The nineteenth-century Southern woman of the middle class was assumed to be modest, submissive, frail, pious, given more to moral than to intellectual capabilities, whole-heartedly devoted to her family, and, above all, sexually pure. Her husband's role was to sustain, to guide, and, above all, to protect her…. [The reality of the Southern woman's position was that before] the war she faced the gargantuan task of overseeing all the domestic duties of a large family and many servants. During the war she of necessity took on the duties of the farm, and afterwards, widowed or with a veteran rendered incapable of work through physical or psychic wounds, managed the business that gradually usurped the agricultural economy. (pp. 67-8)

Lytle is a writer who is deeply aware of his Southern background…. [In his criticism, Lytle comments,] "… because of the prevailing sense of family, the matriarch became the defining image...