Similarities Between Gail Godwin And A Sorrowful Woman

Karen van der Zee and Gail Godwin are both strong writers, but explore the world of writing differently than one another. Van der Zee, the author of From A Secret Sorrow, composes romance novels, while Godwin, the author of “A Sorrowful Woman,” composes a variety of short stories. Both authors compose intriguing works, but “A Sorrowful Woman” is a better example of literature. Both of these authors focus of the theme, the characters and the conflicts in the stories that will be compared, but Godwin makes her work more captivating.
Theme is usually very crucial to a story and both van der Zee and Godwin put an emphasis on their themes. There are two themes that stood out the most in these two stories and they are, male dominance and love. These …show more content…
In both the stories, there is a man and a woman introduced. The male character is described as “durable, receptive, [and] gentle” (Godwin, 38) in “A Sorrowful Woman.” Her story represents the man the same way the the man is represented in From A Secret Sorrow. Both the male characters are loving, caring, and strong. They are passionate toward the woman they love and their children. However, there is a difference in the way the children are introduced into the story. The man and the woman in Godwin’s short story already have a child who is introduced when he is a “tender golden three” (Godwin, 38). The child was introduced within the first couple of sentences of the short story and is a major topic throughout the story. On the other hand, the topic of children was introduced toward the end of the novel. Kai and Faye ended up adopting children in van der Zee’s novel in the very last chapter. Van der Zee described the children as “hungry for love, hungry for nourishment and care” (van der Zee, 37), and the mother fulfills the child's needs. Faye shows that she loves the children and that they are very important in her life. She feels complete as she has her husband and the children around her, but the woman in “A Sorrowful Woman” is the complete opposite. The woman wants to stay away from her child and she tells him to “go away” as he is trying to …show more content…
Each of their conflicts are absolutely different yet are somehow related. Both conflicts incorporate children but focus on them in different ways. Van der Zee’s conflict in her novel is focused on in chapter 11 when Kai begins to question her about a secret that she is hiding from him. She later in the chapter reveals that Faye is not able to have children and is scared that she would disappoint him with the fact that he will not be able to have children with her. Kai does everything he is capable of doing to reassure Faye the he will love her forever no matter what. They solved their conflict, got married and adopted 3 children. In Godwin’s short story, the conflict was introduced in the first paragraph when she wrote, “the sight of them made her so sad and sick she did not what to see them again” (Godwin, 38). The woman was scared of her husband and of her child and thought it would be better to keep herself away from them. Her husband supported her and let her seclude herself from the family. Her life deteriorated and she ended up dying in the end of the story. The ending to Godwin’s story is a bit confusing, but good literature makes the readers think, the way her story does. The conflicts are related in the fact of the children, but are approached in different