The Grass is Singing Summary

The Grass is Singing is a postcolonial novel and murder mystery written by Doris Lessing in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), and London, England. Published in 1950, it belongs to the 20th-century postcolonial literary period. The novel is set in Southern Rhodesia and follows the tragic story of Mary Turner, culminating in her dream and subsequent death at the hands of Moses, which marks the climax. The narrative is presented through a third-person point of view, offering insight into the characters and their struggles within the colonial society.

The story takes place in Southern Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) during the 1940s. Mary Turner, the wife of a man named Dick Turner, has been killed, and a local servant, called a "houseboy," has admitted to the crime.

Dick and Mary are poor farmers who do not mix with the other white settlers in their area. When Mary’s body is found, their neighbor, Charlie Slatter, writes a note to the local police officer, Sergeant Denham. After receiving the message, Denham sends six native policemen to the Turners’ farm. A short while later, the houseboy, Moses, gives himself up to the police.

Charlie Slatter drives to the Turners’ farm and finds Moses already in handcuffs. He also sees Dick, who is in shock. Charlie puts Dick in the back seat of his car and prepares to take him away.

Inside the house, Charlie’s assistant, Tony Marston, explains that he found Mary’s body on the veranda. Sergeant Denham arrives, and he and Charlie start questioning Tony. However, as they ask him questions, Tony begins to feel that they are not really interested in what he has to say. The interview ends suddenly, and the policemen take Mary’s body to the car. Tony is left feeling unsure about what to do. He wonders if he should insist on telling Charlie and Sergeant Denham his own idea about why Mary was killed.

Moses is going to be hanged no matter what, but Tony starts to think that by staying silent, he might be allowing a terrible injustice to happen. The thought troubles him, but in the end, he does not say anything.

The next day, Tony packs his belongings and leaves the farming district. Later, the trial takes place, and the court decides that Moses killed Mary while he was drunk and that he had hoped to steal valuables from her. Meanwhile, Tony moves on with his life. He takes a short-term job in copper mining but does not stay there for long. Eventually, even though he does not really want to, he ends up working in an office job.

Chapter 2 begins with a description of the small stores spread across southern Africa. These stores are simple and sell food, clothes, and other basic necessities. They also serve as local post offices and often have a bar inside. Mary’s father, who was an alcoholic, used to spend most of the family's little money on liquor at the store. This caused frequent arguments between Mary’s parents.

When Mary was a child, her older brother and sister died from dysentery. Surprisingly, the time of mourning that followed was the happiest period of her childhood because, for a while, her parents stopped fighting. Eventually, Mary was sent to a boarding school, and at the age of 16, she decided to leave home for good.

Between the ages of 20 and 25, both of Mary’s parents passed away. She was not saddened by their deaths; instead, she was delighted to finally be completely on her own. She moved into a club for young women and found a job as a personal secretary in an office.

As the years went by, many of Mary’s friends got married and had children, but she remained single, happy, and independent. She refused to acknowledge that she was getting older and continued dressing in a childish style. She had no interest in marriage, but one day, she overheard some of her married friends gossiping about her behind her back. They spoke cruelly about the fact that she was unmarried, and this shocked her. It was the first time she realized how people saw her.

After that, she briefly got engaged to a 55-year-old widower. However, she broke off the engagement when he tried to have sex with her.

Not long after breaking off her engagement, Mary meets Dick at the cinema during one of his short visits to town. Dick is a struggling farmer, and because of his constant misfortune, his neighbors call him “Jonah.” He does not think he can afford to marry, but he cannot stop thinking about Mary. Over the next few months, he works himself to exhaustion, and then one day, he unexpectedly appears at Mary’s door and asks her to marry him. She agrees, and they are married two weeks later.

When Mary arrives at Dick’s farm for the first time, she finds the house dark, stuffy, and unwelcoming. She immediately notices signs of Dick’s deep loneliness. They sit down for tea and try to talk politely, but the conversation feels strained. That night, they have sex. It is not as terrible as Mary had feared, but she also feels nothing from it.

The next morning, Dick introduces Mary to his longtime black house servant, Samson. Unlike Mary, Dick seems to have a genuine fondness for Samson, but Mary is immediately put off by his relaxed and informal attitude. She decides that she will learn "kitchen kaffir," the simplified version of the native Shona language that white settlers use to talk to their black workers.

Mary uses her savings to buy fabrics and other household items. She spends her days sewing and painting the house. One day, she believes that Samson has stolen the raisins she was saving to make pudding. She becomes very upset and, despite Dick’s attempts to calm her down, insists on deducting the cost of the raisins from Samson’s wages. Feeling insulted, Samson quits his job, which makes Dick unhappy.

They hire a new servant, but he also leaves after a short time. Then, they find another servant who is used to working for white women and follows Mary’s instructions without question. However, in a moment of strong emotion, Mary forces him to scrub the already clean zinc bathtub for hours, making him work through his lunch break.

One day, Charlie and Mrs. Slatter visit. Mrs. Slatter tries to be friendly with Mary, but Mary responds in a cold and unfriendly manner. Soon after, the servant quits as well.

A few days later, Charlie suggests that Dick should start growing tobacco, but Dick does not like the idea and refuses to do it.

One day, Dick and Mary make a rare trip to the local train station to buy groceries. While they are there, a man calls Dick “Jonah.” Afterward, Dick reluctantly admits to Mary that he borrowed money from the man and still owes him £50.

During this time, Dick becomes obsessed with keeping different animals on the farm. First, he tries raising bees, then pigs, and later turkeys. However, all of these attempts fail, leading to heated arguments between him and Mary. As a joke, Dick starts calling Mary “boss,” but this only makes her angrier.

