincent Van Gogh when creating these images. The appearance of oil paintings

are very contradictory to me, as they are simultaneously flowing, yet disjointed, and calm, yet discomfiting.

As such, I felt this style worked well for the melancholic, slow-paced, hopeless tone of The Wife’s Lament.

I also added the moving versions of the pictures, as I feel the

movements bring life into them, an aspect I appreciate since the poem is narrative in its nature.

The movement also helps add a level of discomfort due to their slithering appearance.

In closing, I think that The Wife’s Lament ’s main theme is the experience of isolation or

loneliness, and I hope that the digital images I created are appropriate companions pieces. The

focus on this theme in both my art and the elegy is appropriate given the time period, as it helps

frame the lives of women during the Middle Ages. It depicts a woman who is controlled by the

actions of men, and ultimately frames her as an individual being destroyed by her loneliness, a

suitable depiction given the gender discrepancies of the time, and the forced reliance many

women had on male providers. As such, the continued exploration of such art is important, as an

understanding of the female experience is being depicted and understood through such work.

 

 

 

 

How to cite this research:

 

Dickinson, Mikayla. "Hills." In Reading the Middle Ages, supvr. Teresa Russo, Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (MARS), Brock University, March 2021, Niagara (Hills - Trees Finished - Wife Water by Mikayla Dickinson · Reading the Middle Ages: Oral and Literate Cultures · Brock University Library). Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL), Tim Ribaric and Daniel Brett.

Dickinson, Mikayla. "Trees Finished." In Reading the Middle Ages, supvr. Teresa Russo, Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (MARS), Brock University, March 2021, Niagara (Hills - Trees Finished - Wife Water by Mikayla Dickinson · Reading the Middle Ages: Oral and Literate Cultures · Brock University Library). Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL), Tim Ribaric and Daniel Brett.

Dickinson, Mikayla. "Wife Water." In Reading the Middle Ages, supvr. Teresa Russo, Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (MARS), Brock University, March 2021, Niagara (Hills - Trees Finished - Wife Water by Mikayla Dickinson · Reading the Middle Ages: Oral and Literate Cultures · Brock University Library). Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL), Tim Ribaric and Daniel Brett.

Dickinson, Mikayla. "The Wife's Lament: A Modern Artistic Depiction." In Reading the Middle Ages, supvr. and ed. Teresa Russo, Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (MARS), Brock University, March 2021, Niagara (Hills - Trees Finished - Wife Water by Mikayla Dickinson · Reading the Middle Ages: Oral and Literate Cultures · Brock University Library). Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL), Tim Ribaric and Daniel Brett.