 |
| Doris Lessing Doris_lessing_20060312_(jha).jpg: Elke Wetzig (elya) derivative work: PRA, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons |
INTRODUCTION
Doris Lessing’s debut novel, The Grass Is Singing (1950), is a piercing study of colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), set against a backdrop of racial divisions, gender constraints, and the psychological disintegration of a woman trapped by circumstance. The novel combines political commentary with psychological depth, beginning with the stark declaration of Mary Turner’s murder:
“Mary Turner, wife of Richard Turner, was found murdered on the verandah of their house out in the veld.”
From this chilling opening, Lessing unfolds the events that led to Mary’s death, charting her life in a chronological arc—from her youth, to her troubled marriage, to her eventual decline on a failing farm. At the same time, she probes the novel’s central themes: race, gender, colonialism, isolation, and psychological breakdown.
SHORT SUMMARY
Doris Lessing’s debut novel, The Grass Is Singing (1950), is a haunting portrayal of colonial life in Southern Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe). It tells the story of Mary Turner, a white woman trapped in an unhappy marriage and isolated existence, whose life ends tragically in a murder that exposes the deep racial and social tensions of the colonial system.
Opening and Structure
The novel begins with the discovery of Mary Turner’s body, murdered on a remote farm. This shocking event frames the story, and the rest of the novel unravels the events leading up to her death. Through this structure, Lessing explores themes of race, gender, class, and alienation under colonial rule.
Mary Turner’s Early Life
Mary is introduced as an independent young woman who enjoys her freedom in the city. She works in an office, values her autonomy, and has little interest in romance or domesticity. However, social expectations weigh heavily on her. By her late twenties, her friends whisper about her being a “spinster,” and Mary begins to fear loneliness and social judgment.
Marriage to Dick Turner
In a moment of impulsive decision-making, Mary marries Dick Turner, a struggling white farmer. At first, she believes marriage will give her purpose, but life on the farm quickly disillusions her. Dick is poor, impractical, and constantly failing in his agricultural ventures. The farm is in disrepair, and Mary finds the isolation unbearable. Instead of the companionship she craved, she discovers hardship, poverty, and resentment.
Mary’s Decline
Life on the farm wears Mary down physically and emotionally. She feels stifled by the harsh climate, Dick’s failures, and the lack of meaningful human connection. Her frustration often turns into cruelty toward the African servants who work on the farm. Mary represents the destructive effects of colonial attitudes—she views the Black workers with disdain, treating them harshly, while at the same time depending on their labor for survival.
The Arrival of Moses
The story takes a darker turn when Moses, one of the farm’s Black servants, begins working closely with Mary. Their relationship becomes complex, charged with fear, power, and unspoken desire. Lessing portrays this tension as both inevitable and dangerous within the rigid racial boundaries of colonial Rhodesia. Mary oscillates between harshness and a strange, uneasy dependence on Moses, reflecting her own psychological unraveling.
The Tragic Climax
As Mary becomes more mentally unstable, the lines between power and vulnerability blur. Her treatment of Moses escalates into a volatile relationship that neither can escape. Ultimately, Moses murders Mary, an act foreshadowed from the very beginning of the novel. Her death serves as both a personal tragedy and a symbolic indictment of the racial and colonial system that shaped their lives.
Themes and Significance
The Grass Is Singing is not simply the story of Mary Turner’s downfall—it is a critique of colonialism, systemic racism, gender oppression, and isolation. Lessing reveals how the oppressive structures of white colonial society dehumanize both colonizers and the colonized, creating an environment where violence and tragedy are inevitable.
The novel remains a cornerstone of postcolonial literature, blending psychological insight with political critique. Its enduring power lies in the way it exposes the fragility of human relationships under a system built on inequality and exploitation.
ANALYTICAL SUMMARY
Scene-by-Scene Breakdown with Thematic Analysis
Opening Scene: The Death of Mary Turner
The novel opens not with life, but with death. Mary’s murder has already occurred, her killer identified as Moses, a Black servant. The blunt revelation forces readers to focus not on mystery, but on why this crime occurred.
The European community in Rhodesia treats her death with cold inevitability:
“It was the sort of thing you could expect, living out in the veld.”
This fatalistic attitude highlights the social tensions of colonial Rhodesia. The white settlers perceive violence as the natural consequence of failing to maintain rigid racial and gender hierarchies. The opening also foreshadows the cycle of fear and domination that governs relationships between colonizers and the colonized.
Mary’s Childhood and Youth in the Town
Mary grows up in a poor, dysfunctional family. Her father is an alcoholic, her mother embittered. As a child, Mary retreats from the despair of her home by becoming fiercely independent. She chooses to live alone in the town as a stenographer, relishing her financial independence and freedom.
Here, Lessing paints Mary as a product of colonial society’s contradictions: white, yet not wealthy; independent, yet constrained by expectations. Mary embodies a woman who thrives temporarily in a masculine economic structure but is judged by patriarchal norms.
Thematically, these early chapters underscore gender oppression. Mary’s life is acceptable only until she fails to marry at the “appropriate” age. The town gossips—other white settlers—criticize her spinsterhood. Lessing writes:
“They pitied her, and the pity was mingled with contempt.”
This social pressure sets in motion Mary’s ill-fated marriage to Dick Turner.
The Meeting with Dick Turner
Mary meets Dick Turner, a struggling farmer. To Mary, desperate to silence gossip, Dick offers respectability. Yet Dick is also desperate—his farm is failing, and he seeks not companionship but a partner who can help him survive. Their courtship is brief, transactional, and based on mutual escape rather than genuine affection.
