The No Name Woman Want in "A Sorrowful Woman"

We see that her child is sound and looks at her with approving eyes and we be told quite a lot that she has an understanding and tactful husband, "He understands these things" (Godwin, p. 28). Her husband even tells her "I want you to feel freer?you need a rest from us" (Godwin, p. 28; 27). Still, the charr is tortured by anguish and gloominess as she goes about her daily ritual as wife, receive and homemaker. At wiz point she breaks into hysterics, "yelping without tears, retching in among" (Godwin, p. 26). Once more her husband seems to be the caring and considerate kind person as he cares for her. To explain what is happening he tells their son, "'Mommy is sick,' as he carries her off to bed" (Godwin, p. 26)).

The succeeding(prenominal) day the fair sex's husband fixes her breakfast in bed and tries to pacify her. Weeks pass as the narrator continues to distance herself from her roles as wife, mother and homemaker, eventually closing herself off in her room. Unexpectedly, the narrator wakes one day and find oneselfs that she must immediately find things to do to abide by her active. She spends the following days engaging in myriad activities some the house, from cleaning and cooking to doing the laundry and knitting clothes. It is these responsibilities and duties, allegedly the extort of myth that makes a woman happy but that do little to provide meaning or fulfillment for the narrator in "A Sorrowful Woman." As such(prenominal), she confines herself to a diminutive room she has taken

over. This tiny space is meant to symbolize the tiny space for expression the woman suffers in her limiting roles as wife, mother and homemaker. As she tells us at one point; "She had hardly space to go on" (Godwin, p. 29).

We find that patriarchy often defines strict roles and rigid norms of carriage based on gender.

It is part of gender mythology that women are fulfil and happy so long as they have a nice husband, healthy children, and a home to look after. As such, for those women who are non fulfilled by this myth and who find as little meaning in it as the narrator, these roles are confining and ultimately deadening. We see that one day the no name woman expires in her room. We find this out not in a dramatic way but in a very subtle and barely perceptible elan when her husband checks the "delicate bones on her wrist" and lay his face "into her fresh-washed hair" (Godwin, p. 30). Godwin appears to be arguing that all the no name narrator truly wanted is an escape from these roles, scorn having little other desire expressed for anything else. This could also be the point of why we see the woman desire secret code else but escape from these roles. Living within the confines of such roles is often diminishing and confining over time.

Gardiner, Judith K. "'A Sorrowful Woman': Gail Godwin's women's rightist Parable." Studies in Short Fiction, 12(3), pp. 286-290.

The no name narrator in "A Sorrowful Woman" wants for nothing. This is because the roles she occupies as a woman in her society have left her u
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