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.