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To Room Nineteen

Summary

Susan and Matthew¡¦s marriage was a ¡§perfect¡¨ marriage. (pp.2542-3)

Susan becomes a dutiful wife and mother. (p.2544)
Matthew begins to have affairs. 
(pp.2544-2545)
The youngest children (twins) are ¡§off her hand.¡¨ (p. 2546)

Susan rents a hotel room for solitude. (p.2552)
Susan cannot find a way to her real self except by killing herself. Her marriage is ¡§a failure¡¨. (p.2564)

At the beginning, we can see the Rawlings¡¦ marriage was ¡§perfect¡¨ based on intelligence and mutual respect. Susan and Matthew Rawlings, having been ¡§stably¡¨ married for twelve years, are regarded by their friends as a successful couple, having ¡§everything they had wanted and had planned for.¡¨ So they are thought to have guarded their marriage ¡§ in intelligence¡¨. And because of Matthew¡¦s ¡§well-paid¡¨ job, Susan and Matthew belong to the upper-middle-class family, raise four children, and live in a gardened house. For the sake of a normal family life, Susan quits her job to be ¡§mother¡¨ at home. She becomes a responsible mother and wife so she does not have time to experience the sense of freedom. Until Susan¡¦s youngest children go to school, she feels that she has a chance to live her own life. But, she also feels nothing worthy to do and never has a spare moment to herself. Her day is just taken up in waiting for the children to come home, consulting with the maid or worrying about dinner. 

Reference

Cheung, Agnes Ying-fun. The Theme of Escape In Doris Lessing¡¦s Fiction. MA Thesis. The Graduate Institute of English. Taipei: Fu Jen University, 1987. 14-8. 

Question 2: How does Lessing express her view of  marriage through her narrative technique and the character of Susan?

Answer:

Lessing expresses Susan's helplessness (P. 2545) and emptiness (p. 2549) of her marriage life through Susan's internal monologue.

Although Susan knows her husband is not faithful to her, she forgives him. She denies her own feelings, feels helpless of her marriage life, and this leads to her actions at the end of the story. (See P.2545)

Through Susan and Matthew' dialogues, we know that they lack of communication in their married life. (pp. 2559, 2561)

Question 3: How do you comment on Susan's human relationship in the story? How does it relate to the "mid-life crisis"? 

Answer:

Susan isolates herself from people after all her children go to school; her soul can be emancipated only when she is alone. (cf. Woolf's A Room of One's Own)

Midlife crisis for women¡X The feeling of ¡§empty nest¡¨ makes women depressed and terrified. However, for Susan, nothing is important in her life, not even her children. In the end, Susan is tired of her madness and surrenders to death. The words¡X ¡§intelligent¡¨ and ¡§civilized¡¨¡Xfor her are ironic, and her ¡§intelligence¡¨ somehow leads her to commit suicide.

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