To Room Nineteen

Existentialism is a philosophy that views human existence as an experience marked by anxiety, dread, freedom, awareness of death and the consciousness of existing. Existentialism attempts to search for the meaning of life apart from a world of socially constructed values and religious beliefs. Anxiety and dread over consciousness of mortality in an often meaningless and chaotic universe characterizes the desperation of Susan Rawlings in Doris Lessing's short story "To Room Nineteen." Discovering her marriage to be anything but the "happy ever after" scenario promised by cultural myths, Susan becomes conscious of the meaninglessness of existence and its social norms which serve to constrain freedom. Locked into her confining and artificial roles, Susan attempts to attain freedom but determines suicide is the only route of escape for her authentic self from the existential dilemma.

Existentialists believe that values are socially constructed efforts to control the wilder impulses and desires of human beings. Often such values or myths serve to control behavior in ways that have painful effects when individuals become conscious of their artificial nature. This is what occurs to Susan Rawlings when she discovers her marriage is a far cry from myths about the institution. As Nordius writes, "The Edenic garden which is the prominent setting of the 'happy' marriage soon turns into an arid 'desert' as innocence is lost" (171). Ridding one's self of illusions

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st be a certain flatness" (Lessing 206). While it may seem isolating and alienating, Susan can only escape to the "elsewhere" referred to by Quawas once she frees her mind from illusions and the herd mentality. Instead of being a slave to such confines and constraints, she becomes empowered with a consciousness that empowers and liberates her unlike anything she has experience in her socially adopted and confining roles. Quawas notes that the psychological state represented by the "elsewhere" Susan attempts to escape to in room nineteen is an elevated "consciousness that she retreats to for renewal, which bespeaks a world of potential actions and possibilities for human renewal" (107). It is in this world of potential actions and possibilities that Susan recognizes her current existence lacks in the extreme. Yet this recognition places the burden on her to make profound changes in her life. The desire for self-knowledge and self-rule are primary considerations in existentialism. Without self-knowledge or self-rule one is a slave psychologically and physically to the herd mentality that limits individual freedom and will to power. In this sense, Susan's suicide is an act of the will to power because she views it as

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