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With the exception perhaps of the five novels that constitute Lessing's science fiction series Canopus in Argos (1979-1983) and the virtually unknown minor work Retreat to Innocence (1956), of all her many novels, Lessing's first one, The Grass Is Singing(1950), seems least likely, as a matter of course, to attract much critical attention. Why this has been has always puzzled me. But then I am one of the very few critics who has actually written an entire essay on Retreat to Innocence, the orphan novel Lessing more often than not declines to acknowledge, as it is usually missing in those lists of other works "Also by Doris Lessing." Though Retreat to Innocence perhaps deserves the neglect it has received (Lessing herself has said the subject of the novel deserves fuller treatment than she gave it),(1) surely The Grass Is Singing does not. In this paper, I want, therefore, to (try to) stimulate further discussion of The Grass Is Singing and to ask why in the past it has not received as much attention as it might have. One explanation for its relative neglect, of course, could lie in the fact that its meaning seems to be so self-evident, so readily accessible, that no formal exegesis is necessary)--an explanation offered, for example, by Eileen Manion, who suggests: "Perhaps it is because Doris Lessing's portrayal of colonialism in her early stories and novels is so 'realistic,' as well as so vivid and convincing, that careful analysis of it has never seemed necessary" (434). But just how clear is this novel's meaning? Is it really, as most critics have assumed, an effective critique of colonialism and the "colour bar"? Or, given the strict division in the narrative between the white settlers (as Self) and the African natives (as Other), is it, conversely, a novel that lends itself to a (neo)colonialist interpretation--is it a novel that is complicit with the very system it purports (or was designed) to subvert? Is it not possible to argue, in other words, that Lessing has written what Abdul R. JanMohamed would call a manichean allegory--an allegory that functions (however unintentionally in this case) to reinscribe the power and dominance of the white colonial ruling class.(2) Could this be why critics ignore it?
Though...