| Doris Lessing,a brilliant and prolific writer in 20th century,is regarded as one of the most important writers of the past hundred years.In 2007,she,as the 11th female writer,was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature at the age of 88.Lessing,during about 50 years of writing career,published more than 50 literary works covering many different genres including short stories,novellas,novels,two autobiographies,as well as a great deal of poems,scripts,covering a wide range of topics such as racial contradictions,the US-Soviet War,the atomic war,environmental pollution,gender relations,the fate of women,the future of mankind and many other fields.Published in 1950,The Grass Is Singing,her first novel,reveals the social conditions of Southern Africa under apartheid.Different from other studies mainly on the individual trauma in the novel from feminism and post-colonialism perspectives,this thesis focuses on the political connotation of the text and holds that the essence of the novel lies not only in the racial conflict in the colony,but also in a reflection of the power operation paradigm.With the principles of subversion and containment from the perspective of New Historicism,this thesis interprets how Lessing takes the case of a white hostess（Mary）killed by a black manservant（Moses）as the subject to reveal how the individual subverts power,and the social root of the tragic ending of Mary and Moses.In the novel,Lessing skillfully combined the harsh reality in Africa at that time with the tragic endings of fictional figures.She created the seemingly imaginary history on the basis of the real events she had experienced.This is obviously the way to show her political attitude and her concerns about the living situation of mankind and to warn people of reconsidering the history,politics and society whether in the past or at present in a soberer way that is to uncover the veil of the“winners’history”by giving the discourse to the ordinary people. |
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