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<title> Doris Lessing's The Grass Is Singing </title>
The town girl Mary has led a comfortable carefree existence of a single white woman in South Rhodesia when she eventually meets Dick Turner, a poor white farmer, who actually has nothing in common with her. Despite their differences, they decide to marry, each having their own reasons for desiring marriage. Exchanging her formal life in town with a life in the farming district of Ngesi means, however, a radical change for Mary, both socially and economically, and she is slowly driven off balance by heat, loneliness and poverty. Additionally her prejudice against natives- i.e. black African people- makes life difficult for everyone involved, and finally no native is prepared to work for her anymore. After years of struggle, when Mary eventually is found in a state of complete apathy, possibly on the border of mental illness, Dick introduces her to the native Moses whom he has taken off work on the farm and is considered to be the only one left willing to work as a servant. As Moses proves to be excellent at what he is doing and, moreover, is able to draw Mary out of her state of apathy, a new personal relationship develops between the two- a relationship that is considered to be the worst imaginable sin in South Africa and which, finally, leads to the murder of Mary committed by Moses...
One of the strengths of this novel is its structure. As the narrator, who holds a 3rd person omniscient perspective, does not tell the story chronologically, we are immediately thrown into the actual end of the story- when Mary already has been murdered- which raises our curiosity about what has actually happened and, furthermore, triggers us to go on reading.
The very beginning of the narrative is very significant to one of the main themes of the novel- the ideology of white supremacy- as it tells us about the views people in this particular farming district have on natives and, furthermore, relationships between masters and servants. These views are not always spoken out directly to us, but are often brought forward through people's reactions and behaviour in relation to the incident of the murder.
	Firstly, we are told that people felt 'a little spurt of anger mingled with what was almost satisfaction; as if some belief had been confirmed' (p 25) shortly after the murder, which shows us that natives were considered constantly to thieve, rape or murder if given half a chance, and as Mary apparently had given this particular native a chance, the outcome was almost expected as far as the district was concerned. Mary, spoken about as someone unpleasant and unclean, became viewed upon as ' a silly woman got herself murdered by a native for reasons people might think about, but never, never mentioned' (p 11), and it becomes clear that even though everyone knew about the relationship between Mary and Moses, they still did not wish to acknowledge it. This silent understanding tells us about a white civilization sharing an ideology of supremacy- a white civilization which will 'never, never admit that a white person, and most particularly, a white woman, can have a human relationship, whether for good and for evil, with a black person (p26) 
Secondly, two standards of this ideology; one standard the young Englishman Tony Marston had brought with him and one he is adopting, and also different kinds of fear are depicted here. Charlie Slatter and the Sergeant's attempt to silence Tony Marston, their obvious unwillingness to get into details and further investigation, give us a clue about an underlying mixture of fear and hate, a feeling so powerful and overwhelming that it is not even dared to utter out loud. Looking down at Mary's dead body, Tony too experienced fear, but it was of a different kind from the fear that was controlling Charlie's behaviour. While Tony was afraid of death in general, Charlie was afraid of something completely different; something that Tony was not expected to understand, as he had not been long enough in the country.
 The importance of understanding and sharing views is, moreover, strongly indicated: 'When old settlers say 'One has to understand the country,' what they mean is, 'you have to get used to our idea about the native [...] 'Learn our ideas or otherwise get out: we don't want you' (p 18). We understand that it must be very difficult to stand out against a society that holds racist views, and that it is easier to ignore i.e. to forget what one deep inside knows is wrong. For a newcomer like Tony Marston, who holds progressive views, a change of views and standards becomes necessary and also inevitable according to the general opinion that everybody eventually change while living in South Africa.
 We are, however, left with many questions about Mary herself and the incident of the murder after having finished the first part of the narrative. As readers, we are curious to find out more about what has actually happened as we realize that this is by no means a simple matter but a very complicated one; an issue that can not be described in a second. The narrator, acknowledging the importance of finding out more about Mary's upbringing to understand the ideology of white supremacy, goes on telling the story through back flashes, giving us a wonderful description of Mary's childhood as well as her adolescence. 
It turns out that Mary, like every white woman in South Africa, was brought up to be afraid of natives, being forbidden to talk to them and, significantly, never came into contact with them, and from this fact we begin to understand why she has ended up as ignorant and hateful as she is characterized.
 An example of her deep conviction of that she is superior is the incident when Mary, out of fear and hate, strikes the native who against her permission leaves work for getting water to drink. As one of Mary's earliest memories is her father's talk about 'the White man's work ethic', which apparently, in her view, is not shared by natives, she orders him to go back to work and, eventually, strikes him. What is interesting here is the thought that comes to Mary's mind- that he is actually able to complain about it to the police- and which makes her furious. Even though she knows that she has the police, the courts, the jails behind her she is absolutely maddened by it (p 120) which shows us exactly how much superior she consider herself to be. 
