Breaking Free: An Exploration of Women’s Madness in Feminist Literature

In this paper, the author examines the portrayal of female protagonists in three literary works to explore the concept of "madness" as a potential breakthrough rather than just a breakdown. The selected works are Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," Doris Lessing's "To Room Nineteen," and Khairiya Saqqaf's "In a Contemporary House." Despite the varying time periods and cultural contexts, these women share experiences of confinement and domestication due to patriarchal and social constraints, leading them to embrace forms of "madness" as a means to break free and connect with their true selves. The study draws on R.D. Laing's theories on the divided self and individual experiences. Keywords include women's madness, R.D. Laing, feminist literature, and comparative literature.

International Journal of Language and Literatu
December 2018, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 146-156
ISSN: 2334-234X (Print), 2334-2358 (Online
Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved
Published by American Research Institute for Policy Develop
DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v6n2a17
URL: https://doi.org/10.15640/ijll.v6n2a17
A Breakdown or a Breakthrough?: “Madness” in Charlotte Perkins Gilm
Yellow Wallpaper,” Doris Lessing’s “To Room Nineteen,” and Khairiya
“In a Contemporary House”(1)
Hiba Amro
Abstract
This paper looks into the lives of the female protagonists in Charlotte Perkins Gilman‟s
Wallpaper,” Doris Lessing‟s “To Room Nineteen,” and Khairiya Saqqaf‟s “In a Contemporary Ho
attempt to reach a better understanding of women‟s “madness.” To that end, this paper
possibility of madness not being entirely a breakdown, but also a breakthrough, by analyzing the
experiences of the “mad” protagonists, as represented in the selected literary works, in light of R
theories on the divided self and the politics of individual experiences. Despite the difference in ti
and cultural contexts, all three women share the same experience of home confinement and dom
different reasons that stem from patriarchal and social constraints. Such circumstances eventua
women to embrace forms of “madness” in ending a suffocating existence that does not a
connect with their inner-selves.
Keywords: women‟s madness, female malady, R. D. Laing, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Dor
Khairiya Saqqaf, feminist literature, comparative literature
“People behave in such ways [different forms of behaviors that are regarded soc
because their experience of themselves is different. . . [an experience which] goe
horizons of our common, that is, our communal sense.” (Laing, 1967, p. 108-109
Long before their notorious confinement to attics and imprisonment in asylums and mental in
nineteenth century, women have always been associated with madness more than men ever were. F
religious “insane” figure Joan of Arc all the way to twentieth century and contemporary female write
the symptoms of “madness” have been associated with women‟s tendency to defy patriarchy by will
tenets of the Cult of True Womanhood(2) and overlooking their socially accepted roles as obedient wives, mo
and homemakers. Studying this phenomenon, feminist social theorists such as Phyllis Chesler, Elain
Jane Usher explain “the female malady”(3) as a product of patriarchy‟s construction of madness as a “d
“abnormality” that manifests itself in women‟s rejection of set gender roles and “ideal femininity.”
psychologicalapproach, feministcriticsprovidea readingthat naturallyborderson the social,cultural,and
psychological dimensions of women‟s lives. Relying on psychological studies that highlight madness
produced and impacted by the individual‟s social and cultural contexts, what patriarchy per
“madness” is to be explicated as a form of women‟s activism against the stultifying roles and subord
are forced to struggle against on a daily basis. In this sense, “madness” is a way of speaking
women‟s way of making sense of their lives, making new cultural meanings, and trying to assert the
insane world insisting on denying them the rights to self-cultivation and self-realization apart from s
and cultural ideals.
 Assistant Professor, University of Petra, Amman, Jordan. E-mail: [e-mail], [e-mail]

Hiba Amro
Reading into the lives of the women dubbed “mad,” it becomes clear to the reader th
“disease” is more of a “dis-ease” resulting from the oppressive constraints and boundaries imposed
male-dominated society; it is a state of anguish and turmoil that changes women‟s lived experiences
be harmful or eventually liberating in some ways. Without belittling or romanticizing the pain and re
female protagonists experience due to social and cultural pressures, Gilman, Lessing and Saqqaf ch
“madness” as an illuminating stage; a “breakthrough” that gives women the chance to embark on a
discovery and self-fulfillment.
Despite the difference in time, place, and cultural contexts, the three female protagonists dep
“The Yellow Wallpaper” (1891), Lessing‟s “To Room Nineteen” (1963), and Saqqaf‟s “In a Contemp
(1981) all share the same experience of home confinement and domestication for different reasons t
patriarchal domination and imposed constructions of ideal femininity. Entrapment between a moder
hand, and confining, unfulfilling traditional gender roles on the other weighs heavily on the protago
pursuing their dreams and realizing their potentials rather than being charming, selfless, helpless A
In rejectionof theseideals,Gilman‟snarrator,Lessing‟sSusan,and Saqqaf‟sunnamedprotagonistembrace
“madness” in ending a suffocating existence that does not allow them to connect with their inner se
Saqqaf‟s “In a Contemporary House” focuses on the protagonist‟s epiphany, Gilman‟s “The Yellow
Lessing‟s “To Room Nineteen” allow readers to live the private experiences of smothered domestica
they accompany Susan and Gilman‟s narrator through their journeys of descent into “madne
defiance of the New Woman and her questioning of the traditional beliefs of women‟s “insa
domesticated women experience feelings of alienation from a socially constructed self, molde
gender role, and a need to excavate a more satisfying, authentic self, grounded in their needs and d
the norm, the “reasonable,” and the “rational.”
