The Story of My Life is written in a realistic and detailed style. This can be seen on many levels. On a broad level, the chapters appear in chronological order, and Helen describes the relative importance of each event in her life. She begins each chapter with a small summary of the content or themes before delving into further detail, which gives the text a strong and sensible structure. She also explains and defends her method of writing, saying that in order to avoid being tedious, she "shall try to present in a series of sketches only the episodes that seem to me to be the most interesting and important."
On the level of individual sentences, Helen includes many realistic details that make the story come to life. For instance, in Chapter 1, she describes her father as follows:
My father, Arthur H. Keller, was a captain in the Confederate Army, and my mother, Kate Adams, was his second wife and many years younger [...]. Their son, Charles Adams, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and moved to Helena, Arkansas. When the Civil War broke out, he fought on the side of the South and became a brigadier-general. He married Lucy Helen Everett, who belonged to the same family of Everetts as Edward Everett and Dr. Edward Everett Hale. After the war was over the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee.
This paragraph belongs to a list (or catalog) of her family members. She makes sure to situate her own story in the historical context of her own family and of the United States. The realism of this first chapter grounds the reader in her history and reveals the importance she places on accurately recounting the story of her origins. By maintaining a realistic and detailed style throughout The Story of My Life, Helen cultivates a formal yet accessible story whose emotional tenor depends more on the events themselves than rhetorical embellishment.
