A Sorrowful Woman - Free Book Review Sample

Introduction

“A sorrowful woman” is a short story selection written in 1971 by Gail Godwin. The story revolves around a woman who becomes overwhelmed by being a mother and a wife, thus withdrawing from them and eventually wholly shuts them out of her life. This paper critically analyzes and highlights the general content of the text in order to spot the techniques used by the author of the story.

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Parody

The author has used “Once upon a time” at the beginning of the narrative to signify different things. This narrative is a parody of fairy tales. Typical fairy tales tend to have fixed resolutions where everyone lives happily ever after. In this case, however, the story gives a reader an illusion of a fairy tale by beginning it with "Once upon a time” (Godwin 39) but then ends up being a tragic story thus mocking the traditional fairy tale. This mocking of the term fairy tale can further be viewed by the setting of the story for instance, in all fairy tales, the mother often cooks, cleans and looks after her family, but in this case, the woman is too tired to perform such duties. The author has also used the words “Once upon a time” to signify that this narrative is just a story and does not highlight any actual happenings of a real person.

Characters

None of the characters in the story has names. The author has deliberately left out these names with the aim of leading the reader to assume that the characters are playing the universal role. The epigraph at the beginning of the narrative is suggestive of how this woman felt overwhelmed by being a mother “one too many times” (Godwin 39). This epigraph, however, has given away the ending of the story as it already reveals to the reader that the woman was too tired of being a wife and a mother prompting the reader to expect her to bail out of her life.

Some words in the narrative have been used on several occasions. “The sleeping draught was a nightly thing" (Godwin 40) had been cited on many occasions to signify how this sorrowful woman is addicted to different kinds of droughts. Drought, in this case, has been used to mean hunger for life and yearning for existence. She also experienced a sleeping drought. To get rid of the "hunger", the woman sets out to try different things, but none of them gives her the satisfaction she has been yearning. The woman is further described in the narrative as “a cloistered queen”. The irony of this description is that her imprisonment is just her monotony in her duties as a wife and mother.

Highlighting

Just like any other short story, “A sorrowful woman” is not straightforward in highlighting the reasons for the protagonist's breakdown. Instead, the story stresses the efforts her family puts into helping her overcome her exhaustion, leaving them entirely blameless. This prompts the reader to assume that the reason for her deterioration is her lack of drive and options away from her role of being a mother and a wife. She is too accustomed to being a mother and a wife such that she is unable to perform anything else outside her home. Her inability is contrasted with the introduction of a dutiful nanny who is able to efficiently multitask for the money.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the author of “A sorrowful woman” has made the narrative interesting by using different styles and techniques that make the reader to not only think outside the box but also reason and come to their independent conclusions. "A sorrowful woman" takes the reader into the life of the protagonist until her demise.

Work Cited

Godwin, Gail. "A Sorrowful Woman." Scenes from American Life: Contemporary Short Fiction, ed. Joyce Carol Oates (New York: Random House, 1973), discussed in my essay, “A Sorrowful Woman': Gail Godwin's Feminist Parable," Studies in Short Fiction 12 (1971): 286-90.