A Postcolonial Reading of “The Grass is Singing”
- Melike Duru Celik
- 10 hours ago
- 6 min read
The Grass is Singing” is going to be analysed according to a question “some questions postcolonial critics ask about literary texts” (Tyson, 431).
“What does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference-including race, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural beliefs, and customs?” (Tyson, 431).
It is necessary to give brief knowledge about the author of the work before analysing it in terms of postcolonial discourse. Doris Lessing, a British writer, was born in Kermansah, Persia [now Iran], in 1919. When she was born, her family were in Persia and then they moved to Southern Rhodesia, which is known Zimbabwe now. Lessing lived there from 1924 to 1949 until she moved to England. She was educated in a Catholic School but when she was fourteen years old, she rebelled against her family and left the school. Then, she worked in Rhodesia parliament and played an active role in constituting an anti-racist left party in the parliament. She joined to Communist Party in 1943. She was known as an active communist in her adulthood. She began to write professionally after she had divorced and wrote until she died in 2013. She is most known with her work “Golden Notebook”, and she was awarded with Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007 with her novel “The Grass is Singing”.
As an academic discipline, postcolonialism is the name of the concept deals with a cultural heritage left by colonialism and imperialism. Colonization period begins to disappear after the World War I and ends after the World War II. When colonized countries began to regain their independence, decolonization period in which there were cultural, economic, identity crisis, language problems started. Authors who wrote in the colonizer’s language to criticize the coloniser constitute post-colonial literature. The aim of these writers was to investigate what happens when two cultures clash and what happens one of them is superior on the other. Postcolonialism has gained its popularity since 1970.
When it comes to analysing "The Grass is Singing", this novel is about a married couple who lives in the farm, Mary and Dick Turner, and their servant, Moses. It takes place in Southern Rhodesia between the years 1930 and 1940. This book includes numerous postcolonial terms such as third space, displacement, ambivalence, surveillance, mimicry, going native, identity crisis.
. Critical theory helps the reader and critics understand the psychological, sociological, cultural, or ideological operations of any literature forms. It is important to understand what purpose it is written or the connection between a novel and a human being’s domain of experience. Postcolonial criticism concentrates on people who were colonized by any population before and after the decolonized period.
Tyson reminds the reader when the colonialism period started and who were the dominant colonizers until World War II. Some colonizers of European domination in the late fifteenth century were Spain, France, Portugal, and England. England was the largest imperial power, and it was called a country where the sun does not set. However, after World War II, India declared its independence in 1947 first, and others followed India. Britain had almost lost its imperial power by 1980. Postcolonial criticism was not very popular at first but after the decolonization period had started, it became visible, and many colonized writers gave notable works about colonized people’s pains mostly in English since they were colonized for years, and their mother tongue was forgotten. Some writers tried to write in their native tongue, but they had some challenges about publishing and language. According to Tyson, postcolonial criticism cannot be understood without a theoretical framework as the theoretical framework covers all colonising periods and people in the whole world. That is, postcolonial criticism deals with not only Britain’s colonies but all colonies in the world.
