Abstract
This paper aims to discuss how the protagonist’s subjectivity can be achieved in Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing by reading it from a Kristevan perspective. To this end, it explores the relationships of abjection that the poor white female subject Mary has with patriarchal white community and colonized black natives respectively. On the level of personal archeology, abjection is the process through which an infant begins to develop a sense of a discrete “I” by rejecting and expelling the maternal abject; on the socio-historical level, abjection is the matrix on which societies are founded and maintain their identities by constructing boundaries and jettisoning the antisocial abjects. Under the influences of double-bound abjection operating by cross-hatched intersection of race and gender conflicts, Mary is pushed out as abject by the white community, but at the same time casts Moses as abject. However, as Mary develops an intimate relationship with Moses, she realizes that alterity she repudiates can exist without being repressed or expelled, and that she can be constituted as a mature subject only by recognizing and embracing alterity within herself.
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