critical analisys on doris´lessing´s to romm 19

From Pain to Freedom: The Use of Setting in Doris Lessing's "To Room 19" 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, a wife, and a house manager. This painful battle leads her to an utterly denying attitude towards her "intelligent" marriage and domestic life. In order to express this psychological process, Lessing progressively describes the …

…setting in Susan's strained quest towards peace, her initial movements come as an attempt for surviving in the family structure. This way, urging for sheer solitude and anonymity, she gradually leaves the white house she shares with her family, firstly to the garden, then to room 19. As these are no longer safe places, because sooner or later her family's influences end up invading them, Susan makes her last move into the dark river of death.