29 pages • 58 minutes read
Gail GodwinA Sorrowful Woman
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1971A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Syntax
The sentences in the story are deceptively simple, and the narrator relates climatic events in a detached, matter-of-fact tone that belies the darker elements of the woman’s despondency. This line describes a shocking moment in terse neutrality: “After supper several nights later, she hit the child” (250). This understated style recurs in other lines, like “She got herself upstairs and locked the door” (250) and “The weeping child had run to hide” (250), each of which describe harrowing moments with minimal pathos, mirroring the woman’s growing detachment and deadened senses. The simple sentence structure suggests that the family desires to maintain the normalcy of a fairy-tale narrative rather than delve deeper into the woman’s condition or acknowledge the severity of their dysfunction.
In contrast to the short sentences are occasional run-on sentences and abrupt syntax that reveal the women’s agitated state. Following a long list of the girl’s jubilant talents, Godwin writes, “She washed and set the mother’s soft ash-blonde hair and gave her neck rubs, offered to” (251). Again, the syntax reflects the woman’s emotional status, with the curt last two words conveying her hostility as she refuses the girl’s help.
Allusion
The story alludes to fairy tales to deconstruct gender roles and invoke the moral of finding one’s identity. At times, the woman is Snow White, asleep and awaiting revival. The girl, too, is a Snow White figure—agile, adept, and completely entertaining to the two males in the home. The woman is also the evil queen who envies the girl’s youth and fires her for possessing traits she desires. In addition to the damsel-in-distress narratives of “Snow White,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “Rapunzel,” the story also alludes to “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” a tale about finding the perfect environment to fit one’s identity. The husband falls asleep in the child’s bed, and the woman transfers him to his proper bed. The woman searches for her own sense of identity by trying on different personalities in different rooms, only to discover that nothing really suits her. In subverting these fairy-tale elements, Godwin critiques the way unrealistic narratives of domestic bliss constrain women’s identities.
Foreshadowing
When the child scratches the woman, both characters stare intently as “a thin red line materialize[s] on the inside of her pale arm and spill[s] over in little beads” (250). The slow trickle of blood is far from an innocent scratch; it represents both the woman’s injury from the child and her depressive state. “I’m afraid” (250), she tells her husband in reference to the child, but also in reference to what the sight of her blood stirs within. Her “pale arm” reappears in the scene when she stares blankly at “the arm” (253), which emphasizes her sense of disconnection and foreshadows her suicide. This imagery carries through to the conclusion: In his final moments with the woman, the husband “test[s] the delicate bones of her wrist” (254) in search of a pulse that never materializes.
Setting
The story is set entirely within the home, and the woman never leaves the house. She is both literally and figuratively confined in a domestic space while the other characters have mobility. In the beginning, events clearly occur from day to day, but as the woman grows more alienated, the days lose their distinction, and the seasons measure the general passing of time. The melting snow outside the woman’s window indicates that months have passed though she remains locked in a monotonous routine. The winter setting connotes hibernation or death, mirrored in the constant state of drug-induced sedation and depression the woman experiences. Her final emergence from her room occurs at the start of spring, a symbol of renewal and growth. However, she punctuates this burst of activity in the kitchen with her suicide, and the promises of spring only heighten the tragedy.
