Anti-colonial but not Anti-racist
- Calvin Stevens
- Apr 13
- 11 min read
Doris Lessing’s “The Grass is Singing” and the problem of the white gaze in African literature.
Recently, I’ve been delving deeper into the realm of Zimbabwean literature. The likes of Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s The Theory of Flight (2018) and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (1988, along with their follow ups) caught my attention and beckoned me forth.
The former is a magnificent, rhizomatic celebration of multi-culturalism in the aftermath of the Second Chimurenga (war for independence) during Ian Smith’s Southern Rhodesia as well as the subsequent Gukurahundi genocide of the Ndebele people under Mugabe’s rule; the latter, meanwhile, explores the intimate journeys of five Shona women as they navigate the intellectual colonialism and patriarchal junctures imposed by the British.
Both are engendered in a vibrant display of African ideals that are very much anti-colonial and anti-racist.
One book along my journey thus far, however, has stood out like a sore thumb in comparison.
Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing.
The story is fundamentally about the lives of rural white farmers in Southern Rhodesia and how their subconscious adherence or compliance with the larger colonial project not only imposes its malice unto the native population but also the environment and the white settlers themselves.
In one sense, the novel echoes many of the ideas found in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
It is the journey of a white protagonist — Mary Turner in this case — and her subsequent realisation of the true horrors that lie within herself as a component of colonialism — a realisation that leads to her ultimate breakdown and demise.
Now, to address the elephant in the room, this book is a standout, first and foremost, in that it is written by a white writer, unlike the former two Zimbabwean novels.
In fact, Doris Lessing is a British novelist.
Just as you are probably wondering now, I similarly asked: so why can this be found in the trove of Zimbabwean literature?
Well, the story is a little bit complicated.
Who is Doris Lessing?
For the sake of brevity, Doris Lessing is the oldest person to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature — at the age of 87 in 2007.
Interestingly, she was born to British parents in Kermanshah, Persia (in 1919) but moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1925 and, finally, London in 1949.
The Grass is Singing was her first published novel (1950), but her most famous work is The Golden Notebook, published in 1962.
Lessing was a notable opponent to capitalism, nuclear weapons, and apartheid (being honoured as a member of the Order of Mapungubwe), and was an ardent feminist all her life.
Although she was originally a proponent of Marxism and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, her disdain for the Soviet Union and its failures turned her towards more spiritual matters — primarily guided by Sufism — in the later years of her life.
She died in London, 2013.
“African literature”
There is a long debate to be had about what we might classify as “African literature.”
Unfortunately, that is not what I am here for. At least not today.
What I am here to do is discuss the ways in which The Grass is Singing takes Lessing’s experiences of living in Southern Rhodesia and attempts to contextualise them in an anti-colonial identity that, in many regards, adds to the contrapuntal reading of other Zimbabwean texts.
In fact, if anything, Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions almost reads as a beautiful counterpoint to much of Lessing’s failures (as will be illuminated) in The Grass is Singing.
My critical angle, however, does not aim to bash or diminish Doris Lessing intellectually. As mentioned above, she was an active opponent to colonialism and apartheid.
Moreover, this novel is, after all, her first published work.
But I do want to highlight how, despite having good intentions, this novel is undermined by the limited perspective of “the white writer writing about Africa”; and, again, that is not to say that white people — especially those who have lived in Africa most of their lives such as myself — cannot write good novels about the African experience; but more often than not, they fall for the trap of naivety.
I’d point to the slap-fight surrounding Heart of Darkness for invoking a similar phenomenon, albeit more controversial.
Most who read Heart of Darkness agree that it is, if not strictly anti-colonial, somewhat skeptical of and opposed to colonialism; but many still dislike the book for it’s (simultaneous) inherent racism. Rather than being critical of colonialism for the sake of the African people, Heart of Darkness is critical of colonialism for the sake of Europeans.
So, how does The Grass is Singing hold up comparatively?
Let’s get into it…
The critique that misses
I’d first like to begin by highlighting some of what I believe to be “misguided” critiques of the novel.
Naturally, I am not the first to suggest that The Grass is Singing fails to adequately address racism — many others before me have done just that.
But I do think it is pertinent to settle the score straight.
So, for the benefit of Doris Lessing, the following needs to be said in her defense.
There is an eco-critical view held amongst a number of the book’s critics that claims that the failure for adequately addressing racism in the narrative comes at the fault of the environmental disposition of the novel’s two central locations: namely the farms of both Charlie Slatter and Richard (Dick) Turner.
Some suggest that the obvious, intentional juxtaposition of the two farms — and their subsequent owners — is indicative of an unintentional “white saviour” complex.
On the surface, this charge is particularly devastating; but, in my opinion, it is not where Lessing’s narrative becomes problematic. In fact, I think Lessing has enough subtlety to deflect this particular charge altogether.
Let me explain.
