Cather's most important critical statement, useful as a guide to her fictional techniques, was the essay "The Novel Demeuble" (1922), where she asserted her admiration for the "unfurnished" novel by which she meant a work in which the author has eliminated everything that is not strictly necessary and has left the narrative as bare as the stage of a Greek theater.

Specifically, she criticized fiction which exhaustively describes physical and social realities or provides extensive details about the individual psychology of the characters. To a significant degree, O Pioneers! is a novel demeuble for it is made up of carefully selected incidents and details, is written in a clear yet allusive style, and centers on archetypal characters and story lines.

In this novel, she also expertly constructs a series of scenes of varying tone which seem to unfold almost casually when, in fact, they are carefully balanced in terms...