The two stories “A Sorrowful Woman” by Gail Godwin and “A Secret Sorrow” by Karen van der Zee discuss women who are in a constant struggle to fit in with their roles in their families The effects of their unhappiness are presented throughout the stories. The titles of the stories encase the word sorrow to reflect the main theme of the stories because they revolve around sorrowful emotions. Both authors share the same concept of sorrow, however they express it in different ways. In “A Sorrowful Woman,” the woman remains unidentified. Though she does not speak with her family, her sorrowful emotions derive within her family. This is noted as the speaker shares “The sight of them made her so sad and sick she did not want to see them ever again” …show more content…
Faye desires a child to make her family complete. Because she is unable to conceive, she undergoes deep sorrow when hearing the tragic news that she could not bear any children for her husband Kai. Faye stands confused and cannot comprehend why Kai remains by her side considering the fact that she cannot birth a child for him. She explains to Kai “You don’t have to marry me. You could marry someone else and have children of your own” (Zee 35) . In hopes of finding a solution, she discusses the matter with Kai. As well, the woman in “A Sorrowful Woman” presents her problem to her husband too. She is not content with her family and wishes to be free and alone. To cope with her distress, she distances herself from her family in order to live comfortably in her home. Though they feel sorrow for different and opposite reasons, both women have empathetic spouses who wish to help them with their …show more content…
In “A Sorrowful Woman”, the woman’s son experiences sorrow as he is deprived of a healthy and normal relationship with his mother. As the mother seeks solitude in the basement, the only form of communication her son and husband have with her is through notes and drawings. “The child could not write, so he drew and sometimes painted his,” (Godwin 42) in hopes that his mother understands them. The mother neglects her own child as she fails to reply to her son’s drawings, leaving him sorrowful. The boy is too young to fully comprehend his mother’s situation, so all he knows is that he is unloved and unwanted by his mother. According to Jill Savage,a writer, speaker and founder of Hearts at Home, “A child should never feel as if they need to earn a mother's love. A mother's love needs to be given unconditionally to establish trust and a firm foundation of emotional intimacy in a child's life. If love is withheld, a child will look for it in a million other ways.” With the neglection of his mother, the son turned to his babysitter for the love and guidance his mother deprived him of. The woman resents her child so deeply that she blames him for her illness and wished to get rid of him. In “A Secret Sorrow”, the couple resolves their issue by adopting three children. Faye finds reason to believe that the children may have experienced tragic moments in their
The mother and daughter have a very distant relationship because her mother is ill and not capable to be there, the mother wishes she could be but is physically unable. “I only remember my mother walking one time. She walked me to kindergarten." (Fein). The daughter’s point of view of her mother changes by having a child herself. In the short story the son has a mother that is willing to be helpful and there for him, but he does not take the time to care and listen to his mother, and the mother begins to get fed up with how Alfred behaves. "Be quiet don't speak to me, you've disgraced me again and again."(Callaghan). Another difference is the maturity level the son is a teenager that left school and is a trouble maker. The daughter is an adult who is reflecting back on her childhood by the feeling of being cheated in life, but sees in the end her mother was the one who was truly being cheated. “I may never understand why some of us are cheated in life. I only know, from this perspective, that I am not the one who was.” (Fein). The differences in the essay and short story show how the children do not realize how much their mothers care and love
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
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.
...ouse wives, and mothers who are fragile and insignificant. Instead, she is to remain in a “closed pot” (228), just as she is expected to do. As a result, she cries at the truth that she will always be reminded, that she is a “weak” and “useless” woman, which only increases her frustrations and dissatisfactions about her marriage (238).
A Sorrowful Woman, written by Gail Godwin, is a story about a woman who suffers from chronic depression. It becomes evident that the main character, who is nameless, is extremely ill with the condition. As the story progresses, the main character becomes increasingly reclusive. The main character displays numerous symptoms of chronic depression throughout the story including insomnia, getting angry over minor issues, and loss of interest in normal activities.
Marie, who is a product of an abusive family, is influenced by her past, as she perceives the relationship between Callie and her son, Bo. Saunders writes, describing Marie’s childhood experiences, “At least she’d [Marie] never locked on of them [her children] in a closet while entertaining a literal gravedigger in the parlor” (174). Marie’s mother did not embody the traditional traits of a maternal fig...
