Colonial Consciousness In Doris Lessing’s The Grass Is Singing

This thesis analyses Doris Lessing’s colonial consciousness revealed in herfamous novel The Grass is Singing. The Grass is Singing reveals truly the socialsituations in South Africa under the racial segregation system and the poor lives ofthe white settlers in1930s and1940s and shows the racial discrimination in SouthAfrica and the process of how human nature distorted in a unique way. The novelalso reflects the hardship of the colonized brought by apartheid system. This thesisstudies The Grass is Singing written by the English white writer Doris Lessing byusing the post-colonial theory of Said’s cultural history, Bhabha’s cultural location,as well as the Ashcroft’s post-colonial literary theory, to analyse and judge theimperial writing of Lessing, in order to see clearly the double sides of the whiteAfrican writer. Under careful investigation of Lessing’s narrative techniques,characterization, and the images in the novel, Lessing’s colonial consciousnessthat flows out unconsciously is discussed.The thesis is mainly divided into three chapters. The first chapter discussesthe narrative techniques used in the novel, including the third-person narration,aside, and the absent voice of the black, through which the existence of theauthor’s colonial tendency can be found. The way Lessing introduces Africa andthe African people only from the white people’s perspective is one-sided anduntrue. The second chapter analyses the characterization in The Grass is Singing inwhich Lessing portrays different characters, including white (rich and poor) andblack (black men, black women, and their children), aiming to explore the hiddencolonial consciousness of the author in between the lines. The chapter argues the author’s reflection of the ideology of white supremacy, her deliberate excusesfound for the white settlers in Africa for their failures and their brutal behaviors,and her publicity of the racial superiority of the white to the indigenous people inAfrica with a large amount of examples in the novel. The third chapter exploits theauthor’s use of images (bush, death, rape, etc.) in the novel to prove the evidenceof Lessing’s writing in colonial language. The images created by Lessing expressher discrimination towards the black and her colonial tendency of whitesupremacy.This thesis attempts to conclude that Lessing cannot jump out of the center ofthe Empire to write her work, although The Grass is Singing expresses thehardships of the colonized blacks. Lessing shows racial discrimination to theblacks, while advocates the white’s ideology throughout the novel, whichrepresents the existence of her colonial consciousness.