structured life School becomes her happiest memory Later this education helps her get an office job But her childhood also leaves scars She fears marriage and family because of her parents fights Independent Working Life in Town After school Mary became a secretary in a small town She works in an office earns money and enjoys life She lives in a girls club plays games goes to the cinema and has many friends She feels independent and respected Mary avoids marriage at this stage She enjoys freedom She does not want children because she remembers her mother s pain When her friends gossip about her age she feels uneasy They whisper She s not fifteen any longer it is ridiculous Someone should tell her about her clothes This social pressure later pushes her to marry Marriage with Dick Turner and Farm Life Mary marries Dick Turner a poor farmer At first she hopes for love and security But soon she sees his poverty Dick cannot make money Their farm is bare and broken Mary feels trapped in the small house She becomes bitter and angry She quarrels with Dick She shouts at the servants Her loneliness grows The strong happy Mary of the town disappears She becomes nervous sick and broken This shows her development from an independent woman to a ruined wife Mary s Feminist Spirit and Struggles Mary s life shows her feminist side but also her weakness She hates her father s domination over her mother She believes women should not suffer like her mother did She works happily in town She earns her own money She has avoided marriage for many years But society does not accept her independence People judge her because she is unmarried at thirty So she marries Dick In marriage she has no freedom She must obey her role as a farmer s wife Her feminist spirit is crushed Lessing shows how women s ideals are destroyed in colonial society Relationship with Moses and Death Mary s final tragedy is her relationship with Moses the black servant At first she beats and insults him Later when she becomes sick and weak she depends on him She even lets him touch her forehead when she has a fever This is shocking for colonial society Her secret closeness with Moses breaks the racial line Whites like Charlie Slatter and Sergeant Denham cannot accept it The narrator explains White civilization which will never never admit that a white person and most particularly a white woman can have a human relationship whether for good or for evil with a black person In the end Moses kills her Mary dies alone on the veranda Her life shows a woman crushed by loneliness social rules and fear Mary Turner is a tragic figure In childhood she saw her mother s misery As a young woman she enjoys freedom but marriage brings poverty and loneliness Society breaks her feminist spirit Her bond with Moses ends in death Through Mary Lessing shows the suffering of women in the colonial world