29 pages • 58 minutes read
A Sorrowful Woman
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Background
Authorial Context: Gail Godwin
Gail Godwin was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1937 and attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she earned a master’s degree and a PhD in English. Critics regard Godwin’s writings as part of a feminist and Southern literary tradition, and she often draws from her autobiography in her fiction. References to Godwin’s personal life include the unhappy marriages in The Perfectionists (1970) and Glass People (1972), the role of writing and art in The Odd Woman (1974) and Violet Clay (1978), and the treatment of suicide in A Southern Family (1987), published after her stepbrother’s death. These themes overlap with those in “A Sorrowful Woman,” as the story’s protagonist navigates her place within the social conventions of marriage and family in search of a new identity.
Godwin’s assessment of women’s writing caused a stir in her book review of Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s Norton Anthology of Literature by Women (1985). In her review, which prompted letters to the editor, Godwin lamented the anthology’s preferential focus on feminist literature and omission of writers who do not directly address issues of female identity, patriarchy, and gender roles. Aware that her own works encompass these same feminist issues, Godwin argued that critics should evaluate women’s writings as works of art, not solely as works for feminist interpretations. Godwin critiqued the anthology’s focus on the trope of women’s madness as symptom of a patriarchal society. She referred to the editors’ groundbreaking book The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) as “a sort of bible for feminist critics” and cast doubt on Virginia Woolf’s claim that women’s writings “continue each other” (Godwin, Gail. “One Woman Leads to Another,” The New York Times, 28 Apr. 1985). Godwin objects to categorizing women’s books within a narrow genealogy of damaged voices and identities reclaimed through writing. Although she wrote her review more than 10 years after the first publication of “A Sorrowful Woman,” her disappointment at the anthology’s construction of the female literary tradition offers a lens to understand why the protagonist fails to simply write her way to recovery.
Ideological Context: Second Wave Feminism
The 1960s and 1970s are known as the era of second wave feminism in the United States, a time when women rejected the model of femininity proposed during the 1950s that idealized the nuclear family, especially the role of the housewife. This model was itself a reaction to post-World War II sentiments that encouraged women to return to their homes after serving in the workforce during the men’s absence. Feminists of various ideological backgrounds (radical, liberal, cultural, Marxist) examined the role of housework, equal pay, and reproductive rights, and critiqued representations of women in popular culture, such as beauty pageants, Barbie dolls, and fairy tales.
Though the designation of waves is convenient in broad strokes, the claims and characterizations of the second wave did not reflect the realities of all women, particularly women of color, queer and lesbian identities, the Global South, and the lower class. The motto of “sisterhood” was regularly challenged as other women’s voices drew attention to the need for a more diverse and intersectional definition of “woman” and women’s experiences. In “A Sorrowful Woman,” the protagonist’s struggles with her role as wife and mother is a particularly middle-class dilemma. The husband can afford a nanny, babysitters, and nice restaurant dinners. Instead of seeking solidarity with other women in the story, the woman regards the babysitter and especially the nanny as rivals who usurp her position. A class analysis reveals how differently the characters value domestic work. Housework is a thankless job when the woman performs it, as even her husband acknowledges, “Nonsense […] You need a rest from us” (250). Yet when the girl (who is neither mother nor wife) earns money for her work, she rises to an honorable position and is a “treasure of a girl” (252). The disparity between these two views pivots on the assumption that domestic work is the natural duty and expression of a wife and mother and is therefore not as valued as paid labor.
Socio-Historical Context: Women and Mental Health in the 1970s
Godwin’s protagonist takes a nightly dose of alcohol and an unidentified brown liquid to control her emotional outbursts, but they only appear to worsen her condition. Sedatives like benzodiazepines became the most widely prescribed drug by the 1970s, as doctors readily prescribed them to treat anxiety, insomnia, and depression. Tranquilizers like Valium, euphemistically called “Mother’s Little Helper” thanks to a 1966 Rolling Stones song, were known to give short-term relief. In the long term, they could worsen depression and increase risks of aggression and suicide, especially when mixed with alcohol. The overprescription of these drugs was especially evident in women, and “these pills became known as the treatment of choice for the pressure of motherhood, single-hood and other historically specific forms of essentialised womanhood” (Metzl, Jonathan. “’Mother’s Little Helper’: The Crisis of Psychoanalysis and the Miltown Resolution.” Gender & History, vol. 15, no. 2, Aug. 2003, pp. 240-267). Scholars and physicians have since acknowledged the overprescription of these drugs that pathologized women who struggled to feel fulfilled in domesticity.
The woman’s erratic behavior in “A Sorrowful Woman” follows a similar trajectory of paradoxical side effects. She initially feels better after drinking her draught but becomes violent when she strikes her child and eventually suicidal. The tranquilizers deaden her senses and attempt to cure her malaise by dulling her feelings of rebellion. The husband explains that “Mommy is sick” (250) to the child after her second outburst. The story criticizes the pathologizing of women’s emotions, particularly the feelings of dissatisfaction and rebellion against domesticity and motherhood.
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