an expression of the grief of the speaker's beloved. More recent interpretations have disputed this gnomic exhortation. According to John Niles, in this “genteel” reading, it seems less consequential whether the wife has been scorned by one husband or two; it is her “dignified passivity” as well as her gnomic wisdom on which scholars focus. In “vindictive” readings, however, the wife is generally seen to burn with anger toward one man – her husband. In such views, The Wife’s Lament begins as a bold statement of misery, transitions into a description of her misfortunes in which she nostalgically recalls happy days with her husband, and ends in a bitter curse upon this same man who has now abandoned her. One proponent of this approach is Barrie Ruth Straus, author of “Women’s Words as Weapons: Speech as Action in ‘The Wife’s Lament.’” Straus bases her analysis of the poem on the speech act theory of J.L. Austin and John Searle, which regards speech as an action. Strauss breaks the poem into sections and shows how the language or “illocutionary acts” of each can be seen as an assertive act of telling. In a world in which women have little control, Straus emphasizes how speech could be an act of power; thus in the first section, the narrator deliberately establishes an intent to tell her story. She then persuasively presents her story as one of being wronged by her husband, avenging herself in the telling. In light of this speech act theory, Straus concludes that the final ten lines of the poem should be construed as a curse upon the husband, as this is the “least problematic interpretation”. Like Straus, Niles views the poem as an aggressive act of speech. While arguing that the poem presents certain philological evidence to support an optative reading, the bulk of his support comes from contextual analysis of the act of cursing within the Anglo-Saxon culture. His article, “The Problem of the Ending of the Wife’s ‘Lament’ ” provides an intriguing overview of curses, discussing biblical influences of cursing as seen in Psalms 108 and the book of Deuteronomy. He also examines the act of cursing in charters and wills, quoting examples such as the following: “If anyone ever alters or removes anything in this will, may God’s grace and his eternal reward be taken from him forever…”. The Exeter Book itself is inscribed with such