Recognition is an endurance battle

     For a lot of writers, recognition is gained after they pass away. Elizabeth Madox Roberts, however, received the opposite effect. Releasing her first novel The Time of Man in 1926 at the age of forty five, she received praise from the New York Times stating there had never been a finer first novel published in the States for many years (Harrison 325). She went on to have a prestigious career especially in the 20’s and 30’s where she received many awards such as the John Reed Memorial Prize in 1928, an O. Henry award in 1930, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina's prize in 1931 ("elizabeth-madox-roberts.co.tv"). Her fame started to fade towards the end of her life and she died in 1941 less recognized than when she released her first novel in 1926. In looking at her writings in her final collection Not by Strange Gods published the year she died, I will examine the reasons I think her fame did not endure. I will explore her writing style, aspects of her personal life, and the timing of her final work’s release, and how all these factors combined to eliminate Roberts from the literary canon over the years. In my analysis of Robert’s final works, I will examine The Haunted Palace.

     Roberts was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease in 1936. I feel this may have contributed to her falling from the spotlight in her final years. She moved to Florida during this period of her life during the winter months as it was warmer. I feel her illness was definitely a contributing factor to her later unrecognized work. I think Roberts stories are very challenging and would be very difficult to construe for the average reader. In The Haunted Palace, it is hard to make any connection between you as the reader and the main character Jess. Robert’s writing style is written in a firm rich-surfaced prose (Norton). Roberts preferred to describe things as if the reader is in the moment and so she pays attention to many small details that make the moment more real: “[u]sually it seems a living movement suited to the patterns that Miss Roberts found in life, intricate patterns sometimes dim to the reader, but, to judge by what he can see of them, designs of truth” (Norton).

     Looking more closely at the text I felt I had a connection with Jess. Just as we get angry and frustrated in trying to understand the story, Jess also gets angry at Fannie Burt’s stories which she doesn’t understand: “a spent pleasure no longer wanted” (Roberts 11). Throughout the story Jess feels insecure and afraid of things she doesn’t understand. When she is fighting the ghost we realize she is fighting her reflection in the mirror: “[s]he and the creature had beaten at the mirror from opposite sides” (33). I feel this signifies Jess fighting her fear and not letting her lack of knowledge get her down anymore: “she beat at the creature with her club while it beat at her with identical blows. Herself and the creature then were one” (33). Just like the main character I think we both reach a liberating feeling in the conclusion of the story as Jess has a better understanding of things and is more at ease in her new home (34), we also have a better understanding of the story. I think it symbolizes how women of this era always felt they were inadequate constantly trying to live up to standards set by their husbands. It may be symbolic of the feminist movement where women were no longer afraid of society and pushed for their rights smashing the mirror that showed them as underachieving and rising above it.

     I feel Roberts described too much just as if you were to describe everyday life. People don’t like reading too much about reality as a lot of it is boring and repetitive. I think people much prefer to read imaginative concise works. In The Haunted Palace there is a lot of irrelevant information that does not contribute to the story or its moral: “[o]ne would be making a drawing of a horse, such a horse as he would be devising. A horse would be sketched on paper before it was so much as foaled” (Roberts 14). Here we have repetition as well as needless information. It is described in a conversational manner highlighting Roberts desire to give a real effect but I feel the repetitive aspect turns readers off.

     I think the time of release of Roberts’s final publications was unlucky with America involved in World War II. There is the theme of fear constantly expressed in The Haunted Palace and I think people had enough fear in their lives to be reading Roberts work and also people may have wanted to forget reality in the texts they read, not be reminded of it through Roberts writing style. Roberts treatment to female and male characters is very different to other female authors I’ve looked at so far. In Marjane Satrapi’s short story Persepolis: The Veil, the main character’s mother is seen as courageous fighting against the veil which suppressed women: “I was really proud of her” (Satrapi 1174).

     In The Haunted Palace, however, Jess can’t nit or tell stories or do things most women were seen as being able to do. She is insecure with a lack of understanding of many things. Unlike the strong feminist character I’ve seen presented by previous authors, Jess is weak until the conclusion where she overcomes her fear and stamps out feelings of inadequacy. The male character Hubert is very much in the background all through the story. Jess still abides by his rules: “‘Get out of the truck,’ he said to her” (Roberts 20) and takes his decisions as final which is similar to male characters presented by other female authors but he plays a smaller role than I would normally see the male character in this kind of text. I think most authors want to show a domineering male presence whereas Roberts focuses mainly on Jess and her experience.

     In conclusion I feel Elizabeth Madox Roberts did not receive the credit she deserved for her life’s work. Her writing style was complicated and some may not have liked the difficulty in interpreting some of her stories but Roberts was a huge inspiration for many writers. I think Roberts thought on a higher level than the average reader which may have lost her a lot of potential readers. I feel she was too intelligent in some of her work for it to be liked and therefore I think her elimination from the literary canon over the years is undeserved and unjustified especially seeing as her early works were such a success with her first novel described as the best to come out of the States in years and one critic describing Roberts herself as “America’s greatest writer” (Harrison 325). Roberts illness sapped her endurance in the literary scene. Her work was affected and some critics look for consistency. Life is unfair sometimes. That is true for Roberts. You can achieve all your goals in your youth but without consistency you may fail to be recognized.

Works Cited

Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer An Introduction to Short Fiction. Compact 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 878-904. Print

"Elizabeth Madox Roberts." elizabeth-madox-roberts.co.tv. Belknap Press, 2005. Web. 6 Apr 2011. <http://elizabeth-madox-roberts.co.tv/>.

Harrison, Lowell H. A New History Of Kentucky. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997. 325. eBook.

Norton, Dan S. "A Fine and Private Place." The Virginia Quarterly Review. The Virginia Quarterly Review, 2011. Web. 6 Apr 2011. <http://www.vqronline.org/articles/1941/autumn/norton-fine-private/>.

Roberts, Elizabeth Madox. Not by Strange Gods. New York: The Viking Press, 1941. 11-34. Print.