A Sorrowful Woman

Through the woman’s eyes, the man is initially “durable, receptive, [and] gentle” (249). He is heroic in many aspects as he takes on more responsibilities to support his wife. He affectionately takes her out on dates, asking in advance so she can be prepared for and accustomed to the outings. He relieves her of duties, shouldering responsibility for what tradition assumes are a woman’s traits: domesticity, sacrifice, and acquiescence. The relative success of his domestic performance serves as a deconstruction of gender roles: He can tuck the child into bed, read a bedtime story, cook meals, and tend the laundry, illustrating that there is no innate trait that makes a woman more naturally suited to the tasks of child-rearing and domesticity.

The man’s gallant responses to the woman’s breakdown are not always in her best interest. On the first evening, he gives her one glass of cognac and another containing the brown liquid. As the story progresses, he often hands her “two glasses” (253), “the little glass and the big one” (251). He repeatedly prepares and administers the draught, though the woman drinks it willingly. Rather than view her dependence on the sedative as a harmful addiction, he continues giving her doses in hopes that she may resume her role as mother and wife or simply figure out what she wants to do. The narrator contends, “He was attuned to her; he understood such things. He said he understood” (249). The repetition suggests that his assertions of compassion may be more wish fulfillment than actual empathy.

The child has a dichotomous portrayal. He is at once a “tender golden three” (249) and a “vicious tiger” (250). He is a victim of his mother’s physical and psychological abuse, and is often “frightened” (250), “weeping” (250), and hiding in fear of his mother. As an archetype, the child is divine and precious (“golden”), and it is the woman’s duty to revere his life over hers. From the mother’s perspective, the child harbors a threatening presence. She experiences horror when he gazes at her with approval in the kitchen, as if he has the power to determine where she belongs. When the child pretends to be a tiger, he creates an atmosphere of surveillance and stalking, following her “from room to room, growling and scratching” (250). The anxiety the child stirs in the woman links to his inheritance of patriarchal authority and the taboo of rejecting motherhood.

Godwin’s narrator evokes a subtle tension in the child’s presumed innocence by suggesting that he is not as pure and harmless as he seems. When he brings in the grasshopper to surprise his mother, he “smiled mysteriously” (251), as if he knows it will frighten her. Likewise, when he asks, “Can we eat the turkey for supper?” (254), this strikes both a chord of tragic innocence and inappropriate gluttony. Whether real or imagined, the child’s menacing traits represent a reversal where the offspring endangers rather than fulfils the mother’s existence.