本文是一篇英语论文，本文试图以空间为出发点，以列斐伏尔等人的空间批评理论为理论支撑，从物理空间、社会空间和心理空间三个角度对小说中被压迫和奴役的人物进行分析，力图揭示种族隔离和殖民主义制度给这些人物带来的巨大灾难和痛苦。
1 Introduction
1.1 Doris Lessing and The Grass Is Singing
Doris Lessing(1919-2013),a British novelist,has been widely recognized as an excellentfemale writer.Renowned for her outstanding artistic achievement after Second World War,Lessingalso has been praised as the greatest British female writer since Virginia Woolf.Lessing is brilliantand varied in her creative style.During her lifetime,Lessing publishes more than fifty works withunique styles and profound contents.She always takes a serious look at all aspects of society withher keen insight in her creative career.Therefore,she sweeps almost all world-class literary prizes,especially the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007.She was described by the Swedish Academy asthat epicist of the female experience,who with skepticism,fire and visionary power has subjecteda divided civilization to scrutiny.
Doris Lessing was born into a British family in 1919 in Persia(now Iran).Lessing movedwith her parents to Southern Rhodesia(now Zimbabwe)when she was five.Lessing’s father oncemade a thorough“five-year plan”to make fortunes.However,the plan disillusioned and eventuallybecame a“family joke”in the harsh survival environment of South Africa.Though they lived ahard life in South Africa,Lessing received a good family education.Born into a knowledgeablefamily,Lessing had a good genetic inheritance from her parents,especially from her mother.Lessing indulged herself in 19th European literary novels ordered from London by her mother.These novels introduced her literary giants such as Charles Dickens,Stendhal,Leo Tolstoy and soon,which laid a solid foundation for her later literary creation.Therefore,Lessing was veryaccomplished both in literature and music.Lessing once worked as a nurse,shorthand typist, telephone operator and reporter,which broadened her horizons and deepened her realizationtowards various social issues.Lessing sympathized with the oppressed people,abhorred socialinjustice and actively took part in left-wing political movements against colonialism.In 1949,sheleft Africa for Britain with her youngest child and the manuscript of The Grass Is Singing.Naturally,Africa truly kept the memories of her entire childhood and youth,which veritablyrecorded and became an extremely important part of her literary creation.In 1964,when Lessingreceived an interview,she reviewed her growth experience in colonial Rhodesia like this:“I spentmost of my childhood alone in a landscape with very few human things to do it.It was sometimeshellishly lonely,but now I realize how extraordinary it was,and how very lucky I was”.[3]Although Lessing’s life in Africa was hard and solitary,she had a great affection for Africa,whichwas a sincere affection that will never disappear.Such a childhood became a source of thought andinspiration in her latter works.Therefore,she felt so lucky to have spent her youth in Africa.
1.2 Literature Review
As Lessing’s first novel,The Grass Is Singing caused a sensation since its publication.Michael Thorpe once commented the novel as“the most promising novel to have appeared inEngland since the Second World War and the most successful colonial novel since The Story of anAfrican Farm surprised London in 1883”.[6]The Grass Is Singing has been translated into severallanguages and reprinted seven times in five months,which shows it has received widespreadattentions and popularity from readers and scholars abroad and at home.
1.2.1 Studies on The Grass Is Singing Abroad
The Grass Is Singing not only attracts foreign scholars’attentions,but achieves remarkableachievements.These studies mainly concentrate on the aspects as follows:colonialism,feminism,psychoanalysis,comparative studies and other aspects.
First,many scholars studies The Grass Is Singing from the perspective of colonialism andpost-colonialism.In“White Postcolonial Guilt in Doris Lessing’s The Grass Is Singing”,Joy Wan
