Critical Introduction--As For Me (Original version)

8/14/2019 Critical Introduction--As For Me (Original version)

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Patrick McEvoy-Halston

English 5793

Professor Colin Hill

27 Oct. 2005

Critical Introduction: As For Me and My House

Sinclair Rosss,As for Me and My House, excites many critics of Canadian

literature. As we read criticism of the work, again and again we encounter critics who

make use of their essays to announce their delight in knowing of at least one Canadian

writerRosswho wrote something which can and should unapologetically be labeled

modernist. This is the broad significance of the work: apparently, its merits are so

obvious that it announces, beams like a bat signal, to all those interested, that Canada

did manage to produce a work of fiction between the two wars which is not only not an

embarrassment, but which might well be a modernist masterpiece. Without it, it

sometimes seems, critics of Canadian literature would have clear reason to study

Victorian Canadian fictionthat is, fiction written by Canadians during the Victorian

era (because nothing more could have been expected of them)and, of course, our

bounty of postmodern contemporary literature, but would not have much justification for

studying the literature between the gaps (which really could and should have been so

much more.) By itself, that is, it seems to justify further explorations into the literature

written between the wars. (For such a work to exist, there really must have been

something enrichingnot just stiflingabout the Canadian milieu during this time

period; mustnt there?)

What makes it a modernist work? To begin, since it hasnt much been

commented upon, its aristocratic tone. Our narrator, Mrs. Bentley, views much about her


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with evident disdain. She shares an attitudea particularly modern, modernist attitude

that the plebs about her arent capable of understanding either her or her husband. Her

disdain even makes it difficult to designate the book as regional literature; for it can be

difficult to resist agreeing with her (indeed, some critics seem to be in love with her, e.g.,

Robert Kroetsch) that the particularities of those about her, of those who populate her

immediate Horizon, arent much worth delineating or understanding at all. (We might

sense the cosmopolitan modernist in her attitude toward the unsophisticated.)

The natural environment is worthy of her attention, however. And it is a ravaging

environment, of the type so common in Canadian literature. But her descriptions of the

elements tell us more about her than about her surroundings. And it is clear that Ross is

mostly interested in her, in how she experiences the world, how she shapes the world

about her to suit her needs. And it is also clear that she does describe her surroundings to

suit her purposes. The elements are more than brutalthey are, conveniently, primeval:

that is, they are fundamentally opposite in nature to the human community she so loathes.

The elements seem at times, her natural allies, but the house she lives in wars against her.

She thinks it hates her, as she hates it. And it does, in a sense, hate her: that is, those

who built it, who previously inhabited it, would have been the type to despise her should

they have been privy to her innermost thoughts. Her descriptions of the house are,

therefore, in a sophisticated way, quite realistichowever surreal. They register both her

and Rosss superior awareness of the psychological effects of being in any particular

environment.

Numerous critics have noted that Me and My House challenges the

straightforward conception of time as linear. Instead, the bulk of critics argue that the

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book, like life, is essentially plotlessthat each day can be the same as any other

particular day. Im not sure about this, however. What I sense in the seeming sameness

of everyday goings on, in the repetition, is Rosss keen awareness of psychoanalysis

particularly of masochism. The ending that disappoints many critics, that is, the happy

ending which seems to them so false given the nature of what preceded in, is in fact very

appropriate if we, like Ross, understand how the masochists mind works. The masochist

does not believe that happiness is something he/she deserves. It can be made claim to,

but only after much suffering. The novel shows us this sort of process at work. Much

suffering, much failing afflicts the Bentleys. This accumulation amounts to a kind of

progression, however. That is, repetition, the losses the Bentleys suffer, of their adopted

son, of their dog, for instance, is not stasis. It is instead expansionan expansion the

Bentleys are well aware of, and which will at some point become large enough to

warrant their emerging from the Horizon wasteland which encloses them. Eventually,

after enough suffering, the masochist feels they have earned the right to some respite.

Ross is very aware of psychoanalytic theory. The encounters between the

Bentleys register his own awareness of the sadism and masochism in married life. My

own interest is in object-relations psychoanalysis, and Ross also seems to have an

intuitive appreciation of the sort of conclusions object-relations theorists have come to

concerning people (he for instance has Mr. Bentley note that it is important Judith not be

upset lest it negatively impacts her childs womb environment). Mrs. Bentley registers

throughout her entries, her husbands resistance to capture. He seems simultaneously

attracted to and repelled by his wife. Object-relations theory suggests that we relate to

our partners as we once related to our mothers. We desire to be close to them, but at the

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same time fear loosing our sense of selves as separate entities when were close to them.

We fear being engulfed, caught. Mrs. Bentleys opinion, which some feminists might

identify as Rosss sexist assumption concerning womens ostensible needs, that she needs

her husband to be stronger than she is (she has a conversation with herself throughout her

account which addresses her need to conceive of her husband as a natural leader), to be

able to resist her, is also not a surprise to those familiar with object-relations theory; for

this theory holds (at least according to one of its foremost theorists, Margaret Mahler)

that women, more than men, have difficulties separating themselves from their same-

sexed mothers, and seek out strong men to assist them in managing this. Latched on to

strong men, that is, they feel less likely to being overwhelmed by feelings of

powerlessness, of being forever trapped in the maternal matrix. In short, if we are being

offered sexist fair in this novel, it is at the very least updated, sophisticated sexist fair.

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Critical Introduction--As For Me (Original version)