The Grass is Singing
14 January 2007
by: Doris Lessing
The Grass is Singing is Doris Lessing’s first novel. It was written during her second marriage and during the period before she left Southern Rhodesia for England. This book strikes me as unique when compared to her novels that followed, as most first books inevitably are. It revolves around one woman and her life in British colonized Africa, perhaps a typical chain of events for the time, besides, of course, for the somewhat macabre ending. At the onset of the novel Doris Lessing portrays Mary as a woman going about her life, not really passionate about anything, but content. She goes to the movies, holds a job, lives at a house for single women. All is fine with her until her friends begin to talk about the neccesity of finding a husband. For the first time in her life she questions why she does not have one and decides that she must.
The husband she finds is a man named Dick, who is a struggling farmer on the veldt. From then on Mary is a farm-wife living in the open of the African countryside. I can hardly imagine what this must be like. Neither could Mary, apparently. She tries at first to become orientated to the place, buying curtains and some other rare fineries, but these soon fray and Dick, always behind with his farm, can never purchase more. The tin house fries her, the brown earth and the expansive blue sky depresses her, the lonely days leave her with nothing to do but to sit on the couch and stare.
I believe that this book must have been boiling in Doris Lessing since childhood. As she made visits to other farms on the veldt she watched these women in their lonely lives, her own mother included. She watched as neuroses developed, as these women struggled with the need for individualization, the need to identify with the world outside of themselves and their children. Mary never found that. It was rare the woman who did, the woman, like Doris Lessing herself, who challanged social mores and was intent on living her own life.
The ending of The Grass is Singing is as tragic as the whole of the book itself. Revolving into a full circle began by the newspaper clipping at the very beginning, the reader knows there is not going to be a happy ending. Mary seeks solace in the houseboy despite her own manic emotions felt towards him. At once disgusted because of his color and curious because of his manhood, Mary becomes involved in a series of attractions and repulsions. One knows this can not last for long and thankfully it doesn’t.
What Doris Lessing accomplished with this novel was very stunning for the time. Addressing at once the color bar in colonized Africa and the acceptance of women in society, this is a very brave first book indeed.
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