Porter had stated in her "Reflections on Willa Cather" (1952) that all true art is provincial, firmly rooted to its specific time and place. In much the same way as Cather had done in O Pioneers!

(1913) and My Antonia (1918), Porter examines the potential for tragic moral struggle and deep emotions in supposedly "simple" people.

Porter's regional stories, such as "He," "Holiday," and "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall," draw a vivid portrait of the hard life on Texas farmland, never presenting its inhabitants as quaint or dull. The harsh demands of combatting nature and winning a living from it leave no room for folksiness and gentle humor as in earlier Southern local-colorists like Joel Chandler Harris and his Uncle Remus tales.

The literary heritage that Porter draws upon has much in common with that of Thomas Hardy and his Tess of the D'Urbevilles (1891), in which nature's harshness toward...