Because Mary never showed one iota of empathy for anyone but herself and secondly, because I think her fling with Moses was born out of utter desperate solitude, not of any genuine affection. The Grass is Singing opens in dramatic, albeit understated, fashion with a small news report indicating that Mary Turner, wife of the white British-Rhodesian farmer Dick Turner, had been found murdered on her front verandah. Moses won’t leave when Marston requests him to, similarly as he treated Charlie with hatred before. Grounded in meticulous historical research and written with a reverential approach to Jesus's life that focuses on his humanity, The Book of Longings is an inspiring account of one woman's bold struggle to realize the passion and potential. The Grass Is Singing by the 2007 Nobel Prize winner, Doris Lessing, is a scathing indictment of South Africa apartheid as revealed through the tragic lives of Mary and Dick Turner and Moses, their “house boy.”. Lessing uses the characters, Dick and Mary Turner and the corresponding theme of ‘white domination and racism’ to portray the beliefs of the white settler’s of the Rhodesian society she lived in. Lessing’s study of race and class begins in her first novel, The Grass is Singing(1950), which depicts the failure of intimacy between a white woman and her African male servant.
Neither Mary nor Moses are able to fully come to terms with the violations of white, patriarchial norms.