Initially wrapped in awe, intertwined with a sense of uncanny, the narrative slowly unfolds the tragic life of a farmer’s wife, Mary Turner and traces the gradual disintegration of her psyche ultimately leading to 'her decay into death.' The main focus of this novel is Mary’s psychological breakdown as a consequence of the society’s oppression and the repressed self. Thus, the narrative immediately shifts to a flashback of Mary Turner’s past life till her death in the hands of Moses. This news, that this white lady has been murdered by her black servant Moses for money, acts like an omen for other white people living in that African setting. The tragic murder of Mary Turner, a white woman, is reported thus making the readers awestruck at the very onset. Portraying life in Rhodesia, Africa, the novel, The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing (1950) begins with a newspaper article titled 'Murder Mystery' in Ngesi.

Keywords: Disintegration of Self, Infantile Ego, Lowered Self Esteem, Oedipal Complex, Repression and Perception of Death Not only does it speak against colonialism in Africa and has a feminist perspective but it also recognizes chaos and its consequence upon inner reality. The novel depicts the intricacies of human relations, social structures and racial prejudices in Rhodesian society. Heavily steeped in Freudian psychoanalysis, the psyche of the heroine is unfolded as the narrative proceeds further. It actually 'traces her decay into death'. The novel, gradually unfolds the disintegration of the coherent 'self' of Mary Turner, the protagonist, due to the interplay of several external forces on one hand and Mary’s insecure childhood, low self esteem and marital inadequacy on the other. Eliot’s The Waste Land where she gradually unravels the apparent dreariness of romantic connotations of the title in reality. Abstract: In her first novel, The Grass is Singing, in 1950, Doris Lessing, a British writer borrows the title of this novel from T.

The grass is singing characters