Post Colonial Perception on the Grass Is Singing
A Post-Colonial Analysis of Doris Lessing’s
The Grass Is Singing
The Grass Is Singing, first published in 1950, was an international success. The story focuses on Mary Turner, the wife of a farmer, who is found murdered on the porch of her home. After her body is found, we are taken back to her younger days and slowly discover what happened to her. The background, location of this story is set in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in South Africa which has been drawn from Doris Lessing’s own childhood spent there. Her first hand knowledge of living on a farm in South Africa shines through in this book. The land, the characters, the farming are all vividly described. Both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Doris's mother adapted to the rough life in the settlement, energetically trying to reproduce what was, in her view, a civilized, Edwardian life among savages; but her father did not, and the thousand-odd acres of bush he had bought failed to yield the promised wealth. Similar sequences are presented in the book.
Doris Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Persia (now Iran) on October 22, 1919. She is a great female British writer and in October 2007, became the eleventh woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in its 106-year history, and its oldest recipient ever. Lessing has written many novels, short stories and tales, drama, poetry and comics of which novels like The Grass Is Singing, The Golden Notebook are the most popular and her works continue to be reprinted.
Lessing realized that she had quite an amazing life but didn’t know how to
The Grass Is Singing
The Grass Is Singing, first published in 1950, was an international success. The story focuses on Mary Turner, the wife of a farmer, who is found murdered on the porch of her home. After her body is found, we are taken back to her younger days and slowly discover what happened to her. The background, location of this story is set in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in South Africa which has been drawn from Doris Lessing’s own childhood spent there. Her first hand knowledge of living on a farm in South Africa shines through in this book. The land, the characters, the farming are all vividly described. Both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Doris's mother adapted to the rough life in the settlement, energetically trying to reproduce what was, in her view, a civilized, Edwardian life among savages; but her father did not, and the thousand-odd acres of bush he had bought failed to yield the promised wealth. Similar sequences are presented in the book.
Doris Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Persia (now Iran) on October 22, 1919. She is a great female British writer and in October 2007, became the eleventh woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in its 106-year history, and its oldest recipient ever. Lessing has written many novels, short stories and tales, drama, poetry and comics of which novels like The Grass Is Singing, The Golden Notebook are the most popular and her works continue to be reprinted.
Lessing realized that she had quite an amazing life but didn’t know how to
References: * Fishburn, Katherine. “The Manichcan Allegories of Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing", Research in Literature, Vol.25, No.4 Winter I994. * Wang, Joy. "White postcolonial guilt in Doris Lessing 's The Grass is Singing." Research in African Literatures 40.3 (2009): 37+. Academic OneFile.Web. 15 Sep. 2012. * Fishburn, Katherine. "The Manichean Allegories of Doris Lessing 's The Grass Is Singing." Research in African Literatures 25.4 (1994): 1-15. * Postcolonial African Writers- A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook - Pushpa Naidu Parekh, Siga Fatima Jagne - Google Books * http://www.dorislessing.org/biography.html * Doris Lessing - Writer - -The Grass Is Singing- - Web of Stories - http://www.webofstories.com/play/53470?o=MS * The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing - http://www.dorislessing.org/the.html * The Grass is Singing - Doris Lessing - Review - Life and death in South Africa - http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/printed-books/the-grass-is-singing-doris-lessing/1040306/ * Sexual-Political Colonialism and Failure of individuation in Doris Lessing‘s The Grass is Singing – By Sima Aghazadeh ------------------------ Shivani Joshi