Doris Lessing’s To Room 19 Symbols

Women in patriarchal societies are brought up to have certain values, like to have a desire to be good mothers and good wives. However, as much as they try to do these things, they find that their passions and instincts are put down and this leads to misery and insanity. Women have voiced their concerns about the problems of being a woman in a man's society for years. Feminist literature existed before feminism as a movement did. Finally, in the 20th century, this led to the second and third waves of feminism criticizing the limitations of patriarchal and sexist society for women.

Doris Lessing in her story “To Room Nineteen” uses many symbols to explain how women in patriarchal society feel oppressed and unfulfilled. Here I would like to discuss the symbols I consider to be the most important. These symbols are the snake eating its own tail , the devil, poison and the shell. When the narrator begins to explain Susan's life, she describes how ideal and cloudless it seemed to be. She shows that marriage of the Rawlings was “grounded in intelligence” and how much things finally turned out to became a “failure of intelligence”(251) .

This transition is used to explain how women in a patriarchal society feel, how despite all their efforts they end up being unhappy. The narrator, speaking about Rawlings, provides the analogy of a “snake biting its tail”(253). Chris Sheridan in his article “Ancient Wisdom for Modern Problems” states that traditionally symbol of snake eating its own tail used to symbolize “ the eternal cycle of life”, “wholeness” or infinity. Yet, in Lessing’s story the snake eating its own tail is a symbol of endless futility and absurdity of their life.

“Matthew's job for the sake of Susan, children, house and garden – which caravanserai needed a well paid job to maintain it. And Susan's practical intelligence for the sake of Matthew, the children, the house and the garden – which unit would collapse in a week without her” (253). Susan feels that all of her work is basically meaningless, that like in the Red Queen's race they are just running as fast as they can in order to stay in the same place.

She realizes that her life is basically just maintenance and survival with no further hopes. Theorist Denis Kandiyoti in his work “Bargaining With Patriarchy” says that women in male dominant society, women like Susan end up “bargaining with patriarchy”, realizing either consciously or unconsciously that they can't have everything they want so they take what they can get in a patriarchal society (274-276). “Women strategize within a set of concrete constraints, which I identify as patriarchal bargains.

Different forms of patriarchy present women with distinct 'rules of the game' and call for different strategies to maximize security and optimize life options with varying potential for active or passive resistance in the face of oppression” (Kandiyoti, 274). This bargaining with patriarchy can be seen in the fact that the “snake biting its own tail” normally and traditionally is a symbol of infinite possibilities, however here it becomes a symbol of vain hopes and of limitations. Susan's life is not infinite; it is dreary with gloomy prospects.

The compromises that Susan has to make are a part of reasons that make Susan go to her insanity. She tries to find a way of living with her husband's infidelities or with merely taking care of her children, but these bargains fail and she is unable to be happy. Susan's feeling, that her life has no meaning or point, is also a feeling of dishonor. Susan feels shame at her thoughts that all of these are pointless for her. After all, this is everything society is telling her she should have! She feels ungrateful that she isn't happy, but can't resolve that feeling. Susan is far from alone in this.

As Anna Sandiou points out in her article “To Room Nineteen. What Doris Lessing Has to Say About Women”, that literature like Lessing's was part of the beginning of a feminist movement that identified problems like Susan's as not as being personal failure but on the contrary being general problems of the society. “While Susan’s madness can be explained as the result of the clash between her impulsive, complex personality and the orderliness of the Victorian Angel, it can also be seen as resulting from the conflict between her private wishes and the public expectations that were placed on her, and on women in general.” (Sandoiu)

The common social problems of women are why neither one of them, Susan or Matthew, can look at any part of their marriage and say, “For the sake of this is all the rest” (253). Matthew does everything in his power to make Susan happy, asking her how her day was (“not as interesting, but that was not her fault”), and trying to support her because “both knew of the hidden resentment and deprivations of the woman who lived her own life... and is now dependent on a husband” (254). Matthew does cheat on her, but Susan and Matthew end up agreeing that this is natural (255).

All of this, however, makes Susan feel that she was being “poison[ed]” by “resentment” and that “she was a prisoner” (263). As the narrator explains, “She must tell Matthew – but what? She was filled with emotions that were utterly ridiculous, that she despised... ” (264). Like many women, Susan was trying her best to be happy and grateful in a situation that she emotionally hated. The symbols of poison and prison, both slow and dreadful, are used to emphasize how Susan can be suffering even as she seems good on the outside.

Her entire family with a kind of surprise, which she despises, treats even those things that Susan negotiates to make herself feel better. She wants a room to herself to calm down and do her own tasks, but even this idea annoys her. “Many serious conversations took place between Matthew and the children about not taking Mother for granted. Susan overheard the first... and was surprised at her irritation over it. Surely she could have a room somewhere in that big house and retire into it without such a fuss being made? ” (266).

