The Raspberry Room

The Raspberry Room exists inside of a patch on the speaker's grandparents' property. The speaker seems to have been given free reign to explore the nature on this property, which is how she discovers the Raspberry Room. Gottshall uses phrases like "cloistered green bower" and "a canopy of raspberry / dagger-leaves and a syrup of sun and birdsong" to characterize the vibrancy of this place (8 and 14-15). Getting there is an ordeal. Thorns rip the speaker's skin, stinging and drawing blood. Berry juice stains her clothes. Nevertheless, the speaker considers it an adventure to reach a place with "just space enough for a girl to lie down" (19). There, she is granted the gift of feeling like royalty. This shows how the Raspberry Room as a physical place creates new terrain inside the speaker's mind.

A Sanctuary in the Real World

At ten years old, the speaker's budding...