Regionalism, Local Color, and the Settlement Schools

The writings in this section, which date from the mid-nineteenth and to the early twentieth centuries, demonstrate the development of the erroneous idea of Appalachia as a stunted frontier isolated from the rest of the United States and inhabited by mountaineers whose pioneer lifestyle was frozen in time. The texts reflect the rapidly changing nature of life in the region. The era’s local color fiction and nonfiction too often relied on quaintness, stereotype, and sentimentality; that Appalachian people were (and are) frozen in time is a literary conceit. By foisting unfamiliar values onto mountaineers, social reformers attempted to change the very culture that they claimed to be preserving. But the era was pivotal for female authors and educators.