Calling for a literature that breaks from the nineteenth century tradition of presenting
innocent ingénoues, angelic wives and mothers, or shameful fallen women,” Charlotte Perkins Gilma
female protagonists with a complexity grounded in “a realistic variety of ways,” presenting
themselves from the hovering Angel of the True woman (Quawas, “New Woman‟s Journey,” 2006, p
from her own experience with Mitchell‟s rest cure as a treatment for neurasthenia, now k
depression, Gilman writes “The Yellow Wallpaper” to protest against the sexist medical methods tha
“violent process[es] of feminization” (Ammons, 1992, p. 35) which enforce female dependenc
well as social and political subordination. In response to physicians‟ negative reception of the story
enough to drive anyone mad to read it,” Gilman writes “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper?” in whi
that her story “was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy”
authorship and creativity were considered major causal factors in cases of female neurasthenia and
using what was left of her creativity after being told to live “as domestic a life as possible” and neve
brush, or pencil again,” depicts real madness in domesticating women and severing them from the i
political world deemed suitable only for men (Gilman, “Why I Wrote,” 1913, p. 271). It is not that Gi
madness as the solution to patriarchal oppression, nor that she wants women to find their freedom i
insanity, but she uses madness to sound a siren to provoke social change, depicting it as the eventu
severe female oppression that denies women the right to voice their needs, thoughts, and creativity
life of servitude and self-sacrifice that hinders their evolvement into whole human beings and individ
Denied the right to express her thoughts and met by heavy “opposition” if she does (
Wallpaper,” p. 42), the narrator keeps a secret diary in which she writes things she “would not say t
41). Her husband, as a nineteenth century physician who believes intellectual stimulation wearies h
“hates to have [her] write a word” (p. 43), and his sister Jennie, who has internalized patriarchal ide
writing that has made the narrator sick in the first place (p. 47). However, the narrator explains tha
not the act of writing itself, which she needs to do, as much as having to be “sly about it” (p. 42) to a
with heavy opposition: “I must say what I feel and think in some way – it is such a relief!” (p. 49). Qu
medical practices of her time, the unnamed narrator complains in her secret diary about her treatm
proclaims that she has no choice but to abide by the orders of her husband and brother, the “physic
standing” (p. 41): “[ . . . ] I am absolutely forbidden to „work‟ until I am well again. Personally, I dis
ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. Bu
do?” (p. 42).

148 International Journal of Language and Literature, Vol. 6, No. 2,
The narratorcontinuesto complainaboutthe recoveryplans sheis to followand the effectsher
domestication and isolation from other people have on her, making her feel “dreadfully depr
“dreadfully fretful and querulous” (p. 48), “awfully lazy”(p. 49), mostly tired (p. 47), and bringing he
specific reason (p. 48). She fears being sent to Weir Mitchell, the physician who developed the rest
to a friend who has been under his supervision, which is pretty much like John‟s and her brother‟s,
48). Yearning for a change, she pleads with her husband more than once to allow her to socialize wi
like her cousin Henry and Julia, but John forbids her from visiting or having them over as part of her
according to which she is only to rest, eat, sleep, and refrain from any intellectually or socially stimu
The negative influence of isolating her from others and prohibiting her from writing i
frustration resulting from her having to tolerate the “horrid” (p. 45), irritating yellow wallpa
barred windows in which her husband forces her to stay in order for her health to improve. Pleading
than once to stay in a beautiful room downstairs rather than the nursery he chooses, away from the
influence” (p. 46), John turns down the narrator‟s request, discarding it as a “whim” (p. 45). The fac
the nursery at the top of a colonial mansion reflects his complete domination over his wife‟
infantalization of her, alluded to in his calling her a “little girl” (p. 50) and a “blessed little goose” (p
John‟s domineering attitude mirrors conventional power relations in a typical marriage aroun
is revealed in imposing his wishes and beliefs on his wife, taking little to no concern about what she
whether it is about the room she wishes to stay at, her desire to work and socialize, or her own feeli
“condition.” The fact that the narrator is unnamed reflects her lack of an individual identity as a ma
by the patriarchal and social codes of her time. Her diary entries detail the experiences of a middle-
female writer/ artist whose creativity is obstructed and deterred by patriarchal domination a
ideals that all aim to limit her existence to a perfect wife and selfless mother. An example
reaction to his wife suggesting she might not be feeling well, mentally rather than physically. Giving
look,” John stresses the importance of the narrator‟s recovery for him as a husband who needs her
as a wife and a mother by asking her not to think about that “foolish fancy” for “[his] sak
followed by “[their] child‟s sake,” and last as well as least, “[her] own [sake]” (p. 51). Anot
attitude towards her imaginative creativity as a writer, “caution[ing]” her about the dangerous impa
power and habit of story-making” would leave on her weakened nerves, telling her to use her “will a
check that tendency” (p. 46).