The two farmers in the novel — namely Richard (Dick) Turner and Charlie Slatter — represent two sides of the colonial coin; while one side (Charlie Slatter) is the capitalistic, destructive force and the other (Dick Turner) the ideal, restorative, pastoral force, both are fundamentally undergirded by the same colonial philosophy.
For Slatter, his colonial view is clearly engendered in his ecological destructiveness, both his view of the land and its people being fundamentally instrumentalist.
For one, he overuses his plot of land for tobacco farming, sections off areas for mining, and refuses to plant trees. As the narrator informs us:
Mr Slatter’s farm had hardly any trees on it. It was a monument to farming malpractice, with great gullies cutting through it, and acres of good dark earth gone dead from misuse. But he made the money, that was the thing. It enraged him to think it was so easy to make money, and that damned fool Dick Turner played the fool with trees. (Lessing, 98)
The line “But he made money…” perfectly encapsulates Slatter’s view of the land: it is but an instrument to make money, a cow to milk till it is dry and barren. Even when he tries to covet Dick Turner’s farm, he says it is because “the farms that bounded his on the other sides were taken up” (211), hinting at his further ambitions to make more money once his own land was discarded.
Dick Turner, meanwhile, is initially presented as the opposing alternative: the man who cares not for money but for the land itself.
Thus, the critics begin their attack.
Dick is reluctant to farm tobacco because of its harsh effects on the soil as well as it’s meaninglessness when it comes to farming — he likens the process of extracting the crop to an industrial “factory” rather than a farm, calling it an “inhuman crop” (126). As the aforementioned quoted passage says, “Dick Turner played the fool with trees”, for Slatter thought that planting trees was a waste; on the contrary, Turner is said to have “[known] every tree on it [the farm]. This is no figure of speech: he knew the veld he lived from as the natives know it” (154).
From Dick’s point of view, he is saving the land — after all, the text indicates that he originally bought the derelict, exploited piece of land from a mining company (105). He calls his actions a “small retribution” (106) and firmly believes in the goodness of his deeds. In essence, Dick Turner is portrayed as the antithesis to Charlie Slatter.
Critics have a problem with this notion because it portrays Dick Turner as the “good white”, the saviour of the African environment from the likes of the barbaric natives and the “evil whites” (Charlie Slatter); and, on the surface, Dick certainly seems to fall into Binyavanga Wainaina’s satirical category of “anybody white, tanned and wearing khaki who… is a conservationist, one who is preserving Africa’s rich heritage.”
I would argue, however, Wainaina’s critique here is mistaken.
In fact, Lessing explicitly undermines her racist characters. She foregrounds Dick Turner’s racist treatment of his black labourers as well as his disregard for animals, both of which are seen as so-called lesser beings.
He repeatedly calls his labourers “lazy savages” (116), and his malpractice of farming pigs, turkeys, and bees leads to those animals’ suffering and subsequent deaths.
Despite his so-called “small retribution”, between the lines “Dick’s ‘care’ for land is not altruistic but rather self-serving.
In this way, he resembles Charlie more than is initially portrayed. Moreover, the novel’s historical backdrop — colonial Southern Rhodesia — brings into question Dick’s “retribution” since, dismissed from his view, is the original, native owners of the land prior to the mines. Thus, when it comes to Dick and Charlie, Lessing does not fall into the traps of stereotypical colonial writing; the two farmers are, again, two sides of the same coin, not separate coins of good and evil.
Levelling the critique
The novel is anti-colonial but not anti-racist.
Now that I’ve levelled my defence against an all-too-common critique of the novel, I’ll begin extrapolating my concern with the narrative.
In my view, the novel’s dismissal of the native population does fall for stereotypical colonial writing. This is most apparent with the novel’s protagonist, Mary Turner, and her disposition towards the Moses, the black houseboy, and the land.
When Mary first arrives on the farm, she is somewhat disappointed yet altogether frightened by its otherworldliness; she quickly learns, however, that it is something to exploit: “she was exhilarated by the unfamiliar responsibility, the sensation of pitting her will against the farm” (Lessing, 111). Similarly, when Dick falls ill and she briefly takes control of the farm, she further exerts her power over the black labourers and gets a “good feeling, keeping them under her will, making them do as she wanted” (112).
Much like Charlie, Mary equates the land to the people; they are one and the same, barbaric and ripe for exploiting. The arrival of Moses into the narrative thereafter, however, raises a few concerns in this regard.
Moses, much like the land, is the first to be abused (assaulted) by Mary. As a result, she forms a peculiar relationship with him as she does with the farm and bushveld.
In a sense, Moses effectively represents the African bushveld — he is emblematic of Africa. Mary both fears and seeks to use him. The reader is constantly reminded of his blackness, his “oily black skin” (162), his “dark, waiting shape” (202), and his muscularity.
