As Mary becomes weaker, she finds herself feeling endearment towards Moses. In her frailty, Mary ends up relying more and more on Moses. Mary often goes through spells of depression. Often Mary does all she can to avoid having any social proximity with him.Īfter many years living on the farm together, Dick and Mary are seen to be in a condition of deterioration. Mary does not fear her servant Moses but feels disgust and repugnance towards him. This worker, named Moses, comes to be a very important person in Mary's life when he becomes a servant in the house. Her hatred of natives results in her whipping the face of a worker because he speaks to her in English, telling her he stopped work for a drink of water. She lets them work harder, reduces their break time, and arbitrarily takes money from their pay. When Mary oversees the farm labour she is much more repressive than Dick had ever been. Mary is cross, queenly, and overtly hostile to the many house servants she has over the years. She shows contempt for the natives and finds them disgusting and animal-like. She sees herself as their master and superior. While Dick is rarely cruel to the workers that work for them, Mary is quite cruel.
Dick and Mary both often complain about the lack of work ethic among the natives that work on their farm. Mary is overtly racist, believing that whites should be masters over the native blacks.
Mary feels an intimate connection with the nature around her, though being in general rather unexplorative in nature. They do not attend social events, yet are a great topic of interest among their neighbours. Because of their poverty Dick refuses to give Mary a child. To Mary, the farm exists only to make money, while Dick goes about farming in a more idealistic way. When Dick gets sick Mary takes over the management of the farm and rages at the incompetence of her husband's farm practice. They live together an apolitical life mired in poverty. Dick and Mary are somewhat cold and distant from each other but are committed to their marriage. She moves with him to his farm and runs the household, while Dick manages the labour of the farm. Nevertheless, after overhearing an insulting remark at a party about her spinsterhood, she resolves to marry.Īfter a brief courtship, she marries Dick Turner, a white farmer struggling to make his farm profitable. She has a fine job, numerous friends, and values her independence. Mary has a content life as a single white Rhodesian (we assume, though the novel refers to both Rhodesia and the Union of South Africa simply as South Africa, while making clear the farm is in Southern Rhodesia) woman. The bulk of the novel is a flashback of Mary Turner's life up to her murder at the hand of Moses in the last chapter. After looking at the article, people behave as if the murder was very much expected. The news actually acts like an omen for other white people living in that African setting. The novel begins with a newspaper clipping about the death of Mary Turner, a white woman, killed off by her black servant Moses for money.