Gail Godwin's Fiction Writing

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Recommended: The role of fable in literature

Gail Godwin in my opinion was and still is a very talented fiction writer. She has written many novels and many short stories like A Sorrowful Woman and Dream Children, which is plotted around psychological realism. I enjoyed these stories because they both included realistic aspects of life. Like a woman having marital complications. By reading these stories you will see that Gail is a feminist author who explores the trials are ordeals of modern women. According to the Contemporary Novelists 7th edition, Gail Godwin usually portrayed her mother as the strong feminine characters in some of her stories. Gail uses different styles and techniques of writing, an example of this could be the way she wrote A Sorrowful Woman which is written in the form of an ironic Fable, meaning that it was written like a fairy tall.

As I read A Sorrowful Woman, which was practically written like a fable, I realized that Godwin was trying to show the ordeals of modern women. Family members, kids or the woman's husband could cause these ordeals. In this story, the sight of her husband and her son disgusted the woman. According to the Magill Online Literature Plus (MOLP), the story is being told in the form of an ironic fairy tall, which starts with "Once upon a time there was a wife and mother one to many times" is said to have introduced the tone and the theme of the story. It is sated in the MOLP database that the woman, who is suffering from depression, is described as a "cloistered queen"or a "young virgin in as tower. Another fairy tall aspect found in the story is the fact that she was locked up in the room by herself, which is similar to a young woman locked in the tallest tower waiting to be rescued. The woman's sorrow is not c...

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...rs, Revised Third Edition © 1997 by Salem Press, Inc

"Gail (Kathleen) Godwin." Contemporary Novelists, 7th ed. St. James Press, 2001.

Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2004. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC

"Gail (Kathleen) Godwin." Contemporary Popular Writers. St. James Press, 1997.

Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2004. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC

Gail Godwin." Contemporary Southern Writers. St. James Press, 1999.

Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2004. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC

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