초록 열기/닫기 버튼
This article examines how Doris Lessing, the British Caucasian woman writer, describes the colonial situation through her first novel, The Grass Is Singing. The novel has been estimated to anticipate most of her later concerns and provide a microcosm of her future styles. In this novel I try to trace the issue of the colonial mores in view of post-colonial theory. Even though her father was one of the colonialists in Southern Africa, she criticized white settlers’ cruel injustice and sympathized with the natives’ suffering from persecution. Lessing also condemned the actions of blind submission and passive agreement to the falsified values of the surrounding environment through Mary’s patterns of cruelty to her servants and Toni's following of the collective rules. In the meantime, readers cannot help noticing the limits of the Caucasian writer’s description of the colonial situation. The writer symbolizes Mose, the black native, as a sexual image which Fanon blames as a falsified representation. Her description of Mose, one of the main characters, is so superficial that readers cannot catch hold of his mind. On the other hand, The writer analyzes the mentality of Mary, the Caucasian woman colonialist, so incisively that readers can empathize with her behavior and even soften their criticism of her oppression of the natives. With her sharp insight, Lessing prepares the way for a recognition that must alienate her readers from unjust social forces and prepare them to take a stand against them. However as a Caucasian European writer, she shows her limit in depicting the desperate colonial situation.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
The Caucasian writer, Colonialism, South Africa, Group minds, A Caucasian mistress and a native slave
