Character analysis of " A sorrowful Woman".
The plot in this short story " A sorrowful Woman" by Gail Godwin is center around the idea of marriage and motherhood. Marriage, in most society, is a life-fulfilling dream for most women; it is much like a fairy tale: find a prince charming, get married, have children and leave happily ever after. However the ironic in this story is that the fairy tale actually went wrong.
The author begins actually with an epigram emphasizing the ironic of the plot " once upon a time, there was a wife and a mother one too many". Those last words tell everything about how this fairy tale is unusually because instead of a leaving happily ever after, the protagonist is au contraire very sad. The author doesn't say much about her life before childbirth, however some passages presume that she had a beautiful and harmonious life before having a child "the man took is wife to dinner; they dressed and were beautiful again together" .
The author describe marriage as an imprisonment and a source of sickness. Her home life and household shores became a burden. She move away from her husband and stopped doing her shores; her home life seemed to suffocate her and lead her to isolate herself from her family. The responsibility of being the center of everybody was too much to burry; so she couldn't enjoy her life anymore. The outside world looked liberating and much better then her marriage " the room had a new views of the streets that she never seen that way before". Moreover, her own son became the escape goat to to sick a way out and an instrument to capture her husband's attention " she hit the boy when the father would see". She used the boy to show to her husband what she was feeling deep inside but couldn't say out loud. Actually, she tells her husband that she was afraid of the boy " I have locked myself away from him, I am afraid".