Glasgow's realistic fiction novels often showed the female characters as stronger than the male characters. It was this new type of Southern fiction that made Ellen Glasgow one of the major writers of her time. The vantage point from which most of her nineteen novels were written was her native home of Richmond, Virginia. She received the Pulitzer prize in 1942. The book begins: The last day of Circuit Court was over at Kingsborough. The Jury had vanished from the semicircle of straight-backed chairs in the old courthouse, the clerk had laid aside his pen along with his air of listless attention, and the judge was making his way through the straggling spectators to the sunken stone steps of the platform outside. As the crowd in the doorway parted slightly, a breeze passed into the room, scattering the odors of bad tobacco and farm-stained clothing. The sound of a cowbell came through one of the small windows, from the green beyond, where a red-and-white cow was browsing among the buttercups.