Sexuality and Aggression in A Woman on a Roof

            Gender equality has been a challenging issue for society for generations. At the time "A Woman on a Roof," was written in 1963, women still held traditional roles in the society. Doris Lessing illustrates woman's vulnerable role in society by adopting the intolerable heat as a trigger for male aggression and presents the conflict of power between man and woman. Throughout the story, the element of heat functions as a stimulant that increases the aggressive motivations of the workers. The story takes place during the hot summer in London. Three workers, Harry, Stanley, and Tom, are working on the roof and are "all a bit dizzy, not used to the heat" (538). Stanley, who is "normally a sharp young man, quick at his work, making a lot of jokes, and good company" (541) turns into a grumpy, irritated, difficult man that makes his colleagues uneasy. The woman who is sunbathing on a roof then becomes his target to be harassed. When the weather gets hotter, Stanley's behaviors become more irrational and extreme, as he begins "stamping with his feet, and whistl[ing] and yell[ing] and scream[ing] at the woman" (543), Harry has to make an overture "to save some sort of scandal or real trouble over the woman" (543). The older family man, Harry, is afraid that Stanley will take actions of real attack toward the woman so he repeatedly attempts to stray Stanley's attention from his bizarre, self righteous anger about the woman's body being exposed in the hot sunlight. .
             While Harry checks to see if she is there one day, hoping to preclude further outbursts from Stanley, the reader perceives Tom's point of view: "Tom [knows] it [is] to prevent Stanley going, to put off his bad humour" (541). Both Harry and Tom disapprove of Stanley's anger toward the woman, Harry out of a protective fatherly attitude, having three grown children, and Tom for less honourable reasons, for he has been secretly fantasizing a relationship with the woman, objectifying her as a sexual object catering to him, bringing exotic liquor to him while he sits "lordly" in her bed.