지성적 실패, 감정적 실패: 도리스 레싱의 ｢19호실로 가다｣

Abstract

This paper employs Sara Ahmed’s theory of emotion and Lauren Berlant’s concept of “cruel optimism” to examine the emotional and structural imbalance between Susan and Matthew Rawlings, the middle-class couple in Doris Lessing’s “To Room Nineteen.” It analyzes the collapse of their “intelligent marriage” and “balanced, sensible family,” a union they rationally chose and idealized. Within the institution of marriage that promises happiness, Susan becomes confined to the roles of wife and mother and strives to sustain her existence through devotion to the perfect home, gradually losing her sense of self. In contrast, Matthew, positioned as a rational, male-centered subject, is exempt from emotional labor and passively enables Susan’s increasing isolation. His optimistic attachment to preserving the marital ideal ultimately prevents him from maintaining the family’s emotional equilibrium. The paper demonstrates how their idealized expectations of marriage generate an affectively unbalanced relationship and culminate in Susan’s self-destruction. Ultimately, Susan becomes a figure who disrupts happiness by refusing to follow convention. She is not merely a tragic or “unhappy” subject, but an uncomfortable one who exposes what happiness compels us to forgo, thereby “recalling the injustice of happiness.” In this context, “To Room Nineteen” not only portrays a couple constrained by mid-twentieth-century British norms but also resonates with contemporary debates on women’s reproductive and domestic labor amid concerns over demographic decline. Susan’s suicide thus raises a philosophical question—what constitutes a “good life” and a “happy life”?—a question that remains relevant in the twenty-first century.