Gail Godwin A Sorrowful Woman

A family is a number of people living in a household. In Eastern society, family is the most essential part of life because the roles and duties of home define the reputation of families. What happens if a family member fails to do his or her responsibilities? The consequences of the result can affect the family member. Jealousy, selfishness, unfriendliness, not familiar with neighborhood, disputes, and spying are the factors that destroy the family reputation. Therefore, it is most important to understand the roles and responsibilities of the family to make the betterment of the family. The author wrote this story in a chronological order and with the tragic ending of the story. “A Sorrowful Woman” written by Gail Godwin is a story of a woman

who, overwhelmed with her responsibilities as a mother and a wife, she is overpowered by her duties, and she decides to withdraw from the family.
The narrator states in his short story “A Sorrowful Woman” duty as a mother and a wife is overwhelmed because of doing everything in a house, starts to become unusual, and she is not satisfied with it.

She tries her best to satisfy herself by finding other roles, but she fails to find satisfaction there either. Their child has been longing for care from his mother, and is always happy to see and play with her. The narrator states the characters of a woman in a figurative. For example, a child tries to pretend, play with her as a lion, but she gets mad, scream, shut the door, and live alone from her son. Being a mother is a great achievement and one of the major roles of a great

mother.
She is overpowered with her duties. “She was a young queen, a virgin in a tower; she was the previous inhabitant, the girl with all the energies (Godwin pg. 42).” This statement proves that she is overpowered and she expressed the woman’s egoism. She is not satisfied with her work. She gave birth a baby boy. She is the mother of a boy. She is preparing supper for a husband. The husband was sleeping after her good supper. She was starting to cry without reason. The husband wakes up with his alarm and carried her in his arms to her bed. “The boy followed them up the stairs, saying, ‘it’s all right, Mommy,’ but this made her scream (Godwin pg. 40).” These statements make clear, as a mirror, how much child and husband love her. She becomes careless of her child. Her children want to play with her, but she ignores them by screaming. She always feels tired of doing things at home. What she is doing? There is no evidenced, she is doing everything at home and she gets tired. Everyone is working at home, being a good wife makes families happy.
She decided to withdraw her life from the family.

Instead of caring her children, live with a good husband, works with boldly inside home as well as outside home. She has no problems to work outside home because her husband is understandable. In the other hand, the narrator states the character of the husband in the story “A Sorrowful Woman” the real heart of being a loving father and a husband. In the story, the husband showed all his support and patience of his wife by doing his wife’s roles and responsibilities. “He got up hours early, did the shopping, cooked the breakfast, took the boy to nursery school (Godwin pg. 41).” This makes the obvious, the character of her husband is a real loving husband, loving father, showed all his support, and be patience. The author of the story balanced the characters’ roles by praising a patience and understanding husband with an unsatisfied and selfish wife. She chooses the wrong decision in her life. At the end, she completely withdraws her life from her happy

family.
In the conclusion, she missed her good loving husband and her lovely boy. She is a male dominant woman because she is always aggravated with her husband and her child. Being a wife and husband in the setting has equal rights and duties to do with the family. The husband is the best character among all the short story. The narrator states the character of the husband in the story “A Sorrowful Woman” the real heart of being a loving father and a husband.