What are the motifs in The Grave by Katherine Anne Porter?

One important motif (recurring idea) is that of social order. Without a mother to guide them, Miranda's family adopts practices that contradict prevailing social standards. Miranda's boyish dress—"dark blue overalls, a light blue shirt, a hired-man's straw hat, and thick brown sandals"—raises eyebrows among the neighbors. "Ain't you ashamed of yoself, Missy?" they ask her. "It's aginst the Scriptures to dress like that." Her older sister Maria "rode at a dead run with only a rope knotted around her horse's nose." As the story explains, such unfeminine behavior is a serious affront: "it was making a scandal in the countryside, for the year was 1903, and in the back country the law of female decorum had teeth in it."