Doris Lessing - The Grass is Singing

by showhost on 29th Jan 09.
Doris Lessing The Grass is singing
He was obeying the dictate of the first law of white south Africa which is ‘thou shalt not let your fellow whites sink lower than a certain point; because if you do, the nigger will see he is as good as you are’.
The story is set in Rhodesia in the early 1900’s. Mary lives in the town and has a busy social life with her friends who are mainly married couples. she is 30, got a good job, and happy with her life not being married. But one day she overhears people she thought were her friends talking about her being a spinster and how nobody would have her as a wife. This bothers Mary and when Dick Turner a white farmer, takes her out to the cinema, she decides that she will marry him. Dick however is not a rich farmer he grows crops on his farm not tobacco as the other farmers do. Mary becomes trapped by the poverty and loneliness. She doesn’t know how to handle the natives and many leave because of the way she treats them.
She begins to realise their poverty is due to the incompetence of her husband as a farmer. With this and his other weaknesses she loses respect for him & tries to leave him but things have changed back in the town where she was successful. Her appearance has also changed, her clothes are rags compared to those she used to wear, her hair unkempt, her hands soiled not manicured. Nobody wants to employ her so she ends up going back to the farm.
Eventually she befriends one of the natives and looks to him albeit fearfully, for guidance which eventually turns into a physical relationship, almost mutual loathing than love (love/hate). This appalls their neighbour and he talks them into leaving the farm before she disgraces herself but by this time Mary has become mentally ill and Dick her husband has become depressed. The day they were supposed to leave the farm Mary is found dead on the verandah, her native friend Moses is waiting to be arrested. This was the start of the story as well as the end.
The story is about how Mary ended up like this, her drop into despair.

This Was Doris Lessings first classic novel, written in 1950. She was living in Rhodesia when she wrote it. Doris Lessing was the winner of the Nobel Prize for lit 2007.

Did I enjoy it? I found it tedious in places and wouldn’t say ‘you really should read this’. It was interesting and would make a good period tv drama series. To me the twist was that it was the female who was being cruel to the natives not the male.