Room Nineteen: A Room of Susan's Own

Abstract

Doris Lessing's "To Room Nineteen" chronicles a passionate account of Susan Rawlins’s Pathetic fate. Susan, a middle-aged English woman, appears to have a happy married Life with her husband and four children. But her disillusionment of this illusory Happiness principally caused by her husband's infidelity forces to her embark on a quest For self-discovery and Freedom. However, Susan's misinterpretation of the ideas of her 'True self and 'freedom ' ironically propels her to a descent into madness and finally to Committing suicide in Room Nineteen in Fred's Hotel. For the purposes of this paper I Propose to examine how Susan's conjugal life gradually degenerated, and how Room Nineteen stands for the ideas of Susan's emancipation and disintegration at the same Time. Room Nineteen gives Susan hopes to rise from the frustration of her maladjusted Family life. But it is this very hotel room that, like a silent assassin, devours her ill the End. Thus Room Nineteen 'offers multifold significations as it becomes the symbol of Susan's mental trauma, her aspiration and also her failure to subvert the authority of Patriarchy.