SOURCE: “Shirley Ann Grau's Wise Fictions,” in Southern Women Writers: The New Generation, The University of Alabama Press, 1990, pp. 143-60.

In the following essay, Wagner-Martin examines several facets of Grau's work, identifying southern themes, feminist undercurrents and stylistic habits.

As every reviewer of Shirley Ann Grau's fiction points out, she was born in New Orleans in 1929 and spent her childhood between that city, which her mother preferred, and Montgomery, Alabama, the location her father liked. She was educated in the now defunct Booth School, receiving much training in languages, and then, because Booth School was not accredited, transferred to Ursuline Academy for her senior year. She wanted to attend Tulane University but, being female, was accepted instead into Tulane's women's division, Sophie Newcomb College, which she describes as “a kind of finishing school.”¹ While there, however, she enjoyed creative writing classes and announced her intention of becoming a...