The Skylight Room

The titular skylight room is the attic space in Mrs. Parker’s rooming house, described as being like a coffin but nonetheless offering a view out the skylight window like “a square of blue infinity” (48). Whereas Mrs. Parker claims that the other rooms she offers to prospective renters can be charged for as much as twelve dollars a night (over $720 in today’s dollars), Miss Leeson ends up paying two dollars a night ($60 in today’s dollars) for the skylight room. The room represents her poverty, offers no creature comforts, and is ultimately the space in which Miss Leeson succumbs to the starvation she must be rescued from.

The rooming house

Mrs. Parker’s rooming house in New York City is the site of all the action in the story. The topmost attic room is the titular skylight room, and all the other characters who are...