Compare And Contrast A Sorrowful Woman And A Secret Sorrow

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The broken, the loved, and the damned construct a cliche love story. The short stories A Sorrowful Woman by Godwin, Gail and A Secret Sorrow by Karen Van der Zee, contain key differences and similarities. Overall, A Secret Sorrow was more effective in terms of developing a main message as compared to A Sorrowful Woman. There are many concepts that make the two stories very different, but also very similar. A few key concepts could go either way; such as, the husbands, how the women cope with the sorrow, and the plot. First, within each story there is a loving husband looking out for his wife. However, how the husband’s help their wife differs between A Secret Sorrow and A Sorrowful Woman. Both of the husbands mean well, but in the story A Secret Sorrow, the husband Kai had a main point for what he is doing to help. He is very persistent on fixing the problems and making the situation better for good. In the midst of the situation, …show more content…

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

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