Sense of Belonging: Pangs within Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing.

Abstract

Doris Lessing’s first novel The Grass is Singing, published in the year 1950 is regarded as a twentieth century classic work of art. Lessing through the novel elucidates the Settler woman Mary’s problematic situation in a tragic yet glitzy style. Her alienation from the family, society and finally from her husband Dick Turner makes her completely shattered. She terribly needs to belong to someone in her life. Her belonging motif gets dismantled throughout her journey for survival. She becomes a mere puppet in the hands of others. She fails to survive in the modern catastrophic world for she needs more lessons regarding the hypocrisies. Her futile attempts to suppress emotions and feeling were crushed by her successful contemporaries. The paper tries to throw light on the complexities of racism and survival quest in the African situation.