The Struggle of Women in Gail Godwin’s Dream Children, Nobody’s Home, and A Sorrowful Woman

Abstract

This examination aims to unfold the discourse of women’s struggle in Gail Godwin’s selected short stories entitled Dream Children, Nobody’s Home, and A Sorrowful Woman published in a book form in 1976. Secondly, it is to unfold the critical position of the author related to women’s struggles in society. This study concentrates on exploring the struggle of the female main characters of each story. Those characters are Mrs. McNair, Mrs. Wakeley, and an unnamed female character. This study is interesting to examine because all the stories contain the different problems of women’s struggle, but still in the same context, which those problems discussed are often found in today’s issues. The discourse of women’s struggles was examined using Hall’s representation theory and Michel Foucault’s discursive approach. Seligman’s (2012) theory of happiness and well-being was taken as base knowledge in forming the types of struggles. This study is a qualitative study. It uses two types of data. The primary data were taken from the 3rd edition book entitled Dream Children which was published in 1996. The data were accumulated based on words, statements, and conversations from selected short stories that depict women's struggles. The secondary data were taken from books, theses, articles, journals, news, and the internet sources. It contains the author's profile, background, interviews about her opinion on women's struggles in general, as well as the social context of women’s struggles in the 1960s until the 1970s. The female lead characters in each story experienced three struggles, according to this research: the struggle to get joy, the struggle to achieve goals, and the struggle to get affection. The female protagonists in the short stories portray a variety of challenges that women frequently experience in real life, including the difficulty in finding happiness due to loneliness, bad luck, and relationship issues. In Dream Children, Mrs. McNair seeks out people who have identical condition as her. In Nobody's Home, Mrs. Wakeley establishes a private bank account that may fill her with satisfaction, and in A Sorrowful Woman, the female character withdraws from her family and searches for her true identity. Based on these actions, Godwin demonstrates how women can accomplish their objectives in different ways independently. Nevertheless, Godwin also wants to show how long-standing patriarchal traditions have made it difficult for women to be independent. Whatever women do, they are always under the control of men, particularly in domestic settings. It can be summed up that Godwin’s critical position on women’s struggles is still negotiating.