Reflection on The Grass Is Singing
參賽者：柳〇成（應外三）
名次：第一名
書名：The Grass Is Singing
得獎作品：
Making debut in 1950, The Grass Is Singing, one of the chefs d’oevre composed by a British female novelist Doris Lessing, presents a milieu interwoven by a white women’s struggles between her “white sexuality” and her ambiguous affection to the “black power.” Set in a British colony Rhodesia in 1940s, the novel chronicles Mary Turner the British woman’s repressive affection and her marriage with her husband Dick Turner, a white farmer who is in struggles for the greatest profits. Even though Mary remains in a marital relationship with his white husband Dick Turner, the economic difficulty and aloofness in their conjugal relationship conversely cause Mary’s physical encounter with the black houseboy Moses, the transgression of the normal relation between the white and the black, and the generation of the tragic decease of Mary herself. The contrasts between the helplessness of a white wife’s normal marriage with an impoverished white husband and the contravention of the subordination of the white and the black are thus presented with the writer’s indicting narrative.
Recounted intersectionally in the third person omniscient narrative and slightly limited perspective, the novel begins from an article in the newspaper which documents the murder of Mary Turner, the wife of Dick Turner. It is reported that the houseboy, who has no name in the article, “has confessed to the crime.” and his motive “is thought… [to be] in search of valuables” (P.9). As the short report demonstrates its description of the event of murder, we readers are instantaneously aware that the names in the report respectively have distinctive significance. The white’s names are explicitly written as “Mary Turner, wife of Richard Turner [or Dick Turner],” in the first line in the report. (P.9). Mary is the victim and the name of hers is indisputably placed at the beginning. However, the word of elucidating her relationship with Dick on the other hand insinuates the subordinate or hierarchal chains that make bonds between a man as a husband and a woman as a wife. Yet, compared to the two whites, the black houseboy appears merely as a “houseboy” in the report. However the murder develops, the houseboy, particularly the black “one”, are customarily silenced so that the black have no opportunities to defend himself from the defamation; what’s worse, the name of the black laborer Moses is effaced from the report. The defacement of name signifies the permanent evaporation from the memory. As the readers endeavor to clarify the wherefores of the events, the houseboy would be interpreted as an object that once existed but not now exists unlike the two whites with their names existing all the time.
After the report on the event of the murder, the novel makes a flashback from the childhood of the mistress through her youth and young womanhood to her decease. Mary spends almost all her childhood in an unhappy family and is kept in bonds with a controlling force of her family. Dick Turner and she would be a mismatched couple as she gets married with the man for avoiding herself from the societal pressure of the gossip about her spinsterhood and she is actually not well-prepared for this marriage. To Mary, her life is almost under the control of society and ontologically because she is female, she does not exist, not to say her desire or her will. However, as she is compared to the black servant who is deemed inferior to her, now she’s aware that the black is actually in no need of their basic desires, peculiarly the desire to “eat” as the novel describes, “She [Mary Turner] had forgotten completely about his need to eat; in fact she had never thought of natives as needing to eat at all.” (P.26). This way of treatment illuminates the human’s reaction or hierarchal consciousness as a fundament to construct the society and also elucidates the learning of means to control the subordinates. The male-constructed or androcentric society objectifies the females to satisfy their own needs; thus females are habitually ignored or silenced; nevertheless, as females are aware of their superiority to the others, the so-called “others” are simultaneously ignored and silenced and the females still utilize the males’ means of ruling to control the inferior “black” . But compared the black to the white males and white females, they are actually the victims of the double oppression—one from the male colonizer like the master Dick Turner, and the other from the mistress Mary Turner. This conceptualization of class consciousness and gender consciousness then sculpts a pyramid-like relationship to stabilize the development of the colony under colonization and besides it becomes the axis of the development of the three’s relationship in this novel.
Although the white male and the white female allies themselves with each other as a force to oppress the black in the beginning of the novel, the female force would reversely and subsequently keeps alliance with the black once the white male disbalances the relationship with the woman with one of his inferiority in society. White though Dick Turner is in African colony, he is in fact in impecuniousness unlike the other white wealthy colonizers in the African continent.
