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She rose to go inside and declare herself: it was typical of her that her first thought was, how unpleasant it would be for her friends to know she had overheard". But she receives a blow when she overhears her friends discussing about her- "She was alone and heard people talking in low voices, and caught her own name.
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Mary’s apparently uneventful life is reflected in the narrator’s voice as she says, "Till she was twenty-five nothing happened to break the smooth and comfortable life she led" The narrator also says: "She was very happy: that was perhaps her only positive quality, for there was nothing else distinctive about her, though at twenty-five she was at her prettiest". However, during these years, her parents die leaving her unmoved and little, if at all affected– indicating a psychic stagnation and a defense mechanism of denial perhaps. Little happens to her between the ages of twenty and thirty.
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She appears to be repelled by intimacy, preferring solitude. Mary’s childhood experiences have been found to make her emotionally vulnerable if not cripple by the time Mary is twenty and achieves financial independence as a typist in a small town. Moreover, the values of the conservative English settlers in South Africa is enmeshed within her. Mary, since childhood has always witnessed poverty and a bitter attitude of her mother in pursuit of financial stability. Mary Turner, the protagonist of the novel is the daughter of an alcohol addict. Mary’s death was a matter "simply not discussed.A bad business"-an incident that naturally was expected to fade into oblivion, an issue stirring people internally though no external ripples could be observed- as was Mary Turner’s gradual self disintegration-something not to be uncovered…not to be discussed, yet so very personal and unique. Initially wrapped in awe, intertwined with a sense of uncanny, the narrative slowly unfolds the tragic life of a farmer’s wife, Mary Turner and traces the gradual disintegration of her psyche ultimately leading to "her decay into death." The main focus of this novel is Mary’s psychological breakdown as a consequence of the society’s oppression and the repressed self. Thus, the narrative immediately shifts to a flashback of Mary Turner’s past life till her death in the hands of Moses. This news, that this white lady has been murdered by her black servant Moses for money, acts like an omen for other white people living in that African setting. The tragic murder of Mary Turner, a white woman, is reported thus making the readers awestruck at the very onset. Portraying life in Rhodesia, Africa, the novel, The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing (1950) begins with a newspaper article titled "Murder Mystery" in Ngesi. Keywords: Disintegration of Self, Infantile Ego, Lowered Self Esteem, Oedipal Complex, Repression and Perception of Death Not only does it speak against colonialism in Africa and has a feminist perspective but it also recognizes chaos and its consequence upon inner reality.
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The novel depicts the intricacies of human relations, social structures and racial prejudices in Rhodesian society. Heavily steeped in Freudian psychoanalysis, the psyche of the heroine is unfolded as the narrative proceeds further. It actually "traces her decay into death". The novel, gradually unfolds the disintegration of the coherent "self" of Mary Turner, the protagonist, due to the interplay of several external forces on one hand and Mary’s insecure childhood, low self esteem and marital inadequacy on the other. Eliot’s The Waste Land where she gradually unravels the apparent dreariness of romantic connotations of the title in reality. Abstract: In her first novel, The Grass is Singing, in 1950, Doris Lessing, a British writer borrows the title of this novel from T.