She is not able to deal with her son on a regular basis, let alone playfully. This called for a nanny. The husband found the “perfect girl” who was “young and dynamic.” The nanny employed her “thousand energies” by painting the room she was staying in white, “fed the child lunch, read edifying books, raced the boy to the mailbox… cleaned a spot from the mother’s coat, made them all laugh… knitted dresses for herself and played chess with the husband.” The nanny meets the standards of a committed, typical mother and housewife. She is able to do everything the woman is not including, attending to the child and spending quality time with the husband. The only fault of the nanny is allowing the son to become playful with his mother. When the boy “approached her, smiling mysteriously… he placed his cupped hands in hers and left a live dry thing that spat brown juice in her palm and leaped away.” This innocent gesture was enough to have the nanny fired and the sorrowful woman miserable,
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
Through diction, the tone of the poem is developed as one that is downtrodden and regretful, while at the same time informative for those who hear her story. Phrases such as, “you are going to do bad things to children…,” “you are going to suffer… ,” and “her pitiful beautiful untouched body…” depict the tone of the speaker as desperate for wanting to stop her parents. Olds wrote many poems that contained a speaker who is contemplating the past of both her life and her parent’s life. In the poem “The Victims,” the speaker is again trying to find acceptance in the divorce and avoidance of her father, “When Mother divorced you, we were glad/ … She kicked you out, suddenly, and her/ kids loved it… ” (Olds 990). Through the remorseful and gloomy tone, we see that the speaker in both poems struggles with a relationship between her parents, and is also struggling to understand the pain of her
Every fairytale has the same, happy, predictable ending, right? Most love a happy ending to a story that they have read. A Secret Sorrow by Karen Van Der Zee, and “A Sorrowful Woman” by Gail Godwin, are two amazing pieces showing a woman and her lover. One might not expect the way that both of the stories go. Both the man’s love towards the woman, endings, and theme are very similar, but they have differences. I like the “Sorrowful Woman” more because it is more realistic and it does not have the same fairytale ending that you would expect, and would not allow you to foreshadow the ending.
For starters, A Sorrowful Woman does not contain a standard plot, but is a complete short story. While A Secret Sorrow is an excerpt from a romance by Harlequin books. In addition, although both stories are more in the romantic category the endings are very unalike. In A Secret Sorrow Faye gets her happy ending with Kai by adopting children and having a family. However, in A Sorrowful Woman the woman locked herself away in a room and passed away. Within the plot Faye wants children, but is unable to reproduce. While in A Sorrowful Woman the woman had a child that she did not want. Her disgust for the child was clearly stated, “ The sight of them made her so sad and sick she did not want to see them ever again” (Godwin 38). Her disgust can also be proven by how she never refers to the child and her husband by name. Although small ideas, all of the concepts work together to build the plot; setting the two stories
In “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Story of an Hour”, the woman in each story imprisons in the domestic sphere. In “Hills Like White Elephants”, the woman in this story conflicts between keeping the baby or getting abortion although the relationship with her boyfriend would not improve as he said. In “The Story of an Hour”, even though Louise Mallard, an intelligent, independent woman understands that she should grieve for Brently, her husband and worry for her future, she cannot help herself from rejoice at her newfound freedom. The author of this story, Kate Chopin suggests that even with a happy marriage, the loss of freedom and the restraint are the results that cannot be avoid.
Nanny has learned the lesson that love is not synonymous with love, and she thinks Janie is just too young to realize the truth. As a slave near the end of the Civil War, Nanny gave birth to her white master's child, who became Janie's mother. But the white man disappointed Nanny when the his wife realized the baby is her husband's, his wife went into a jealous rage; she declared that Nanny would receive a hundred lashes in the morning and watch her baby sold off when it is a month old, but he didn't do anything for Nanny and his own child, and Nanny had to escape with her baby eventually. This painful heartbreaking experience has taught Nanny a harsh lesson that love cannot always be trusted; more than that, love cannot play a only part in marriage. Unlike her young granddaughter Janie who is youthful and only sees the reason to marry is if is true love. ¡§the inaudible voice of it all came to her.
In the story, the narrator is forced to tell her story through a secret correspondence with the reader since her husband forbids her to write and would “meet [her] with heavy opposition” should he find her doing so (390). The woman’s secret correspondence with the reader is yet another example of the limited viewpoint, for no one else is ever around to comment or give their thoughts on what is occurring. The limited perspective the reader sees through her narration plays an essential role in helping the reader understand the theme by showing the woman’s place in the world. At ...
At one point she realises that loneliness starts to operate in her again and only connection to home, are the phone calls to her mother. ManjuKapur uses her strength and valiant when she receives the alarm from La Leche league, to take old decision to meet the Gynecologist. Because she believes the arrival of child will bring happiness and will make her loneliness disappear. But the confrontation of Nina does not work out with the selfish and betrayal husband who tries to hide his problem he undergoes the premature ejaculation and tries to change her track. “To get pregnant as soon as you married was a very stupid. It was more important to settle down first.”(167) But her strong decision to meet the gynecologist proves on her side that she is normal.