“I want to have a child,” she [Mary Turner] said one day.
Now for years Dick had wanted children, but he had always felt that she had
always felt they were too poor. Mary had never encouraged his wish for a family.
“But the money, Mary. We haven’t got the money. School bills, books,
train fares, clothes…we just can’t afford it at the moment.” (P.39-P.40)
As Mary mentions her basic wish for having a child in a conjugal relationship, the husband’s circumstances are not qualified to fulfill her wish. Economy is accentuated to be in coexistence with the marriage. To Mary, she manages the farm merely on the basis for the making of money. She yearns for money to have herself away from the laborious management of the farm and the tedious supervision on the black servants. She extremely hopes that she herself could have a normal living as a white wife of a white husband and that they would have a child. Nonetheless, as Dick shows that he has no ideal economic basis, her desire for being a mother is seemingly restrained; thus she feels more sympathy for the black houseboy Moses who is also under the repression. And she also sees herself through the body of Moses, particularly when she has a physical contact with the black houseboy. The transgression of a conventional norm is seen as subversion to the bonds of a male as an oppressor and a female as an oppressed. The female character Mary Turner’s repressed will and desire is ultimately discharged to escape from the inherent dualistic relationship between women and men; however, the female character at the same time impels herself to be in guilt of the denormalize the relationship between a white mistress and a black servant, a guilt forming the conflict in her mind and then driving her into insanity.
Subsequently and eventually, the psychosis which Mary Turner possesses from the transgression also brings Mary herself to death. After the mistress Mary becomes increasingly insane, she is actually in disconnection with the farm; what’s more, the denouncement of the ownership of the farm and Mary’s decision to have a vacation with her husband in cause of the convalescence from sickness would assure the black that the farm is going to be closed. Knowing the termination of the management of the farm, Moses himself soon feels that the master relationship with Mary would develop into disillusion. In the white society, the black is intrinsically conditioned to believe that he’s inferior to the white; but Moses the black whose status is distinct and is elevated with the transgression of the white mistress believes that Mary Turner has bestowed the position as a master on him. However, with the mainstream in white society which asserts the decorous norm between the black and the white, his elevation in status on the other hand seems to be self-deceived and unrealistic. Under the circumstances, he determined to choose the relationship with Mary. Therefore, he slays her so that he has the opportunity to receive the death penalty from the white. And the death of the two would be regarded as an equal treatment not the treatment of a slave and a master; identically, the death would be an eternal reservation of the relationship as the relationship becomes “dead.”
The novel is pertinent to gender, race, and class. It is constructed by plenty of subordinate relationship and subversion of the conventionalized relationship. Even though the novel is interlaced with too much helplessness and too many miserable struggles, it unquestionably presents the universal and transpatial phenomena in society. Although some contend that “all men are created equal”, the mankind reversely creates inequality injustice and unfairness in forms of laws, ideologies, and cultures and conforms to the convention such as the belief in dualistic and subordinate relationship in man-woman, master-slave, and white-black relationship. To the androcentric society, social-class society and white-centric society, the operation of society essentially relies on the oppression to the “others” such as females, laborers and black. “Wherever there is oppression, there is resistance.” Mary and Moses, even though initially complying to the conventional relationship, both then challenge and resist the trite conception of the binary relation in which they are both the subordinates, but at the same moment their destiny is doomed to sacrifice as they contrast the mainstream and are unwilling to comply with the norm that has already existed. Mary Turner makes the transgression in a conjugal relationship and releases her repressive desire for an ideal affection. Moses, as a conditioned inferior, on the other hand, shows his desire to be elevated in a lower status to a higher status. Doris Lessing depicted a real phenomenon in humanity and accused the society built with class and subordination. Through the words and narration, she brought out an issue on the social struggles of the bipolar individuals as well as the dignity, the basic element in humanity.
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