To Room Nineteen

The Rawlings’s garden becomes a potent symbol for Susan in her quest for autonomy. With its biblical associations, the garden is clearly a fallen paradise—a place Susan avoids lest the emptiness of her situation consume her. In the garden lives “the enemy” (a common euphemism for Satan): “She looked out into the garden and saw the branches shake the trees. She sat defeating the enemy, restlessness. Emptiness. She ought to be thinking about her life, about herself. But she did not. Or perhaps she could not” (2550). All that was innocent about her ideal marriage has been lost amidst the affairs and the limiting expectations. The garden is also symbolic of Susan’s domestic entrapment; it is the tame counterpart to the jungle in which her “wild cat” should be stalking (2555).

The river beside Susan’s house represents the slow but steady current carrying her away from her family and herself: “[S]he looked at the river and closed her eyes and breathed slow and deep, taking it into her being, into her veins” (2551). When she embarks upon her final act, inhaling the fumes that will kill her, “[S]he drifted off into the dark river” (2565), floating away (or perhaps returning) to some primordial place.