Sentence:  It may be that in this comment he has broken from the conventional pattern more violently than in any other regard , for the treatment in his books is far removed from even the genial irony of Ellen Glasgow , who was the only important novelist before him to challenge the conventional picture of planter <WSD>society</WSD> . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  an extended social group having a distinctive cultural and economic organization