Analysis of Imagery Description in To Room Nineteen

科技信息人文社科Analysis of ImageryDescription in To Room Nineteen安徽理工大学外国语学院高凤花[Abstract]Doris Lessing is the well-known contempotary Brish writer and novelist. Her famous short story To Room Nineteen tells Susan,a neleligent woman, is lost in the chaos housework and tries to search for an authentic self which leads to her madness and ulimately suicide.This paper focuses on imagery in Lessing' s To Room Nineteen from which foreshadows Susan's suicide.[Keywords]imagery description restrictions suicide1.Introductionlife, showing Lessing's constant foreshadowing of Susan's death since she felsDoris Lessing, the British writer and novelist, was born on October 22,that her life no longer has meaning,1919, in Kermanshah, Iran, where her father was a eaptain in the BritishLessing describes that Susan fels“as if life had become a desert" (Army. Her father ended his military service when she was five years old and inMacGibbon & Kee, 1963, 2545). The conslant decription of this bareness is1924 the family moved to a farm in Southem Rhodesia in Southem Africa,symbolic of her spiritual aridity, or of deah and hopessnes.s In the miror, aswhere they stayed for twenty years. Doris's education began atl a convent schoolshe brushes her "thick healthy black hair" ( MacGibbon & Kee, 1963, 2555),and later at a govemment school for girls. Her formal education ended whenSusan sees "the refetion of a madwoman" ( MacGibbon & Kee, 1963, 2555)she was twelve. After lwo failed marriages, she moved to London. Doris Le88-and thinks,“much more to the point if what loked back at her was the gingerying is very much a wrter of her time, deeply involved in the changing pltemnsgreen- eyed demon with his dry meager smile”( MacGibbon & Kee, 1963,of thought and culture in the westem world during the last thity years. There2555 ). Again, Lessing uses symbols of color black representing death andis great continuity between her life and her work. Her keenest interst is in the.chaos, and green representing death and deeay 鸽Susan looks al her innerreltionship between the black and white races in Africa, changing ways be-"refletion" in the mirror. Lessing's use of the "demon' as a symbol of the ob-tween generations, and the position of women in society. She stands for socialjectification of the irational self -Susan wishes to banish from awareness. Thejustice and she believes that women should play a bigger part in improving theintensity of Susan's inner strugle has placed her life in the most serious dan-society by her inluence, bringing less cormpetitive agression and a higherer.level of culture and understanding Her writing style is most highly developedIn Lessing s description the demon represents a force directly opposite toin her short stories of African life. She jis considered to be one of the best shortthe values conventional society imposes. For Susan, following the demonstory writers in English today. She has won several lierary prizes for herwould be an act of sin, but Lessing proves that for Susan, it is better to sin thanbooks. In 2007, Lessing won the Nobel Prie for Literature.to have a lfistyle which is dictated by society. The demon represents a way out2.Analysis of To Room Nineteenof her trapped and restricted life through the mirror. Women and mirors are2.1 To Room Ninetcenintimately linked and Susan Rawlings' voyage through looking the glass willTo Room Nineteen was first published in A Man and Two Women, a col-take the traveler to the room nineteen, there to remake interiority by unmakinglection of Lessing's short stories that helped her achieve her reputation as aintelligence.notable short story writer. Susan and Matthew Rawlings marry in their lateIn order to escape imposing societal structures, women are sometimestwenties and raise four children. When the youngest child goes off to school driven to extremely solutions, such as comitting suicide. but these solutionsSusan, who quit her job to mother, does not have the sense of fredom that she do not provide true feedom The result of Susan's conining motherhood is thathoped. She feels as if she has nothing to do and never has spare moments tolife becomes a desert for Susan; her soul is not her own. As her resentmentgrows she rejets the prison of motherhood for the feedom of a room of hersulting with the maid or preparing for dinner, She becomes anxious and isolat-own-Room 19 in Fred's Hotel. Motherhood becomes a dead end for Susaned, plling away from Mathew, her husband who begins to have afair. Final-Rawlings. It has bscome a "desert" for her, but the idea that fredom wasly. in order to gt some time alone, she rents a hotel room every aftermoon inachieved in having a "room of her own" is not consistent with the point thatwhich she just sits and thinks. Her husband guesses she is having an afairLessing fomulates. Susan does not achieve feedom until the end of the storyand tracks her down. Realizing that his rational world will not recognize herwhen she escapes all of her "prisons" by commiting suicide. Both the room"rational" feelings she tells him that she is indeed having an afair untnuth-and her entire existence are‘ "prisons". Her physical escape to the hotel roomflly. The next day, she returms back to the room nineteen and conmits sui-is flled with emptiness and futher alects her spintual and mental healtheide.which causes her suicide.2.2Analysis of feminine imagery2.3Analysis of Water imageryLessing implores feminine imagery throughout the story symbolcallyLessing uses water imagery in the story to show the course of the Rawl-which depicts women who are driven to run away from the societal structuresings' mariage, the emotional turmoil, and the gradual disintegration of Susan'simpsed by the existing patriarchal order. By describing the garden, the river, ego which causes her lack of enerngy. At the beginning, Susan is fuflled withthe demon, and Susan's reflection in the mirror, Lessing actually foreshadows her marriage, husband, and fanily, and is happy in the confinements of theSusan's inevitable suicide."big married bedroom (which had an atrctive view of the river)"( MacGibbon& Kee, 1963, 2544). Gradually, as husband and wife fall into habit and out ofcally, the end of her "beautiful femninine lfe", and then uses the "slow-moving love, drifting apart into such diferent lives, they "lay side by side, or breast tobrown river" ( MacGibbon & Kee, 1963, 2549) to fresbhadow Susan's suicide, breast中国煤化工-5 the wild sllied river, and theyas if she is slowly breathing in death. The color white represents death and laughey knew it was really because ofteror. Susan is trifed because she has realized that her life is "mortgaged.";YHC N M H G spprting euch an edifice onThe story details the number four in asciation with the life cyele. Iessing their intellgent love (Macuibbon & Kee, 1963, 2546). The river comes todescribes Susan as a mother of four children and her life with Matthew, her symbolize Susan's reluctance to change, her inability to define herself againsthusband, as a snake biting its tail. Like the number four, the story defines theand in relation to the collective, rather than ltting herself float along with theancient snake symbol, referred to as the representation of the eternal cycle of demoralizing collective experience. Once, to be alone, ( 下转第122页)- 119-