The Grass Is Singing

Life on the farm was even worse than before. She no longer had her daydreams of the town to keep her going. She knew now that there was nothing there for her. This was the beginning of the end for Mary. She could no longer feel. She could no longer fight.

She disliked the native men but she hated the women, with their soft brown bodies and their questioning faces. She could see a group of them outside the shop now, waiting for it to open. She hated the way they sat there in the grass with their breasts hanging down for everyone to see, looking as if they did not care whether the shop opened today or tomorrow. But what really made Mary angry was that they always looked so satisfied and calm.

Of course she had no respect for Dick as a husband, as a man, but that did not matter... not to her anyway.

Deep inside she was building up a great anger and hatred, not only against the native who had left, but against all natives.

... in fact she had never thought of natives as needing to eat at all.

He was quite an old-fashioned man in many ways, and he did not feel comfortable with women wearing trousers.

His dream was to marry and have children, but he could not ask any woman to share such a life. Not until he could afford to build a new house and pay for some small luxuries.

It could have been anybody - or rather, anybody who treated her as if she were wonderful and special. She needed that badly.

Life is never as one expects it to be, after all.

And that 'white society' could never, ever admit that a white person, and particularly a white woman, can have a human relationship, good or evil, with a black person. For as soon as it admits that, it falls.

The Turners were not just poor whites; they were, after all, British!

People all over the country must have read the short report and felt angry and yet satisfied, as if their strong beliefs about the natives had been proved correct. When natives steal, murder or attack women, that is the feeling white people have.

Тони пока что еще не начал зарабатывать себе на жизнь, а потому мыслил исключительно абстракциями.

Однако, рано или поздно, все женщины начинают ощущать неосязаемую, но вместе с тем неумолимую потребность выйти замуж.

Успехи Мэри еще больше усугубили его неуверенность в самом себе.

Когда меняется хозяин, всегда жди беды.

Человек не может работать по двенадцать часов в день и после этого находить в себе достаточно сил для занятий.

Время бежало быстро, устремляясь вперед, как это часто случается в те времена, когда в жизни человека наступают переломные моменты, которые потом, если оглянуться назад, представляются горами, рубежами, отделившими один этап от другого.

Она не имела ни малейшего представления о жизни в других странах – ей не с чем было сравнивать.