Room Upstairs

Room Upstairs depicts the life of an old woman, Sybil, who becomes the prey of vacillating loyalties and bewilderments of modern society. A six-line highway slices through her farm, leaving a farmhouse on one side and the barn on the other. Sybil, a widow of eighty, fractures her thigh after the wedding of her grandson. Dorothy Grue, a housekeeper, is hired to look after Sybil. Dorothy starts to rule the house and keeps Sybil under control by every possible means, but when Dorothy becomes interested in the herb recipes written down by Sybil's father, she will finally taste her own medicine. This is a grim, relentless story, with touches of macabre, about a proud woman hanging grimly on to what is left of her well-remembered past.