It's hard to be quite sure without having the whole passage in front of you, but from what you say I would guess that the technique is PERSONIFICATION. This is a form of imagery in which inanimate things or abstract ideas are treated as if they were human (not animals: if animals are treated as human, as in Beatrix Potter for example, this is ANTHROPOMORPHISM.)
We use personification all the time, in phrases like "the smiling sun," "angry black clouds" etc, as if our non-human surroundings were alive and had human feelings. A related technique, which may also apply to Cather, is the device known as the PATHETIC FALLACY. In this, the landscape is seen as echoing human emotions; so if two lovers are having a quarrel, a storm will start etc (we see this a lot in films.) If Cather describes a storm which echoes some turbulence etc, in the town's people (or some of them) then her technique here could be called pathetic fallacy.
We use personification all the time, in phrases like "the smiling sun," "angry black clouds" etc, as if our non-human surroundings were alive and had human feelings. A related technique, which may also apply to Cather, is the device known as the PATHETIC FALLACY. In this, the landscape is seen as echoing human emotions; so if two lovers are having a quarrel, a storm will start etc (we see this a lot in films.) If Cather describes a storm which echoes some turbulence etc, in the town's people (or some of them) then her technique here could be called pathetic fallacy.
