The Grass is Singing

“… She turned and ran back, suddenly terrified, as if a hostile breath had blown upon her, from another world, from the trees.”

Mary’s fear of the bush—and by extension the farm—highlights her animosity to the farm and its direct association with natives, whom she views as nonhuman.

“It was a proper old-fashioned bed, high and massive: that was his idea of marriage.”

This telling quote highlights Dick Turner’s old-school views on work, life and marriage. He thinks in terms of natural rights and has lived his life at odds with Mary’s cosmopolitan view of the world.

“Mary watched the wildly flickering flame of the dying lamp leap over the walls and roof and the glittering window panes, and fell asleep holding his hand protectively, as she might have held a child’s whom she had wounded.”

The quote highlights Mary’s feelings for her husband; they are not feelings of romantic love, but feelings of duty, much like those of a mother.

“His craving for forgiveness, and his abasement before her was the greatest satisfaction she knew, although she despised him for it.”

This quote highlights early on the manifold and confused nature of Mary. She wants to be right, but also despises Dick for allowing her to be right, and constantly struggles with this throughout the novel.

“She did not know it was part of the native code of politeness not to look a superior in the face; she thought it was merely further evidence of their shifty and dishonest nature.”

Mary is out of her element on the farm. Instead of getting to know how things work as Dick suggests, she wants others to bend to her beliefs, which are ultimately racist and shallow.

“But she did not know that loneliness can be an unnoticed cramping of the spirit for lack of companionship.”

Mary refuses help from her neighbors. As she also does not look on Dick Turner as a companion in the romantic sense, the quote suggests that she is lonelier than she even realizes.

“It was not the voice of Mary, the individual … but the voice of the suffering female, who wanted to show her husband she just would not be treated like that.”

Mary’s anger at Dick Turner takes the form of symbolic anger. In it, she channels her mother who was always angry at Mary’s drunken father. As the narrative suggests, she channels scorned women everywhere.

“…It seemed to her that it was not a tall, spare, stooping man whom she saw, only; but also a swaggering little boy, trying to keep his end up after cold water had been poured over his enthusiasm.”

Mary’s view of Dick as a successful man and farmer shows signs of cracking as she begins to see him both as a man and a temperamental child.

“But it was as if she wore two masks, one contradicting the other …”

Mary’s dual nature again comes to the surface. She is both energetic and depressed, hopeful for Dick and herself, and simultaneously without hope. She feels scorned like her mother, then spiteful, once again like her mother.

 “Mary did not like that; she did not like it at all; for his sarcastic remark said more about their marriage than she had ever allowed herself to think …”

Dick’s sarcasm hides his frustration—and realization—that their marriage is not only damaged but an inconvenience for them both.

“It was a feeling of being out of character that chilled her, not knowledge that she had changed.”

Mary still lives with delusion as she sees herself in the mirror and realizes she is different from the single woman in the city she used to be. She has changed, but does not accept the person she has changed into.

“But it was the first time that she admitted to herself that she had changed, in herself, not in her circumstances.”

With the failure of her job search and her running away from Dick and the farm, Mary finally realizes that she has become something different than the “innocent” woman she used to be while working in the city.

“This was the beginning of an inner disintegration in her. It began with this numbness, as if she could no longer feel or fight.”

Mary’s failure in the city marks the beginning of another bout of depression, one that will cause her and Dick no small amount of grief as she forgets chores and ambles about in a confused mental state.

“Her attitude towards Dick, always contemptuous, was now bitter and angry. It was not a question of bad luck, it was simply incompetence.”

Mary looks over Dick’s books and realizes that, like so many others already seem to know, he is incompetent at farming. What seems so obvious to her is unseen by Dick.

“She had behind her the police, the courts, the jails; he, nothing but patience.” 

This quote adds foreshadowing to the narrative as the reader already knows that Moses kills Mary in the first chapter. Mary takes the stance that might is right as the legal resources are on her side. As the reader soon sees, Moses is in fact a patient man.

“A poverty that allows a tiny margin for spending, but which is shadowed always by a weight of debt that nags like a conscience is worse than starvation itself.”

Mary realizes that they can continue living on the farm and barely break even, but she refuses to live like this. Barely getting by is worse than starving from abject poverty.

“Really, her withdrawal from the farm was to save what she thought was the weakest point of his pride, not realizing that she was his failure.”

Though Mary despises Dick, she attempts to leave matters pertaining to the farm alone to spare Dick from understanding that, above all his failures, his failure in marrying her is the largest.

“The crises of individuals, like the crises of nations, are not realized until they are over.”

This quote highlights just how dangerous the tensions between Mary/Dick and the natives are to the story.

“For some time neither of them moved; then he came round where he could see her face, looking at her curiously, his brows contracted in speculation and wonder.”

The dynamic between Mary and Moses noticeably changes here. He looks at her in wonder as he realizes that she is, in a sense, human, which is an ironic realization given the fact that she does not think of him in the same way.

“…Her feeling was one of a strong and irrational fear, a deep uneasiness, and even—though this she did not know, would have died rather than acknowledge—of some dark attraction.”

Mary’s disgust of natives and Moses is shown here to also hold a tinge of attraction, foreshadowing her growing obsession with Moses and his physical appearance.

“But she felt as if she were in a dark tunnel, nearing something final, something she could not visualize, but which waited for her inexorably, inescapably. And in the attitude of Moses … she could see he was waiting too. They were like two antagonists, silently sparring.”

This quote highlights the dangerous, dark end that awaits both Mary and Moses. They are brought together against both of their wills, and both feel something dangerous approaching.

“In the minds of all three of them the word ‘charity’ was written in big black letters, obscuring everything else. And they were all wrong. It was an instinctive self-preservation.”

Charlie’s actions can be seen for what they truly are here, as a means to preserve the standards of the white community and keep them from embarrassment on account of the Turners’ misfortune.

“But then, what is madness, but a refuge, a retreating from the world?” 

Tony Marston’s questioning of Mary’s sanity takes an interesting turn. His investigation posits the suggestion that madness, which most think as a failure, is more akin to self-preservation, or a kind of refuge.