Gail Godwin's A Sorrowful Woman

Who Runs the Woman? Sorrow.

“A Sorrowful Woman” written by Gail Godwin in the 1970s, highlights that not every woman wants to just be a mother and a wife. The sorrowful woman remains nameless because she is the voice of every woman that wishes to be more than a housewife or a stay-at-home mother. This short story is unusual because the woman’s husband, without much help from the woman herself, maintains their home and takes care of their son day and night. Ironically, the woman is able to attend to her depression and her need to escape motherhood and housekeeping before it literally kills her. While attempting to cram in her duties as both mother and wife, she overdoses within a day. The woman’s son already became used to the idea, “she’s already

tired from doing all of our things again.”
Although the woman is not the attentive or affectionate kind of mother, she attempts to fulfill her expected duties.

While speaking to her husband in regards to their son, the woman asked, “... could you get him a clean pair of pajamas out of the laundry. ” The woman cares if her son is clean and maintained, the same way she cares if his stomach is full. In fact, she even made “eight molds of the boy’s favorite custard,” knitted him and his father sweaters and provided them both with “two weeks supply of fresh laundered sheets and shirts and towels.” The woman is a mother and a wife but, she has a reserved way of fulfilling her roles. She does not find it necessary to play motherhood and a housekeeper every day or all day long. Evidently, the woman is still different from a typical mother; she is still dealing with depression that keeps her miserable and isolated from her husband and

son.
The sight of the woman’s compassionate husband and tender three-year-old child makes her “sad and sick.” The woman refuses to play with her son who was “growling” while pretending to be a “vicious tiger,” because he accidentally scratches her.

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,

again.
With the husband taking over the wife’s duties such as getting up hours early, doing the food shopping, cooking and taking their son to his nursery school, the woman is able to deal with the depression that causes her to yearn for an identity. The woman decides to make herself comfortable in the nanny’s old, white room. From then on she became “the girl with all the energies.” She searches for who she wants to be while trying different “personalities on like costumes.” The costumes allow the woman to be everything but a mother and wife, which is what she feels she needs. Motherhood makes her unhappy but being able to explore other roles is her escape. In addition, the woman also develops a hobby while in the white room. She writes her own sonnets while recognizing the formulated structure, “ABAB or ABBA.” Actually, she realized, “she did not have to write a sonnet… her poem could be six, eight, ten, thirteen lines, it could be any number of lines, and it did not even have to rhyme.” The same way the woman realizes she does not have to follow the formula of a sonnet, she knows she does not have to abide by the presumed roles of being a mother and a wife.
The sorrowful woman is an unprincipled mother. She is not solicitous towards her son and husband, neither does she try to conceal her feelings. In spite of the woman deciding to bake five loaves of bread, roast turkey and do laundry, “her veins pumped.” At last, when the husband and son arrived home, “the house smelled redolent of renewal and spring. The man ran to the little room,” and the boy, “watched his father tenderly roll back her eyelids, lay his ear softly to her breast,” and “test the delicate bones of her wrist…” The sorrowful woman dies from her arduous duties. Perhaps, being just a mother and wife is overrated.