The Master of the Mill is a 1946 novel by German-Canadian writer Frederick Philip Grove (1879 – 1948). The story takes place in northwestern Ontario in 1938 but via recollections, it spans several generations of the Clark family, who own a flour mill. While the Clark family introduced mechanization of their flour mill to make workers’ lives easier, the automation ended up creating a cold, isolated life for employees. The novel explores the impact of colonization and industrialization in the late nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth century in North America and it examines themes of the "Promised Land". ideal." In Salvator Proietti's article in Science Fiction Studies, he calls the novel an example of pastoral utopianism.[1]

Plot

A respected, wealthy humanitarian and botanist, Senator Samuel Clark, recounts his life's memories as he nears the end of his life. While his time as a botanist had been a time of contribution to society, as he developed new types of plants, he feels guilty about creating a mechanized flour mill which led to his father and his son becoming dominated by their service to the company and its machines. Clark feels saddened that the Clark family's efforts to reduce the burden of work by automation of the flour mill ended up turning humans into cogs, taking away their independence and giving them relatively cold, empty lives. By the end of the novel, Clark finds a spark of hope that the human spirit can be rekindled.

Reception

The Canadian Encyclopedia calls it a “painstakingly researched, prophetic attempt to trace the effects of industrial mechanization on individuals, societies and civilization”. As well, the novel has been “criticized for being too technically demanding, with its frequently shifting time frame and points of view, and its complicated subplots.” Grove's background research for the novel was done in 1928, when he did a detailed study of the flour-milling industry.[2] Robin Mathews' 1982 article on the novel, which analyzes the eight versions of the book, finds that “Nietzsche's "will in history" is manifested in various ways, and is less or more apparent in different versions of the novel.”[3] In Grove's reading of modern society in North America the "pastoral ethos" in which people give up their "worldly striving in favor of a simpler, more contemplative life" (as set out in Leo Marx's works), but it also cannot be an "expansionist and Jeffersonian "industrialized version of the pastoral ideal."[4]

Further reading

  • Keith, W. J. “F. P. Grove's "Difficult" Novel”. 1973-04-01. Vol. 4 No. 2 (1973): April 1973.

References

  1. ↑ Proietti, Salvator. "Frederick Philip Grove's Version of Pastoral Utopias". Science Fiction Studies, Number 58 = Volume 19, Part 3 = November 1992.
  2. ↑ McMullin, Stanley E. “Grove and the Promised Land” in ‘’Canadian Literary Review’’, 1971.
  3. ↑ Mathews, R. (1982). F.P. Grove: An Important Version of The Master Of the Mill Discovered. Studies in Canadian Literature, 7(2). Retrieved from https://journals.lib.unb.ca
  4. ↑ Proietti, Salvator. "Frederick Philip Grove's Version of Pastoral Utopias". Science Fiction Studies, Number 58 = Volume 19, Part 3 = November 1992.
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