Though the description of the text as a woman's song or "frauenlied"—lamenting for a lost or absent lover—is the dominant understanding of the poem, the text has nevertheless been subject to a variety of distinct treatments that fundamentally disagree with this view and propose alternatives. One such treatment considers the poem to be allegory, in which interpretation the lamenting speaker represents the Church as Bride of Christ or as an otherwise feminine allegorical figure. Another dissenting interpretation holds that the speaker, who describes herself held within an old earth cell ("eald is þes eorðsele") beneath an oak tree ("under actreo"), may indeed literally be located in a cell under the earth, and would therefore constitute a voice of the deceased, speaking from beyond the grave. Both the interpretations, as with most alternatives, face difficulties, particularly in the latter case, for which no analogous texts exist in the Old English corpus.