Mary, whose independence once defined her, resigns herself to a conventional life. Lessing subtly critiques the colonial institution of marriage, portraying it as a trap for both Mary and Dick. Their union is less about love than about conforming to social expectations.
Life on the Farm: Disillusionment and Isolation
After marriage, Mary moves to Dick’s farm. She quickly realizes she is unprepared for farm life: the isolation, the labor, the financial instability. The veld—the vast, unforgiving landscape—becomes a symbol of Mary’s growing alienation.
“The bush stretched endlessly about them, hostile, indifferent, waiting for them to fail.”
Here, the theme of environmental determinism emerges. The land itself becomes an adversary, crushing dreams and reflecting the futility of the colonial farming enterprise. For settlers like Dick and Mary, the African environment resists control, just as the colonized population resists domination.
The couple’s relationship deteriorates. Dick obsesses over doomed farming projects, while Mary grows resentful and depressed. Their isolation mirrors the broader isolation of white settlers—physically apart from urban life and emotionally estranged from the African majority.
Mary’s Struggles with the African Servants
One of the most significant aspects of the novel is Mary’s interaction with Black servants. She adopts a harsh, authoritarian stance, insisting on strict obedience. Yet her cruelty is born not of inherent malice, but of fear, ignorance, and social conditioning.
“She felt uncomfortable with the natives, as if they could see through her.”
Mary oscillates between repulsion and dependency. She cannot live without servants, yet she resents their presence. This ambivalence illustrates the colonial paradox: settlers depended on African labor while fearing African autonomy.
The servants’ silent resistance—inefficient work, subtle defiance—deepens Mary’s paranoia. Her inability to manage them underscores her failure as a colonial mistress, which in settler society equates to personal failure.
The Arrival of Moses
Moses, a Black servant, enters Mary’s life late in the novel, but his presence is pivotal. Initially, Mary mistreats him, slapping him during a confrontation. This violent moment, however, transforms their dynamic. Later, when Moses helps her recover from illness, Mary becomes increasingly dependent on him.
This dependency carries psychological and sexual undertones, though Lessing leaves their relationship deliberately ambiguous. The transgressive intimacy between Mary and Moses challenges colonial taboos. To the white community, any suggestion of a relationship between a white woman and a Black man is not only scandalous but dangerous—an existential threat to racial hierarchy.
Mary’s reliance on Moses symbolizes the collapse of colonial authority. She cannot maintain emotional or physical distance, and her authority erodes into dependency.
Mary’s Decline
As the farm continues to fail, so does Mary’s mental state. She becomes increasingly withdrawn, haunted by feelings of futility. The once-independent woman of her youth disappears, replaced by someone consumed by fear and obsession.
“She seemed to be waiting for something—she knew not what.”
This waiting becomes her deathwatch. Her decline is tied to broader themes of colonial decay: just as the farm cannot sustain itself, neither can Mary’s psyche. Both are unsustainable experiments in domination—of land, of people, of self.
The Murder
The climax occurs when Moses kills Mary. The act is not sensationalized; it feels inevitable, the culmination of years of psychological erosion, racial tension, and personal despair.
The murder is less about individual crime than about structural violence—the destructive legacy of colonialism itself. Mary’s death represents the collapse of an entire system built on domination, dependency, and denial.
Aftermath: The Community’s Reaction
The European community responds with detached inevitability. Mary’s death is framed not as a personal tragedy but as a cautionary tale—what happens when a settler fails to maintain racial boundaries.
Their callous response emphasizes the collective denial of systemic injustice. Rather than questioning the conditions that led to her death, they reinforce colonial hierarchies, ensuring the cycle continues.
Thematic Analysis
1. Colonialism and Racial Division
At its core, The Grass Is Singing dissects the hypocrisies of colonial Rhodesia. White settlers depend on Black labor yet dehumanize Black people. Mary’s relationship with Moses—fearful, violent, dependent—embodies these contradictions. The novel reveals how racial hierarchies corrode both colonizer and colonized.
2. Gender and Patriarchy
Mary’s trajectory is inseparable from her gender. Her society offers her two choices: independence (scorned as spinsterhood) or marriage (which becomes entrapment). Her “failure” to fulfill patriarchal expectations leads to psychological ruin. Lessing critiques how gender oppression intersects with colonial ideology to destroy women’s autonomy.
3. The Land and Environmental Hostility
The African landscape functions almost as a character—vast, unforgiving, indifferent. Settlers view it as land to be tamed, yet it resists, symbolizing the futility of imposing foreign structures on African realities. The veld reflects Mary’s isolation and Dick’s doomed dreams.
4. Isolation and Psychological Breakdown
Isolation is both physical and emotional. Mary is cut off from town, from companionship, from meaningful identity. This isolation erodes her psyche, leaving her vulnerable to dependence on Moses. Her breakdown is not only personal but also emblematic of a broader collapse of colonial ideology.
5. Violence as Inevitability
From the novel’s first line, violence is presented as destiny. Mary’s death at the hands of Moses feels less like a crime of passion than the inevitable product of systemic injustice. Lessing’s unflinching portrayal suggests that colonialism breeds violence, whether in overt forms (murder) or slow psychological destruction.
Conclusion
Doris Lessing’s The Grass Is Singing is not simply a murder story; it is a profound exploration of colonial life, gender oppression, and human fragility. Through a chronological, scene-by-scene narrative, Lessing reveals how Mary Turner’s life—from her independent youth to her tragic death—was shaped and ultimately destroyed by the forces of colonial racism, patriarchal expectation, environmental hostility, and isolation.
Mary’s murder is the final symptom of a diseased system. Lessing’s novel remains a powerful critique of colonial society, resonating with contemporary discussions of race, gender, and power.