Susan finds herself annoyed that the process of expressing her feelings and finding a way to be little happier must be such a big deal. Her anger is represented in her guilt as “devils of exasperation” that forces her to hide in the garden (267). “Devil” is a very important symbol. Matthew explanation that “.. family sometimes get on top of a woman” annoys her deeply because she does not allow herself to believe that the problem isn't the woman, it's the family(267) . Susan is unable to explain the true cause of her feelings, so she finds that they become “devils” (267).

As Anna Sandiou puts it, “Susan wonders whether something is wrong with her, the term ‘wrong’ pointing to how hard she is on herself and how little she is able to accept her emotions”. Susan struggles with the guilt of perception of her personal failing. She is incapable to accept that she does not have a personal failing, that she is simply unhappy because the patriarchal society doesn't allow the happiness for women. This is what leads her to her suicide. “To Room Nineteen” clearly demonstrates the emotional weight of those “public expectations” imposed on women like Susan who just want to be good, smart, and free.

“A woman who wants to be a woman in a different way than that society has prepared for her”(Sandiou) The symbol of the devil continues to be important throughout the story. When her room ultimately became a family room again, she “howled with impatience, with rage” and prayed to God to keep the devil away (267-268). She imagines the devil as “young-looking”, “energetic”, almost a sexual object (268). Her shame, her struggle, and her fight against her emotions causes her to see the devil. Moreover, in her growing suffering she realizes that “there is a danger because I’ve seen him.

He is lurking in the garden and sometimes even in the house, and he wants to get into me and to take me over” (268). We may say that the idea of demonic possession is a symbol of the passions that are being repressed by the demands of Victorian patriarchal society. And the attractiveness of the devil may represent unfulfilled sexual desire and passion for having a better life, which her society is not allowed her to have. The fact that the demons are certainly the symbols of her passions becomes clear in the final scene of the story, when she begins to plan her suicide by gas.

“The demons were not here. They were gone forever, because she was buying her freedom from them. She was slipping already into the dark fructifying dream that seemed to caress her inwardly... ” (288). Susan's denial of her passions leads her life to be so unworthy that she can't fight against suicide anymore. A very critical symbol that is used, though it is mentioned only once, is the idea of a “shell” (279). “She was surprised no one saw through her, that she wasn't turned out of doors, as a fake. On the contrary, it seemed that the children loved her more” (279).

Like a real shell, Susan's persona is actually loved more because it is never about her or her happiness, such as Matthew tries to make her happy in his own way. It is about others' happiness. The persona, the shell, is not seen through because no one wants to see through it. No one really wants to peel the shell and see the actually angry, desiring woman underneath who wants something more from her life than what she has gotten. Eventually, when Susan kills herself what has been remained - a body, a shell. Her existence as a mother and a wife was more important to others than her actual feelings or desires.

She felt so much guilt and shame about her true self that she had to end her life to keep the illusion. Therefore, when she removes her shell in the final moments as she is considering suicide, she is able to free her true self and no longer has to see the demons. We may consider the shell is in part a symbol of “alienation” (Quawas, 107). As Rula Quawas explains it in her article “Lessing’s ‘To Room Nineteen: Susan’s Voyage into the Inner Space of “Elsewhere”, “Doris Lessing draws extensively on women's inner, private experiences and their departure from the unsatisfactory reality of life in an alienated and alienating society” (107).

Also, she claims that Susan is a woman who ” discards the various garments and social roles she has worn and adopted, retreats into her room and experiences her own 'elsewhere'” (107). It seams to me that one of the great taunts of the story is that the hotel room far from her family is so important to her as “her” own room that Susan is willing to wait in a hall full of disinfectant in order just to be in there, while the room that she tried to make for herself in her house became just another part of her prison and eventually another family room.

It ends up that Susan wears the “shell” and this shell is a symbol of her alienation, and her final death symbolizes, reflects the impossibility of the freedom for women in patriarchal society. In conclusion, I would like to repeat that the story is “about a failure in intelligence”. However, we have to admit that nothing is intelligent about patriarchy. Patriarchal society oppressed women, didn't treat them seriously and the most accepted roles for a woman were only a wife and a mother. No one in a patriarchal society could really tried to understand the needs of any real woman. Susan happened to be unable to live in those circumstances.

All of the symbols in the story are about the transformed ideas: The ‘snake eating its own tail” becomes a symbol of infinite hopelessness instead of infinite possibility; her own passions becomes to be viewed as devils because they are socially inconvenient and can not be accepted by society; the good life that she is living becomes a shell covered her pain; her entire existence becomes to be an existence of a poisoned prisoner. The symbol of the snake eating its tail, the devils, the poison and the shell all help the reader to reinforce the fact that this pain is a deeply social one.

Cite this Page

Doris Lessing’s To Room 19 Symbols. (2016, Jul 23). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/doris-lessings-to-room-19-symbols/

copy to clipboard