Both Drake (1960) and Buswell (1961) draw parallels between Sister as a first-person female narrator and Edna Earle, her counterpart in Welty's novella The Ponder Heart.Both females are loquacious, opinionated, assertive, and compelling narrators. Both Drake and Buswell identify the two women as representative of the "old maid" figure, who nonetheless commands, by her very presence, a certain authority and recognition in the community. Sister, like Edna Earle, assumes a traditionally male responsibility by securing work outside the home, yet remains within the conventions of the feminine by what Drake labels "a vocation of service." While both chafe at the restrictions of that vocation from time to time, neither protagonist is ever entirely free to sever those family ties completely, as Sister seems to begin to discover at the end of her amusing narrative.

Romines (1989) cites "Circe" as the story most similar to "Why I Live at the...