Although she continues to write in secret against their wishes, the narrator‟s writings reveal
internalization of her husband‟s thoughts as she documents her reaction to his instructions and beli
condition. According to her diary, she “take[s] pain to control [her]self –– before him, at lea
“unreasonably”(p. 43) angry with him, and as any sensible Victorian lady would, she blames such un
on her “nervous condition” which she believes is hindering her ability to “think straight” (p. 49). Un
real reason behind her anger at this point, the narrator describes a nervousness that takes
thinks about her baby (p. 44), an irritation she feels for not being able to carry out her role as a mot
becoming a “burden” rather than the “help” and comfort she is supposed to be to her husband (p. 4
on me so not to do my duty in any way!” (p. 44). Although she blames her sickness for failing to mee
live up to her ideally constructed role and image, the narrator comes to recognize that these roles a
domineering attitude are the reasons behind her sickness, a realization she arrives at after discover
with the figure of a woman trapped in the patterns of the hideous wallpaper in the nursery she is oc
As much as she hates it, the narrator‟s enforced isolation gives her a chance to contemplate h
as a sick “hysteric” woman, but as an oppressed writer who is being forced to discard her real-self f
and society expect of her. The atrocious yellow wallpaper she keeps staring at functions as a mirror
through which the narrator comes to identify with herself, the reflection of her trapped alter-ego ge
day after day. Making her think of “old, foul, bad yellow things” (p. 54), the color symboliz
“hysteric” tendencies as viewed by her husband and society at large, and foreshadows the revelatio
of something within her that is to be seen by society as “bad” and “foul.” The flamboyant pa
every artistic sin” (p. 43) is associated with the narrator‟s “sin” as a female writer/ artist daring to c
cultural boundaries of the time, the punishment of which is the “hysteria” label and enforced domes

Hiba Amro
The more time she spends in this room, studying the patterns of the wallpaper, she realizes “[
in that paper that nobody knows but [her], or ever will . . . It is always the same shape, only very nu
of “a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern” (p. 50).
This woman, “subdued” by daylight (p. 52), is brought to life by moonlight, “shak[ing] the pat
wanted to get out” (p. 50). The contrast between daylight and moonlight, according to whic
different (p. 51), reflects the narrator‟s conflicting feelings and behaviors in the presence of John an
the embodiments of patriarchal and social rules, and in the presence of the creeping woma
embodiment of madness, which points to the narrator developing a split or a schizoid perso
having become aware of John and Jennie watching her, seeing them having “inexplicable loo
queer” around her, the narrator‟s anxiety increases as she confesses “getting a little afraid
“Escaping the Jaundiced Eye: Foucauldian Panopticism in Charlotte Perkins Gilman‟s „The Yellow W
Bak likens the narrator‟s experience, imprisoned in the nursery, to the experience of Fouca(4) in
which shriveling the prisoner/patient in the supposedly better environment of the Panopticon
harmful than the “unhealthy or unappealing environment of the prison or mental ward” they would
42), creating a fear and a paranoia that affect their psychological stability. The numerous “
[that] are everywhere” in the pattern (“Yellow Wallpaper,” p. 46), watching the narrator and staring
society making sure she checks her behavior as defined by the cult of true womanhood; the “two bu
46), however, stand for John‟s as he monitors her every move, not letting her “stir without special d
Bak explains that:
Under the unerring scrutiny of the “two bulbous eyes” in the yellow wallpaper, the narrator p
stages from concern to paranoia and, finally, to madness. During the entire journey, w
Foucault‟s description of panopticism‟s “faceless gaze” with “thousands of eyes posted every
placing her in this room, John, the narrator‟s husband, resembles the penal officers of the eig
psychiatric wards or penitentiaries, whose credo Foucault describes [sic]: “project the subtle
discipline onto the confused space of internment, combine it with the methods of ana
proper to power, [and] individualize the excluded . . . ([Foucault] 199).” (Bak, 1994, p. 42)
Finally being able to “see through [John]” (p. 56), asking her all sorts of questions while “pret
very loving and kind” (p. 56), the narrator becomes aware of the patriarchal oppression John repres
and a medical practicioner. Consequently, she starts completely identifying with the imprisoned wo
bars of the sickening yellow existence of the wallpaper, crawling around the room when no one is lo
trapped woman does, and focusing her energy on freeing that woman from the narrow patterns she
“As soon as it was moonlight and the poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and
pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had pulled yards of that paper
last diary entry, looking out her window, the narrator mentions seeing “so many of those
exclaims: “I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?” (emphasis added, p. 58). Freei
from the shackles of patriarchy and the bondage of marriage, the narrator, creeping around the roo
surprised husband saying: “I‟ve got out at last . . . inspite of you and Jane. And I‟ve pulled off most
you can‟t put me back!” (p. 58), ending her narrative with “creep[ing] over him” (p. 58) as he faints
the wall.
Discussing the ending, Cathrine Golden describes it as one that “defies a reductive explanaiti
Gilman intended. Opinions range along a spectrum marked by extremes: liberation versus entrapme
defeat” (1992, p. 15-16). The fact that the narrator‟s name is only revealed in her last line
identifying with her socially constructed self (Jane) as an „other,‟ having developed a new identity a
revolt against John‟s domination. The narrator‟s “madness” in this case, resulting from an imprison
her to go back and forth between what she needs and believes to be the solution to her condition on
and her husband‟s domineering attitude and enforced methods and ideologies on the other, can be
of R.D. Laing‟s theories on the divided self and the politics of individual experiences.
