A Sorrowful Woman

The mother feels an antagonism toward her son that is a mixture of fear and revulsion. How is the woman’s fear of patriarchal dominance projected onto the son? Would she feel and behave differently if her child was a daughter?

Describe the relationship between the woman and the girl. Consider each character’s perspective and analyze how they would interpret each other’s behavior.

The narration’s deceptively simple style heightens the story’s ambiguity. Ernest Hemingway, whose prose is equally direct, proposed the “iceberg theory” to contend that stories should reveal just enough detail to see the surface of characters but accentuate the depth of meaning underneath. Choose a passage from the story and rewrite it to include descriptions of the characters’ internal thoughts and motivations. Include emotional indicators like body language, adverbs, and internal monologue to emphasize your understanding of their actions. How do your changes alter the significance of the scene, your sympathy for the characters, and the meaning of the story as a whole?

The story provides sparse information on the family’s background to contextualize the opening scene where the woman rejects her family. What do you imagine the family dynamic was like before? What clues does the story offer to support your interpretation?

Godwin acknowledges that readers have struggled to make sense of the woman, and she receives “regular emails from bewildered high school and college students asking why this woman did what she did” (Godwin, Gail. “Working on the Ending.” The New York Times, 10 Dec. 2010). What underlies the woman’s choices and behavior? Is she a sympathetic character who is a victim of a patriarchal society? Is she clinically mentally ill? Is she a spoiled, middle-class woman who does not appreciate her husband? Use the text to support your answer.

The woman leaves behind a plethora of goods in the kitchen on the day of her death. What do these items reveal about her identity and the way other characters perceive her? Choose three items and analyze their significance to the story.

Is the husband a sympathetic hero or a passive enabler? Does he wish for a fairy-tale ending, or does he challenge the myth of the nuclear family? Cite evidence from the text to support your argument.

Choose a fairy tale and compare it with this story. Some elements to examine include setting, structure, narration, characters, and literary devices. How does Godwin employ fairy-tale elements, and in what ways does she subvert them? What is the moral of your original fairy tale, and what is the moral of “A Sorrowful Woman”?