A Century of The Time of Man (1926) : Reconsidering Elizabeth Madox Roberts' Legacy

Abstract

A Century of The Time of Man (1926): Reconsidering Elizabeth Madox Roberts’ Legacy To some degree, the vagaries of the reception of The Time of Man over a century have been those of almost any minor classic. Critical and popular interest has waned as tastes have changed and as the issues raised by the novel have appeared obsolete. This first novel by Kentuckian novelist and poet Elizabeth Madox Roberts, The Time of Man received a universal acclaim and was granted a wide attention from critics all over the country in 1926. Reviewers called it “best book of the year”, focusing on its “stark regionalism”. Suffused with the qualities of a classical epic, it has poetic sensitiveness and keen humanity: we meet Ellen Chesser, a convincing representative of the 'poor white' southern tenant-farmer class, first in adolescence, then marriage and childbearing, and watch the crisis precipitated by others; at the end, we are with her and her children again upon the road, where we found her with her parents at the beginning. Other critics had mixed feelings about the effectiveness of the characterization of the main character: “contrived, humorless, melodramatic, with a force of inevitability”. Gradually, the book was qualified as provincial, uninspiring, and tedious. Its fate – recurrent disappearance from print and limited scholarly attention – is now a relatively common one, if not emblematic and typical. Though a logical contribution would be to examine the novel through the prism of its critical reception over time: first as a realist narrative, then as a regionalist fiction imbued with naturalist inflections, thereafter as a feminist story, and eventually as an eco-critical book – given the inseparability of setting and heroine - yet such a trajectory would obscure what is most characteristic: a distinctive personal approach.Actually, the writer’s reclusive, frail, and introverted personality - reluctant to receive honors - has substantially contributed to a backlash of sorts and to her progressive neglect on the American literary scene. In any sense, the permeability/porosity between author and work has long been a locus of critical tension, and this question has regained centrality in contemporary debates. Nowadays, a lineage of themes and critical thought can be traced, rather than an assertion of literary inheritance. Admittedly, research indicates that The Time of Man continues to be regarded as the novel through which Roberts attained full artistic maturity. These considerations will be scrutinized in this paper to help rediscover and celebrate this engaging dense fabric of life that defies schematization, commands respect, and clearly substantiates Elizabeth Madox Roberts’ talent and mastery in writing fiction