SOURCE: Halisky, Linda H. “Redeeming the Irrational: The Inexplicable Heroines of ‘A Sorrowful Woman’ and ‘To Room Nineteen.’” Studies in Short Fiction 27, no. 1 (winter 1990): 45-54.

In the following essay, Halisky finds parallels between the female protagonists in Gail Godwin's “A Sorrowful Woman” and Lessing's “To Room Nineteen.”

The heroine of Gail Godwin's short story “A Sorrowful Woman” seems inexplicable. Apparently healthy, married to a “durable, receptive, gentle” husband,¹ and mother of a three-year-old son, she seems to have no aspirations beyond the roles of wife and mother she more than competently fulfills. And yet, one day, as the result of no discernible cause, the sight of her husband and child “made her so sad and sick she did not want to see them ever again” (26). When she tells her husband about her feelings, he comforts her, says he understands, and asks what he can do to help: “He...