She writes too about the hypocritical double seksual moral and about the labour proportions.
There is an important background in to story, but I don=t know if it is an historical one.ĭoris Lessing scrutnized the relations between whites and blacks in Southern Africa. It will be about the beginning of this century. The rest of the chapters describes the period they are married (two years?). Before the marriage she lived in a town in Southern Africa, after her marriage she has to live on the country. The second chapter describes the life of Mary before she married to Dick and how she married to him. Mary is killed and >nobody= knows the motive of the murder. In the night after the next night, the night before Mary and Dick would go on holiday, Moses kills Mary. He feels shocked and affirm in his ideas about the seksual hypocrisy in Africa. Tony is frightened when he see that Moses helps Mary to put on her clothes. Tony, a young Englishman, becomes engaged as temporary manager. He present him to buy the farm, to pay his debts and to engage a replacer for six months so that Mary and Dick would go on holiday. He is frightened of the circumstances they lived him, and the whole situation. When Dick gets a malaria attack, Mary is complete at the mercy of Moses.Īfter Dicks illness, Slatter, a rich neighbour of the Turners visits them. Moses promises her to stay, provided that she behaves reasonable. Dick has said that he, after Moses, wouldn=t engage an other houseboy.
When Moses threats to go away too, she becomes hysterical. But for the first time, she doesn=t see a native only like a working machine or like a dog. But she doesn=t forgot that he=s a native, she hates him as native. He can read and write and he does his work perfect. At any time, Mary has strucked him in his face with a whip. Moses is an high developed, English speaking seasonal worker. She hates the black population, the farmer=s life and Dick the misfit.Īfter she has sent the hundredth (black) houseboy away, there=s Moses. Dick falls ill and Mary has to run the farm. She runs away to the town, but after a while she comes back. After failed projects with bees, pigs and turkeys, Dick starts a store and Mary has to serve the natives. She=s lonely and the life on the farm is monotonous. Her marriage to Dick isn=t a succes and she is very unhappy. The life reminds her to her own poor youth. Complete inprepared and unaware of the life on a farm, she arrives. She rushes into marriage with Dick Turner, a poor farmer of a distant farm. She waked up to the fact that she was on her way to become an old maid. She lived a lighthearted life in the town till she was thirty. In the next chapter the story goes back to the past. It is thought he was in search of valuables.Ī young Englishman who is just in Africa, and who was stayed with the Turners has his ideas, but he hold his peace. The houseboy has been arrested and he had confessed to the crime. It starts with a newspaper report Mary Turner, wife of the farmer Richard Turner was found murdered. The first chapter of the book is a flash-forward.