An Exploration Of The Roots Of Mary Turner's Tragedy In The Grass Is Singing

Doris Lessing, one of the most outstanding and productive writers in the world, is the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 2007. The Grass is Singing published in 1950 was Lessing's early novel. The novel tells a story about a white woman-ary Turner's tragedy. It tells what she experienced in her early age and how she degenerated from a single office lady to an isolated housewife. At the end of the story, being excluded by the collective, Mary suffered mental breakdown and finally was murdered by her black houseboy.This paper will analyze the various factors contributing to the protagonist's tragedy based on R. D. Laing's ontological insecurity theory. Laing holds that the ontological insecurity developed from one's childhood. If one suffers ontological insecurity, it will be difficult to develop integral selfhood and personal identity and the substantiality of others to contact with them in a usual way thus will fail to obtain ontological security. The individual experiences himself as a man who is threatened by the real world in danger of being engulfed and petrified. The individual is unable to share the experiential world and isolates himself from others. But the influence of the outside will be distorted and enlarged in the individual's inner experiential world. The Grass is Singing reveals Lessing's concern for the relationship between the individual and the collective. The main character, Mary Turner, lost the balance between the individual and collective and experienced what Laing defined as "ontological insecurity". The causes of Mary's tragedy are complicated. Mary's tragic end is as much her own responsibility as the result of the oppressive collective. Her tragedy is the result of a psychological problem as much as the outcome of the racial inequality and her female identity.The thesis is divided into five parts:The first chapter is a brief introduction of Lessing and the literature review. The second part of the paper analyzes Mary's twisted nature, which mostly accounts for her final tragedy. The third part discusses the racial system in South Africa which contributes to Mary's isolation. This part interprets the code of white collective and Mary's violation of the racial structure. The fourth part of the paper analyzes the gender prejudice which is also an indispensable factor to cause Mary's breakdown. Under patriarchal structure, women suffered both physical and spiritual torment. Mary's violation to the racial code and patriarchal structure made her isolate from the collective. The last chapter draws a conclusion, which emphasizes Lessing's concern about the balance of the relationship between the individual and the collective.