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A review by ericjaysonnenscheinwriter2392
The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing
4.0
I was so impressed by "The Golden Notebook," which was a novel of high accomplishment, confidence and artistic command, that I decided to read Lessing's first novel, "The Grass Is Singing." After all, we tend to have a skewed view of authors when we only focus on their mature work without taking into account how they launched.
Good writing often contains good journalism. That is, it is able to elegantly give the reader the insight and background he or she needs to fully appreciate the story. Lessing is very good at providing information when she needs to. She also can be incredibly poetic, especially in describing a landscape, the colors of a dawn, the movement of muscles as men work or a character's disintegrating sanity. The description of Mary Turner's hallucinatory state in "The Grass of Singing" is a kind of prelude to Anna's dissociative mental state in "The Golden Notebook."
Despite all of that, I found this novel a bit hard to get through. It read too much like a narrative treatise on the debasing and disintegrating effect of racism and exploitation on white South African white farmers, with the Turners and the servant Moses being the subjects of the case study.
In the end, Lessing's sensitivity and penetrating psychological insight ultimately spin around rather than pinpoint the fundamental tragedy. The author deftly describes Mary in broad strokes as a creature overcome by the forces of African climate, social isolation, a difficult family life growing up, poverty and the social strictures of society. All of these combine to seal her in her own dismal fate. But Lessing describes Mary's psychology in fairly conventional, social and even behavioral terms, e.g. When Mary hears people at her club talking about her as a spinster, she reacts by wanting desperately to marry. That is too much respondent conditioning to seem more than plausible. It is a convenient device for the writer to move the character along on the assembly line to her fate. we never learn how Mary feels and thinks from the inside until she falls apart.
The same holds truer for Dick, Mary's good-natured but hapless husband. He is described as one of those stock characters who are cursed with incompetence, bad luck and the stubborn rectitude to carry on without improving or conceding. He is also riddled by guilt for sharing his wretched life with Mary, yet unable to address her needs, or to see her as anything but a reproachful hindrance to his true love--the farm.
Charlie Slatter, the Turners' wealthy, pragmatic and callous neighbor, is a very well drawn character, but his motivations are the very obvious ones of a shrewd and candid businessman. Slatter serves as the choragos of the tragedy--the leader of the chorus of white Africans who remain at perpetual war with the land and the natives and determine to keep a solid white front.
Meanwhile, Moses, the ambiguous man-servant, is described as an enigmatic colossus, powerful, sensual, perceptive, kind, attentive, indolent and arrogant. And yet, despite the physical descriptions of his body, his work and behavior, Lessing never provides insight into this deus-ex-machina of a man. He remains an agent of change, a delegate of Africa and oppressed Africans. His humanity, and Mary's acknowledgement of it, threaten the walls of apartheid, as surely as the vegetation and fauna will push against and ultimately ruin the white African houses encroaching on them. Finally, like many of the characters in this novel, Moses is more symbolic than flesh-and-blood, a figure in a morality play.
Lessing is most perceptive, in my view, when she is describing people in society. She has much to say about social structure and interaction. When it comes to describing the interactions of men and women, she slips into very basic terms--passive/dominant, kindness/pity. The characters' limited interactions and communication are either realistic depictions of people of that milieu, a deliberate indictment of her times, or just a sign of her own limited scope of interest.
"The Grass Is Singing" provides an evocative picture of southern Africa in the mid-20th century. It is also an interesting landmark of where Lessing came from as a woman and a writer.
Good writing often contains good journalism. That is, it is able to elegantly give the reader the insight and background he or she needs to fully appreciate the story. Lessing is very good at providing information when she needs to. She also can be incredibly poetic, especially in describing a landscape, the colors of a dawn, the movement of muscles as men work or a character's disintegrating sanity. The description of Mary Turner's hallucinatory state in "The Grass of Singing" is a kind of prelude to Anna's dissociative mental state in "The Golden Notebook."
Despite all of that, I found this novel a bit hard to get through. It read too much like a narrative treatise on the debasing and disintegrating effect of racism and exploitation on white South African white farmers, with the Turners and the servant Moses being the subjects of the case study.
In the end, Lessing's sensitivity and penetrating psychological insight ultimately spin around rather than pinpoint the fundamental tragedy. The author deftly describes Mary in broad strokes as a creature overcome by the forces of African climate, social isolation, a difficult family life growing up, poverty and the social strictures of society. All of these combine to seal her in her own dismal fate. But Lessing describes Mary's psychology in fairly conventional, social and even behavioral terms, e.g. When Mary hears people at her club talking about her as a spinster, she reacts by wanting desperately to marry. That is too much respondent conditioning to seem more than plausible. It is a convenient device for the writer to move the character along on the assembly line to her fate. we never learn how Mary feels and thinks from the inside until she falls apart.
The same holds truer for Dick, Mary's good-natured but hapless husband. He is described as one of those stock characters who are cursed with incompetence, bad luck and the stubborn rectitude to carry on without improving or conceding. He is also riddled by guilt for sharing his wretched life with Mary, yet unable to address her needs, or to see her as anything but a reproachful hindrance to his true love--the farm.
Charlie Slatter, the Turners' wealthy, pragmatic and callous neighbor, is a very well drawn character, but his motivations are the very obvious ones of a shrewd and candid businessman. Slatter serves as the choragos of the tragedy--the leader of the chorus of white Africans who remain at perpetual war with the land and the natives and determine to keep a solid white front.
Meanwhile, Moses, the ambiguous man-servant, is described as an enigmatic colossus, powerful, sensual, perceptive, kind, attentive, indolent and arrogant. And yet, despite the physical descriptions of his body, his work and behavior, Lessing never provides insight into this deus-ex-machina of a man. He remains an agent of change, a delegate of Africa and oppressed Africans. His humanity, and Mary's acknowledgement of it, threaten the walls of apartheid, as surely as the vegetation and fauna will push against and ultimately ruin the white African houses encroaching on them. Finally, like many of the characters in this novel, Moses is more symbolic than flesh-and-blood, a figure in a morality play.
Lessing is most perceptive, in my view, when she is describing people in society. She has much to say about social structure and interaction. When it comes to describing the interactions of men and women, she slips into very basic terms--passive/dominant, kindness/pity. The characters' limited interactions and communication are either realistic depictions of people of that milieu, a deliberate indictment of her times, or just a sign of her own limited scope of interest.
"The Grass Is Singing" provides an evocative picture of southern Africa in the mid-20th century. It is also an interesting landmark of where Lessing came from as a woman and a writer.