The Power Of Language Over The Subject In Doris Lessing’s Short Story “To Room Nineteen”

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The Power Of Language Over The Subject In Doris Lessing’s Short Story “To Room Nineteen”

Journal Title: Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları - Year 2019, Vol 20, Issue 20

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the predominant role of language in the subjectivization of the female protagonist in Doris Lessing’s “To Room Nineteen” within the framework of Lacanian psychoanalysis and relevant terminology. Published in her collection of short stories titled A Man and Two Women (1963), the story relates the failure of Susan Rawlings to fulfil her desire to be a ‘subject’ in the French philosopher, Jacques Lacan’s terms. Having been disillusioned in her quest for solitude in her personal space called “Mother’s Room” and later on in a downtown hotel, she is finally drawn into a hideous hotel room, Room 19, with which she is obsessed to the point of bringing her life to an end. Throughout the narrative, there is a prevailing claustrophobic atmosphere in which she feels as if she was caged, or imprisoned within the borderlines of an empty life. However, the ambivalence of the ending with regard to Susan’s suicidal cause has been an intriguing situation. Thus, the aim of this paper is to account for the protagonist’s lasting death-wish by adopting a Lacanian perspective. In line with the protagonist’s final breakdown, the narrative is manifested as liable for a psychoanalytical reading that will draw on the process of becoming a ‘speaking subject’ as well as other Lacanian terminology, including the conceptions of desire/lack, subject’s relation to language, distinction between ‘ideal ego’ and ‘ego ideal’, and the displacement from the Symbolic or linguistic realm.

Authors and Affiliations

Elif TOPRAK SAKIZ

Keywords

Doris Lessing Lacan language subject psychoanalytic literary criticism

EP ID EP666692
DOI 10.30767/diledeara.635563
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