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…
(Godwin 1). On the other hand, in “A Secret Sorrow”, Faye, the main character, presents to be unhappy because she is unable to conceive children for her husband. Faye’s sorrow is reflected as she explains to her husband “ ‘Kai, I…I can’t live all my life with your regret and your disappointment. Every time we see some pregnant woman, every time we’re with somebody else’s children I’ll feel I’ve failed you’ “ (Zee 35). Therefore the main difference in the stories is the fact that Faye wishes and hopes for a family,yet the unidentified woman in the Godwin’s story already has a family and loathes them. The common and significant interest between these two stories is the concept of sorrow that shows an ordeal affect on the two women. At this point and age in their lives the women are able to have a family and become comfortably settled, yet they are unable to come to peace and content with their situations, and they long for a change. Faye in “A Secret Sorrow” longs to birth a child. In contrast, the woman in “A Sorrowful Woman,” already holds a husband and a son but longs to be free from her duties as a mother and wife. This demonstrates as a major difference between the two women considering that the women long for what the other woman already has. Throughout the two stories, sorrow is reflected from the means of family.
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…
suffering. In both stories, the concept of sorrow is also portrayed through the neglection the children experience in their lives.
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
lives before being adopted. The children often had nightmares that dealt with the suffering they had lived through. “With small faces and large dark eyes full of fear. In their faces Faye could read the tragedies of war and death and poverty” (Zee 38). Faye noticed that their eyes reflected all the hardships and suffering the children had been through in their life. This indicates another similarity between both stories considering the children from each story demonstrates sorrow as they have been neglected and deprived of love and comfort from a mother. As well, both stories reflect the same hardship in relation to the husbands. With the sorrow that is drowning the wives, both husbands face the test of love; however, the outcome is not the same in each case. In the situation of “A Sorrowful Woman”, the husband attempts to communicate with his wife, in hopes of resolving the issue. It is noted that the husband “got up hours early, did the shopping, cooked the breakfast, took the boy to nursery school,” (Godwin 41) and went to every extent possible in order to ease her suffering. The husband even goes to the extent of hiring a babysitter to guarantee there are no duties or chores the mother needs to deal with. Despite all of his effort, it is still not enough for the wife. She is so overwhelmed and sorrowful that she takes her life because she can no longer take the suffering. In “A Secret Sorrow”, Kai empathizes for his wife as he understands she feels upset because she cannot bear children for him. Faye goes to the extent to suggest that Kai find another woman who can give him children. However, Kai remains by the side of Faye and marries her despite their situation. Though his endeavors were difficult, Kai was set on convincing his wife that the inability to conceive is not as issue so long as they love each other. The support and love that the husbands reflect demonstrates another similarity between the two stories.
Previously, the narrator has intimated, “She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own.” Her thoughts and emotions engulf her, but she does not “struggle” with them. They “belonged to her and were her own.” She does not have to share them with anyone; conversely, she must share her life and her money with her husband and children and with the many social organizations and functions her role demands.
In the stories “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin both women suffer through expectations brought on by society and the ideas of marriage. Emily loses her sanity trying to obtain love and live up to the expectations of society. Emily kills the man she loved so that he would never leave, and so that she could maintain her reputation. She was put on a pedestal, and that pedestal would end up being her destruction. Louise is a woman afflicted by heart problems, which could relate her unhappiness. After losing her husband she starts to feel free; however when her husband walks through the door she dies. Louise was a prisoner of societies making, she was never given a voice. She could never explain her unhappiness because women were expected to love and obey their husband’s without complaints. Marriage to these women meant different things, although the idea of marriage damaged both women. Louise and Emily were women damaged by the pressures of who they are expected to be.
This darkly satiric poem is about cultural imperialism. Dawe uses an extended metaphor: the mother is America and the child represents a younger, developing nation, which is slowly being imbued with American value systems. The figure of a mother becomes synonymous with the United States. Even this most basic of human relationships has been perverted by the consumer culture. The poem begins with the seemingly positive statement of fact 'She loves him ...’. The punctuation however creates a feeling of unease, that all is not as it seems, that there is a subtext that qualifies this apparently natural emotional attachment. From the outset it is established that the child has no real choice, that he must accept the 'beneficence of that motherhood', that the nature of relationships will always be one where the more powerful figure exerts control over the less developed, weaker being. The verb 'beamed' suggests powerful sunlight, the emotional power of the dominant person: the mother. The stanza concludes with a rhetorical question, as if undeniably the child must accept the mother's gift of love. Dawe then moves on to examine the nature of that form of maternal love. The second stanza deals with the way that the mother comforts the child, 'Shoosh ... shoosh ... whenever a vague passing spasm of loss troubles him'. The alliterative description of her 'fat friendly features' suggests comfort and warmth. In this world pain is repressed, real emotion pacified, in order to maintain the illusion that the world is perfect. One must not question the wisdom of the omnipotent mother figure. The phrase 'She loves him...' is repeated. This action of loving is seen as protecting, insulating the child. In much the same way our consumer cultur...
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 ...
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
...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.
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,
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.
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...
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.
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.
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