Because Katherine Anne Porter's fictional descriptions of the South of her childhood correspond so exactly to those in her factual accounts, her Miranda stories have been read as closely autobiographical. Although she has warned against such literal-mindedness, the author's own image as an aristocratic daughter of the Old South tends to confirm the authenticity of the background. The settings of "Old Mortality" and "The Old Order" seem entirely appropriate to Katherine Anne Porter. (p. 339)

In "Noon Wine: The Sources" she writes of the large house, presided over by the grandmother, in which she grew up…. The description coincides with that of Miranda Gay's childhood home, which is given most fully in "The Journey" and is referred to in "Old Mortality" and in the first paragraph of "Pale Horse, Pale Rider." (p. 340)

There is … in Porter's work a strong vein of actuality which argues against the fabrication of characters...