The Grass Is Singing

Doris Lessing moved to London in 1949 and because of her involvement with radical politics was banned from her native Southern Rhodesia until black majority rule in 1980. Her first novel written while she lived in Rhodesia was published in 1950 and was a stunning debut; that brutally exposed the culture of her native country. This is the overriding theme but also the novel deals with psychological and mental breakdown and sexual repression.

The novel opens with the murder of Mary Turner and mental breakdown of her husband Dick and the arrest of the black houseboy Moses. Within the first twenty pages of the first chapter Lessing has told the reader all he needs to know about the repressive racist culture that existed in Rhodesia in the show more 1940's. We are plunged into a society of masters and slaves, but where the masters are beginning to look over their shoulders. Charlie Slatter and a Police Sergeant arrive at the crime scene and their thoughts are only about clearing away the messy situation as quickly as possible. Tony Marston a trainee farm manager just fresh from England is shocked by the attitudes of the White Rhodesians and Lessing says:

"when old settlers say 'One has to understand the Country' what they mean is 'You have to get used to our ideas about the native' They are saying in effect 'Learn our ideas or otherwise get out: we don't want you. Most of these young men were brought up with vague ideas about equality. They were shocked for the first week or so, by the way the natives were treated. They were revolted a hundred times a day by the casual way they were spoken of, as if they were so many cattle; or by a blow or a look. They were prepared to treat them as human beiings. But they could not stand out against the culture they were joining. It did not take them long to change.

The novel is not about young Tony Marston but tells the back story of Mary and Dick Turner and how they come to such a terrible end. Mary is a city girl who finds that her fear of marriage and of intimacy has left her only with a casual circle of younger friends as she moves into her thirties. She no longer fits and so when Dick Turner a farmer from the veldt asks her to marry him she accepts. Dick is a struggling farmer who cannot seem to make anything work, he has ideas about cultivation that are progressive, but in spite of working hard on the land he cannot carry a project through. He takes a more lenient approach with some of the natives and his unwillingness to involve himself socially with his farming neighbours makes him also a person who "does not fit." The book is about the Turners struggle with their environment, their social and sexual relations and the culture which they buy into, but does not work for them. They are two people who are hopelessly ill equipped to cope with any of the challenges facing them and their ruin and disintegration is inevitable. Lessing ruthlessly exposes their lives concentrating on Mary, whose treatment of her native houseboys is as bad as the culture will allow; she seems to be taking out her frustrations on them and when Moses arrives at the end of a long line of houseboys Mary is seriously and mentally ill and a point is reached where a line is crossed from where there is no turning back:

Remembering that thick black neck with the lather frothing whitely on it, the powerful black stooping over the bucket, was like a goad to her. And she was beyond reflecting her anger, her hysteria, was over nothing, nothing that she could explain. What had happened was that the formal pattern of black-and-white, mistress-and-servant, had been broken by a personal relation; and when a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which is his chief occupation to avoid, his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip.

The Turner's inability to exploit the land and to exploit the natives as well as their neighbours leads to their financial ruin, but this is not the whole story and it is Lessing's brilliant dissection of the Turners characters and relationship that makes their total disintegration so believable. Their inability to fit even with each other and the hints of child molestation in Mary's past explains her frustration and fears of being intimate with Dick. This together with an unrelenting climate and an invidious culture leads inexorably to their tragedy. An excellent novel which I would rate as 4.5 stars. show less

I read this in one sitting--not so much because it's short--although it's a relatively short novel--but I found it nigh un-putdownable, which is a bit odd, because this novel has several aspects I'd ordinarily find off-putting. It's on an ugly subject--racism, with characters impossible to like but I found oddly compelling, and it's very interior--with pages, even chapters--where you'll find very little to no dialogue.

