The emotional content of Gail Godwin’s short story, “A Sorrowful Woman,” provided a glimpse inside the mind of a distant and detached woman, completely outside my personal experience. Reading this story was not unlike the escapism at the heart of formula fiction, but with a decidedly different slant. I was taken on a trip inside a mind completely different from my own, escaping from my own reality. For a brief time, I was able to understand how a person might, through the natural course of events, grow apart from reality and into a quiet world of their own construction. I was struck by the lack of explicit events or justifications for this woman’s depression.
As an engineer, and a male, I tend to be drawn to action and reason, and have more difficulty understanding a story about emotion and feelings. Godwin’s plain descriptions of daily events painted a picture of emotional solitude by their contrast to the understanding and loving actions of the husband. We see this contrast in early descriptions where the woman’s actions have almost no content at all, “She got up on Monday and moved about the house till noon.” Meanwhile the rest of her family is filled with energy, “The boy, delighted to have her back, pretended he was a vicious tiger and followed her from room to room, growling and scratching” (6). Later, the same contrast is repeated as the woman slowly withdraws, again painting a simple picture as she moves into the “girl’s white room. She put her hairbrush on the dresser; she put a note pad and pen beside the bed.” (20) At this point, her family is becoming more distant, along with the descriptions of their activities from her perspective. Still, we can feel their love when the husband “squeezed his wife’s pale arm” and “sat for a long time with his head in his hands.” (25) The distinct lack of emotion in the heroine is made stronger by its contrast against the love of her family. I was surprised that the use of such a simple plot could paint such a clear emotional picture.
I am curious to know the “why” and the “what” that led to our heroine’s condition, but we are left to wonder. We are given glimpses of her fear and guilt when she locks herself away after being scratched, and says “I’m such a burden.” (15) The emotions are described, but not the cause. Clearly, at some earlier point, she felt quite differently. She met and married a loving husband and formed a family. She understands the simple rewards of baking a loaf of bread for her family. But somewhere along the way, the love became smothering: “The force of the two joyful notes slipped under her door that evening pressed her into the corner of the little room; she had hardly space to breathe.” (33) What events caused this change? We now understand that depression is a chemical imbalance. Unlike what we’ve been taught by literature, that character arcs are driven by plot, depression has no identifiable cause. It is precisely that lack of plot, and the simplicity of the descriptions, that mirrors the lack of love and emotion in our heroine.
References:
Godwin, Gail, “The Sorrowful Woman,” The Bedford Introduction to Literature, 8th Edition, Editor Michael Meyer, Boston, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. Pg 39-43.
I agree with you that the way the story is written, with gaps in what is revealed mirrors the woman's condition. It seems there is a gap inside of her that cannot be filled. The unanswered questions actually enrich the story by leaving it to our imagination and wondering.
ReplyDeleteI loved your commentary regarding this story. I understand where you come from when you implied you wanted to know the cause of this emotional effect. Women, such strange creatures are we... I'm going to go with a guess that our sorrowful woman may have had a bad lingering case of post partum depression.
ReplyDeletePPD normally lasts up to a year, but there have been cases where it has lasted longer. Even some cases where it wasn't trigger until much after the baby was born. Since she did have a three year old, that could have very likely been the case.
As far as the gaps in the story, possibly it was written that way to mirror the gaps in the life of our sorrowful woman.
I thought it was really neat how you pointed out that the story seemed to lack content from the woman's perspective. I thought it was very odd, and very interesting, that the author chose to make the woman so dull and seemingly lifeless. 'This happend and then this', while those people around her seemed to get much more joy out of the daily life.
ReplyDeleteI also think it was interesting that the husband was hardly described. The child and that surrounding it was a much more focused on person, and the husband was not described in emotional detail, while the son painted things and ran about the house growling like a tiger.
I also wondered what the beginning of this relationship must have been like. Probably intentional by the writer to let you/us to fill in the plot points. What was the woman like during the beginning of the marriage before the child came in. Was she angry before the child or was that the lever that pushed her toward anger?
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