Summary
Harold Pinter’s 1957 play The Room features six characters: Rose, a 60-year-old woman; Bert Hudd, Rose’s 50-year-old husband; Mr. Kidd, the Hudds’ elderly landlord; Mr. and Mrs. Sands, a young couple; and a mysterious blind visitor named Riley. The stage is set as a room in a large house that is subdivided into rental suites. The “bedsit” single-room apartment features a gas fire, gas stove, a sink, a window, tables and chairs, a rocking chair, and a double-bed protruding from an alcove on stage right.
The play opens with Bert wearing a cap and reading a magazine at the table while Rose prepares breakfast at the stove. Addressing Bert, Rose talks about how cold it is outside, and comments on how the warm bacon and eggs she cooks for Bert will “keep the cold out.” Rose comments that she can feel the cold even inside, but the room luckily stays warm. She says it’s at least warmer than the basement, adding that she doesn’t “know how they live down there. It’s asking for trouble.”
After serving Bert, Rose sits in the rocking chair and continues her monologue. She wonders aloud who lives in the basement she referenced earlier, saying she believes the tenants have changed since she was last there and she didn’t see who moved in. She says she wouldn’t like to live in that basement; the walls were running with moisture.
Rose encourages Bert to eat more if he is going to go outside. She comments on how she hasn’t been feeling well lately and so hasn’t been out. Rose wonders whether Bert should go out given that he’s recently been “laid up.” She says it’s good he was “up here” and that he wasn’t in the basement, adding, “That’s no joke.”
She gets up to pour the tea, realizing she’s left the tea bags steeping. Returning to the subject of the basement, she says the damp walls would have killed Bert. She says that whoever lives down there now is taking a big risk, and she speculates that they might be immigrants.
Rose says she would have taken care of Bert, though, if they had been in the basement and he’d gotten sick. She says there isn’t room in the basement for two people, however. Rose says she is happy where she is, and Bert is too. It isn’t far up the stairs from the street. She says, “We’re not bothered. And nobody bothers us.”
Rose suddenly says she doesn’t know why Bert has to go out today; she asks whether he couldn’t “run it down tomorrow.” She suggests that he could sit by the fire, a preferable alternative way to spend the evening. Rose points out that it will be dark soon, as it gets dark early these days, and there is ice on the roads. She says she knows he can handle driving—she’s not saying he can’t. She adds that she spoke to Mr. Kidd that morning and told him Bert hadn’t been well lately, but he is still a marvelous driver. She says it’s really cold, and he’ll have to have some cocoa when he returns.
Rose rises and looks out the window, talking aloud about how she thinks she sees someone before quickly realizing she hasn’t seen anyone. She pulls the curtain over the window and returns to her rocking chair. Rose says they live in “a good room,” adding that Bert has “a chance in a place like this.” She reminds Bert that she takes care of him, such as when they were offered the basement and Rose immediately rejected it. She knew it wouldn’t be good to have a ceiling close to your head and no window and no space to move around. She says Bert can go out, do his job, and come home, and he is all right.
Rose wonders again who has the basement now. She has never seen them or heard of them, but she believes someone is down there. Whoever has it, she says, can keep it. Then she comments on how Bert’s bacon rasher looked good. Apropos of nothing, her thoughts move to the cup of tea she’ll pour herself later, once it has steeped more. She says she likes her tea a bit stronger, reminding Bert he likes his weak. She stands when there is a knock at the door.
Analysis
In the opening scene of The Room, Pinter establishes Rose and Bert’s peculiar dynamic as a couple while introducing most of the play’s major themes. Among them is the theme of miscommunication, which features prominently as Rose carries on a one-sided conversation as she dotes on Bert. Ostensibly, her words are addressed to the taciturn Bert, but they have the effect of a theatrical “aside”—a direct address to the audience. With this theatrical device, Pinter makes Rose convey to the audience the thoughts and feelings that preoccupy her.
While the premise of a woman rambling to a husband who clearly is trying to ignore her is used to generate comedy, Pinter simultaneously infuses Rose’s monologue with deeper existential concerns. As Rose goes on, it becomes clear she is anxious, and potentially agoraphobic. Alienated from the rest of society, Rose repeatedly draws contrasts between the world outside and their comfortable apartment. While the outside world is dark and cold and full of potential dangers, their modest bedsit is warm and light.
Reading through to the subtext of Rose’s words, the audience understands that she symbolically associates her room with safety and certainty. In this way, Pinter establishes the major theme of security. Pinter also builds on the theme of fear with Rose’s comments about the rooming house’s basement. Having rejected the offer to rent a room down there, Rose is relieved she chose their room—a place of safety for her. One of the play’s most important symbols, the basement is here associated with dampness, darkness, and foreignness—a direct counterpoint to the known environment of Rose’s room.
While the basement’s full symbolic meaning is yet to be developed, Pinter subtly establishes its association with death by having Rose comment that if they had been living downstairs while Bert was recently unwell, the damp walls would have “finished [him] off.” The themes of fear and uncertainty also arise with Rose’s worries over Bert’s safety on the icy roads. Knowing he has to go out that day to drive his van (presumably to deliver something), Rose suggests that Bert could wait. When he doesn’t reply—predictably at this point—Rose tries to assuage her fear of the uncertain by reassuring herself that Bert is an excellent driver.
It is also worth noting how Pinter adds a subtly surrealist edge to the superficially mundane opening scene. Time in the world of the one-act play is flexible and somewhat bewildering, with Rose cooking Bert breakfast foods before sending him off to work while simultaneously commenting on how it is nearly dark out already, as though evening is closing in. With the peculiar atmosphere and emotional stakes of the play established, Pinter introduces Mr. Kidd, who will be the first of many destabilizing disruptions to Rose’s dull, cozy, and fear-riddled life.
