Fortitude and Faith in Books by Four Southern Women Novelists: Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Mary Noailles Murfree, Ellen Glasgow, and Edith Summers Kelley
Abstract
Focusing on the works of four Southern women novelists, this paper surveys some of the images and depictions of women in the rural South from the 1890s to the 1940s in the writings of Mary Noailles Murfree’s In the Tennessee Mountains (1884), Edith Summers Kelley’s Weeds (1923), Ellen Glasgow’s Barren Ground (1925), and Elizabeth Madox Roberts’s The Time of Man (1926).
In the four books, classic features of sharecroppers and mountain literature prevail, especially the major issues regarding the portrayal of rural women: the woman as a victim, living a life of hardship and accepting her lot without complaint; on the other hand, the woman as willful, strong, capable and independent.
Indeed, these works bring to the fore a sustaining and nurturing principle which enlightens a common humanity between the female characters and the rest of the world. All four novelists also show the close relationship between women and their place through a strong connection to the land.
Besides that first aspect of female characterization in the four stories, the other aim of this paper is to study the literary styles of these four women writers from the South.