The Killing Spiritual Wasteland--On The Grass Is Singing

The Killing Spiritual Wasteland----On The Grass Is Singing Graduate: Fu Li Supervisor: Ms. Ji MmDoris Lessing (1919-- ) is one of the most significant British authors writing today. Her multi-genred themes, her independent vision and bold experiments on fiction attract a large number of worldwide readers for her. The Golden Notebook, her masterpiece, is regarded as the Bible for western feminists by most critics. Brought up in South Rhodesia(now Zimbabwe), she hit the literary field in London by The Grass is Singing( 1950), her first novel, which successfully won her worldwide fame and praise thereafter. The Grass is Singing tells a tragedy about a white woman who is killed by her black servant on a south African farm in 1930s. Reviewers acclaimed it as the most promising novel to have appeared in England since the Second World War and certainly it was the most extraordinary colonial novel since The Story of an African Farm (by Olive Scbreiner) surprised London in 1883(Micbael Thorpe, Doris Lessing :(Africa). It is appreciated for both its vivid and subtle psychological description and the exotic color. In order to state clearly what the novel displays, this thesis attempts to analyze the roots of the tragedy from external and internal aspects based on Marxist determinism and psychoanalytical theory (Nancy Choldorow, Carl Jung and Laing are the major representatives). Marxist determinism, which advocates economical conditions decide the individual consciousness, is applied to illustrate the outer cause, namely, the material shortage and financial pressure which lead spiritual emptiness; and psychological analysis is utilized to elaborate the mental problems of the protagonist which invite her death. These two critical approaches provide the study an organic whole. This thesis is composed of five parts. The part of Introduction gives a general view of the colonial African background which influences Lessing's career a lot, the themes of Lessing's works and the theoretical basis and the critical modes of the thesis. Chapter Two discusses the external causes that push the major characters into destruction indirectly under the economic pressure from the perspective of Marxism. It introduces the social and cultural conditions of South Africa in 1930s the major characters live in and attacks the evil economic system. Chapter Three focuses on interpreting the writer's description of Mary Turner's psychological problems from four aspects as following: The Ignored Self; The Feminine Self; The Divided Self and The Self-salvation. It traces how the female protagonist turns from a happy single woman to an unhappy wife with nothing to do at home, and then to a hysteria virago and at last to a helpless and empty spirit. The spiritual emptiness and lack of self-awareness, according to the psychoanalytical theory, causes the fatal destruction and the refusal of the collective. This chapter offers an acceptable and tenable explanation of the most powerful piece of the novel. Chapter Four deals with the writer's techniques and artistic achievements in terms of the writing skills, narrative approaches, its symbolic images as well as its limitations objectively. Lessing applies dreams as an important device to suggest the...