Another example is when she forgets to feed the native cleaning the bathtub. Even though she deep down inside does not care whether the bathtub is clean or not, she forces the boy to work on it the whole day, without a single thing to eat. This proves that she has never been taught to think of natives as human beings that need to eat and drink which, naturally, causes problems when she is starting her married life on the farm, facing a native servant all days long. But it also shows an extremely unhappy woman, who simply cannot cope with the heat and restlessness of her new life, her lost ability to be in charge of her destiny but who is still determined not to show weakness.
In addition to her feeling of superiority over natives, Mary is also characterized as feeling superior and somewhat hateful towards men. The reason why she married Dick was that she 'needed to restore her feeling of superiority to men, which was really, at bottom, what she had been living from all these years. His craving for forgiveness, and his abasement before her was the greatest satisfaction she knew, although she despised him for it' (66)
 These feelings are entirely due to the environment in which she was raised that involved constant quarrels between her parents concerning drinking and economy. We are told that Mary had inherited an arid feminism from her mother, as she very early was able to turn Mary against her father, and which later became significant to the independent life Mary chose to live in town.
 The hate towards her father as well as childhood is brought to us from Mary's reaction after his death. As she feels relieved by his death, it is implied that she saw her father as the very last link that bound her to her childhood, a link she hated to remember and which now was removed. She was now free, earning good money, had lots of friends although they were not intimate with her -'she felt disinclined, almost repelled, by the thought of intimacies and scenes and contacts'- which would affect all her relationships to men, particularly her future husband Dick, to a great extent. For this reason, her attitudes towards Dick was 'fundamentally one of contempt, [...] as a man she paid no attention to him, she left him out on account altogether'.
As Mary is brought to us as a woman who has never experienced real love and, assumably, never been able to love, we suspect the experience with Moses to be as close to fysical attraction she has ever come before. The way he manages to jerk her '[...]clean out of her apathy, for the first time in months seeing the ground she walked over, and feeling the pressure of the sun against the back of her bare neck, the sharp, hot stones pressing up under her soles (144) and, moreover, how she lets everything else slide except for matters involving Moses, are brought to us as evidence that this woman is genuinly attracted to him. This she refuse to admit, of course, and his hand on her back leading her to the bed when she is ill fills her with nausea. I interprete her nausea och contempt, the horror she experiences when she meets Moses, as feelings of attraction she is not able to label. Her frustration is due to the indoctrination she has been facing since she was a child, and also lack of experience of these feelings. Deep down she realize that Moses has become a human being to her- that they have a human relation- and she is prepared to die rather than acknowleding that. 
The marriage between Mary and Dick was never based on love, with other words. And love is not, in my view, a theme in this novel. Instead we find a lot of differently expressed loneliness as a theme. It was, for example, Dick's sudden realization that he was lonely and longed for a family that made him marry Mary in the first place. The two pictures torn off a calendar of the chocolate-box lady and the six-year-old child, give us an insight into his loneliness as well as his dreams. He chose Mary because 'it was essential for him to love somebody', which shows us a man desperately hoping for love that is not there. Dick is, furthermore, characterized as a very sensitive man from the way he treats Mary and the patience he shows in waiting for her to turn on him on her own accord.
 However, from his continuous feelings of guilt we understand that he, deep inside, realizes that Mary is not suited for a life on the farm and that she probably never will love him the way he hoped for. He also realizes that Mary is very different from him, having qualities he himself lacks; an energy and efficiency that ' undermined his own self-assurance even further...for he knew, deep down, that this quality was one he lacked (62). Well aware of that he would probably do better if he followed the advice of Mary and Charlie Slatter, he still chooses to go his own way, having several eggs in his basket at the same time, which shows us a stubbornness and strength in this man as well. It is very sad, however, that he ended up with a woman like Mary who could not fully appreciate him for what he was.
To conclude, I have enjoyed this novel very much. It has told me the hardships of poverty; how it changes people and, moreover, how to coupe with it in addition to other problems such as bad luck, drought, heat and generall misary.
 But most significantly, it has successfully depicted the complicity of white supremacy in a trustworthy way and left me ponder the matter a great deal. This is something that everyone should do in a society like ours where fluences of white supremacy still is spreading. As Doris Lessing tells the story from a future perspective, leaving information about events taking place many years after this actual story, and furthermore inserts some general statements about peoples views throughout the text, we understand her view on white supremacy without having her to say it directly which is very well done, in my opinion. I would certainly recommend this novel to everyone interested in the subject.
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