He is wild and untamed, and during the novel’s climax, he seemingly becomes “one” with nature:
The trees hated her, but she could not stay in the house. She entered them, feeling the shade fall on her flesh, hearing the cicadas all about, shrilling endlessly, insistently. She walked straight into the bush, thinking: ‘I will come across him, and it will all be over.’ (196)
The fact that Mary dies, amongst the trees in the black of a rainy night, at the hands of Moses is supposed to be symbolic of the native tearing down their colonial master; but, moreover, Lessing emphasises that it is Africa, as a whole taking revenge, for “the bush avenged itself… the trees advanced in a rush, like beasts, and the thunder was the noise of their coming” (204). Moses, being one with the trees — “the trees that hated her”, the trees that “advanced in a rush” — is posited as the ultimate image of Africa.
Yet, notably, it is not so much the trees that are personified to meet the level of Moses. Rather, Moses himself is reduced to meet the trees. His blackness becomes dangerously emblematic of the infamous, colonial notion of the “dark continent”.
Moreover, Moses and the other “natives” are never given a perspective of their own within the narrative. The whole novel follows the voices of the white colonial settlers — Mary, Richard, and Charlie— and fails to offer a well-rounded counterpoint of the natives. Indeed, they are seemingly sidelined and barely mentioned.
Moses’ motivation for killing Mary is left unclear. He is never given the opportunity to speak, not by the white characters and not by Doris Lessing either. He, like the African bushveld, is only ever viewed through stereotypical colonial eyes — his motivations are assumed by Charlie Slatter and shallowly hinted at by Lessing.
Lucky for me, as I scoured the Net for voices to back me up, I discovered that I was not alone on this point.
I tend to agree with Li Chao’s assessment that Mary’s death at the hands of Moses is an attempt at a “redemptive alleviation of white post-colonial guilt” (Chao, 124).
Joy Wang makes a similar argument in White Postcolonial Guilt in Doris Lessing’s ‘The Grass is Singing’.
I would argue, further, that the novel is then anti-colonial but not anti-racist. The contrast between Dick Turner and Charlie Slatter may not undermine its thematic identity, but that is only because the anti-colonial sentiment is expressed through the underlying relationship of these two white characters.
When it comes to the black characters, however, Lessing seems less capable in maintaining that line.
Moses is only ever perceived through Mary’s eyes, and through her colonial gaze; he has no eyes of his own. In a way, Lessing, like Dick, is dismissive of the black characters in the narrative, and seemingly unable to account for them. As a result, the association of Moses (whether intentionally or not) to notions of the “dark continent” certainly highlight a more troubling inability to fully break away from the fated stereotypical white writing of Africa as critiqued by Wainaina.
Final remarks
A novel does not necessarily require a diverse cast of characters (with multiple perspectives thereof) to be anti-racist.
The same is true in reverse.
Yet, in this specific case, the narrative suffers from the lack of a genuine counterweight perspective.
The same could be said of Heart of Darkness which, again, is entrenched in racism despite being anti-colonial because it explicitly avoids any interlocutors. Marlow — a white man working for a colonial regime with his own problematic racial disposition — is given free reign.
Hence, in many cases, I imagine it is easier — not required, but certainly easier — to tackle themes of racism with a more diverse range of perspectives.
Just think of The Theory of Flight or E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India.
As I’ve noticed with a lot of post-colonial literature, anticolonialism does not always equate to antiracism. Contrary to misguided popular belief, the two are not mutually exclusive.
Finally, having read The Grass is Singing as well as biographical information on Doris Lessing, I think it is important that in delicate cases like this, we detach the author from the book.
The Grass is Singing should not be used as something to define Lessing by.
As mentioned before, she was an ardent opponent to apartheid and was recognised by the South African government for her contributions thereof.
It’s safe to say she was not a racist, and neither was she complicit with racial societies or ideologies. Rather, she was a vocal activist against them.
In the case of The Grass is Singing, apart from being her first published novel, her realist narrative simply suffers from a lack of foresight.
We are all human at the end of the day, and we will all suffer from such mistakes; but it’s our openness to being judged, critiqued, and corrected that greatly contribute the betterment of our hermeneutical social understanding.
References and Further Reading
Chao, LI. “Sound and Silence in Doris Lessing’s The Grass Is Singing.” 歴史文化社会論講座紀要 13 (2016): 115–126. Journal Article.
Iheka, Cajetan. “Dispossession, postcolonial ecocriticism, and doris lessing’s the grass is singing.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 25.4 (2018): 664–680. Journal Article.
Lessing, Doris. The Grass is Singing. Johannesburg: Heinemann Publishers (Pty) Limited, 1950. Electronic Book.
Mutekwa, Anais and Terrence Musanga. “Subalternatizing and Reclaiming Ecocentric Environmental Discourses in Zimbabwean Literature: (Re)reading Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing and Chenjerai Hove’s Ancestors.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 20.2 (2013): 239–257.
Wainaina, Binyavanga. “How to Write about Africa.” Granta 92 (2005): 1-3. https://granta.com/how-to-write-about-africa/.
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