As For Me and My Essay By: Cory Boucher ENG 2400

Sinclair Rosss As For Me and My House leaves many of the actions in it to be interpreted by the reader. Since Ross has decided to use a first-person narrator, the events that she describes are not objective but subjective. Therefore the reader can never truly know the absolute truth about any actions or events described in the novel. Many of the literary critics of the novel tend to then focus on the character through whose eyes the audience sees all of the actions of the novel take place, Mrs. Bentley. The two articles assigned, represent the two points of view that most critics seem to take, they are either pro-Philip or pro-Mrs. Bentley. In Anne Comptons article As If I Really Mattered: The Narrator of Sinclair Rosss As For Me and My House, she attempts to defend Mrs. Bentleys actions as those of a hopelessly oppressed victim. Evelyn Hinz and John Teunissen take a different stand on the novel, they wish to prove that Mrs. Bentley is like a cancer to Philip, ruining everything he could be. In their article, Whos the father of Mrs. Bentleys Child? As For Me and My House and the Conventions of Dramatic Monologue, they show that the novel is a dramatic monologue and that Mrs. Bentley purposefully manipulates her retelling of events to gain sympathy and absolve herself of her past actions. While these two articles are confident in their opinions, they argue their points inconclusively and lack adequate proof in defending their theses. In Anne Comptons article she begins by quoting many other authors to show the general literary consensus on their attitudes towards Mrs. Bentley. The many derogatory comment that she quotes give an impression on the reader that the narrator is culpable for

3 manipulating all of the events of the novel as well as the people in it. Among their many arguments, the other literary criticisms that Compton references a dispute over the main character of the novel. Compton claims that this makes no difference as investigations of the narrator ultimately become accounts of Philip, but as Sandra Djwa adds to this by saying that the focus, therefore is on the man, Philip, but it is on Philip in his relation to his perceiver, Mrs. Bentley (Compton, As If I Really Mattered, 1). Compton then returns to quoting other critics that go so far as to brand the narrator Mrs. Bentley as a biased filtering eye, an imperial narrator, and far from gold (Compton, As If I Really Mattered, 2). In the final part of the introductory section of her essay, Compton fully states her thesis. She tells the reader that she wishes to rehabilitate Mrs. Bentley like she were a convict that Compton would like to reintegrate into society and be someone people come to respect (Compton, As If I Really Mattered, 2). Compton then enters the first main point of her essay in which she tries to remove blame from Mrs. Bentley for being a manipulator. She justifies her aggression and her management of people and emotions, by looking at them as the acts of a powerless woman, a powerlessness reinforced by Ross and the Western cultural notion of women. (Compton, As If I Really Mattered, 5). She feels that the actions of Mrs. Bentley are just the desperate acts of a woman lashing out at her captors and that while she is the keeper, or warden, of this journal, the warden here is hostage to the prisoners needs (Compton, As If I Really Mattered, 5). The second main point of the article deals with the ironic nature of the Mrs. Bentley character as a prisoner who imprisons and a watcher who is herself watched (Compton, As If I Really Mattered, 5). Compton uses the example of the elements as

4 one of the oppressive forces against Mrs. Bentley. The attempted invasion of the elements into her small shelter of a house makes her feel like the walls are closing in on her and she is being slowly squeezed into nothingness. This is especially dangerous to her because of the lack of a bond with her husband. The nothingness is encroaching in on her life and threatens to swallow her whole. Compton then goes on to discuss the various attentions that Philip has throughout the novel (Steve, Judith, painting) that are external to Mrs. Bentley. These interests of Philips are detrimental to Mrs. Bentley and her vision of future marital happiness because either way (flesh or art), he is tuned from his wife (Compton, As If I Really Mattered, 7). Compton feels that Mrs. Bentley is looking to get on with domesticity and that, in the end, she does not change their lives through her scheme of saving for a bookstore; she changes their lives by changing herself (Compton, As If I Really Mattered, 9). In the final section of her essay, Compton uses the end of the novel as a basis to assume that Mrs. Bentley has changed through the rehashing of the events of the past year in journal form and rebuilt herself and overcome her pettiness in an attempt to find true happiness. Compton feels that the basic human need, to be seen, to matter, to live and in living to count, is what Mrs. Bentley has been striving for her whole married life (Compton, As If I Really Mattered, 9). She feels that Mrs. Bentley has undergone a transformation by the end of the novel and has found worth in her life. Compton forgives Mrs. Bentley as one who identifies the threats to her happiness and deal with them. Comptons argument is as convincing as her thesis, which states that it is an attempt to prove something and, lacking enough proof, will look at the subject in a broad terms in an attempt to find scraps of truth in the broad to justify a specific case. While she

