Survival Plight: A Study On The Grass Is Singing From The Perspective Of Spatial Criticism

Doris Lessing,a Nobel Prize Winner,has been hailed as one of the British most famous contemporary writers.During her lifetime,she wrote more than fifty works,including novels,poems,prose and autobiographies,which cover almost all the major issues of human society in the20^thcentury,such as ethnic conflicts,gender relations,cultural crisis,politic struggles,scientific plights and so on.As Lessing’s maiden work,The Grass Is Singing depicts the story of a white woman Mary’s growth,life experience and her miserable fate of eventually being killed by a black man Moses in South African colony.The Grass Is Singing also reveals the villainous colonial rule characterized by white domination and man domination,which not only are the roots that generate the blacks’sufferings in South Africa,but also are the sources that twist and kill poor whites who live on this land.With space as the starting point and Lefebvre’s theory as theoretical support,the oppressed and enslaved characters in the novel are analyzed from the perspective of physical space,social space and psychological space.Meanwhile the great disaster and suffering are revealed that apartheid and colonialism have brought to characters as well.With South African veld as the physical space,the private space represented by Mary’s small wooden-box house in her childhood and the tin-roofed house after marriage and the public space represented by store and town are studied in detail.It is found that these buildings are filled with patriarchal and racial oppression,which reveal Mary’s survival plight.Both store and town also reveal the plight of women who live in it.Starting from the social space,the survival plight faced by different groups in the South African society are studied.Under the influence of the social space dominated by apartheid and patriarchal system,both blacks and poor whites face the oppression from the society characterized by white domination.Similarly,women even face more severe oppression from the patriarchal society.And they are in a disadvantage position in the relation with white men,even in the relation with black men.Living in such social space,the situations of blacks,women and poor whites inevitably suffer different forms of oppression.Based on the psychological space,the plight faced by women represented by Mary,poor whites represented by Dick and blacks represented by Moses in the psychological space are analyzed.Meanwhile,the loveless marriage plight between Mary and Dick and the interracial love plight between Mary and Moses are clearly depicted.In fact,the tragic fates of the oppressed and enslaved people represented by Mary,Dick and Moses are rooted in the evil colonial system.They are marginalized as“others”.No matter how hard they attempt,they cannot escape the control of colonialism represented by the white domination and man domination,then eventually walk towards deaths.