Eventually, Dick decides to open a “kaffir store” on the farm, even though there is already another store nearby. This means that his shop is unlikely to be very successful. He asks Mary to run the store, but at first, she refuses, saying she “would rather die.” However, she eventually agrees.

Mary hates working at the store. She finds the native women who sit outside with their children disgusting and feels miserable every day. She starts dreaming about escaping and going back to her old life in town. One day, she sees that her former office has posted a job ad for a shorthand typist. Without hesitation, she packs a suitcase and leaves the next day, asking Charlie to drive her to the train station.

Mary goes back to town and visits the girls' club where she used to live. However, she is told that they do not allow married women to stay there. She then goes to her old office, hoping to get her old job back, but she is told that the typist position has already been filled. Feeling lost, Mary returns to her hotel room and realizes that she does not have enough money to pay for her stay. At that moment, Dick arrives. He begs her to come back home with him. After thinking about it, Mary agrees to return.

At first, Mary and Dick fall back into their usual way of living. However, after some time, Dick becomes very sick with a high fever. Charlie brings a doctor to see him, but the doctor speaks to Mary in a rude manner. He tells her that she and Dick need to protect the house from mosquitoes and take a three-month break to recover. During this period, Mary takes charge of supervising the farm workers since Dick is too sick to do it himself. She carries a sambok (a whip) with her while working. One day, when Moses, one of the farm workers, asks for a drink of water, Mary becomes angry and strikes him across the face with the whip.

Mary also punishes workers who arrive late by not paying them, which makes some of them quit immediately. Back at home, Mary tries to convince Dick to focus on growing tobacco, hoping it will help them earn enough money to leave the farm. Dick thinks about it for three days. In the end, he agrees, and they begin building tobacco barns.

Dick builds the tobacco barns, hoping for a good harvest. However, in January, a drought strikes, and all the tobacco plants die. Without a crop to sell, Dick is unable to pay for the expenses. To avoid going bankrupt, he is forced to take out a loan.

Mary’s health starts to decline. She becomes weak and depressed. Desperate for some hope, she begins begging Dick for a child. But Dick refuses, saying they are too poor to raise one. Mary becomes more and more unhappy, and Dick also struggles. He becomes deeply miserable and starts smoking constantly.

After yet another house servant quits, Dick has no choice but to move Moses, one of the farm workers, from the fields to work inside the house. No one else is willing to work under Mary. Over time, Mary becomes strangely fascinated by Moses. She secretly watches him as he works. One day, she sees him washing himself outside and stares at him for a long time. Moses notices her watching and stops what he is doing. He stares back at her until she turns and walks away. This makes Mary furious. To punish him, she forces him to do a series of unnecessary tasks. Later, she asks Dick if they can fire Moses, but Dick becomes angry and refuses.

As the months go by, Mary sinks deeper into depression. One day, Moses tells her that he is quitting. Instead of reacting with anger, Mary suddenly bursts into tears and begs him to stay. Seeing her distress, Moses brings her a glass of water, tells her to lie down on the bed, and gently covers her with her coat. After that, he never mentions leaving again.

A new kind of relationship forms between them. Moses starts acting more informal and even authoritative toward Mary, while Mary begins to feel completely under his control. She no longer sees him as just a servant but as someone who holds power over her.

During this time, Mary starts having intense nightmares. Meanwhile, Dick falls seriously ill with malaria. In her dreams, Mary sees disturbing images—she dreams that Dick has died, that Moses is touching her, and that her father is making unwanted advances toward her. In one particularly terrifying dream, Moses and her father merge into the same figure. She wakes up screaming in fear.

One night, Moses asks her directly why she is so afraid of him. In a panicked and hysterical voice, Mary insists that she is not afraid.

Dick and Mary’s neighbors begin to spread cruel gossip about them. One day, Charlie comes to visit and urges Dick to sell his farm. Charlie stays for dinner and notices how Mary and Moses interact in a familiar and playful way. Later, Charlie pulls Dick aside and firmly tells him that he and Mary should leave the farm. Dick hesitates but eventually agrees. Charlie then asks Tony to start working on Dick’s farm so he can take over.

While staying on the Turners’ farm, Tony starts to think that Mary has lost her mind and needs to see a psychologist. One day, he sees Moses helping Mary get dressed, and he is shocked at the idea that they might be having an affair. Tony decides to tell Dick that he should fire Moses. However, before Dick can do anything, Moses leaves that evening and does not come back.

Two nights before Dick and Mary are supposed to leave the farm, Mary wakes up suddenly. She wanders around the house, trapped in paranoid thoughts, her emotions shifting wildly. She believes that Moses will come that night to "finish her."

The next day, Mary is supposed to spend her time packing, but instead, she accidentally falls asleep and doesn’t wake up until late afternoon. Suddenly, she feels an urge to go to the store. When she gets there, she sees Moses and panics. She screams and runs away, only to bump into Tony. He speaks to her gently and tells her that he has suggested to Dick that she should see a doctor.

That night, Mary does not join Tony and Dick for supper. Later, as she lies in bed, Dick tells her that she is unwell. Mary replies that she has always been sick in her heart.

After Dick falls asleep, Mary quietly gets up and moves through the house, convinced that Moses is there. She steps onto the veranda and sees Moses standing in the distance. As he approaches, he suddenly covers her mouth with his hand and stabs her to death.

For a moment, Moses thinks about pretending he is innocent, but then decides to turn himself in. He waits outside the house until morning.