Everybody has a time in their life when they just need to be alone. Whether it's to think about life, or free themselves from their daily stress, isolation from the world may well be a necessary thing. In To Room Nineteen by Doris Lessing, the character Susan craves freedom from the bondage of her responsibilities. Her role as a mother and wife is so demanding that it is literally constant in her presence, and follows her wherever she travels. With Susan's duties to enslave her, the supposed contentment from living the ideal life eventually leads to her suicide from the failure to be happy.
Although Susan was thought to have the perfect life, it seems that it has turned out to be anything but that. Susan married Matthew Rawlings in a wedding that everyone believed was the perfect match. After having four beautiful kids together; a boy, a girl, then twins, and living in the house of her childhood dreams, one would think that Susan would have all the necessary elements for her happiness. Yet, she needed more. She believed she needed to find her identity after signing away her life to helping other people. But it wasn't that she needed to learn to be herself, rather that she needed to be alone. The last time she had been free was before she was married. Afterwards, however, no matter how much she tried, she was always tied down by the lives of others depending on her. .
Susan could go anywhere she wanted, but she would always have that sense of duty to the family hanging over her, as manifested in what she called "a demon". Her role as a mother and wife controlled her, driving her insane, and even delusional. From trying to relax in a room above the house to searching for an isolated hotel room where there would be no questions asked, she sought to find that place where no one would disturb her. That simple, quiet place was all she needed, away from life and all the pressures that came from it.
