Short Story Review of Gail Godwin's Parable "A Sorrowful Woman"

A detailed Summary of Short Story Review of Gail Godwin's Parable "A Sorrowful Woman"

The short story "A Sorrowful Woman" by Gail Godwin represents in parable-fashion, what may in fact happen within a (supposedly at least) "fairy tale marriage" in which the wife becomes overwhelmed, bored, and discontented with her traditional role(s). This story, in which everyone is nameless and faceless, takes place in an unidentifiable place, except that we are told the weather is cold, and winter turns into spring. But otherwise there are no physical descriptions except that the girl who comes to clean house for the exhausted young wife, is "not pretty" (Godwin, p. 34) (which, if she had been, might have complicated the predictable direction). This parable is, in fact, like a fairy tale in reverse even at the end when the "sleeping beauty" splayed out in the kitchen fails to be stirred awake by a man's loving caress.

The discontented young wife works just as hard as a Cinderella (at first, that is, until an ugly step-daugh

Then spring comes and the young woman's energy returns, but (predictably by now) not for very long. Her fate, it seems, is to either to "under-do" her vital womanly role, or to "overdo" it, although in the reverse order of typical fairy tales. For example, this young woman is awake (even if just barely) at the beginning of "A Sorrowful Woman", but she is dead on the floor, unable to be revived by even the most loving touch, at the end. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, on the other hand (for example) fall asleep early in their respective stories, but wake up once kissed by a prince at the end. By comparison, though, the equivalent circumstances to those that cause Snow White; Sleeping Beauty; Cinderella, and several others, to "live happily ever after", instead put this unnamed "Sorrowful Woman" of Gail Godwin's ironic parable to sleep forever.

Within this parable, all ends "unhappily ever after", with the devoted but mystifi

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Approximate Word count = 636
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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