From the start one is aware in Gordon's fiction of a decisive, directing set of values. Indeed, her insistent conservatism seems to demand a personal response, and although it is hard to resist the narrative strength which compels sympathy with her protagonists, I confess to a deep unease at the nostalgia for past certainties which pervades each story. This traditionalism embraces both a Faulknerian yearning for a lost relationship with the land, and also a social vision, of a world where men led and women followed (although unhappily), and where one could celebrate the closeness of black and white without questioning the juxtaposition of cabin and colonial mansion….

At times the individual voice does echo that of the "group". The prewar stories, in particular, are coloured by the views of the Agrarians as expressed in I'll Take My Stand (1931), in which a defence of Southern culture is suggested...