Elizabeth (novel)

Elizabeth is an unpublished novel by American poet Oscar Whitfield, first submitted to literary agents in June 2002. The controversial manuscript, AbOUT an abused woman who is the greatest composer who ever lived, has received nearly 6,000 rejections.

The novel uncovers the extremes of domestic violence, from inside the life of a young couple in Martin County, North Carolina. The woman is an uneducated modern housewife with a gift for music composition, who was taken out of school when she was twelve years old and isolated on her mother's farm. The story reveals that she was physically and sexually abused from early childhood, and has lived under the threat of death her entire marriage.

Though her music is essential to her and only one other person in the book, it is indispensable in knowing her psychology. Most important is the nature of her talent, which an educated observer in the novel suggests makes her "the most gifted composer who has ever lived--with a body of work unrivaled in the history of classical music." The book implies that though the woman was held prisoner and tortured by her husband, the truest source of her misery was her childhood, and a single mother driven to madness by grief.