In postcolonial identity, Tyson tells the reader that there were so many people colonized by Britain and they were taught English and forbidden to speak their indigenous language and they [had to] use English in all areas. This is simply cultural colonization that Britain imposed on its colonies. They are no longer a colonized population, but they lived like colonized people as they had an identity crisis in the decolonized period. They did not have their own language, they did not know where they belonged to and they had to live with a negative image culturally, morally, and even physically. Colonialist discourse reflects indigenous people as a savage, undeveloped as colonizers saw themselves like they were the most civilised, most sophisticated populations. They isolated and otherized indigenous people but sometimes use the word savage to describe a primitive beauty or exotic other. In any case, savage’s meaning remained as “not fully human”. Tyson asserts that colonial discourse is synonym with the Eurocentrism and Universalism in literature is determined by so-called eurocentrism. Eurocentrism, [British, European, American] decides which literary text is universal or not. They put the standards and thus Eurocentric language term emerged. Tyson divides countries where Eurocentric language is seen into four. First World countries are Britain, Europe and United States; Second World consists of white populations in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and southern Africa, Third World consists of developing countries in technology such as India, and the Fourth World consists of formerly colonized indigenous populations such as Native Americans and aboriginal Australians. Existence of the earlier world is ignored by Eurocentrism and Tyson warns the reader about these Eurocentric implications. Eurocentric language shows itself especially in the Orientalism notion that Edward Said has practised in Europe, England and the United States. Orientalism despises Eastern countries, such as Egypt, Arabia, Chinese or Asia culturally. According to orientalism, the East means dishonest, immoral, promiscuity, perversion, ignorance, and this list goes on while the West associated with good, moral, intellectual, honest, and so on. Created by Western philosophy, orientalism otherizes Eastern like white people marginalised the Blacks. Tyson claims that Eurocentric colonialist ideology is so difficult to be rebel against as British culture systematically programmed to impose their values into colonized people. Even, colonized individuals so much adopted colonizer’s values and culture that they start imitating their lifestyle. It is called mimicry as a term in postcolonial studies. In other words, individuals who were colonized long years, adopted colonizer’s cultures, language, and values and even if they declared their dependence, they could not leave their habits. They suffer from being double consciousness which means to have double vision in postcolonial theory. This is something like being stuck in two cultures and not deciding where to belong or feeling unhomeliness. Homi Bhabha used this unhomeliness term to describe a trauma of cultural displacement in his postcolonial studies. As well as imitating the colonizer’s value or, hair, wearing style; colonizers sometimes imitated colonize people’s values, as well. As a result of being double consciousness, some writers, such as Ngugi wa Thiang’o tried to write in their pre-colonial language and culture to reject colonialist ideology while some preferred writing in English such as Chinua Achebe since he learnt English first. To Tyson, another problem in turning to the pre-colonial past is it is impossible in many ways because new generations occurred. Even if they want to seek their roots or pre-colonial language and cultures, it is quite difficult as culture does not remain the same, it changes. All cultures change and evolve a new culture in the territories conquered or colonised. It is called hybridity or syncretism in postcolonial theorists and this hybridity is necessary in some sense since it is more dynamic than the old ones. However, some colonised people think that they must create a native culture not to be swamped by Western culture. These people are called nativists. According to nativists, having to forget one's own culture is totally different from a culture changing. Tyson draws an analogy between postcolonialism and Feminist criticism as women are subjugated by both patriarchy and colonizer. They are both women and colonized. For instance, being subjugated in terms of being Negro, and being a Negro woman. It means two times oppression on women.
In postcolonial debates part, Tyson describes invader colonies which were established by non-white people with the help of British army force in Africa South America. There are also white settler colonies and non-white settler colonies. For white settler colonies Britain is the mother country while for non-white settler colonies is not. Debate among postcolonial critics is whether postcolonial literature should include white settler colonies or not. White settler colonies are not subjugated or marginalised as indigenous non white settlers’ colonies. Tyson asserts that race issue determines the postcolonial studies. Postcolonial criticism analysis cultural identity and its dynamics. Pre-colonizers maintain their colonial aims behind the scenes with a new name: neocolonialism. They exploit labour force of underdeveloped or developing countries. Tyson defines Cultural imperialism that means consciously or unconsciously adopting a culture of those who have economic domination. Some theorists draw analogy between postcolonialism and cultural imperialism as subalterns are not considered as a subject of most postcolonial critics than others who were born in colonized nation sand educated in European universities.
Tyson summarises the chapter by manifesting that the fear about postcolonial criticism will become a way to read the work of the same First World writers that has been read for years. Tyson gives prominent postcolonial writers’ names and says the last words: it is illogical to be worried that postcolonial literature will be colonized by the cultural Eurocentric language.
WORKS CITED
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. Routledge, 2006.
“Speak quietly, think quietly” is the words which clearly reflect the postcolonial period’s dominant culture.
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