The title here sets the table for the poem. It gives us a pretty good idea of what to expect in the poem and clues us in to both the speaker and her tone. All of this is pretty much confirmed in the opening few lines—wait, or is it?
See, no title actually appears anywhere in the original text. The poem simply begins, like the rest of the texts in the Exeter Book, with its first line. The words "wife's lament" don't appear anywhere, in fact. Weirder still, there's actually no mention of the Old English word for "wife" ("wif"), or "husband" ("ceorl"). The speaker's gender can be inferred from pronoun usage, as we point out in the Detailed Summary, so we can tell, at least, that the poem is from the woman's perspective. But how can we even tell that this poem is written from the perspective of a wife to her husband? The Old English term "hlaford" most closely translates to "lord," though within the context of the poem and surrounding pronouns, it likely means husband. Probably. Maybe. The critics are in dispute.
One such critic, Benjamin Thorpe, one of the first great scholars of Anglo-Saxon literature, first titled the poem "The Exile's Lament" way back in 1842. Eight years later, the poem's title was changed to the gendered "Wife's Lament." How might our reading of the poem change if it was still called "The Exile's Lament?" Does the current title limit our understanding the poem? Is a title even necessary? These are questions to think about when reading any poem. Given this poem's textual ambiguity and murky history, however, they are especially important to consider here.