An analysis of the works of Sinclair Ross
“In a modernist fashion, Ross’s stylistic-narrative economy transforms external incidents and images into symbolic, indirect expressions of the characters’ inner states” (Nischik 11). Sinclair Ross wrote short stories and novels produce a graceful bend that is evidence of his status of professional fiction methods. His short stories have a nice plot and a rich symbolic prototype (Nischik 106). Most of the short stories were printed during the Depression and the warfare, these works made a significant contribution to establish the author’s literary reputation (New 168, 2003).
The contribution of short stories into the writer’s reputation
The film “The Painted Door” is based on the story of the book of the same name. It shows a “sexually starved woman’s betrayal of her husband during an unusually vicious winter night and her horrifying manner of discovering that her husband had found out” (Beard 31). The film is worth making a mention of an extremely obvious symbol of the straining in the drama. The heroine is worried about her husband leaving into the storm, while she feels fear for him and insufficiency; both feelings are underestimated and less ardent than words. “In the depth of the Depression, painting the dark wood yellow was an appropriate symbol of the wife’s longing for a more relaxed and brightened life, yet the even slap-slap of the paint also indicates the monotony of the day passing” (Miller 230). Thus, the fresh yellow paint on the heroine’s husband’s mitten symbolizes her guilt, and makes us believe in her indirect complicacy to her husband’s death.
It is thought-provoking whether men and women experience loneliness differently and whether marital status causes loneliness. It is socially important that loneliness is investigated with a view to physical, behavioral, and emotional problems. Loneliness is invertedly connected with standards of self-respect and is displayed as a feeling or state that is mightily bound to discomfort, worry, and enmity between persons and with essence insult, suicide, and inclination to health problems (Rokach 15).
Comments on the screen version of “The Painted Door”
The short story “The Painted Door” by Sinclair Ross apprehends depriving of spirit presence feeling of solitude and irony entireness to the author’s severe stories (New 364, 2002). A provisionally left wife takes a lover for one night and the story extends with the problem of excitement and guilt. This woman is for some time released from the deterrence ennui of her life by one night of adultery with her neighbor. Then the woman feels a Puritan guilt before her husband, the part of that guilt is pictured by the spirit of labour (Stouck 93). The woman who feels loneliness while being temporarily abandoned by her husband is sure to be compromised by things she makes, by her actions. The woman should not be alone, she is to be admired, should experience new delightful emotions. The heroine was unfaithful to her husband, and understood his significance only after his death in a blizzard.
Works Cited
Beard, William, and Jerry White. North of everything: English-Canadian cinema since 1980. Canadian electronic library. University of Alberta, 2002.
Miller, Jane Mary, CBC Enterprises. Turn up the contrast: CBC television drama since 1952. Canadian electronic library. UBC Press, 1987.
New, H. William. A history of Canadian literature. Literary critism. Canadian electronic library. McGill-Queen’s Press – MQUP, 2003.
New, H. William. Encyclopedia of literature in Canada. University of Toronto Press, 2002.
Nischik, M. Reingard. The Canadian short story: interpretations. European studies in American literature and culture. Boydell & Brewer, 2007.
Rokach, Ami, and Heather Brock. “Loneliness and the Effects of Life Changes”. Journal of Psychology 131 (1997): 15.
Stouck, David. As for Sinclair Ross. University of Toronto Press, 2005.