To Room Nineteen | The Subtext in To Room Nineteen
In the following essay, Nordius explores Lessing’s use of T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” as a subtext in “To Room Nineteen.”
In her illuminating discussion of Doris Lessing’s debt to T. S. Eliot, Claire Sprague traces allusions to The Waste Land and other poems in four of Lessing’s novels. In addition to those instances, The Waste Land is also an important subtext in Lessing’s short story “To Room Nineteen.” Charting the failure of communication and subsequent decline of love in a mid-twentieth-century marriage, Lessing both pursues one of Eliot’s most central themes in The Waste Land and writes back from the woman’s point of view.
“To Room Nineteen” addresses Eliot’s...
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