Ellen Glasgow and social democracy

The South has always always been a happy ground for writers. It was the only part of the country to create an aristocratic leisure class and a culture; likewise it was the only part of the country to have a catastrophe such as Civil War. Therefore, Southern writers have sought to recover and record the pre-war civilization; to write of particular view of war between the states; and to portray the slow decline of its civilization in the lethargic generations since the war. These same writers have shown also the incursion of the factory systems with its social and economic problems. The contrast between the glamourous past and the ugly present has long been a theme subject for southern writers. Because of these ideas, Southern Literature has been called romantic and not realistic; and sentimental rather than naturalistic. Many older writers were faithful to the early traditions like Stark Young in So Red The Rose which is a story of aristocratic plantation life in the Old South