Analysis Of The Heroine's Tragedy In The Grass Is Singing

Doris Lessing is one of the most widely recognized and most favored contemporary woman writers. In 2007, Lessing was rewarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the greatest award of literature, and became the oldest winner in the history of this prize at the age of 88. During the career of literary creation for as long as sixty years, her works involve in a wide range of themes among which the female survival and female psychology are her main concerns. In her first novel The Grass Is Singing her feminist and postcolonial views are fully reflected.Since Doris Lessing obtained the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, more and more scholars and post-graduates at home and abroad began to do research on her and her works. As for Lessing's first novel The Grass Is Singing, scholars interpreted it from such a wide range as feminism, Marxism, psychological perspective, ecological perspective, etc. However, this research paper will try to provide a comprehensive analysis of the forces that cause Mary's tragedy from both the external and the internal perspectives, which consists of exterior social circumstances as well as her inner weakness.As a colonized South African woman, Mary is rejected by blacks and alienated by whites, and thus isolated from both the black world and the white world---belonging to neither. This thesis intends to examine the tragedy of the heroine, which also reflects Lessing'development of feminist views as well as post-colonial views.Through fine description, Lessing expressed her keen social observation and her concern for the human destiny. The Grass Is Singing not only described the contradiction between the white colonists and the black natives, but also revealed the obvious exploitation among the whites and suggested the hypocrisy of colonialism.