5 does take a different point of view from her narrator-demonizing colleagues, she does not cogently absolve Mrs. Bentley but instead touches upon different issues in an effort to garner support. While the points she makes about the nothingness that threatens to swallow Mrs. Bentley in her relationship with her husband is solid, her other points do not cogently follow the same logic and fail to prove anything. While I personally agree with Compton's underlying statement that critics are much too harsh on Mrs. Bentley as a manipulator and a purposely-deceitful character, Compton does not convince the reader with her argument of Mrs. Bentley as a poor, defenceless victim of oppression who reacts with pettiness to defend herself, this absolves her of nothing, only appeals to the sympathy of the reader for mercy. Hinz and Teunissen take a much different approach to the subject of the journalbased narrative. They see Ross novel as a dramatic monologue. These critics feel that Mrs. Bentleys journal is written for an audience, and can be taken as an attempt to present a case to the reader in an effort to be absolved of her guilt. They compare the narrator of As For Me and My House with other narratives whom give us not merely a biased observer but one with a guilty conscience (Hinz and Teunissen, Who is the Father of Mrs. Bentleys Child?, 1). They see this style of narrative as that of someone with a guilty conscience who wants to get caught a style accompanied by the inadvertent revelation of evidence and the projection onto others of ones own motives and the inadvertent trapping of oneself in contradictions (Hinz and Teunissen, Who is the Father of Mrs. Bentleys Child?, 1). They feel that Mrs. Bentley is a very hypocritical woman, as shown by her false fronts, and that Ross is inviting the reader to look deeper into the narrative to find Mrs. Bentleys hypocritical actions that she will not

6 acknowledge to herself and, by extension, her journal. They use her paranoia and the apparent pressures she feels from the environment as admissions of some sort of past or present guilt that she does not relay to the audience. In the first part of their essay they address the false front that Mrs. Bentley erected before she married Philip. They feel that Philips constantly withdrawing to his study is demonstrative of his unhappiness with the direction that the marriage has taken. Hinz and Teunissen think that Philip was unaware of the true woman he was marrying as she erected false fronts before the wedding. In Mrs. Bentleys recollection of meeting Philip, she tells the reader how she abandoned the piano and that Philip became the main thing in her life. Hinz and Teunissen view this passage as a temporary change in the character of Mrs. Bentley, one that would hurt their marriage later on because Philip was marrying a Mrs. Bentley much different than the woman who he lives with during the passage of the novel. The article then moves on to discuss the matter of the stillborn child. Mrs. Bentley presents the stillbirth as the cause for her guilt in the marriage and her need to make it up to Philip. However, according to these two critics, in a dramatic monologue the original explanation for guilt is a misleading one. They think that this is an attempt to divert the blame from another action, one much more devastating. Mrs. Bentley tells the audience that on the night Philip proposed, he came to her erect and white-lipped and asked her to marry him, such a description sounds less like that of a lover and more like that of a man who has steeled himself against his natural inclinations (Hinz and Teunissen, Who is the Father of Mrs. Bentleys Child?, 4). Hinz and Teunissen go on to insinuate that at the time of the proposal, Mrs. Bentley was pregnant. They then use her obscurity

7 over the birth date of the child and the amount of time that the two have been married to find that the baby had been conceived out of wedlock. Hinz and Teunissen then turn all of the blame that the Bentleys place on the church and the trapped feeling that they get onto Mrs. Bentley and the two of them being trapped into a marriage because she got pregnant. They go on to explain that Mrs. Bentley wants to replace the child that she feels responsible for losing. This is why she does not approve the adoption of Steve because it would not have [balanced] the moral score; to alleviate her guilt it is necessary for her to be in the position of the wronged party (Hinz and Teunissen, Who is the Father of Mrs. Bentleys Child?, 5). They use this hypothesis to explain why instead of being bitter about Philips adultery she responds as if she were the guilty one (Hinz and Teunissen, Who is the Father of Mrs. Bentleys Child?, 6). They then go further to assert that her narrative creates the impression that if she did not somehow engineer the adultery she was nevertheless waiting for something like this to happen (Hinz and Teunissen, Who is the Father of Mrs. Bentleys Child?, 6). The two authors then change the subject and defend Philip, claiming that the proof of his unfaithfulness is unfounded. One of their key points is that the Bentleys sexual relationship improves just as Philip is supposed to be with Judith. Because of the questionability of Mrs. Bentleys episode where she hears the little laugh, there is no real proof that Philip has committed adultery. The only real proof is that Philip refuses to explicitly deny the allegations brought forth by Mrs. Bentley. Hinz and Teunissen discuss this guilt in the keeping in mind the guilt that they think Philip must feel over making his wife assume so much of the blame. They ask the question does he see in going along

