From Pain to Freedom

Susan Rawling, the main character in Doris Lessing’s short story “To Room 19”, fights against her inner emptiness and the roles she is supposed to play as a mother and a wife. This painful struggle leads her to a resentful attitude towards her “intelligent” marriage and domestic life. In order to express this psychological process, Lessing progressively describes the different views the character has of her surroundings - such as the starkness of her white house, the big and “wild” garden, and finally “Room 19” to demonstrate how these settings influence her troublesome emotional status.
              At the beginning of the story, Susan Rawling lives in a large, white house with a garden. Although it appears her husband and her live a wealthy life and that their house is likely to be comfortable, scarcely can the reader find any detailed description of both the house and the furniture in this house. Along the story, the reader can clearly perceive that this is an intelligently organized structure managed mainly by her. Everything is perfect, “[t]hey had everything they had wanted and had planned for. And yet...” (p. 666). At a certain moment, Susan realizes that there is something wrong with her life. Despite the fact that apparently she leads a flawless life, “... why did Susan feel as if life had become a desert, and that nothing mattered, and that her children were not her own” (p. 668). Susan tries to draw herself back from this structure when she feels she does not totally belong to that place, since there she is not really herself, but the mother, the wife and the house manager, simply, Mrs. Rawling. Inside the house, Susan has to perform her domestic roles, “not being able to see her own essence, as if she were in abeyance, as if she were in cold storage” (p. 669). She hopes once all her children are at school, she will have enough free time for herself and hence will be able to take time to just be herself, Susan. Nevertheless, this yearning creates...