Redefining the “schizophrenic”(5)experience in his The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise
out that “disturbed” (1967, p. 93) individuals usually become so due to being caught in a “
disturbed and disturbing patterns of communication” (1967, p. 94) that mainly operate in “o
families (1967, p. 93) in which husbands are the prime suspects in cases of disturbed unhappy marr

150 International Journal of Language and Literature, Vol. 6, No. 2,
To this end, the patient‟s “schizophrenic” behavior becomes a “reflection of and a reaction to
and disturbing patterns” of his/her family (1967, p. 95), and by analogy of society at large, a “speci
person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation” (1967, p. 95). The narrator‟s obsession with
and the woman imprisoned behind its bars, mirrors an “immersion in inner space” that is usually re
social withdrawal, a deviancy, invalid, [and] pathological per se” (1967, p. 103). However,
journey into inner space, often labelled “madness,” is not necessarily “all breakdown”: “It may also
It is potentially liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death” (1967,
“breakdown” that the narrator “breaks through” with a realization and a rejection of her imprisonm
constructions, a step in her spiritual quest to the “superior sanity” which Laing continuously refers
Although his theories are not exclusive to women, Laing‟s work has been popular am
critics due to its focus on the social context of madness, the factors that drive people insane, and on
labeling “different” individual experiences and behaviors as forms of pathological illnesses. These th
in explaining the relationship between women and madness, highlighting the impact of sexu
oppression, and social conditioning on the psychological stability of women. Influenced by Laing, or
views in terms of the nature of madness and the conflict between public and private consciousness,
most of her works, depicts the psychological damage women are afflicted with due to domestication
gender roles, featuring women‟s inner struggles and attempts to break-free from the image of the A
The protagonists of The Children of Violence series (1952-69), The Golden Notebook (1962), and Th
(1973), all battle against patriarchal oppression and struggle for self-realization, self-fulfillme
madness; however, it is in The Grass is Singing (1950) and “To Room Nineteen” (1963) that Lessing
of using “the figure of a mad woman to suggest that the middle-class housewife is socially construct
self-destructive behavior to change – even to the point of willing her own death” (Hunter, 1987, p. 9
Reflecting a feminist social dilemma of the time, Lessing‟s “To Room Nineteen” depic
restlessness, sadness, and dismay shadowing the life of a middle-class housewife who, in “p
(“Room Nineteen,” p. 2543), gives up her career for the sake of having a “proper” family, which as i
never be “a centre of life and a reason for being” (p. 2543). 1963, the year in which “To
published, witnessed the first systematic reaction to the cult of domesticity reestablished in
American and British cultures, as voiced by Betty Friedan in her The Feminine Mystique, a book th
marked the beginning of the second wave of the feminist movement. After interviewing former colle
discovering a shared growing discontent of a domesticated existence, Freidan sets to deconstruct th
happy housewife who finds satisfaction and fulfillment in her socially constructed “feminine” role of
and discusses the misery housewives eventually face and cannot quite explain, referring to it as the
no name” (2002, p. 9).
The deep psychological turmoil Susan finds herself struggling with after ten years of marriag
the “essential Susan were in abeyance, as if she were in a cold storage” (“Room Nineteen,
embodiment of Freidan‟s nameless problem of the “dissatisfied voice within” (Freidan, 2002, p. 13)
marriage being one “grounded in intelligence” (p. 2542),the Rawlings belief in their “foresight,” and
was probable” fails them in anticipating Susan‟s eventual despair over a self she miserably tries to
her ultimate decision to commit suicide in a cheap dingy hotel room as her only way out. Abiding by
wisdom” of her time (p. 2543), the talented Susan is impelled to give up commercial drawin
pregnant, move to a big beautiful house with a garden, and have a “balanced and sensible family” (p
she eventually discovers that this life, despite it being what “everyone would wish for”(p. 2543), doe
with the fulfillment and happiness society promises, as it only alienates her from her real self and le
irritated, and angry. Adding to it her husband's infidelity, Susan starts feeling like she is “living out
(p. 2550), “bound” to a stranger of a husband who she comes to see as “a person that shields all del
(p. 2550).
Annoyed, bad-tempered, and hurt, Susan tries to suppress and control the pain Mathew‟s unf
caused her since “intelligence” forbids quarrelling, accusations, and tears (p. 2546). Continuously tr
her situation, finding it in the “nature of things” for a married woman and a mother to be denied an
delightful life (p. 2543), Susan tries to comfort herself with the hope that “in another decade, she w
back into being a woman with a life of her own” (p. 2546) when her youngest children are off to sch

Hiba Amro
However, she disappointingly discovers that the “seven blissful hours of freedom” (p. 2547) s
looking forward to for years would never be free and would never be hers, as her mind always drifts
of school clothes, sewing, cooking, the kids‟ dentist appointments, and Mrs. Parkes‟ non-sto
comments. As the duties of the good wife, selfless mother, and practical mistress of the house contin
her, Susan‟s restlessness is intensified by her conflicting emotions as she thinks of her dist
“utterly ridiculous” (p. 2549); something she despises and tries to discard but yet feels “so strongly
off” (p. 2548). Something inside her continues to “[howl] with impatience, with rage” (p. 2551), her
feel like a “human cage of loving limbs” (p. 2551), and she starts seeing a demon in her garden, wai
[her] and to take [her] over” (p. 2552). For all she knows, Susan thinks she has become an “irration
2551) who is somehow sick and should probably “see a doctor” (p. 2548). Blaming herself for having
Susan continuously thinks “there must be something wrong with me” (emphasis added, p. 2551) and
with Mathew. Susan‟s guilt over these feelings, blaming herself instead of trying to understand her
by something happening around her, is part of the social conditioning of women, which not only con
of true womanhood, but also shames women for the slightest doubt or rejection of their set
presenting such tendencies as anything but feminine or normal. In this sense, Susan‟s ugly demon,
is reminded of while looking at herself in the mirror as she brushes her hair, is an embodiment of so
the monstrous unfeminine woman Susan believes herself to have become.
