The Themes Of Characters In A Sorrowful Women By Gail Godwin

971 Words2 Pages

Hannah Ottens
English 102/Kay
Essay 1
3 October 2014 A Depressed Woman
In many stories that one reads, characters exhibit numerous behaviors throughout the story such as excitement, sadness, and loneliness. A fairytale will have happy character behaviors and end happily, whereas depressed characters the story may end melancholy, which can affect the outcome of the story. In the short story “A Sorrowful Women” written by Gail Godwin, the main character that is unnamed exhibits several behaviors. Such as a mental illness, behaviors of not wanting a family anymore, and the women shows behaviors that she’s not happy with the performance of a mother and wife. For she’d shows these behaviors at the end of the story the sorrowful women …show more content…

Her role as a wife and a mother starts to become her daily routine, and she is not satisfied with it. She tries her best to satiate herself. She starts making efforts to achieve different approaches to satisfy these efforts but still “she does not get pleasure in her duties” (Goodwin 39), and this is the reason why she always get dissatisfaction in her life. Her dissatisfaction with this role in life also leads the narrator protagonist to try on other roles. Though she tries on many, none of these seem to satisfy her either; she "tried these personalities on like costumes, then discarded them" (Goodwin 38). Her inability to find any role that satisfies her probably contributes to her general sense of helplessness, and continues to withdraw from her family. Since she cannot find any particular role that suits her, she attempts not to have any role at all; the coldness and isolation of the undecorated white room make it seem that she is trying to empty herself of her previous life.
“A Sorrowful Woman” written by Gail Godwin, shows that the behavior of the characters does affect the outcome of the story. If the main character had not showed these behaviors the ending would have been happily ever after, instead of the despondent way it did. Character behaviors affect the outcome of the story for its sets the tone of the story. If the sorrowful woman in had not been depressed the whole time it’s likely to have not end horrifically. Therefor character behaviors do affect the outcome of a

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