SOURCE: Inness, Sherrie A. “Looking Westward: Geographical Distinctions in the Regional Short Fiction of Mary Foote and Mary Austin.” Studies in Short Fiction 35, no. 4 (fall 1998): 319-30.

In the following essay, Inness views short stories of western regionalists Mary Foote and Mary Austin as literary vehicles used to criticize the notion of eastern United States cultural superiority, particularly its expectations about the “proper” roles of women.

“There is no sort of experience that works so constantly and subtly upon man as his regional environment” (97), writes Mary Austin in her essay “Regionalism in American Fiction” (1932). She urges her readers to know “not one vast, pale figure of America, but several Americas, in many subtle and significant characterizations” (98), a task made possible, she suggests, through an appreciation of regional fiction. It, according to her is “the only sort of fiction that will bear reading from generation to generation” (100). To Austin, regional...