Patrick McEvoy-Halston f#

English 5793

Professor
ColinHill
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27oct'2005
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Critical Introduction: As For Me and tr[y House - ttt "I

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SinclairRoss's,I sfor Me and trIy Housei,excites
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literature. As we readcriticism of the work, againand againwe encountercritics who
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-^ouncetheirdelightin knowingof atleastoneCanadian
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{ v- writer-Ross-who wrote somethingwhich canand shouldunapologeticallybe labeled
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modernist. This is the broad significanceof the work: apparently,its merits are so

obvious that it "announces,"beamslike a bat signal,to all thoseinterested,that Canada

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did manageto produce a work of fiction betweenthe two wars which is not only not an u/cj9'fu'
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embarrassment,but which might well be a modernist masterpiece. Without it, it

sometimesseems,critics of Canadianliteraturewould have clear reasonto study

Victorian Canadianfiction-that is, fiction written by Carndiansduring the Victorian era

ftecausenotling more could havebeenexpectedof themFand, of course,our bounty of

postrnodemcontemporaryliterature,but would not havemuchjustification for studying

the literaturebetween"the gaps"(which really could and shouldhavebeensomuch

more.) By itself, that is, it seemsto justiff further explorationsinto the literaturewritten

betweenthe wars. (For sucha work to exist, therereally musthavebeensomething

enriching-not just stifling-about the Canadianmilieu during this time period;mustn't >
toit foo 4"tr^'f"r' pr *' iwlp '
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t, What makesit a modemistwork? To begi4 sinceit hasn't much been

commentedupon,its aristocraticto#O* nurrutor,Mrs. Bentley,views muchabouther

with evidentdisdain. Shesharesan attitude-a particularlymodern,that is, modernist

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*)t( afiitude-that the "plebs" about her aren't capable of understandingeither her or her
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'Y husband. Her disdain even makesit difficult to designatethe book as "regional

literature"; for it can be diffrcult to resist agreeingwith her (indeed,some critics seemto

be in love with her, e.g., Robert froet#h) that the particularitiesof those about her, of

thosewho populateher immediateHorizon, aren't much worth delineatingor

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understandingat all. (We might sensethe cosmopolitan modernist in her attitude toward , J-
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theunsophisticated.)
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The natural environment fs worthy of her attention, however. And it is a ravaging

environment, of the type so common in Canadian literatur{ But her descriptions of the

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

mostly interestedin her, in how sheexperiencesthe world, how she shapesthe world

about her to suit her needs. And it is also clear that shedoesdescribeher surroundingsto
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\{ suit her purposes. The elementsare more than brutal-they are, conveniently, primeval:

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

The elementsseemat times, her natural allies, but the houseshelives in wars againstn"r(

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

who built it, who previously inhabitedit, would beenthe type to despiseher should
\ave

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they have beenprivy to her innermostthoughts. Her descriptionsof the houseare,

therefore, in a sophisticatedw&y, quite realistic-however surreal. They register both her

and Ross's superiorawarenessof the psychologicaleffects of being in any particular

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env1ronment.

Numerous critics have noted that Me and My House challengesthe

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straightforward conception of time as linear. Instead,the bulk of critics arguethat the
 book suggeststhat life is eitheressentiallyplotless-that eachday canbe the sameas any
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otherparticularday, or cyclical. I'm not sureaboutthis, however.What I sensein the
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of everydaygoingson, in the repetition,is Ross'skeenawarenessof
seemingsameness 0
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psychoanalysis-particularlyof masochism.The endingthat disappointsmany critic p
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that is, the happy ending which seemsto them so false given the nature of what preceded

it, is in fact very appropriateif we, like Ross,understandhow the masochist'smind

works. The masochistdoesnot believe that happinessis somethinghe/shedeserves.It

can be made claim to, but only after much suffering. The novel showsus this sort of

processat work. Much suffering, much failing afflicts the Bentleys. This accumulation
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amountsto a kind of progression,however.That is, repetition, the lossesthe Bentley's

suffer, of their adoptedson, of their dog, for instance,is not stasis. It is instead

expansion-an expansionthe Bentley's are well aware of, and which will at somepoint

become "large enough" to wa:rant their emerging from the Horizon wastelandwhich
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enclosesthem. Eventually, after enough suffering, the masochist feels they have earned

the right to somerespite. The book, that is, delineatesfor us a very true way in which

many peopleplot there life.

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Ross is very aware of psychoanalyic theory. The encountersbetweenthe
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Bentleysregisterhis own awarenessof the sadismandmasochismin marriedlife. My

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0t ' )fu o*interest is in object-relationspsychoanalysis,andRossalso seemsto havean
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.rupf intuitive appreciationof the sort of conclusionsobject-relationstheoristshave come to

concerning people (he for instancehas Mr. Bentley note that it is important Judith not be
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upsetlest it negativelyimpactsher child's womb environment). Mrs. Bentley registers

throughouther entries,her husband'sresistanceto "capture." He seemssimultaneously

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attractedto and repelled by his wife. Object-relationstheory suggeststhat we relate to

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

sametime fear loosing our senseof selvesas separateentitieswhen we're close to them.

We fear being engulfed,caught. Mrs. Bentley's opinion, which somefeminists might

identiff as Ross's sexist assumptionconcerningwomen's ostensibleneeds,thatsheneeds

her husbandto be stronger than she is (she has a conversationwith herself throughout her

%:f. account which addressesher need to conceive of her husband as a natural leader), to be

able to resist her, is also not a surpriseto those familiar with object-relationstheory; for

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this theory holds (at least accordingto one of its foremosttheorists,Margaret Mahler)

that women, more than men, have difficulties separatingthemselvesfrom their same-
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sexedmothers, ffid seek out strong men to assistthem in managing this. Latched on to
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strongmen, that is, they feel less likely to being overwhelmedby feelings of

fi'rfnf powerlessness,of feeling as if they are still caught in the maternal matrix. In short, if we

%,-d are being offered sexist fair in this novel, it is at the very leastupdated,sophisticated

4 sexist fair----exactlywhat we would expect from a modernist work

Work Cited

Ross,Sinclair. As For Me and My House. Toronto: McClelland and Stew art, 1989.

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