Doris Lessing: The Grass is Singing (1950)

Classics are hard to write about, because everything about them has been said much better by more learned scholars. The Grass is Singing is a truly exceptional book, because the plot is realistic and consistent on so many levels - human relationships, history, societal mechanisms, racism, economy of farming - while staying short, just 300 pages.

As a student decades ago used to like discourse analysis, how it decostructs texts to find out how they reify social order, conventions and power structures by handing out roles, expectations and standards in everyday conversations and behaviours. The Grass is Singing is a treasure trove of such intricate negotiations.

It starts with omnipresent racism (but certainly does not stop there.) However, the situation is far from stable. On the one hand the colonial masters tell stories and dream about past days when they could mistreat their labour as they pleased. On the other hand exit equals voice. Mistreatment is kept in check by the need for white farmers to maintain good reputation among black labourers, and to allocate their labour efficiently on most productive farming activities.

"I hope you are being careful with them," he said anxiously. "You have to go slow with them these days, you know. They are all spoilt." "I don't believe in treating them soft," she said scornfully. "If I had my way, I’d keep them in order with the whip." "That’s all very well," he said irritably, "but where would you get the labour?"

Initially Dick Turner, an inefficient farmer for nevertheless scrapes by, can reach a working consensus with his black workers. The situation is upended when he brings a wife, Mary, from the city. The wife is obsessed with status in everyday interactions. She respects his husband, when he is unyielding to her requests. After a long employment in the office, she has superior financial planning skills, but the idea of respectful co-operation with her husband without commanding authority is alien to her. She is also unable to manage a situation, where she is expected to both maintain strict discipline of his black house servant, but also to treat him respectfully and take into account his legitimate interests to prevent him from leaving.

The book also includes a village strongman noticing that things are not going well in the farm, making sharp observations and trying to solve the problems (to his own advantage) when they are still manageable; and a newly arrived British youngster learning the conventions as an outsider.