DORIS LESSING: TO ROOM NINETEEN
This was the first short story that I read from Doris Lessing. Since then I read another one, Through the tunnel, and both of them made me think. For me, both stories represented people who felt that they were not needed, that they had to do something to make themselves realised by the ones they loved.In To Room Nineteen the main character, Susan, is a person who needs to have a feeling of comfort, love and freedom at the same time. At the beginning everything seems so perfect. She married to a man she loves and admires. They make a couple everybody is proud to know. They are a role model for other people. Seemingly they have everything: they live in a beautiful house, they do not have financial problems and they have four wonderful children. These things are probably enough for an outsider to consider this relationship a success. But not everything is the same inside the house as from outside. Matthew, the husband, works late; they only have conversations in their big, comfortable bed as they do not have any other opportunity to talk. At first, Susan is satisfied with this situation. She has a loving husband, four children and she has no other jobs to do but to take care of them.
The feeling of not being needed grows day by day. I feel she is the one who puts herself in a position not to be needed. The easiest solution was to kill herself, leaving everything behind instead of facing the problems, talk about them with her husband and find a solution together. She escapes throughout the whole story and this is just another form of doing it. She does not want to be a nuisance to anyone that is why she chooses to go away to a place where no one knows her and no one can disturb her. She feels that he would leave her if he knew the truth. She finds a little hotel where she can be alone without hearing the voices of her family. This is just another cause that separates the couple from each other. She turns into her own world, hiding from reality. Susan thinks that employing this girl would mean more freedom for her. The children need her, need someone to be with. After a while, going away is not satisfying anymore. There are people, like the owner of the hotel, who would like to be in her position. This is the time when she decides to employ an au-pair girl. I think this is the point when Susan starts to feel that she does not belong to this family anymore.
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