This is set in what was Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) around World War II. We're told the ending from the first sentence: Mary Turner, wife of Richard Turner, a farmer at Ngesi, was found murdered on the front verandah of their homestead yesterday morning. A sentence that would head many a whodunnit. Except we're told show more paragraphs in their houseboy Moses seemingly did it, and this isn't a mystery novel really. I don't know I'd even call it a whydonnit--since that also is telegraphed early on. It's more about how did we get here. It's like those ancient Greek tragedies where we all know where things are headed with all the morbid fascination of a train wreck. I couldn't take my eyes off it. And it's an ugly scene. Especially in that first chapter the word "nigger" rains down on us. Both Mary and Dick Turner use the word unsparingly--as well as using "boy" even for elderly black Africans.

Yet somehow there's nothing routine about this treatment of racism. Too many stories of racism fall between two stools. Even when written by whites, white racist characters are often dehumanized so the reader can comfortably think, well, that's not me. Or else the racism is there simply to set off the heroic Noble White Liberal (tm). Lessing doesn't take those easy ways out. Lessing grew up in Southern Rhodesia from the time she was five years old until thirty when she headed to England in 1949 with the manuscript of The Grass is Singing: her first novel. You just know she's known people like the Turners. She takes advantage of her omniscient perch to be scathing and acerbic about white colonial attitudes--and yet...

Well, Lessing's pitiless in her depiction of Mary, but she makes you crawl inside of her skin. I can't say I ever liked Mary, and I'm not sure empathy is quite how I'd describe what I felt for her; even aside from her racism she's a chilly, neurotic character. Yet at times I did feel an identification with her, especially early on, and Lessing was masterful in showing her deterioration--and how it was fed by her attitudes towards the "natives." Dick has a decency despite his racism but is frustrating in his fecklessness. Moses is more a cipher. He only gets a point of view toward the very end, and is far less knowable, though never pitiable the way the Turners are--he's not a simple victim, a noble martyr--and I think the opacity of his character is deliberate.

Besides the characterizations, I was also hit by the luminosity of Lessing's prose. She certainly conjures up the African landscape and climate, the isolation of the farm and its shabbiness and exudes an atmosphere that was suffocating and oppressive. Even that interiority of the narrative contributed to that, I think. I would definitely seek out Lessing again. show less

An exciting and interesting plot, vividly described setting, and a depth of understanding about severe culture clash without a hint of know-it-all attitude - what more could I want?

I loved this book. Lessing has written a novel that reads like a page turner but has the depth of a slow, studied book. The story of Mary Turner is revealed after we read of her murder on the first page of the book. Her childhood, her marriage, her experience of isolated farm life, and her complete ignorance of the native people of Southern Rhodesia, all combine to lead to her death in a complex and compelling way.

This book manages to be a look at marriage, a look at a white woman's available paths in Rhodesia, and a study of the interactions of the various show more races and socio-economic levels in Rhodesia all at the same time. And it remains readable and memorable while doing it.

I particularly loved that Lessing doesn't pretend to know more about the native Africans in her book than she actually does. Their emotions and lives are not at all described from their own point of view, only through the lens of the white people around them and a bit through their actions. I appreciated that she didn't try to enlighten those reading her book on "what Africans are like" - something that drove me crazy and seemed so demeaning to African culture in a book I read recently, [Out of Africa].

I highly recommend this. show less

It is hard to accept that this is a first novel - there's nothing immature, or needing development here. Rather Lessing's unique voice springs from the pages with all its characteristic qualities. Descriptively she paints an evocative picture of Africa, without sentimentality in her descriptions of how the land is despoiled by its white farmers, worked by its black labourers, and precariously tenanted by humanity (as Mary imagines the insects and the sun and the earth inexorably swallowing up her and Dick's poor farm house). The sun beats down and the rains come or pass over; the crops grow or fail, and humans thrive, fail and go mad living their little lives under the huge sky, both beautiful and terrifying.
As a white African, and a show more woman, Lessing's work is often seen through the prism of sex and race, and through Mary in particular Lessing examines the terror of the 'other' , power relations through the sjambok and through psychological, unspoken warfare; and the narrowness of the choices available to a single woman in a small country where everyone knows everyone. Social class and commerce also play a key part in the novel; Mary and Dick play the game particularly badly, negotiating their poor hand into disaster, paying the price for no particular sin in poverty, madness and death.
A disturbing, but energising read. show less

Published in 1950 and set in Southern Rhodesia (today’s Zimbabwe) in the 1940s, the book opens with a news announcement that Mary Turner, wife of struggling local British farmer Richard Turner, has been found murdered on her verandah. The couple’s house attendant, Moses, has been arrested. The neighboring successful farmer, Charlie Slatter, seems anxious to downplay the murder and move on. A young newcomer to the area, Tony Marston, wonders why the authorities do not want to find out what happened and why.

