The Grass is Singing: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

Dick and Mary rarely visit the local train station, which is 7 miles away, instead sending a native worker to pick up their post and groceries twice a week. Once a month, they go by car in order to get heavier goods such as bags of flour. During one such trip, Mary sees a man (who she doesn’t know) call Dick “Jonah” and note that his farms have flooded. When Mary asks who the man is, Dick irritably explains that he borrowed £200 from the man before they married, and that he has paid it all back except the last £50.

They go about the rest of their tasks at the station awkwardly; when Dick accidentally bangs his leg against a bicycle, he begins to curse in a surprisingly violent manner. At the store, Mary picks up a pamphlet about beekeeping, although it is written for the English climate and is thus not very useful in Southern Rhodesia. She fans herself with it, and scrutinizes her memory of the man’s tone during his brief exchange with Dick. She has begun to notice things about Dick that she hadn’t previously, signs of “weakness,” such as the tremor of his hands.

Back at home, Mary finds Dick intensely absorbed in the pamphlet. After supper, he begins to make calculations, and eventually asks her with boyish happiness what she thinks about the prospect of getting bees. He resolves to go see Charlie about the matter the next morning. When Dick returns, he is whistling in a false pretence of happiness. He explains that Charlie shut down the beekeeping idea because his brother-in-law failed at it, but adds that this doesn’t mean they will fail. Dick then goes out to his tree plantation; while Charlie disproves of it, this is Dick’s favorite part of his farm. He stands here for hours, thinking about bees, before realizing that he is neglecting his work and reluctantly going to join the laborers. At lunchtime, he tells Mary that the bees could make them £200 a year; this surprises her, but she does not argue with him.

Dick spends the next month in a reverie of devotion to the beekeeping project. He builds 20 hives himself and plants special grass, but he is not able to draw the bees over to the hives, and gets badly stung. Mary is relieved when Dick forgets about the whole thing, until six months later when he goes through the same process with pigs. This time, Mary warns him about “castles in the air,” but to no avail. Dick builds the pigsties in the rocks behind the house and shows them to Mary, who notes that the structure is unbearably hot. Dick is defensive of his tactic, and Mary doesn’t push it.

Before the pigs arrive, Dick reads that curdled milk produces better bacon than fresh, so he leaves milk out, where it soon begins to gather flies and make the house smell. Then the pigs die almost immediately after arriving. Dick says they must have been diseased, but Mary responds that they simply “disliked being roasted before their time.” Dick is grateful for the chance to laugh at this joke.

Mary, on the other hand, is far from amused. She has realized that two options lie before her: drive herself crazy with anger at Dick, or repress this anger and silently “grow bitter.” Mary chooses the latter option, although she at times struggles to control her emotions. A few months after the pigs, Mary sees Dick standing on the veranda with the same look of boyish enthusiasm on his face. She tries to reassure herself that the season has been good so far, but her heart sinks when Dick begins talking about buying turkeys.

During Dick’s “turkey obsession,” he hardly goes to the fields at all, instead staying near the house building brick enclosures for the birds and arranging the purchase of the expensive equipment needed to raise them. However, just after buying the turkeys he changes his mind and decides to use the enclosures for rabbits, even though people in South Africa do not eat rabbit meat. At this point, Mary loses her temper and exhausts herself in a fit of rage, to which Dick sarcastically responds, “Ok, boss.”

Mary sells the turkeys and buys chickens for the enclosures, telling Dick she will use whatever chicken money she can get to buy herself some new clothes. Dick ignores this statement, and soon flatly tells her that he plans to open a “kaffir store” on the farm. He argues that kaffir stores are “gold mines of profit.” Mary quietly points out that there is a kaffir store nearby—how will Dick attract customers?—but Dick is defiant. He acquires a trading license and builds the store, the sight of which Mary resents, viewing it as a bad omen.

Mary sinks into a depression, thinking about the fact that the bee, turkey, rabbit, and store money could have bought them more rooms for the house, ceilings, and furniture. Once the store is finished, Dick is so happy that he buys 20 bicycles to sell, a risky move, as rubber rots easily. Dick then begins discussing hiring a shopkeeper for £30 a month. When Mary protests, Dick notes that he had assumed she would run the store, but Mary replies that she would rather die. Dick thinks this is because she does not want to interact with black people, but in fact it is because the store brings back too many miserable memories from her childhood.

Eventually Mary agrees to work in the store. In the morning, groups of native women and their children sit calmly outside the store, and Mary watches them with rage and disgust. Mary serves them irritably, shouting at them to hurry up as they look through the store’s goods. The final straw comes when the bicycles do not sell and all rot, costing them another £50. Overall, the store does not bring in much money. In the afternoons, Mary sleeps for hours, dreaming about her life before she was “forced” to get married. In this midst of this period, she begins thinking of running away. Although she worries about hurting Dick, she comes to disregard this, believing that if she only gets on the train and returns to town her life will be restored to its previous state. One day, reading the newspaper, she notices that her old firm has placed an ad for a shorthand typist. The next day she packs a suitcase and leaves Dick a note saying she has gone back to her old job.

Mary carries her suitcase to the Slatters’ farm and asks Charlie to drive her to the station, explaining that Dick can’t do it because he is working. Charlie is suspicious, but agrees. Back in town, Mary is thrilled to be back in “her world.” She returns to the girls’ club, where she is reminded that they do not house married women. She then goes to a hotel before returning to her office, which has new furniture and a new crop of women working there. There she is told that the typist position has already been filled. Seeing her appearance, one of the office workers asks if she has been ill, to which she replies: “No.”

Back at the hotel, Mary tips out the coins in her purse and realizes that she does not have enough money to pay the bill. Soon after, Dick knocks on the door. He takes her hands and says: “Mary, don’t leave me.” They eat at a restaurant and return home, where Mary slips miserably back into her old routine, without even the dream of escape to comfort her. If Dick had not gotten ill a few months after this point, the narrator says, perhaps Mary herself would have died, unable to go on.