Discuss the Character of Mary in The Grass is Singing.

Character of Mary in The Grass is Singing

We are introduced to Mary Turner in the first chapter of the novel, The Grass is Singing. The author Doris Lessing begins her story with a cutting from a newspaper article about the death of Mary Turner. It says that Mary Turner, a white woman, was killed by her black servant Moses for money. The news actually acts like an omen for other white people living in that African country (Rhodesia) on looking at the article, people behave as if the murder was very much expected.

 

 

We are then taken to a flashback in which the author Doris Lessing describes the kind of woman Mary was and how she slowly degenerated. Mary’s childhood was largely unhappy. She was brought up by parents who ran a store in a farming community; her father was a drunk and her mother bitter and twisted. Mary was delighted to leave home and get a job in the city. With a wide circle of friends, she had no desire to marry, until she reaches her thirties and her friends start to treat her as odd because she is still single. When Dick Turner asks her to marry him, she agrees and goes to live on his farm, where her life completely changes.

Mary is shocked to see the condition of Dick and his farm. He lives in a tin-roofed shabby house without ceilings. However she makes the house a bit comfortable by spending all her savings. She is even unable to handle the ill-behaved native servants. She is anti-social, does not like to mix with the neighbors, who, she thinks are inferior to her.

When Dick falls ill with malaria, Mary takes charge of the situation. She loathes the natives and their ways of works and is firm in dealing with them. She lectures the native workers on the dignity of work and living their work for its own sake. When one of them pauses for a drink of water for what, to her, is too long an interval during his work in the field, she even hits him across the face with her whip. Mary sees the blood trickle down the natives’ face and splash across his chest, and is scared. But the boy simply wipes back the blood and resumes work. Mary is convinced that she can tackle the situation.

Things go from bad to worse when Moses, the native worker whom Mary had whip-lashed in the farm two years ago, is taken as a servant for their house. Moses appears to be gentle and respectful and gradually he becomes solicitous and protective of Mary who often goes through spells of depression. In her frailty Mary becomes more and more dependent on Moses. There is even a hint of sexual relation between the two.

Dick and Mary reluctantly make plans to go away. However, on the night before they are to leave, Mary is murdered by Moses, an act of long cherished revenge for her having struck him. Towards the end, Mary realises that she alone is responsible for her tragedy and that there is no way out of it but death.