Doris Lessing

Some lengthy notes on her bio and “To Room Nineteen”:

(1) She was born (1919) in Iran to British parents and her family moved to what is now Zimbabwe in 1924. She moved to England later on in her life. Keep this in mind when you are reading Lessing: she was an outsider in every country she lived in- in Africa she was white and therefore “other,” while in England she was of African birth and therefore “other.” The “other” is usually used with respect to race or ethnicity, but Lessing, in “To Room Nineteen,” uses the notion of “the other” to describe the condition of one woman. Susan is an “other” in two ways: (1) she is a woman, (2) she is losing her mind and therefore “other” to her own self.

(2) “To Room 19” clearly deals with the dynamics of marriage, what makes a marriage work and what makes it fall apart. But it goes far deeper then that. For example, on page 2545 of your text, the marriage between Susan and Matthew is called “this thing they had created.”  The word “thing” is strewn throughout the rest of the pages: “it was the nature of things that the adventure and delight could no longer be hers” (2547), “they put the thing behind them” (2547). Lessing is incredibly careful in choosing her words, and the reader notices, at this point in the text, that “this thing,” their marriage, is doomed to fail. Their marriage is not a deep, passionate involvement that two beings create and share with one another, but a “thing,” an object of convenience. This is an example of a “close reading,” something you should try to do in your own papers.

(3) Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize in 2007. Her Nobel speech is absolutely amazing. If you guys have time to listen to it please do! Here it is: http://nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=777

(4) Lessing was a member of the Communist Party and was ( is) actively involved in human rights campaigns and politics. Some of her other works deal with issues regarding the South African apartheid and the rights of women throughout Africa and the rest of the world.

(5) In ‘To Room Nineteen” both Matthew and Susan fall inside certain categories. They begin to act out the roles of husband and wife, unaware that these roles are imaginary roles which can and should undergo revision. The idea of “choice,” which appears on page 2545 (“because of their infallible sense for choosing right”), is problematic: do you think that they had a “choice”? What does the narrator subtly attempting to say about the notion of “free will” here?

(6) Although the short story is loosely based on Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, I think that Lessing is attempting to rebuke Woolf, to show that a Room is not enough. A room will not stop Susan from turning on the gas, nor did it stop Woolf from walking into the river that March afternoon. Lessing is going beyond Woolf, yearning  for more than just a room of one’s own. She wants the cemented gender roles that society has enforced upon populations for centuries to undergo an intense reconstruction, making  room for new possibilities. Where do you see traces of Woolf in this short story? How is Lessing showing that a room is not enough?

(7) Think about the interior dialogue that Susan engages in. At the beginning Lessing using parentheses to help the reader understand where this interior dialogue takes place ( the parenthetical serves to LITERALLY show interiority). Toward the end of the story the parentheses disappear. Why? Has Susan’s  interior dialogue completely taken over?

(8) This is a story about madness. The narrator takes us on a journey which depicts the rise of Susan’s madness. The words “bondage” and “prison” appear throughout- what do they imply? Susan begins to recognize her own madness on page 2556. She looks in the mirror and sees “the reflection of a madwoman.” What is the significance of the mirror throughout? Is the mirror another type of prison? How can Susan be free? What is required for her to feel the freedom she desires?

(9) Think of some of the characters. Is Matthew a bad husband? Why? Why is Sophie, the au pair, brought into the house? What about the devils that Susan keeps seeing and hearing (she always hears the hissing sound)?

Pick one passage of this short story, just a few sentences, and do a close reading. What do you discover? This would be a great story for many of you who have not decided on a paper topic to work on. It is incredibly rich with symbols, themes, and linguistic complications. Please read it, make the time, you will be pleasantly surprised at the astonishing beauty of Lessing’s prose.

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