The Poor Man
An Interwar Social Satire of Poverty, Conscience, Displacement, and Outsiders in a Changing Imperial WorldBy Stella Benson
Length6h 52m
About this audiobook
Stella Benson's The Poor Man is a socially observant, imaginatively unsettling novel that examines poverty not merely as an economic condition but as a moral and psychological structure imposed upon modern life. Characteristically blending realism with irony, fantasy, and the grotesque, Benson exposes the assumptions through which respectable society defines value, success, and human worth. The book belongs to the experimental literary culture of the interwar period, when novelists were challenging Victorian moral certainties and conventional narrative forms; its tonal shifts and satirical perspective make social criticism inseparable from literary invention. Rather than offering poverty as a sentimental spectacle, Benson presents it as a condition entangled with class privilege, gendered expectations, and the failures of public compassion. Benson (1892–1933) was an English novelist, essayist, and committed pacifist whose life was shaped by political dissent, feminist sympathies, and extensive residence abroad, particularly in Burma and China. Her experience of imperial societies and rapidly changing postwar cultures sharpened her distrust of inherited hierarchies and encouraged the cosmopolitan, humane skepticism evident in her fiction. The Poor Man reflects an author alert to the distance between benevolent ideals and social realities. This book will reward readers interested in interwar modernism, feminist social criticism, and fiction that uses wit and imaginative distortion to reveal uncomfortable truths. It is especially valuable for those seeking a subtler, less canonical account of class and conscience in twentieth-century literature.
Audiobook details
GenreGeneral Fiction, Humor
Length6 hrs 52 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateDec 6, 2023
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1The Fleet: Its Rivers, Prison, and Marriages (Annotated)
7CHAPTER FIVE
2KWAN-YIN, GODDESS OF MERCY
8CHAPTER SIX
3CHAPTER ONE
9CHAPTER SEVEN
4CHAPTER TWO
10CHAPTER EIGHT
5CHAPTER THREE
11CHAPTER NINE
Show all chaptersShow less
6CHAPTER FOUR
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