The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing (Book Analysis)

This practical and insightful reading guide offers a complete summary and analysis of The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing. It provides a thorough exploration of the novel’s content, characters and main themes, as well as a close examination of the damage wrought by colonialism, for both the colonized and the colonizers. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time.

This clear and detailed 48-page reading guide is structured as follows:

• Biography of Doris Lessing
• Presentation of The Grass is Singing
• Summary of The Grass is Singing
• Character study
  • Mary Turner
  • Dick Turner
• Analysis of The Grass is Singing
  • Postcolonial studies and The Grass is Singing
  • Language as power
  • Hybridity

About The Grass is Singing

The Grass is Singing is set in the British colony of Southern Rhodesia and centers around the crumbling marriage of Dick and Mary Turner, a white couple who live on a failing farm. They nonetheless cling to their belief that they are superior to the country’s native population and are openly hostile to the farm’s black workers. However, their fellow white citizens become worried by Mary’s increasing closeness to a black servant, which they see as a threat to the precarious order on which their society is based and which will eventually have dire consequences.

About Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing was a British writer who was born in Iran and grew up in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), which was at that time a British colony. Her first novel, The Grass is Singing, was set in the country; her later works include The Good Terrorist, The Golden Notebook and Briefing for a Descent into Hell. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007, with the Swedish Academy lauding her as “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny”.