Reflection of “A Sorrowful Woman”

A Sorrowful Woman is a short story by Gail Godwin in which a wife and mother suffers from depression. At the beginning of the story, we are introduced to the unnamed main characters: husband, wife, and child. The wife and mother has a depressive disorder. She doesn’t like the way her husband and child sight. Meanwhile, the husband and father taken over the household chores and taken care of their child. He also take care of his wife like brings meals to his wife's bed and undress her. This situation is very rare in nowadays, especially in eastern culture. In eastern culture, patriarchy is the most common things in any marriage. In some marriage, even when the wife get sick, the husband divorce his wife and married another woman. I can understand why it’s hard to be wife and mother. In my experience, I can see it in my mother. She sacrifice her job to be a full time wife and mother. Thankfully, she did not get into depression but if she tells me that she’s depress, I can understand why. It’s hard to be a wife and a mother in the same time. So, by that I can understand why the wife and mother fell into depression. Then, the story continue with the husband hired a nanny to do the household chores, take care their child, and take care his wife. One day the wife doesn’t want to see the husband and child anymore. Instead, she told them to put notes. “One night, when the husband's note had been extremely short, loving but short, and there had been nothing from the boy, she stole out of her room as she often did to get more supplies, but crept upstairs instead and stood outside their doors, listening to the regular breathing of the man and boy asleep. She hurried back to her room and drank the draught.” I believe that she felt something suspicious with the husband and child with the nanny. There is some affection that the nanny gave to his husband and child due to the wife and mother absence to their life. So then the wife didn’t like the nanny and fired her. “In the evenings, very briefly she saw the two of them. They knocked on her door, a big knock and a little, and she would call Come in, and the husband would smile though he looked a bit tired, yet somehow this tiredness suited him. He would put her sleeping draught on the bedside table and say, ‘The boy and I have done all right today,’ and the child would kiss her. One night she tasted for the first time the power of his baby spit.” At this point, at first I thought that maybe he finally realize that after all this time, her husband and child still loves her. But then, the wife response that she can’t see him anymore. It refer to her child. By this action, I’m sure that the wife still on a huge depression. And then, the man and boy came home and found five loaves of warm bread, a roast stuffed turkey, a glazed ham, three pies of different fillings, eight molds of the boy's favorite custard, two weeks supply of fresh-laundered sheets and shirts and towels, two hand-knitted sweaters (both of the same grey color), a sheath of marvelous watercolor beasts accompanied by mad and fanciful stories nobody could ever make up again, and a tablet full of love sonnets addressed to the man. Also, the house smelled redolently of renewal and spring. The wife do all of this. However, when the husband and child found her, she’s no longer alive. In my opinion, there are probably two scenario, the wife die because of depression or she committed suicide.