Persian
born to British parents, wrote much on racism, communism, feminism and other social
and political issues.
The
theme of self-destruction occurs in several of Lessing's works which relate
the deterioration of the individual or of society more generally. The
pattern of self-destruction typically proceeds through three phases: 1) attempts
to preserve self-control, 2) a growing preference for isolation or detachment
on the part of the individual, and 3) a commitment to asceticism, living life
on its simplest, barest terms.
"To
Room Nineteen" is the last in a cycle of stories about the "mindless task
of motherhood." In the preceding story the heroine was an artist,
but and when she becomes a mother, the "baby's killed everything creative"
within her.
There
is some debate over whether or not "To Room Nineteen" is a pointedly feminist
story. Asked this question, Lessing says that she does write "from
inside a woman's viewpoint," but she maintains that she is "essentially writing
about 'the rights of the individual.'" Elsewhere Lessing says that
she has "assumed that that filter which is a woman's way of looking at
life has the same validity as the filter which is a man's way."
Lessing
herself claims that the story is more about "woman's vulnerability than man's
culpability"—which is not to say that men are blameless in this story.
. . . She says also, "I like Room Nineteen, the depressing piece
about people who have everything, who are intelligent and educated, who have
a home and two or three or four beautiful children, and have few worries, and
yet ask themselves 'What for?' This is all to typical of so many Europeans—and,
I gather, so many Americans."
Which
side of this debate you side with may depend on whether you see the primary
conflict in the story as being the plight of the typical upper-middle class
housewife who has to sacrifice herself for her family, or whether you see the
conflict as the opposition of "intelligence" and emotion. There are, of
course, other possible interpretations.