In her “Madness in Doris Lessing‟s „To Room Nineteen,‟” Eva Hunter refers to the recurring
snake, the demon, and the mirror as Lessing‟s way of “symboliz[ing] the vigour of the irrational asp
psyche and the danger of suppressing emotional energy” (1987,p. 93). The mirror forces Susan to s
of her that she tries so hard to suppress, as the features of her candid pleasant face and healthy bla
nothing but a “reflection of a madwoman,” very much as if it is “the gingery green-eyed de
smile” that looks back at her (“Room Nineteen,” p. 2555). Becoming aware of the nature of her true
they are to be interpreted by the world as “madness” and “irrationality,” Susan is finally able to see
the split between what she represents to those around her and what she feels inside, coming to acce
and the “darkness.” Brushing her hair in front of the mirror, Susan‟s repeated strokes cause “fine b
in a “small hiss of electricity” that she enjoys listening to (p. 2555). The significance of the hissing h
the first snake image that appears in the text, used in a description of the Rawlings‟ marriage as a s
While the snake could signify “wholeness, inclusiveness, and perpetual renewal” (Hunter, 198
Rawlings it signifies the complete opposite: routine, boredom, and entrapment. The demon Susan se
seems to be prodding an unhealthy-looking snake-like creature that twists and turns in prot
intrusive stick. Susan reacts to the presence of this demon, the enemy, in her house in the same way
the second image is associated with Susan herself, being prodded by the demon to stop the unhealth
is causing, Susan‟s willingness to break free from her bondage is established in her enjoyin
electricity resulting from brushing her hair in her first scene in front of the mirror. In the second sce
steady visits to room nineteen, the snake image is developed, not only with an increase of “hissing,”
becoming “absorbed” in watching her hair making shapes against the blue wall behind her in what
image (p. 2559): The snake(s) become a part of Susan who is ready to shed her old self in the same
its own skin in growth and renewal. As the mirror reflects both Susan‟s true feelings and how she s
as how society sees her, her self-renewal is to be seen by her husband as a transformation into a Me
“cold,” “indifferent” (p. 2555) woman who is to walk out on her unfaithful husband, demanding child
white house, trampling over the forgiving, loving, and selfless Angel in the House. This tran
acceptance of her “evil” and “mad” side, is explained by Laing as the end result of trying to suppres
individual‟s being (the bad) at the expense of the other (the good):
It has always been recognized that if you split Being down the middle, if you insist on grabbin
that, if you cling to the good without the bad, denying the one for the other, what h
dissociated evil impulse, now evil in a double sense, return to permeate and possess the good
itself.(6)
Torn between her duties, her need to maintain the aura of “intelligence” and “rationality” she
her continuous attempts at behaving with a “controlled decency that nearly drove her crazy”

152 International Journal of Language and Literature, Vol. 6, No. 2,
(“Room Nineteen,” p. 2547), and her inability to shake off her dreadful emptiness and irritatio
questioning her whole existence and longs for a solitude that would bring about an “emancipation a
of the-hub-of-the family into woman-with-her-own-life” (p. 2546). Her restlessness, suppressed
need for being completely alone and free of all her responsibilities as Mrs. Rawlings, seeking anony
away from her home and family, all form a part of Susan‟s process of “metanoia.” According to the
Jung(7), metanoia is explained as a form of a potentially positive and productive process of self-healing
spontaneously by a split or a damaged psyche under unbearable pressure resulting from a
emotions, causing the damaged psyche to melt down in order to be reborn in a more adaptive form.
what is perceived as psychotic episodes, or signs of “madness,” are in Jung‟s views manifestations o
with which the psyche tries to deal and eventually resolve on its own.
