A sorrowful woman

Gail Godwin beckons a woman to know herself as a woman and not as mere in a relation to other in her much thought provoking story, “ A Sorrowful Woman”.

Michael Meyer said that, ” Goodwin selects several key events that e place over a period of year to show us the slow decline of the Woman in her role as wife and mother.”(geocities. com, online).

Marriage calls upon woman to obey and serve as a traditional good wife and mother but at the cost of her individuality, which made our protagonist to take life on a very pessimist note. We find woman in a “ Sorrowful Woman” as totally tired of her relationship as a mother, a wife and of her life. Godwin says,  “ The sight of them made her so sad and sick she did not want to ever see them again” (Gail, 35).

This story was initially titles “ Sorrowful Mother”, as whose obsession of motherhood was putting question on her individuality. But it is not a story of only mother but the question of independent identity and individuality of all women. This dilemma brought them onto the verge ofdepressionand ultimately their downfall. Therefore it is not the Sorrowful mother but A Sorrowful Woman.

WORKS CITED
Godwin, Gail. ” A Sorrowful Woman” inDream Children. Ballantine Books, 1996.
Micheal Meyer, A Plot, Sorrowful Woman, Online, 22th May 2008 Available at http://www. geocities. com/davidjohntoth/102/plot. html