The Member of the Wedding - Essay Example

?AThe Member of the Wedding Carson McCullers- An Introduction Carson McCullers (1917- 1967) was a Southern who wrote in a Southern Realism style adopted after the Russian Realism style. Carson did numerous literary jobs such as novel writing, plays, short stories, essays and poetries. Almost all of her works are set in South America and reflects the themes of misfits and spiritual isolations of the south. Her characters are desperately lonely individuals that are looking for ways to escape from their small town existence. The writing style and structure is deceptively simple hiding the richness of empathy that Carson portrays towards individual plight. The writer is best known for her three novels, “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” (1940); Reflections in a Golden Eye” (1941) and “The Member of the Wedding” (1946). A Biographical Sketch of Carson McCullers Carson McCullers was born in Columbia in Georgia in 1917 in the home of a plantation owner and former soldier of the war. She initially had aptitude for music and it was this subject that motivated her to leave her home and study it at an advanced level through the prestigious Julliard School of Music (situated in New York City). But, when she lost the money that she had saved to the study the subject of music, she totally left any thoughts of pursuing the subject in higher education and instead started taking courses in creative writing under the tutelage of Dorothy Scarborough, a Texas writer at Columbia University. Carson also studied along with Sylvia Chatfield Bates at the Washington Square College of New York University. Later she met an aspiring writer Reeves McCullers and married him in the year 1937. Carson had suffered rheumatic fever in 1932 which may have been the primary cause of the number of crippling strokes that Carson suffered later in her life. The strokes weakened her body and by the age of 30, her left side was completely paralyzed. However, the strokes did not weaken her moral spirit and instead gave her the determination to face life with all her mental strength. The sufferings acted as fuel to her imagination and together with the association of prominent writers of the time (such as Eudora Welty, Louis Untermeyer, Newton Arvin and Katherine Anne Porter) made her compose highly creative works. Carson created tragic works with an element of comedy in them. Carson’s first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) had a sensational response from the critics and readers alike and established her as one of the premier prose writers of the country. Carson was twice awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship (24 March, 1942 and 15 April 1946) but was unable to accept it due to her poor health conditions. Amidst all the physical pains and spiritual disillusionments, Carson wrote the script of the play, “The Member of the Wedding” which opened to a full house on 5th January, 1950. The play is an adaptation of her book with similar title and won her the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for the best play of the season. However, her other play, The Square Root of Wonderful (1957) failed to attract the crowd and closed prematurely. Devastated by its failure, Carson turned to children’s writings. She publishes a children’s book, Sweet as a Pie, Clean as a Pig on 1st ‘November, 1964. Finally, the year of her death (1967) recognizes her outstanding contribution in the field of English Literature as she was awarded the 1966 Henry Bellamann Award. A few days later, Carson suffered a stroke and died on 29 September. Literary Analysis of the Book the Member of the Wedding The Member of the Wedding was one of the most important works of Carson written over a period of 5 years. At the time of its creation, the world was suffering from the traumas of World War II and this trauma passes on to its protagonist. It is a story of a 12 year old tomboy, Frankie Addams who is leading a very isolated kind of life with hardly a suitable candidate to speak to. Frankie’s father is a jeweler who had lost his wife during childbirth. Her elder brother, Jarvis is busy with his marriage plans and has little time to spare for his younger sister. Hence, Frankie is left to her own means to entertain herself. She has her housekeeper, Bernice and her six year old cousin, John Henry for companions. To get rid of this loneliness and to achieve a feeling of belonging, Frankie plans to run away with her brother and his new bride in their honeymoon. Carson confesses to Tennessee Williams that in The Member of the Wedding "I was trying to recreate the poetry of my own childhood." Hence, many of the emotions seen in the story are those shared by the writer herself. And not only, Carson, but these emotions are representative of all the adolescents growing up in every corner of the world. The book is all about loneliness and a search for identification in this increasingly alienated environment. Frankie is at a stage of transition where she is about to leave her childhood and step into