SOURCE: “The Face in the Window: Sunshine Sketches Reconsidered,” Studies in Canadian Literature, Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer, 1978, pp. 178-85.

In the following essay, Ferris argues that Sunshine Sketches of Little Town is a more serious and modern work than commentators have perceived and that the power of the work is found in its narrative voice. However, Ferris also points out that Leacock fails to develop the sketches to their full artistic potential.

In the final chapter of Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, the narrator turns to a “you” who is simultaneously himself and the reader and offers this advice: “No, don't bother to look at the reflection of your face in the window-pane shadowed by the night outside. Nobody could tell you now after all these years. Your face has changed. …”¹ This act of self-scrutiny, implicating both narrator and reader, is the central event of Sunshine Sketches. Through...