¶ … Women Similarities and Separation in Two Sorry Women

It is impossible to discuss the nature of femininity or what it means to be a woman without some discussion on child bearing and rearing. While modern feminist movements have rejected the notion that child bearing abilities should define women's roles in culture or society, the fact is that it is this physical capability that has defined women's roles in many cultures and still does in many remaining cultures. Literature has often explored what these shifts in individual and societal perception mean and what the personal implications are for women, and Karen Van Der Zee's A Secret Sorrow and Gayle Godwin's "A Sorrowful Woman" are two prime examples. These stories both explore what motherhood and the capability to bear children means to a modern (or at least semi-modern) woman, showing that the personal nature of the self and of maternal instincts can lead to very different responses. Through a comparison and contrast of the romance novel A Secret Sorrow's protagonist Faye and the more reticent featured character of the wife/mother in the short story "A Sorrowful Woman," it can be seen that despite some similarities, these women are quite different in terms of how they view their roles as mothers, as wives, and as individuals.

Being a mother is a very important aspect of both Faye and the wife/mother's character,...

Faye is distraught because an accident has left her without the ability to bear children, while the wife/mother has a son that seems to repulse her to ever-intensifying degrees. Both women face enormous struggles with their maternal expectations, and for both women it seems clear that the issue of offspring is the source of the titular sorrows. Faye feels an enormous expectation to bear children from those around her and had this expectation of herself, as well, and she is too ashamed of her physical incapacity to openly acknowledge that this expectation cannot be met; it is hinted that the wife/mother, on the other hand, senses that she is supposed to feel differently towards her son than she does, yet is unable to alter these feelings and so is further turned away by her own lack of maternal feelings. Both women see themselves as failing to live up to the expectations of motherhood, then -- one because she cannot have any children, and one because she cannot bring herself to love the child she has -- and so both women become increasingly miserable as the situation goes unchanged.
Motherhood and maternal instincts and abilities also have a direct impact on the relationships these women form with the men in their lives, and their perception of their roles as wives. Again, the wife/mother has a husband,…