Gail Godwin's A Sorrowful Woman

active, healthy lifestyle. She is increasingly tasked with the dual responsibilities of career and family and is constantly challenged to balance her work, life and health. We believe she pursues exercise to achieve physical fitness and inner peace.

Though fulfilling love, happiness and trust in a relationship can be comforting, couples often are unsuccessful in finding or keeping the love that their relationship need; even if issues may interfere within the relationship, couples should find a way in working through their problems. Once a couple's happiness, trust and love have been fulfilled, they can experience unconditional love. Although they would need to make every possible step to heal their relationship, if and when their relationship breaks down, there is still much they can learn. With this stated this idea holds opposing views among the two females in A Secret Sorrow and "A Sorrowful Woman."

Women are taught from a young age that marriage is the end all be all in happiness, in the short story “The Story of An Hour” by Kate Chopin and the drama “Poof!” by Lynn Nottage, we learn that it is not always the case. Mrs. Mallard from “The Story of an Hour” and Loureen from “Poof!” are different characteristically, story-wise, and time-wise, but share a similar plight. Two women tied down to men whom they no longer love and a life they no longer feel is theirs. Unlike widows in happy marriages Loureen and Mrs., Mallard discover newfound freedom in their respective husband’s deaths. Both stories explore stereotypical housewives who serve their husbands with un-stereotypical reactions to their husband’s deaths.

Gail Godwin’s Sorrowful Woman develops the message that the archetypal role of mother and wife is so constricting and limiting as to force ‘the mother’ character to end her life. The end of the story demonstrates the power of rhetoric, contrast, and detached narration in creating the text’s message.

Children, Marriage and Love are the three main factors of the two short stories, “A Sorrowful Woman” by Gail Godwin, and “A Secret Sorrow” by Karen van der Zee. Two relationships at risk because of children. Neither of them know what to do but try to find solutions to solve their problems. They end up having different outcomes.

Her marriage also causes her to lose control. Even within the one thing that is supposed to hold strong, she is alone. Her husband, leaving her on a daily basis to work, insists that she cannot write nor visit friends and family. Thus, he leaves her alone during the day to sit

In Godwin’s story “A Sorrowful Woman”, the mother has a series of very complex feelings and emotions. From the story, it can be inferred that this is a woman with a sudden onset of mental illness, a woman who has lost her identity and sense of belonging; and a woman who is consciously aware of all this, knowing she is a burden to her loved ones.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).” The love and respect for the outdoors is something everyone should value, many things promote this way of life, due to its extravagance and true freedom in this great creation. They can sometimes go to that outdoor place in books, poems, art, and even some news articles. Much of this world doesn’t get to see the other side of America; they don’t get to see the best part, the outdoors.

The story “A Sorrowful Women” by Gail Godwin describes a woman that seems to be exhausted of her family and life. Unlike the first story, this is about a married couple who already have a child. The narrator does not give names to the characters and he/she engages on a third person role to tell the story. This story carries a depressing, sad and dark mood. The wife, one night tells her husband if he could “put the boy to bed and read him the story about the monkey who ate too many bananas(39)” since she was already tired of doing all the work at home. The husband thought she just needed a break, and he assume that there’s nothing wrong with the idea of taking care of the child, therefore he happily agreed to take care of the kid. Since that evening the husband noticed that his

Gwendolyn Brooks is a famous, African American poetess who is famous for making a social commentary upon the urban society in which she lives. Clearly seen in three of her more popular poems, “the mother”, “a song in the front yard”, and “What shall I give my children? Who are poor?”, Brooks uses the struggles of impoverished motherhood to comment on the stymied lives of adult black women. This is obviously evident in her use of the tone of hopelessness, which transcends all three poems in differing forms that stem from regret in “the mother”, worry and overprotectiveness in “a song in the front yard” and frustration of lacking the necessities for children in “What shall I give my children? Who are poor”

In both the excerpts from Karen van der Zee 's novel "A Secret Sorrow" and in Gail Godwin 's short story "A Sorrowful Woman," the plots center on ideas of marriage and family. Conversely, marriage and family are presented in very different lights in the two stories. Karen van der Zee presents marriage with children as perfect and completely fulfilling; it is what Faye, the protagonist of "A Secret Sorrow", wants and what is necessary to her happiness. For Godwin 's unnamed protagonist, marriage and family are almost the antithesis of happiness; her home life seems to suffocate hear and eventually leads her to death. "A Secret Sorrow" directly endorses and encourages marriage, whereas "A Sorrowful Woman" indirectly questions and discourages

The personal essay, Variations on Grief, by Meghan Daum is about how she tried to cope with the death of a dear friend of hers, Brian Peterson. At first, she attempted to deal with her loss by detaching herself from it and pretending that it didn’t affect her, but she soon discovered that she couldn’t escape reality in that manner.. As Brian’s parents came to rely on her for support, she felt obligated to lie to them about his life because it felt easier than telling the truth. At the same time, she had to deal with her own confused emotions and endeavored to convince herself that Brian had died because he simply wasn’t capable of living. When I first read Daum’s essay, I couldn’t quite understand her reaction to Brian’s death.

Novelist, Gail Godwin, in her short story, “A Sorrowful Woman,”tells the story of a wife and mother who experiences pressure of societal norms which eventually leads to her demise. The main character is overwhelmed with her life taking care of her husband and child. The husband, who is stereotypically portrayed as perfect and supporting , an important decision of Godwin, copes with his wife’s condition. The mother continues to shut out her family members and withdraw from completing her work as a homemaker. The couple chooses to hire a nanny, who benefits the family by providing care and help. The main is eventually fired and the mother’s condition gets worse. She locks herself in a room and slowly distances herself more from her family. She

Marriage is depicted as an adventurous lifestyle between two “soul mates” for an eternity, but during the 20th century women were viewed as house wives. Gail Godwin’s “A Sorrowful Woman” and Karen Van der Zee’s “A Secret Sorrowful” illustrate how men exceed boundaries to satisfy women. These two narratives demonstrate how children can play a huge part in a couple 's marriage from different perspectives. “A Sorrowful Woman” and “A Secret Sorrow” demonstrate how the husbands so dearly loved their family, although Godwin implies the marriage is slowly falling apart, Van der Zee reveals an infertile marriage that is prosperous and full of love.

This story starts off as a perfect representation of that. When the protagonist gets home from work the first thing he does is start yelling at his wife and starts drinking beer. He’d down the first one right at the refrigerator (Gilb 541). Their children, three boys, were seven, four, and almost two (Gilb 541). The man yelled at them too when they continued to be loud after he got home. “Everybody shut up and be quiet!” he yelled. The kids started to get upset and the baby started crying which caused his wife to glare at him. “You know sometimes I wish you were a man cuz I wouldn’t let you get away with looks like that. I wouldn’t take half the shit I take from you.” (Gilb 541). When you read more into the story you realize that the man has just gotten laid off from his previous job and he is scared that the same thing was going to happen with this job. He makes statements like “If he’s gonna get me most likely it’ll be tomorrow”, “There’s other jobs”, and “All of ‘em end no matter what.” (Gilb 542). He takes all of his frustration and worries out on his family. Throughout the story, he and his wife continue to fight while the rest of his family hides in a room in their apartment. After some time he came back in the room to talk to her. “I’m sorry” he said. “You know I’m sorry” (Gilb