Doris Lessing`s The Grass is Singing: Surrender or Resist? = Doris Lessing`s The Grass is Singing: Surrender or Resist?

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper aims to read Doris Lessing`s The Grass is Singing (1950) in light of Erich Neumann`s theory of the Great Mother and the Struggler. According to Neumann, the struggler tries to get out of the mother`s dominance only to fail, and as a result the struggler is destroyed by her. The protagonist, Mary Turner, in The Grass is Singing embodies the struggler and a black servant, Moses, embodies the Great Mother. In a struggler, the fear for the Great Mother is the first sign of ego stability. This fear expresses itself in various forms of flight and resistance. Mary is seen as a struggler who attempts to get out of her poor marriage (flight) and to control Moses with power (resistance), and who is murdered by Moses. In this, Mary seems to be a failure. However, this paper attempts to maintain that, despite some critics` argument for her failure, the female protagonist resists society and marriage system, not surrenders to them. Therefore, Mary`s death can be considered as a means to get to the highest stage of ego development, that is, centroversion. (Chungwoon University)