From Pain to Freedom: The Use of Setting in Doris Lessing's

At the onset of the story, Susan Rawling lives in a large, white, and gardened house. Although one may possibly infer her husband and she lead a wealthy life and that their house is likely to be comfortable, scarcely can the reader find any detailed description of both the house and the furniture this house is bound to have inside. Along the story, many are the passages where the reader can clearly perceive that this is an intelligently organized structure managed mainly by her. Everything is perfect, "[t]hey had everything they had wanted and had planned for. And yet..." (p. 666). At a certain moment, Susan realizes that t

Nevertheless, Susan's husband, puzzled with her absence, hires someone to verify where she spends her afternoons. Being aware of the existence of this refuge of hers, room 19, he questions her about the place, leading her to assume his beliefs about a probable lover. Instead of facing it all, Susan decides to "play another part", and confirms her husband's guesses. Meanwhile, she tries to return to room 19 many times to look for herself, but these attempts are not successful, since there she finds nothing but "the unnamed spirit of restlessness" instead (p. 682). Because her husband had discovered about room 19, this place is no longer paramount to a representation of the safe freedom she utterly needs. At this moment, Susan understands that there is only one way to escape from "playing parts": suicide.

here is something wrong with her life. Despite the fact that apparently she leads a flawless life, "... why did Susan feel as if life had become a desert, and that nothing mattered, and that her children were not her own" (p. 668). Susan tries to draw herself back from this structure when she perceives she does not totally belong to that place, since there she is not really herself, but the mother, the wife and the house manager, in other words, Mrs. Rawling. Inside the house, Susan has to perform her domestic roles, not being able to see her own essence, "as if she were in abeyance, as if she were in cold storage" (p. 669). She hopes once all her children are at sc

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