Dorris Lessing’s short story “To Room 19,” tells the story of Susan, a middle-aged, stay-at-home mom with four children. As a woman in the 20th century, she follows the expectations for her gender. Her life revolves around the needs of her husband, her children, and their home. As Suan plays the socially mandated role of dutiful wife, she and her husband Matthew project the image of a model couple, making all the right decisions and living the perfect life. For a while, everything is indeed right. Susan and Matthew create a “balanced and sensible family,” and they possess everything “right, appropriate, and what everyone would wish for.” They are “a popular young married couple,” living in a charming house. 

Then the youngest children are sent to school.

Suddenly, Susan finds herself alone in her house during the day. With more time to herself, she wonders if she is making the right choices. On the surface, she seems to be. After all, she has everything: a big house, a responsible husband, healthy children, cars. But deeper down, beneath the traditional trappings of middle class happiness, she discovers that she feels confined by her marriage. She needs to be left alone. She needs a “Mother’s Room,” where she can be alone and have her privacy. In vain, she seeks a room of her own in a hotel in Victoria, far away from home. She tries to persuade herself that everything is alright and that the maintenance of her marriage depends partially on her sacrifices. Yet, she constantly feels “besieged by devils of exasperation.”

Thus emerges the dichotomy between instinct and intellect. 

“To Room 19” is a story of Susan’s constant struggle between following her instinct and listening to her intellect. Her first experience with the struggle happens after Matthew confesses to having cheated on her with another girl. The news pains her. She becomes ill-tempered and irritable. She feels that there is “something unassimilable about it.” But she tells herself that “the whole thing was not important,” that she and Matthew “had loved each other for over a decade, would love each other for years more. Who, then, was Myra Jenkins.” Despite trying to calm her feelings, Susan finds herself constantly plagued by Matthew’s affair. She starts to doubt her life, feeling “as if life had become a desert, and that nothing mattered, and that her children were not her own.” Ultimately, however, Susan’s intellect reigns. She tells herself that a sensible person would “put the thing behind them and move forward into a different phase of their marriage.” She suppresses the inner pain she is grappling with and continues to display the image of the model wife. It is important to note that, although the story appears to come from a third-person omniscient perspective, the narrative voice is actually Susan’s intellect, constantly telling her to suppress her feelings and to comply with the standards society has set for women. 

Susan tries to articulate her struggles to her husband, but in vain. She feels that her thoughts are not “sensible,” and so she does not “recognize herself in them.” Although she entertains the idea, she eventually concludes that “this conversation should not take place.” An example of this is found when she becomes mad at her youngest children. Her instinct reign, and she finds herself shouting at her twins for no reason. She feels instant regret and excuses herself, saying she has a headache. Her children seem to be understanding. She even hears Harry “telling the little ones: ‘It’s all right, Mother’s got a headache.’” But what the children’s reaction reveals is that this is not the first time Susan has had an outburst in front of them. They are used to her mood swings and treat her like a sick person. This feeds into the lack of understanding Susan has with her surroundings, which helps to intensify her struggles and leads to her ultimate downfall. 

Nor does her husband understand her fears. When Matthew returns home from work, she tells him miserably that she shouted at the twins unfairly. Matthew tries to comfort her, telling her that “if you shouted at them fifty times a day it wouldn’t be more than the little devils deserve.” But Susan fails to laugh at the joke. Matthew does not understand Susan’s misery. He answers Susan’s question, but he does not address the underlying problems: Susan’s struggles with the confinements of staying at home, her desire to have freedom, her constant struggles with shutting down the two aforementioned thoughts. For her part, Susan does not articulate her struggles to Matthew. “She had not told him of her real fears at all.” This fuels a lack of communication between the couple, which in turn reignites Susan’s struggles. She feels that her feelings are not being understood; she is stuck with a “devil of exasperation” that is corroding her sensibilities. A lack of understanding also happens later in the story when Susan is talking to her mom. Her mom tells her ways to cure her inability to sleep [CHECK], but she is not answering her real fears.

It is perhaps not surprising that the story concludes with Susan committing suicide out of insanity. Thus, caught in the intensifying conflict between her instincts and her voice persuading her that everything is right, Susan is driven mad and seeks refuge in death. 

“To Room 19” illuminates the struggles of women in a patriarchal society. Susan’s story is resonant of the struggles common among 19th-century British women. The “the cult of domesticity” confined them to the house, compelling them to cater to the needs of their husbands, their children, and their houses. They were supposed to be “the angel of the house,” creating a comfortable home that functioned as a refuge for their husbands who undertook struggles outside the home. However, not all women found their talent within the house. Many, like Susan, wanted to go beyond the house. Yet, society inculcated in them the idea that they had to be in the house. So they were stuck between their desire to go out and the social constraint of staying inside. This situation culminated in tragedies, like that of Susan.

Two centuries later, for a society living in the repercussions of 19th-century gender ideals, “To Room 19” is an illuminating and resonating story.