Exclusion of Women in Sherwood Anderson Writings

Section I: Life and times of Sherwood Anderson

A prolific writer, Anderson published eight novels, four collections of short stories, autobiographical works, poems, plays, and essays. Critics agree that his reputation rests on his influential short fiction, although his stories seem to range greatly in quality. Anderson published his most important and influential work, Winesburg, Ohio, when he was forty-three years of age. By 1926, after two novels were panned by the critics, his critical reputation suffered. Although Anderson's style is modernist, his themes and subject matter are not, which led him to be considered as old-fashioned or irrelevant before his time.

Soon after Anderson's death, there was a renewed critical interest in his work. In the 1940s several anthologies of his fiction appeared and the first two biographies of Anderson were published. In his critical study Sherwood Anderson, Rex Bur-bank asserted, “No other writer has portrayed so movingly the emerging consciousness of the culturally underprivileged Midwesterner with neither condescension nor satiric caricature.”

The fact that Anderson's reputation was in decline may have influenced the early reviews of 1933's Death in the Woods and Other Stories. Reviewers of the book were tepid in their praise.

“This collection of short stories neither augment nor diminish the affection with which America regards Sherwood Anderson,” maintained T. S. Matthews of the New Republic.

Matthews continued: “The almost childish une-venness of his performance, shown in most of his earlier books, is echoed in Death in the Woods; but as almost always there are compensating high spots.” Many critics singled out the title story as one such “high spot” As Louis Kronenberger contended: “In a few of the short stories here there are a simplicity and tenderness, there are evocations of phrases and moments in American life which, as things go, are the real thing.”

In the opinion of Ray Lewis White, editor of The Achievement of Sherwood Anderson: In only one case were critics of Anderson's later work seriously wrong in their judgment. Death in the Woods (1933), Anderson's last collection of short stories, contains works that are among our finest short fiction. . . . Perhaps because these were stories and not extended writing, Anderson recaptured the tender charm of Winesburg, Ohio, The Triumph of the Egg, and Horses and Men.

Other critics also consider this volume as one of Anderson's best, and singled out “Death in the Woods” for special praise. Writing in the introduction to the Portable Sherwood Anderson, Horace Gregory described the story as a “masterpiece'': Beyond any other story that Anderson wrote,” Gregory opines, [“Death in the Woods”] “was the summing up of a lifetime's experience, and in its final version it became Anderson's last look backward into the Middle West of his childhood.” Recent Anderson criticism has explored the themes and mechanics of the story, with special attention to the narrator's point of view.

Section II: Summary of characters, settings, plots and symbols of each story

Death in the Woods

Sherwood Anderson published early versions of ''Death in the Woods'' as a ...