A Woman on a Roof

The naïve and romantic teenager Tom is the closest thing to a hero Lessing offers in this realistic short story. As a “grownup child” who is the same age as Harry’s son, Tom is presumably new to the work force, and definitely inexperienced at the game of love.

While Stanley responds to the provocation of a near-nude female sunbather by swinging wildly between lust and rage, Tom swiftly imagines that he has fallen in love. When Stanley whistles at the woman, Tom stands beside him grinning in a way that he hopes conveys apology. He remembers his fantasy of intimacy with the woman the night before, and he believes that the woman he has dreamed up is the real person. He is perplexed to notice that Stanley’s face is “hard, really angry,” and he “wonder[s] why (Stanley) hate[s] her so much, for by now he love[s] her” (75).

Even when she first appears, Tom offers an ironically chivalric defense of the woman’s choice to sunbathe in the nude, because “she thinks no one can see her” (73). By day 4, he is “pleased” when she moves out of the line of sight of the men, because “He felt she was more his when the other men could not see her” (78).