A WOMAN ON A ROOF
by Doris Lessing, 1963

The more than 30 books and 50 short stories of Doris Lessing range from early realist work to later fantasies. "A Woman on a Roof" is from A Man and Two Women, Lessing's collection of British stories about modern European life and culture. Mona Knapp has noted the dialectic structure of nearly all of the British stories, in which each protagonist comes into conflict with a self-defining force. According to Knapp the collective forces in Lessing's British stories fall into five categories: sexuality, role crisis, politics, history, and social ills. In "A Woman on a Roof" both sexuality and role crisis are central motifs.

While repairing a roof during a scorching heat wave, three workmen spot an attractive woman sunbathing on a neighboring roof. Tom is 17 years old, shy, and impressionable; Stanley has recently married and is both shocked and attracted by the woman's nakedness; and Harry, who is married and has a son about Tom's age, is 45 years old, tolerant and practical minded. Lessing weaves her story around each man's different response to the woman's presence and to the heat. While the woman relaxes on the stifling roof, smoking, reading, sleeping, and getting a tan, the men sweat and struggle to work under a blanket they have crudely rigged to provide shade. Their task becomes more irritating when the sun-bather ignores them.

Tom's reactions are mostly interior and secretive. Upon first noticing the sunbather, he grins excitedly, but he says nothing. He joins Stanley in whistling at the woman, but when she responds with annoyance, Tom smiles apologetically, as if signaling his detachment from Stanley. He privately watches her roll her bikini pants over her hips, but he reports to his coworkers that she has not moved. Stanley wants the sunbather's attention, even as her boldness affronts his sense of propriety. He avows that someone will report her, though Tom defends the woman, suggesting that "she thinks no one can see." Tom views himself as an outsider, peering into the woman's intimate space, while Stanley looks at the woman as if she were on public display. He affronts her with wolf whistles, gestures, and yelling. From his neutral position Harry chides Stanley, "Small things amuse small minds."

The sunbather's presence gives Harry no reason to interrupt his workday. He borrows a blanket from a tenant and attempts to create some shade, and he leaves the work site to obtain some materials. While Harry stays focused on work, Tom and Stanley periodically stop to check on the woman. Stanley gestures lewdly when she changes positions and rests on her back. His persistent whistling prompts Harry to inquire scoldingly, "What about your missus?" The older man's monitoring angers Stanley, for whom marriage should curb his wife's behavior but not his own. Frustrated by the sunbather's indifference, on the second day Stanley threatens to call the police himself. If he cannot have her attention, he is determined that no one will.

During the six days the men work, they see the sunbather on every day save one, when the extreme heat drives them to the basement. By the second day Tom has fantasized about the woman treating him tenderly at night. A crane on a neighboring building sets him to thinking that he operates the machine and can swing the woman closer to him. He feels smitten, and Stanley's anger perplexes him. The sunbather defies Stanley's need for control, and he calls the woman a "bitch" when his furious whistling on the second day prompts only a squinted glance. Tom snickers that the woman should ask the men over. Harry tries to cool the rising tension by interjecting that, if the woman is married, "her old man would not like that." Stanley then challenges the potential husband by confidently telling his companions that, if his wife lay about for everyone to see, he would put a stop to it. Harry suggests that maybe Stanley's wife does sunbathe while he works. Secure in his feelings of superiority, Stanley boasts, "Not a chance, not on our roof."

For all his criticism and supposed disgust, Stanley will not leave the sunbather alone. He postures and struts to no avail, epitomizing the man who can relate to women in only one way. When he fails, he has no other ideas. Thus, he reasserts his failed method with greater force. On the fourth day, when the woman briefly hides her presence, Stanley assumes that her husband has finally "put his foot down." It satisfies him to suppose that a man has regulated the woman's behavior, since his own efforts have failed. By week's end he speaks insultingly of the sunbather. He surmises that her skin must be like that of a rhinoceros, and he sarcastically likens her aloofness to Lady Godiva's. As if to compensate for his lack of success with the sunbather, Stanley shamelessly flirts with and teases Mrs. Pritchett, the woman who loaned Harry the blanket. Harry watches disapprovingly and Tom with admiration at Stan-ley's ease in conversation. Stanley insults the sunbather again by complaining to Mrs. Pritchett how the roof work was miserable in the oppressive heat, although some do "lie about the roof as if it was a beach."

Tom increasingly adopts his fantasies as facts. At night he dreams of alluring encounters with the woman. She is friendly, and she cares for him. He sleeps at her apartment, and he loves her. Tom is confident that the woman looks upon him as different from the other men. He envisions himself protecting her from Stanley. When she moves to a hidden spot to avoid the men's glances, Tom feels that she is his because the other men cannot see her. Tom eventually suggests that Stanley's whistling is dissuasive, and Stanley angrily retorts, "You didn't whistle, then?" Tom feels that he did not. Meanwhile, Harry remains detached from his coworkers' involvement. One time he whistles with the other men, but it is in parody of them. He reminds Stanley that the sunbather is not his wife and that she is doing no harm, and he urges Stanley at least to pretend to work as a means of channeling his frustration.

The sixth day is the hottest yet, and Stanley finally explodes. He throws the gutters, quits work, and madly whistles with his fingers in his mouth, stamping and screaming for the woman's attention. Frightened by Stanley's ferocity, Harry takes command and packs up the tools. He tells the boss that the men are suffering from sunstroke.

The heat in Lessing's story refers both to the actual temperature and to the men's rising passions. Stanley's irrationality and near madness make Harry fearful, while Tom loses all sense of reality. When the men finally abandon the roof, Tom stays behind on the street and finds the sunbather's apartment building. He climbs the ladder to her roof and tries to talk to her. She snubs him, suggesting that he go to the beach if he likes seeing women in bikinis. Tom assumed that she would react as in his dreams, and her rebuff stymies him. He leaves resentfully and gets drunk, hating her. When it rains the following day, he thinks of the sunbather and says, "Well, that's fixed you, hasn't it now?"

By selecting three men with varying life roles—a youngster, a newlywed, and a family man—Lessing illustrates both a range of attitudes toward women and sex and how the progressive stages in life shape the men's views. Reality shatters Tom's naïveté, while the erosion of his assumed dominance shocks Stanley. For Harry the incident on the roof is a catalyzing experience. He shifts from offering his companions reasonable observations to taking a paternal-like charge over them. Decisively and forcefully, he prevents their encounter with the woman from escalating into a crisis.

—Barbara A. Looney