Becoming a Woman in a Consumer Society: Tante Rosa and “To Room Nineteen”

This study aims to analyse two works of literature; “To Room Nineteen”, by Doris Lessing, and Tante Rosa, by Sevgi Soysal, comparatively; our objective is to read these texts as cases which illustrate the roles of ideal wifehood and motherhood, and to identify the role of the capitalist consumer culture in shaping these identities. Although these two works are the products of different cultures, the two texts share a lot in common: both were written in the same decade, and both portray the social and economic conditions of the period. Besides, the texts depict the female protagonists’ existence under the strain of consumerism as a form of struggle, because they feel they do not belong to the consumer culture that they have been born into. They search for identities, meanings other than those which are assigned by this culture of consumerism. Both texts portray the dilemmas and struggles of the authors, as well. The primary objective of this study is to identify the roles of the ideal wife and the ideal mother imposed by modern consumer culture. Taking these literary texts as cases in point, this study also attempts to find out how women try to cope with the strains of fulfilling these roles.