The story combines elements of the folktale with social realism and the style known as magical realism. The opening sentence, "This is the story that Doña Marcelina Trujillo Benidorm told her friend Concepción Martínez when they met in Simons, California," makes the story sound as if it is part of a tradition of oral storytelling. The folktale elements include the brevity of the story, its wide time span, the dignified, noble emotions ("infinite sadness," "immense sorrow") and the simplicity of many of the descriptions: the rich aristocratic family, the "beautiful" servant, the "beautiful" daughter, the "lovely" mother, the "saintly" healer. In literary fiction, as opposed to folktales, adjectives such as "beautiful" are used very sparingly and are usually amplified with more specific details.

Countering the timeless folktale elements is the social realism of the setting, which is especially...