A Sorrowful Woman
The story that is A Sorrowful Woman seems to be a story told from the point of view of a narrator who focuses only slightly on the inner conflict of one of the main charters in the story. The character of which I am speaking is never referred to by name, instead is called she, the woman, mommy, and wife throughout the entire story which lends credence to the conclusion of the viewpoint as being told from the outside. The first indication that the focus of the story will be not of a warm and loving nature is the line “The sight of them made her so sad and sick she did not want to see them again”(1). This is where a hypothesis can begin to be formed as to who the antagonist of the story is, bearing the statement above in mind, the character known as the woman.
The crux of the story is a woman who suffers a manic depressed breakdown for a reason that is not so readily apparent; however, when the woman looks at her husband and healthy happy child and grows mentally ill and physically tired (Godwin). The conclusion for the cause of her anguish is from the child a r...
The narrator is forbidden from work and confined to rest and leisure in the text because she is supposedly stricken with, "…temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency," that is diagnosed by both her husband and her brother, who is also a doctor (1).
...en-year-old girl”. She has now changed mentally into “someone much older”. The loss of her beloved brother means “nothing [will] ever be the same again, for her, for her family, for her brother”. She is losing her “happy” character, and now has a “viole[nt]” personality, that “[is] new to her”. A child losing its family causes a loss of innocence.
Louise, the unfortunate spouse of Brently Mallard dies of a supposed “heart disease.” Upon the doctor’s diagnosis, it is the death of a “joy that kills.” This is a paradox of happiness resulting into a dreadful ending. Nevertheless, in reality it is actually the other way around. Of which, is the irony of Louise dying due to her suffering from a massive amount of depression knowing her husband is not dead, but alive. This is the prime example to show how women are unfairly treated. If it is logical enough for a wife to be this jovial about her husband’s mournful state of life then she must be in a marriage of never-ending nightmares. This shows how terribly the wife is being exploited due her gender in the relationship. As a result of a female being treated or perceived in such a manner, she will often times lose herself like the “girl
The narrator, a new mother, is revoked of her freedom to live a free life and denied the fact that she is “sick”, perhaps with postpartum depression, by her husband, a physician, who believes whatever sorrows she is feeling now will pass over soon. The problematic part of this narrative is that this woman is not only kept isolated in a room she wishes to have nothing to do with, but her creative expression is revoked by her husband as we can see when she writes: “there comes John, and I must put this away, - he hates to have me write a word (Gilman,
Gail Godwin's short story "A Sorrowful Woman" revolves around a wife and mother who becomes overwhelmed with her husband and child and withdraws from them, gradually shutting them completely out of her life. Unsatisfied with her role as dutiful mother and wife, she tries on other roles, but finds that none of them satisfy her either. She is accustomed to a specific role, and has a difficult time coping when a more extensive array of choices is presented to her. This is made clear in this section of the story.
No person is inherently mad; humans have caused other humans to drown their own sanity which can then submerge that person into an ocean of madness. Historically, madness had become a common occurrence with women due to several stress factors they must endure on a daily basis: finding a husband, baring children, raising children, find a suitable job, retaining femininity, and more. Authors Charlotte Gilman and Jhumpa Lahiri explored the psyche of two women who were facing very stressful situations. Gilman’s The Yellow-Wallpaper, introduces her readers to an unnamed nineteenth century woman who is slowly falling into madness. The protagonist must endure the “rest cure” where she must live without artistic expression, human contact, or freedom to go where she pleases. After months of enduring, she is ultimately shoved into madness by her husband, whom originally started her treatment. Lahiri’s protagonist, Aparna, is forced into an arranged marriage, and then moves to Boston with her new husband to live a new life with their daughter, Usha. Aparna is being neglected by her husband, finds it difficult to adjust to Boston culture, and spends most of her time being a house wife. She finally finds a friend, and possibly a love, in another Bengali man named Pranab. Once he was engaged and then married, Aparna revels to Usha that she was on the brink of committing suicide. Both characters were being controlled and had little to no say in what they could or could not do. These restraints with the added on stress that they faced cause both to the edge of madness. Women who had to withstand the struggles of doing what is expected of them while still attempting to do what they desire encounter many restraints that force them to stray away fr...
Early in the film , a psychologist is called in to treat the troubled child :and she calmed the mother with a statement to the effect that, “ These things come and go but they are unexplainable”. This juncture of the film is a starting point for one of the central themes of the film which is : how a fragile family unit is besieged by unusual forces both natural and supernatural which breaks and possesses and unites with the morally challenged father while the mother and the child through their innocence, love, and honesty triumph over these forces.
... that he resembles the proverbial "poor cat" that wanted the fish but would not get its paws wet. she tells him that her own lack of pity would extend to murdering her own child as it suckled at her breast. With this one terrifying example, she confirms that "the milk of human kindness" is absent in her.
There is no one to listen to her or care for her ‘personal’ opinions. Her husband cares for her, in a doctor’s fashion, but her doesn’t listen to her (Rao, 39). Dealing with a mentally ill patient can be difficult, however, it’s extremely inappropriate for her husband to be her doctor when he has a much larger job to fulfill. He solely treats his wife as a patient telling her only what could benefit her mental sickness rather than providing her with the companionship and support she desperately needs. If her husband would have communicated with her on a personal level, her insanity episode could have been prevented. Instead of telling her everything she needed he should’ve been there to listen and hear her out. Instead she had to seek an alternate audience, being her journal in which he then forbids her to do. All of this leads to the woman having nobody to speak or express emotion to. All of her deep and insane thoughts now fluttered through her head like bats in the Crystal Cave.
Suffering from the death of a close friend, the boy tries to ignore his feelings and jokes on his sister. His friend was a mental patient who threw himself off a building. Being really young and unable to cope with this tragedy, the boy jokes to his sister about the bridge collapsing. "The mention of the suicide and of the bridge collapsing set a depressing tone for the rest of the story" (Baker 170). Arguments about Raisinettes force the father to settle it by saying, "you will both spoil your lunch." As their day continues, their arguments become more serious and present concern for the father who is trying to understand his children better. In complete agreement with Justin Oeltzes’ paper, "A Sad Story," I also feel that this dark foreshadowing of time to come is an indication of the author’s direct intention to write a sad story.
Signs of the depth of the narrator's mental illness are presented early in the story. The woman starts innocently enough with studying the patterns of the paper but soon starts to see grotesque images in it, "There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a...
One of the main causes for her insanity is the treatment she is receiving by her husband. Right when the story begins the narrator moves into a home with her husband and new born child to stay for a few
The bleak tone of this story takes a particularly sad and disturbing tinge when the wife illustrates a scene from early on in her marriage where she tries to get her husband to satisfy her desire and provide her with mutual satisfaction, only to have him rebuke and reprimand her. In fact, the husband responds in such a particularly brusque and hysterical manner that the reader can see how traumatized the wife would have been at ...
tragedies that befell her. She is an example of a melancholic character that is not able to let go of her loss and therefore lets it t...
The conflict continues in the next passage, “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away...