Introducing Sinclair Ross's As for Me and My House: A Reader's Guide

Esther Fisher is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and
a former food critic for The Globe & Mail.

Woodcock, that indefatigable man of letters, has contributed yet another
scholarly appraisal to Canadian literature. In this work, he includes a
comprehensive review of Ross’s book’s critical reception,
incorporating and discussing changing attitudes toward it. Woodcock’s
book reveals as much about Canadian literary criticism as it does about
Ross’s novel.

Woodcock comments on Ross’s possible sources and influences
(including autobiography, the Bible, and American literature), on
Ross’s use of the diary form to reflect the way Canadian pioneer women
recorded their feelings and “sustain[ed] their sanity,” and on the
names of characters and places: Woodcock also considers the setting,
both natural and artificial, as background and, more significantly, as
an evocation of states of mind and being. He concludes by commenting on
the novel’s ironic nature and on the ambiguity of the ending.

He is particularly good on character, explaining how the diary reveals
Mrs. Bentley’s sense of isolation and her inner self-sufficiency, but
also her self-deception and her manipulative personality. He sees Philip
(revealed through his wife’s diary) as a frustrated artist, and, by
extension, as a symbol of the artist’s position in Canada when Ross
was writing. Woodcock also sees Philip as a rebel, defying his
congegation’s puritanical ethos and Horizon’s small-town ethos.

This work, with its annotated bibliography, will be helpful to both
teachers and students of Canadian literature. It gathers much that has
been said about As For Me and My House and it offers helpful new
insights, all in lively, straightforward prose. Such unpretentious and
clear analytical writing is a pleasure to read.