8 with her assumption that he is an adulterer a way of regaining sexual stature in her eyes? (Hinz and Teunissen, Who is the Father of Mrs. Bentleys Child?, 7). They then recall the story that Mrs. Bentley tells of her former lover Percy Glenn. The way that she describes their relationship through music leaves much room for interpretation and can easily be read as a list of sexual euphemisms. Hinz and Teunissen then bring the readers attention to the fact that after speaking to Percy, Mrs. Bentley smothers Philip with love, however at the end of the novel, she views Philip's loving actions towards her as admissions of guilt. Hinz and Teunissen point out this double standard and further question the guilt that Mrs. Bentley feels about her former lover and why she still feels this guilt, years after being married. Hinz and Teunissen then finish their article with the discussion of the opinions of two other authors. David Williams and Paul Denham. They use the Williams article to question the role of Paul and the paternity of Judiths child. Williams brings to attention the possibility that Mr. Finley may be the child of the newly adopted Bentley baby. They list several incidents, including the church sale where Mr. Finley ends up buying the rompers from Mrs. Bentley that are meant to brand Mr. Finley as a fornicator and to create another potential father for the child at the end of the novel. Denham argues that the novel fails as a diary entry style novel. He claims that Mrs. Bentleys apparent disregard for true facts, such as the lack of the eleven-year drought she speaks of, change the novel from truthful journal entries into something else entirely, Hinz and Teunissens dramatic monologue. While they have a well-structured and rather persuasive argument, ultimately the reader must choose to disregard the main points in the Hinz and Teunissen essay. Most of

9 their proof is based on actions that are omitted from the journal. They find facts in the negative, looking into what Mrs. Bentley cannot bring herself to tell the reader. The danger with these assumptions however, is that they are just that, assumptions. They are only possibilities and are not backed up by solid fact. The omissions in the journal do not necessarily mean that their theories are correct and in some cases their arguments sound like the ramblings of conspiracy theorists. Hinz and Teunissen tend to lay the blame for everything that is wrong squarely on the shoulders of Mrs. Bentley. They go to far in criticizing her actions and assuming the evil intentions of the whore of Babylon (Hinz and Teunissen, Who is the Father of Mrs. Bentleys Child?, 5). One example where they unjustly blame Mrs. Bentley is in the pregnancy and stillbirth of their conceived child. They rest the blame for the marriage and the lack of children on her shoulders, and grave injustice. The fact that Mrs. Bentley got pregnant was most definitely the work of the two people, not just Mrs. Bentley, which would be biologically impossible. As for the stillbirth, this does not mean that either of the married parties is infertile, it just means there was a complication beyond the control of the two. Hinz and Teunissen are too harsh on Mrs. Bentley and paint the picture of Philip with a much different brush, showing a certain bias while trying to place the blame for this unhappy marriage. While both of the articles present new theories on Sinclair Ross highly interpretive novel, neither fully or persuasively argues their point and the reader is left to their original opinion which they formulated when they read the book. Their opinions were quite good, but their proof was non-existent or, in thee case of Hinz and Teunissen, was based on drawing incredibly detailed information out of absences in the novel. As

10 For Me and My House is a highly interpretive novel, which leaves much of the facts up to the reader to discern. Because of its first-person narration, every observation and fact presented is biased and possibly misinterpretation or an outright lie. Sinclair Ross novel can be read many different ways because of the style it is written in, these two authors lack the necessary proof to persuade the reader to look at the novel in a new light.

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Works Cited Compton, Anne. As If I Really Mattered: The Narrator of Sinclair Rosss As For Me and My House. Studies in Canadian Literature. University of New Brunswick, n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2011.

Hinz, Evelyn J., and John J. Teunissen. Who is the Father of Mrs. Bentleys Child? As For Me and My House and the Conventions of Dramatic Monologue. Canadian Literature. University of British Columbia, n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2011