adulthood. Hence, she is at a loss to claim her identity- is she a child or an adult? Which group would best accept her? Frankie is a troubled adolescent and feels disjointed with everyone around her. Thus, to find a meaningful place in a group and experience the feeling of belonging, she creates a dream of threesome, going on to her brother’s honeymoon. The marriage ceremony has given her a sense of purpose. Here she is not just an onlooker, a passerby, but an active member of the wedding. We find further attempts by the protagonist to merge up in the grown up world by her insistence on constant name changing. Frankie twice changes her name, first to F. Jasmine (to appear more grown up and sophisticated) and later to Frances (to appear realistic and world weary). But, these name changes are nothing more than ripples on the surface, for Frankie as a person remains the same and people around her treat no differently. On inquiring the reason as to why is it illegal to change one’s name without the permission of the court, the cook thoughtfully replies, “You have a name and one thing after another happens to you, and you behave in various ways and do various things, so that soon the name begins to have a meaning. No matter how we might change externals, it is only when our innermost feelings are altered that we truly change and grow.” According to some critics like McKay Jenkins, the book to some extent portrays the theme of sexual and racial identity. Frankie fantasizes that people could “Change back and forth from boys to girls”, whereas Berenice, the housekeeper wants that there should be “no separate colored people in the world, but all human beings would be light brown color with blue eyes and black hair.” Hence, here we see that Frankie is uncomfortable with her sexuality and her oncoming maturity and wishes to be of neutral gender. On the other hand, Berenice suggests that she is a victim of racial discrimination and wants this racism to end. Hence, she wants even coloring for all people so that racial discrimination may be stopped. According to Nicole Seymore, “the novel allows us to imagine an adolescent body in synchronic rather than diachronic terms - thereby challenging the ideals of sexuality, gender, and race that normally accrue to such bodies." At the end of part 1, Frankie reasons her plan to run away with her brother and his bride by saying “they are the we of me”. It is like Jarvis and Janice belong to an exclusive club where she (Frankie) has also found a membership. With these words Frankie tries to delude herself that even though she his physically separated from these two people, yet she belongs with them in the spirit. However, the reality soon sets in, when Frankie realizes that she is indeed an outsider in the marriage which only has place for two people in it. The writer cleverly uses a number of techniques to portray the feeling of isolation and loneliness suffered by the 12 year old girl. She uses vivid imagery, introduces us to symbols and motifs with the use of colors, words, imageries, etc. The novel starts with the color green which is a symbol of hope (that Frankie would go away with her two relatives), youth (Frankie is on the verge of adulthood). The color red is rarely used but when used they symbolizes sex (Frankie’s oncoming monthly cycle, the bitter experience with the soldier). Another startling revelation in the book is the housekeeper’s two colored eyes. Berenice has one original eye of brown color, while her other eye, a glass one, is blue colored. This shows Berenice’s affinity to cross the racial barrier and to possess the biological qualities of the so called superior race. Conclusion Thus, we can say that Carson has managed to give a very sensitive portrayal of a lonely adolescent as she is suddenly confronted with the realities of life. It is a story of loneliness, abandonment and of identity search. Frankie faces much disillusionment within the span of a couple of days. She is introduced unpleasantly to the basics of sex. She is rudely reminded that a marriage only has a space for two. Her name changing has no effect on the treatment of other people around her. And that her plight is to continue in the lonely world with no immediate respite in sight. Other than the obvious themes regarding Frankie, we are also thrust with the theme of racial discrimination in the portrayal of Berenice (however, no actual discrimination is shown here). Work Cited 1. Carson McCullers (1946). The Member of the Wedding. Houghton Miffing 2. Freeman, Elizabeth. The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern American Culture. Duke UP, 2002 3. Seymour, Nicole, "Somatic Syntax: Replotting the Developmental Narrative in Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding." Studies in the Novel 41.3 (Fall 2009): 293-313 4. McKay Jenkins The South in Black and White, Chapel Hill, 1999 5. SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Member of the Wedding.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. n.d.. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. Read More