An Ecofeministic Analysis of the Causes of Mary’s Tragedy in The Grass Is Singing

The Grass Is Singing is the first published book of Doris Lessing, a famous British female writer, whose novels are largely concerned with people involved in the social upheavals of the 20th century. This story is about a white farmer Dick and his wife Mary and their black servant Moses in Africa. In this novel, Doris Lessing presents readers with the tragedy of Mary, who has suffered a lot from the patriarchal ideology and racial discrimination in that society. This paper first analyzes the embodiment of Mary’s tragedy from such aspects as her unhappy childhood, her unsuccessful marriage and her miserable ending, and then aims to probe into the causes leading to Mary’s tragedy from the perspective of ecofeminism: as a colonist, she cannot harmoniously coexist with nature; as a woman, she cannot equally get along with men. In conclusion, her alienation from nature has caused nature to take revenge on her; the pressure from her incompetent father has distorted her view of men; the physical and mental oppression from her husband has ruined his illusion about marriage; the cruel revenge from her lover has directly resulted in her tragic ending.