Beyond Mrs. Bentley: A study of As For Me and My House

Beyond Mrs. Bentley: a study of As For Me and My House WILFRED CUDE In his introductory remarks to the New Canadian Library edition of As For Me and My House, Professor Roy Daniells asserts that the characters and the events of the novel are to be comprehended solely in terms of the analysis of them proffered by the narrator. According to Professor Daniells, Mrs. Bentley's narrative can be accepted without the slightest reservation. Mrs. Bentley herself is "pure gold and wholly credible ." 1 She is "the more candid, selfless, and receptive soul, struggling less overtly but seeing herself, her husband, and indeed the whole situation with exquisite and painful clarity."2 This assessment of Mrs. Bentley determines what Professor Daniells has to say in his evaluation of the totality of the work. All the other characters are quite subordinate to Mrs. Bentley: their major function is to mirror her golden nature. Philip is of interest because he is "beautifully complimentary to his wife's character."3 The other central figures, "Steve, Judith, 'El Greco', even Paul," exist as "no more /than agents to reveal to us the character of the Bentleys ."4 The remaining inhabitants of Horizon merely serve "as convenient and appropriate chorus. " 5 It is not surprising that Professor Daniells cannot be completely satisfied with the results of such a mode of presentation. The novel, in his opinion, is a one-character study: although it is the product of a "voluntary limitation of range,"6 it must be censured for "an inescapable monotony contingent upon our seeing everything through Mrs. Bentley's eyes."7 As For Me and My House thereby emerges, in Professor Daniells' estimation, as an interesting minor work. The novel is of the same calibre as many another in the canon of English-Canadian fiction, but "this is inevitable in a new country whose Journal of Canadian Studies history lacks the intellectual excitements and artistic incentives of an established court and church as well as the folk materials of a settled peasantry."5 Now, it is true that Mrs. Bentley does search through the depths of her difficulties with all the honesty at her command. And it is also true that she does provide a degree of illumination to be expected from a person who is intelligent, well-educated, and articulate . Nevertheless, it does not necessarily follow that Mrs. Bentley's account of her circumstances is to be accepted without question. In fact, the reader is at fault if he does not approach her account with a number of questions. Does Ross intend Mrs. Bentley's reporting to stand without qualification ? If qualification is required, how does Ross indicate this? What purpose could Ross have in taking the novel in some measure beyond Mrs. Bentley? Would the novel have any greater significance if it actually did go beyond Mrs. Bentley? The relevance of these questions to a work like As For Me and My House should become at once apparent when one remembers that narrators in English fiction are often deliberately presented as being unreliable. Consider, for example, Swift's essay "A Modest Proposal." In this classic piece of first-person narration, Swift does not want the reader to accept the projector's proposal: rather, he wants the reader to reject the sickening idea, together with the even more repulsive basic premise that the Irish are animals, and may be treated as such. But how does he signal all this from behind the projector's account? The reader is not entitled to presume, merely from a knowledge of Swift's own life and beliefs, that Swift's views differ from those of the projector: there must be some element in the essay itself - a built-in factor - to force the reader to distrust the projector. One such element, one about which there can be little debate, lies in the arithmetic that is scattered throughout the essay. The essence of the projector's macabre proposal is economic: 3 the projector is telling the c1t1zens of the British Empire how they might convert a liability into a cash commodity. And yet, when the projector does the arithmetic connected with the conversion of people into cash...