Doris Lessing
The Grass is Singing by the 2007 Nobel Prize winner, Doris Lessing, is a scathing indictment of South Africa apartheid as revealed through the tragic lives of Mary and Dick Turner and Moses, their “house boy.” The novel opens with the newspaper announcement of Mary’s murder and Moses’ arrest. The novel then shifts back in time to reveal the events leading up to the murder.
Eager to escape her drunken father and embittered mother, Mary moves to the city where she leads a contented, financially independent life as a secretary. She is happy being a reliable, “sisterly” friend without romantic attachments or desires until she hits the age of thirty when she becomes focused on finding a husband. She marries the first man who asks her—Dick Turner, a farmer. She is shocked to discover the meager condition of his home and farm. Her restlessness transforms to anger when she learns of her husband’s incompetence in managing his affairs and his total inability to eke out a decent living. Anger soon transforms to disengagement and apathy. Her disappointment in life and abject loneliness coupled with an attraction and repulsion she feels toward Moses eventually leads to her total breakdown. The final chapter skillfully conveys her muddled mind as she struggles to discern what is real and what is imaginary.
Lessing sustains a relentless tone of impending doom throughout the novel. Every detail spells misery--from the intolerable heat; to the blinding sun; to the parched, unforgiving earth; to the incessant chirping of the cicadas; to Dick Turner’s yet another in a series of failed new ventures. The main focus, however, is on Mary. Plagued with unmitigated boredom, embarrassment at their poverty, loneliness, isolation, increasing estrangement from her husband, and the gradual erosion of her hope for a better future all contribute to the gradual deterioration of her mind.
Mary is far from being a sympathetic character. Her treatment of the black “house boys” and farm workers is despicable and arises from her gendered and racist socialization. She struggles to navigate an appropriate relationship between master and hired hand when Moses enters her life as her house boy, the same Moses she had whipped when he defied her in front of the other farm hands. Tormented by her action, Mary finds herself both attracted and repulsed by him. She dies without understanding the expectations placed on her as a white female and wife in a South Africa riddled with the racial tensions and injustices of apartheid.
Lessing casts an unflinching lens on the impact of apartheid on white and black races. She allows us access to Dick Turner’s mind and draws him with some sympathy. But she never allows entrance into the mind of Moses who remains a mystery. This may be an intentional strategy to capture the truism that whereas the survival of the slave/servant depends on his ability to know the mind of the master, the master can cultivate a willful indifference to the thoughts and feelings of those he has subordinated. We never learn Moses’ attitude toward Mary although he is shown to be solicitous toward her on occasion. Does he murder her because she represents a system that strips him of his humanity? To avenge himself for her cruelty? Because the balance of power has shifted and he now feels he has the upper hand? Or does he murder her because he witnesses her mental breakdown and wants to put her out of her misery? His motivation is never made clear. What we do know is Moses calmly surrenders to white authorities and seems to accept his fate with equanimity.
A very powerful, well-crafted novel that demonstrates Doris Lessing’s consummate skill as a writer. Her unflinching lens and immersive details expose the tragic, dehumanizing impact on oppressor and victim in a virulently unjust, brutal, exploitative, and racially segregated society. This is what happens, Lessing tells us, when you dehumanize another.
Highly recommended.