Influenced by Jung‟s theories on the nature of psychotic breakdowns, Laing gives his famous
madness not being necessarily all breakdown but also possibly a breakthrough (1967, p. 11
radical change of perspective that alters one‟s view of one‟s self and the world, metanoia or ego tra
explained by Laing, is achieved in Susan‟s case through meditation and complete solitude which wo
connect with her real authentic self away from the influences of social, cultural, and politic
transcendence of the ego entails dissolution from the socially constructed ego, the presence
causes the individual‟s inner conflicts, towards an autonomous, more authentic and balanced self. S
solitude starts at home, as she continuously tries to find a place where she can be “really alone, with
(“Room Nineteen,” p. 2548), locking herself in the bathroom, going to the very end of the garden, re
spare empty room upstairs, all to no avail. Even when she takes a vacation and tries to enjoy the “W
(p. 2555), Mrs. Parkes‟ calls make her feel like “the telephone wire [is] holding her to her duty like
is not until she seeks solitude in the privacy of a hotel room far away from home, realizing “[s]he wa
alone. She was alone” (p. 2553), that Suzan finally “feel[s] pressures lift off her” for the first time in
This experience marks Susan‟s first step of dissolution from her constructed ego, a spiritual w
her domestic sphere, and the beginning of a journey towards her inner self and space. Sus
rediscovery and simultaneous identity deconstruction and reconstruction, appears to answer to Les
angst of identity or what might happen in the new feminist era to a woman of the old dispensation”
caught up in the socially constructed image of ideal Womanhood, but has also accepted this image a
responsibilities in the form of motherhood and wifehood, and with her husband‟s infidelity, the role
wife (Quawas, “Lessing‟s,” 2007, p. 110).
In her “Lessing‟s „To Room Nineteen‟: Susan‟s Voyage into the Inner Space of „Elsewhere,”
analyzes Susan‟s decision and will to free herself from the restraints of her socially constru
initiation enabling her to enter “the „elsewhere‟ of consciousness” (2007, p. 112). This „elsewhere‟
primary place of identity and enunciation of female experience and subjectivity [away from
ego],” a psychological state that is rather a “mode of consciousness that helps women to ent
inhabitable, universe where they can review their lives and seek self-knowledge” in a way that helps
the “wider world” and their place in it (2007, p. 112). Room nineteen at Fred‟s hotel provides Susan
that allows her to sink into herself, not as “Susan Rawlings, mother of four, wife of Mathew, employ
and Sophie Traub,” but as the anonymous Mrs. Jones with “no past and no future” (“Room Nineteen
changing her name, Suzan gives up her old identity and opens up to the possibility of having a new
tone with her own needs as an intelligent woman determined to redefine her existence. It is in her d
empty room that Susan starts embracing, rather than repressing, her need to set herself free from t
marriage (p. 2550) and the responsibilities she finds herself stuck within.
The narratordescribesSusan‟sreexaminationof her life and her self-rediscoveryas actsof “wool
gather[ing],” “brood[ing], wander[ing], simply [going] dark” (p. 2558). Her experience of “wool-gath
“represent the „elsewhere‟ of female experience” Quawas refers to, the “feelings which are
recognized bymasculine culture, whichare often forbidden, andthis takesup a shadowy residence in the
unconscious” (“Lessing‟s,” 2007, p. 118). Although the whole process of reconnecting with herself e
her feel like an “imposter” (p. 2558) in her own house, Susan finally embraces her rejection of her a
everything that comes with them.

Hiba Amro
This is accompanied by her seeing the world differently for the first time in years, symbolized
through her hotel room window happily, “loving” all the anonymous people who pass by, the buildin
and the sky she feels like she has never seen before. Seeing the world with a new perspective shows
be an eye-opener for Susan, helping her to finally see her current place in the world, and
possibilities of being, somewhere beyond the suffocating domestic sphere.
Wool-gathering in the solitude and anonymity that room nineteen provides her becomes Susa
safe place that allows her to become the independent free person she aspires to become. It becomes
world, a room of her own that she insists on living her new experience in, ready to wait for it if it is
than just take another supposedly similar room. However, when this room, this new world and its pr
by Mathew‟s intrusive presence, Susan loses the sense of shelter and peace the room has given her
“snail pecked out of its shell and trying to squirm back” (“Room Nineteen,” p. 2560). With her solitu
transcendence obstructed by a husband who has her followed, suspecting her to have a lover, Susan
connection with her inner space is disrupted before she is able to “close the gap once and for all bet
wife and mother and the Other Susan” (Quawas, “Lessing,” 2007, p. 119). Coming back to the room
after her husband interrupts her process of self-growth and recreation, Susan tries to “look
instead she found the unnamed spirit of restlessness, a prickling fevered hunger for movem
consciousness that made her brain feel as if it had coloured lights going on and off inside it” (“Room
2560). The room is not the same anymore as Susan‟s anonymity vanishes and her past, presented in
Mathew‟s wife, comes to haunt her and remind her of her suffocating present and future:
Instead of the soft dark that had been the room‟s air, were now waiting for her demons that m
blindly about, muttering words of hatred; she was impelling herself from point to point like a
itself against a windowpane, sliding to the bottom, fluttering off on broken wings, the
invisible barrier again. And again and again. (“Room Nineteen,” p. 2560)
Incapable of moving forward and cultivating her new self in her own room anymore, Susan is
choice but to go back. Going back to the big white house in the middle of a weekday, Sus
watches how life in that house is being carried out without her: Mrs. Parkes cooking in Susan‟s ove
taking care of Susan‟s sick daughter, whose listless face “hurt[s] Susan” (p. 2560) and urges her to
little girl. Looking at them from the outside, Susan realizes how “remote” and “shut off from them”
(p. 2560). She realizes how irrelevant her presence is in that house with other women filling in for h
and more importantly, how impossible it is for her to relive the roles she has enjoyed willfully break
over a year now: “all this had nothing to do with her: she was already out of it” (p. 2561). Already in
forging a new, free, rebellious identity that does not acknowledge the validity of the socially constru
