Once Upon A Time Gordimer Summary

Dark clouds surround the sky as the night approaches the city, men are laughing and having a wonderful time ,children are sleeping, and the lonely housewife awaits her husband’s return unknowing when he might arrive and burst through the doors. Women were always home cooking, cleaning, taking care of the children, and doing the laundry and other chores .Women in the past had no saying in any debate or conversation, women were just a man’s tool to be used how he pleased . The reasons behind it was men felt that women were shunned and were said to be much more delicate and less intellectual than a man. They also had no knowledge of important matters and were only there to satisfy for childbearing and watching over the house. These type of events …show more content…
A typical family living in the suburbs with pets, a mother, father, and child , they barricade themselves and only hired “good” servants as the neighbors put in a good word for them. This accusation about blacks being ruthless, deceiving people is racist but around the 1900 's it was normal behavior to act self consequence and distrust the Africans. The family does everything in their power to protect their house from invaders but made it a hazard for their small child who got stuck in a barbed wire and was killed slowly as he tried to free himself. There is a lot of Irony in this short story , for example ; the plaque that reads “YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED” that was supposed to ward off intruders it didn’t do any good since their child was harmed and killed. At the time the housewife was mortified with her household trying to be a good wife she gave food to the blacks to keep them out and to give them a sense that she was a good person. The result was don’t overthink the situation and overdo specific situations in society, misfortunate events will come back to haunt one self. Although the title reads “ Once Upon a Time,” it wasn’t such a glowing ending the wife was, depressed and defenseless, she cries for the loss of her child and as every fearful …show more content…
Some sort of insanity was developed in each story ,”The Lottery” injustice of stoning a person, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” shows us a person can become very ill and lead to psychotic behavior and lose sanity, as for “Once Upon a Time,” paranoia comes into play and leads the household in a state of hostility and in the process they destroy what they wanted to protect most dearest to them, their child . All three share a similar motive that women were looked at as fragile, delicate, inadequate ,and were a weak or lesser being , in all stories the ending for the woman was a tragic and devastating end of loss hope and denial. Insanity, death, and desires were all lost in all the short stories , there was no happy ending for any story and goes to show that women oppression of the desires the wish to hold cannot be held to the standard because men were bringing them down and society has yet to reach an understanding of equality for all