Feminine Critique and Domestic Mystique: Representations of the Home in Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Elizabeth Madox Roberts, once considered one of the most important authors of the early twentieth century, has suffered critical neglect since her death in 1941. Though Robert Penn Warren wrote an important essay calling for her recovery in 1963, the political and social environment of the 1960s, including the advent of second-wave feminism, contributed, in part, to the continued neglect of Roberts's work. Roberts's texts do not actively protest social or economic injustice; instead, they focus on the internalized lives of her protagonists. This internalization is seen in Roberts's complex portrayal of the home and domesticity. This paper analyzes the ways in which the home in Roberts's novels functions as a space for a woman's internalizations, and also explores how Roberts's representations of the home and domesticity did not fit the political or social agendas of the 1960s and 70s when Robert Penn Warren called for renewed interest in her work.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts in English (M.A.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis (open access)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Department of Literature and Philosophy

Year dc:date.available

2012

Author dc:creator

• Brown, Lyndsey

Contributors dc:contributor

• Richard Flynn
• Jane Eblen Keller

• ETD
• Elizabeth Madox Roberts
• Second-wave feminism
• Black is My Truelove's Hair
• The Time of Man
• My Heart and My Flesh
• Domesticity
• Internalization
• Feminism and literature
• Women in literature

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/186

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu:etd-1186