accepts motherhood, marriage, and ideal femininity as the ultimate purpose in life, Susan eventually
this new self by experiencing physical death in the same room where she experiences psychological
it all starts and ends in room nineteen of Fred‟s hotel near Paddington:
[W]ith hardly a break in her consciousness, she got up . . . put two shillings in the meter and t
. . . quite content lying there listening to the faint soft hiss of the gas that poured into the roo
lungs, into her brain, as she drifted off into the dark river. (p. 2564)
While some critics, such as Lynda Scott, consider Susan‟s suicide a defeat, a “complete loss o
the patriarchal collective in spite of her disillusionment with its ideals,” and a “submission to the co
pag.), the actual defeat for Susan lies in going back to her family. Going back to her old life means b
found self by reclaiming the roles she no longer identifies with, adding to them the role of the adulte
to be able to maintain an access to the solitude she acquires in room nineteen. Her willful self-annih
way Susan is capable of remaining true to her new self, physical death being a protection of her new
trapping and limiting powers of the patriarchal and cultural ideologies of womanhood and wifehood
get to her eventually one way or another. The domestication of women and the psychologica
depression, and agitation it causes are constant feminist issues for women all over the world, regard
or culture. Khairiya Saqqaf, a Saudi feminist author, dedicates most of her short fiction, collected in
al-Abad (Taking Off into the Distance), to several social and feminist concerns that Saudi women ha
a daily basis. In her fiction, she voices women‟s feelings on universal issues like domestication, fem
as the inferior sex, patriarchal domination, and preordained gender roles, among others.

154 International Journal of Language and Literature, Vol. 6, No. 2,
Featured in her collection, “In a Contemporary House” is one story in which Saqqaf presents
domesticated woman entrapped by the patriarchal familial and social systems of a 1980s Arab cultu
hinder women‟s ability to develop a necessary sense of selfhood and individuality and prevent them
sort of intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and physical freedom.
While Gilman‟s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Lessing‟s “To Room Nineteen” depict two wome
against the ideals of the cult of true womanhood and power relations in a marriage, Saqqaf‟s unnam
stands for the majority of Saudi women of her time, married or not, who are domesticated as part of
restrictions and “traditional norms of honor . . . that require women to protect their virtue
(Alsuwaigh, 1989, p. 69). With its gender policies and laws, the Saudi state has played a significant
and domestication of women in Saudi Arabia. An example can be seen in the legal requirement of th
the sexes outside the home, which has deprived women from the right to education up till the 1960s
schools were first established. With no to little education, women had no chances of employment ou
which was regarded unnecessary anyway since women‟s main work had always been socially define
domestic sphere and household chores.(8) The state has also imposed legal restrictions on women‟s m
forbidding them from driving,(9) walking the streets or going shopping alone without a male mahram,(10)or leaving the
country alone without a written approval from a male relative (Silvey, 2004, p. 255). The state‟s Co
Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Hai‟at Al-Amr Bi Al-Ma‟ruf Wa Al-Nahi „An Al-Munk
moral police (the mutawaa‟in) supervise women‟s behavior outside their homes, seeking out and „d
who seem to be breaking the ground rules for maintaining virtue, such as those not wearing the hija
in restaurants with men they are not married to or non-mahram men (Silvey, 2004, p. 255).
Having no name, no identity of her own, Saqqaf‟s protagonist is presented to the reader with
indication to her marital status, age, or physical features. Her individuality emerges in the
depicted in the story as she decides to break free from the typification of the collective image of the
domesticated woman, protesting to her confinement in the symbolic act of “impatiently” ope
windows of her room (“Contemporary House,” p. 90). Identifying with the rumbles of the air conditi
about continuous suffering” (p. 90), the protagonist complains of a chill down her veins, an overwhe
her chest and throat, a fatigue paralyzing her body, and a depression that blurs her sense
protagonist, an omniscient narrator remarks: “In such an environment, she is unable to define clear
which she now breathes . . . incapable even of knowing its secret . . . she becomes depressed” (p. 9
different research results looking into the reasons behind women‟s depression, Jane Ussher points o
and the domestic sphere have been “for too long the seat of women‟s oppression and depression” (W
1992, p. 299). Women‟s roles as mothers and housewives usually cause an isolation from th
creates feelings of powerlessness and subordination, especially in relation to economic dependency
Madness, 1992, p. 299), which forces a lot of women to tolerate unbearable living conditions or dom
sake of having their material needs met, such as having a place to live, as well as the main necessiti
clothes.
While Saqqaf does not clarify her protagonist‟s role in the family, it seems she belongs to the
middle class, as the room is described as having velvety walls and is furnished with “crysta
(“Contemporary House,” p. 90). By the time the story was published (1981), middle-class Saudi wom
better chances at education and joining the public labor force, though still limited to professions ass
with women, such as teaching, social work, nursing, and to some extent writing newspaper
(Alsuwaigh, 1989, p. 70-76). However, with a culture that tries to maintain the subordination of wom
norms that resist a change in the status of women, along with a “lack of economic incentive for [fem
upper and middle classes (Alsuwaigh, 1989, p. 77), not so many women were allowed the opportuni
putting their knowledge and intelligence at work and joining the public sphere. Staying home usual
out household responsibilities, such as cooking, cleaning, taking care of the needs of other family m
men and children or younger siblings, all of which can be suffocating and depressing for a lot of wom
grow as individuals and have different life experiences. Studying the conditions and social p
women‟s lives and attributing to their distress, depression, restlessness, and emptiness, Ussh
feelings, the “pain and despair,” eventually drive women to “desperate measures” in which “madnes
forms becomes their only means of expression (Women’s Madness, 1992, p. 283).

