The Sense Of Belonging As A Shaping Quality On Mary's Identity In The Grass Is Singing

Doris Lessing,the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 2007,makes a great contribution to British literature.She is granted as a “Evergreen Tree” in British literature.As a second-generation member of the colonizer,Lessing had lived in a colony in her early years,so she experienced the evils of colonialism and the hardship of living in such an environment,especially for a poor woman.The hard life there provided the original materials for the creation of her debut The Grass Is Singing.In her masterpiece,she describes a white woman colonizer Mary who is oppressed and marginalized by the patriarchal distinctions and social norms in the shadow of colonialism.Throughout her life from childhood to final death,her attempt to derive a sense of belonging from family,society and ethnic group always end up in failure.The Grass Is Singing has been studied from various perspectives and achieved fruitful results by scholars from around the world.They have analyzed it from the perspectives of post-colonialism,feminism,eco-feminism,rational analysis and binary opposition deconstruction.Some studies on identity mainly focus on black people under the oppression of colonialism.However,it ignores that the white could also face identity dilemma in the same social background,especially the white women.This thesis aims to unveil the effects of colonization on Mary's identity in terms of her identity construction and sense of belonging.Mary's identity construction is closely related to her sense of belonging and yet both are fundamentally affected by the colonial situation.The effects of identity construction and the sense of belonging,which boil down to the demise or survival of the individual,interacts with family,society,environment,and race issues that the thesis investigates by dedicating a chapter to each.Besides introduction and conclusion,there are three chapters in the main part.Introduction brings up the background,topic and literature review.Chapter one concentrates on the sense of belonging and identity shaping in the familial and social context;Chapter two discusses the influences of sense of belonging on identity shaping from the perspective of environment;Chapter three centers on race issues in order to reveal segregation on the protagonist's sense of belonging to the white community and personal identity shaping.The thesis argues that Mary's tragic ending is inevitable under the impact of colonial situation.Mary cannot shape her own identity because she cannot escape from the chains of family,gender limitations,colonial norms and racial issues,but she foreshadows a change in colonial attitudes.What is more,she reverses the social,racial and cultural orders of her society though unconsciously.Her death makes people deeply realize the plight of white woman colonizer in the shadow of colonialism.