SOURCE: “The Keepers of the House,” in Louisiana Women Writers, Louisiana State University Press, 1992, pp. 169-82.

In the following essay, Oleksy presents a comparative study of Grau's The Keepers of the House and Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, focusing on traits shared by the central heroines.

Gone with the Wind (1936) is Margaret Mitchell's only surviving work of fiction; The Keepers of the House (1964) is Shirley Ann Grau's most ambitious, and in many ways most successful. Although the popular appeal of Mitchell's record-breaking classic far surpasses that of The Keepers, the books are oddly similar. Both won the Pulitzer Prize; the writers both have been praised for their storytelling skills. Perhaps least apparent, but meriting special attention, is the affinity between the books’ dominant themes: gender and racial relations.¹

In an interview conducted by Kay Bonetti in April, 1989, Shirley Ann Grau expressed her admiration for the “magnificent narrative...