Hiba Amro
Agitatedby the dreadfulsilencearoundher, the nauseaand pain “convuls[ing]her intestines”
(“Contemporary House,” p. 90), the boredom taking over her and paralyzing her body, the protagon
would be typically considered a hysteric fit, a bout of “madness,” in which she suddenly starts smas
tearing everything around her: “She tore the curtains … she threw the crystals on the floor … with h
glasses, one by one and threw them on the floor, and they broke, were shattered … aroun
nothing, inspiring murder” (p. 90). Provoked by the affinity between her and the “bright things” tha
around her, the protagonist revolts against her current existence as a beautiful, immobile, fragile, d
breaking her silence and the silence around her, and opening the closed windows that separate her
and life of the outside world. By having her protagonist muster the courage to open the windows on
stop the “protesting rumbles” of the air conditioner with her own hands, Saqqaf is encouraging her
stand up against their oppression and fight to free themselves from the subordination and imprisonm
face one way or another as women in male-dominated societies.
Unlike Gilman‟s narrator who eventually goes “mad” in her yellow wallpapered room, and Le
who commits suicide in her room nineteen, Saqqaf‟s depressed protagonist is yet to discove
forced domestication as she “c[o]me[s] forward violently shaking her head to get rid of the vestiges
91). Gathering her strength to defy the social conventions trapping her in her richly furnished house
breakdown, depression and „hysterical fit‟ lead her into a break-through-“darkness” as the sun app
her window and life starts “coming in” her room: a glimpse of hope and a promise of chan
accompany her revolt and defiance as she goes down the same path Jane and Susan go in search of
and personal growth.
Notes
1- This paper is a revised chapter of Amro‟s doctoral dissertation entitled How “Sane” Is “Insane”?:
“Insane” Women in Modern Feminist Fiction.
2- The cult of true womanhood and domesticity is a nineteenth century value system that stresses th
women's domesticity, purity, piety, and submissiveness. For more on this see Bertha Welter (1966
True Womanhood, 1820-1860,” American Quarterly. 18, 151-74.
3- Elaine Showalter‟s The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture 1830-1980 (1985
Women and Madness (1972) are two of the most fundamental feminist accounts that unravel the
between women and madness, clarifying patriarchy‟s role in the construction of madness as
throughout centuries. Jane Ussher contributes to this scholarship with Women’s Madness: Misogy
(1992) and The Madness of Women: Myth and Experience (2011).
4- In his Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), Foucault discusses Jeremy B
building which is wheel-like in structure, with a tower at the center that makes surveilling each r
building possible. The individuals in each room are to be watched by warders or prisoners with w
communicate, being aware they are being watched without knowing when exactly or by whom. A
cultivates fear and paranoia, the Panopticon becomes a social disciplinary mechanism that
groups‟ control over people and guarantees maintaining power relations within a society (Foucau
5- In his The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise, Laing distinguishes his use of the term
the traditional medical definition of the word as a “label that some people pin on other people und
circumstances” (p. 86), rather than a physical or mental condition or illness as it is gene
commonly used in relation to brain dysfunctions in some cases. For further explanation on schizo
and as a voyage into inner space, as well as a deeper analysis of the dynamics of madn
experience that reflects the impacts of chaotic and divided social systems and structures
destruction of one‟s ego, see The Politics of Experience chapter 5: “The Schizophrenic Experienc
“Transcendental Experience.”
6- The Politics of Experience (1970). p. 75, quoted in Maryon Vlastos‟ “Doris Lessing and R. D. Lain
and Prophecy” (PMLA, 19.2, Mar. 1976, p. 247) in analyzing the madness of Lessing‟s A
Golden Notebook. Eva Hunter in “Madness in Doris Lessing‟s „To Room Nineteen‟” quotes Vlast
relation to the division or split in Susan Rawlings‟ psyche.
7- Carl Jung developed William James‟ use of metanoia as a term that was used in reference to radic
individual‟s view of themselves and the world to a process through which the psyche attempts to

156 International Journal of Language and Literature, Vol. 6, No. 2,
For more on Jung‟s metanoia, which he discusses in several books, see Jung‟s The Undiscovered
The Individual in Modern Societies (2006), Jung‟s The Practice of Psychotherapy (1954), a
Psychotherapy (1993).
8- For more on the social conditions of women in Saudi Arabia between the 1960s and the 1980s, es
of education, employment, family, and marriage, see Siham A. Alsuwaigh‟s “Women in Transition
Saudi Arabia” (1989).
9- Saudi women are now allowed to drive (as of June 2018).
10- A woman‟s mahram according to Islamic laws is a man she cannot marry or have any sexual relat
her father, brother, uncle, or nephew. Although women‟s mobility in Saudi Arabia is usua
company of a mahram, a big group of women can replace the presence of a mahram in
necessary errands outside the home.
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