A Sorrowful Woman

The grasshopper symbolizes the woman’s repressed feelings of rebellion. The insect “spat brown juice” (251), a liquid that evokes the draughts the woman drinks daily to cope with her anxiety. The grasshopper regurgitates the liquid and leaps away, whereas the woman addictively consumes the fluid and remains sedated. The grasshopper also alludes to fairy tales where humans transform into creatures. The woman, cursed in an unrecognizable body, wishes to return to her original form by spitting out the poison. The insect leaves her repulsed because it too closely resembles her present form, one of fragility and insignificance.

The motif of hair brushing reveals the woman’s fixation on femininity and the pressures to resume her role as wife and mother. As her condition worsens, the woman replaces the act of reading with habitual hair brushing. The ritual is a conventional act of feminine grooming and alludes to tales of Rapunzel and the woman’s own fantasy of being trapped in a tower. When she moves into the girl’s room, she imagines that she becomes “the previous inhabitant, the girl with all the energies” (252). She brushes her hair for hours, as if doing so will restore her youth or doll-like existence.