Though at first it appears to be a murder mystery, this story is so much more. It is an exploration of the racial divide in southern Africa between the white landowners and the native workers. It also portrays the role of women in show more society of the time and the expectation that they would marry. Mary is independent at the time but overhears gossip that causes her to make an unfortunate decision, which will drastically impact her life. Mary is a rather unlikeable character, but reasons behind her unpleasantness are gradually revealed.

I felt the underlying current of discord as I was reading. We know something bad will happen and the author does a great job of conveying the tensions to the reader, slowly building to the climax. I cannot say too much without spoiling, so suffice it to say that it is a complex multi-layered social commentary that induces a feeling of impending doom. Lessing spent her youth in this region of the world, so she was relying on first-hand experience. I can see why this book is considered a classic. show less

This short, intense and, I suspect, highly memorable book by Doris Lessing is a psychological portrait of a woman whose spirit is destroyed by her disastrous marriage and by her living conditions. It is also an exploration of exactly how white supremacy and colonialism in Africa was unjust, prejudicial and exploitative. These 200 pages pack a powerful punch and I can certainly understand how The Grass Is Singing earned it’s stature among twentieth-century literature.

I found this story to be original and thought provoking. The characters were sharply drawn, and, although there wasn’t one that I felt much sympathy for, their actions and attitudes painted a very clear picture of white African society. Barely a step away from whip show more toting slave owners, they felt full justification in their control over the black population. The story was also a vivid portrait of how powerless women were in this environment as well. Having no escape, nothing to plan or work toward, her dreams unfulfilled, the woman in this story goes slowly insane.

With this simple story, Doris Lessing exposes both the racial and gender inequality that British Colonialism supported and encouraged. The Grass is Singing is a disturbing story of doomed lives crumbling away under the hot African sun and is told with exceptional clarity and power. show less

The Grass is Singing opens with the murder of Mary Turner, a white Southern Rhodesian's farmer's wife, by one of the farm's black workers. Whilst to the local police this is an open and shut case of simple "native" brutality, as we walk back through the years in Mary's life we discover that a long and complex road of disappointment and racial prejudice has ultimately laid the path to her murder.

I found this incredibly layered novel to be profoundly psychoanalytical and disturbing. In 200 short pages Lessing manages to convey the utter horror of a black/white segregated 1940s Southern Africa in a way that affected me much more than other books I've read with this setting. Mary's loathing of "the natives" runs much deeper than her show more husband's, manifesting itself in untempered disdain and a complete inability to consider the black workers on any human level. Her husband Dick tries to operate his farm workforce with a level of fairness, yet one doesn't have to peel back the layers of the onion too far to see that this "fairness" is based on the doctrine of keeping the coloured man down in his place under the total control of the the white man.

He was obeying the dictate of the first law of white South Africa, that is "Thou shalt not let your fellow whites sink lower than a certain point; because if you do, the nigger will see that he is as good as you are".

This is not only a novel about racial hatred, however. The Grass is Singing is an acutely observant look at the human psyche, of how life's twists and turns slowly but surely sour and disappoint a once vibrant and popular woman until she loses herself completely into that which she had always so defiantly tried to avoid becoming.

I've found this a very difficult book to review as there are so many facets to it, but what I think stands out most is it's starkly honest portrayal of how the white southern Africans consider their fellow black men to be entirely sub-human and requiring management in the same way as the beasts of the land.

4.5 stars - a darkly disturbing read in many ways, but a profound and important one that will leave me thinking about it for some time. show less