Analysis Of A Sorrowful Woman

In the story “A Sorrowful Woman”, the woman is suffering from depression which later caused her to commit suicide. The woman is very depressed as she does not want to be a full time wife and mother. The sight of her husband and son always makes her feel disgusted and sicked. When the husband hires a girl to manage the woman roles that the woman wished to achieve herself, this made the woman more upset which makes the woman to fire the girl. After she fired the girl, the woman started moving to the girl’s white bedroom and that’s where everything starts to fall apart as she cuts off all the contact with her family. The woman wanted to be free so bad. She doesn’t want to be a wife and mother so she tried new things. She tried new personalities, for example, she attempted to write a poem, but it doesn’t seem that she is satisfied with it. After she tried everything, she realized how many options and choices she have and the idea of having so much freedom seems to distress her.
I think the woman is very selfish because in the whole story all she did is to find her own self as she can’t identify herself so her husband is always there by her side fulfilling her roles.
The woman doesn’t even care for her family as she disconnects herself from her family, since she finds her home and family as a burden. She thinks that the life that she’s living right now seemed to suffocate her with the roles of being a mother and wife. In this story, I think the woman wants to portray that not all women must want to be a wife or mother, especially during the time or year of this story. And women just wanted to be independent and free like any other man just like the main character, the woman, in the
story.
The woman committed suicide after she prepared everything for her family. I think that the woman’s suicide illustrates her inability to deal having too many choices and also symbolizes that she wanted to be free of sorrow. All she wanted is to be free but all the freedom she did seem to be overwhelming.
The woman’s character is a dynamic, she changes so much throughout the story. In the beginning, the author mentioned that the woman had a happy and beautiful life before she had a child. As the story goes on, the woman keeps changing from seeing her family as a burden into a woman that wanted to be free from sorrow. The woman in the story has a lot of dissatisfaction not only in her family but in her life too. The dissatisfaction of the woman slowly withdraws herself from her husband, son, her home and the world. I think that the author wants to emphasize by the woman’s character that marriage and motherhood does not always end up a happy ending.