The Member of the Wedding

While E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End seems thematically, stylistically, and even conceptually eons away from Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding, Forster’s eerie “only connect” haunts the pages of the latter novel. McCullers’ protagonist, Frankie, a child caught on the cusp of adulthood, struggles to create and express her individual identity through social memberships. We watch helplessly as she wanders from person to person, struggling to connect and identify with someone else’s experience. As someone hovering on various thresholds (she’s between childhood and adulthood, is forever hesitating in doorways, is not clearly gendered initially, and hails from an unnamed town that seems to be a waiting place show more between the present and the future), Frankie’s attempts to form an identity that is both distinct and can connect with other people seems like an effort to claim a space for herself, to assert that she belongs. The book suggests, through Frankie, that identity is just as much about connection and belonging as it is about individuality. And if that's not a queer theme, I don't know what is. :) show less

Twelve-year-old Frankie Adams is bored with life and longing for adventure, for a sense of belonging to something “bigger.” When her older brother comes home on leave from the Army, to marry his girlfriend Janice, she becomes obsessed with the wedding and what it may mean for her own future.

Carson McCullers has a way of writing her characters that draws the reader into their very souls. Frankie’s journey through this phase of adolescence is at once painfully distressing, funny and charming. I was, in turns, afraid for Frankie and amused by her. I was – with some wincing – reminded of my own foibles at this age. That headlong rush to “grow up” to be part of an adult world that I didn’t quite understand but SOOOoo wanted show more to join. That in-between age when I still enjoyed the games of childhood and younger cousins, but also wanted to be accepted by the older teens and included in their dances, parties and secret societies.

I listened to the audio which I got through my library’s Overdrive connection. It is wonderfully acted by Ruby Dee, Jena Malone and Victor Mack, however, it’s an audio of the PLAY, not of the novel. I immediately picked up the text of the novel and read it through in a day. show less

Remember the oppressive boredom of a long and sultry teenage summer?
Feeling vaguely fearful and fiercely moody, at the precipice of childhood’s end.
Wanting to be alone, grown, and babied too.
Unsure whether to belong or be different.
Everything in flux, including your very sense of self.

This short novel will take you back to that time.

“This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member…
It was the summer of fear for Frankie...
The summer when Frankie was sick and tired of being Frankie...
The year when Frankie thought about the world.”

Image: Belonging - and not, by johnhain/Pixabay (Source.)

Mood(y) and characters

This is a book of mood and transition more than plot. Of vivid, believable, quirky characters.

It covers a show more few days in the life of 12-year old tomboy Frankie. It’s set in the southern US, in the early 1940s. Frankie’s father owns a watch, clock, and jewellery shop. They’re white, not well off, but not poor either. They don’t own a car, but employ Berenice (who is "colored") as a cook, housekeeper, and childminder. Six-year old cousin John Henry is often around: bright for his age and both a comfort and annoyance to Frankie.

Her older brother, Jarvis, is returning after two years away with the army, to marry Janice. Suddenly, everything changes for Frankie - including the name she uses: F Jasmine, and finally Frances: one in each section of the book. She has some similarities with Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, another motherless tomboy in the deep south, albeit slightly younger.

Frankie becomes obsessed: wanting to be a part of not just the wedding, but the married life of her brother and the bride she has yet to meet.
“They are the we of me.”

In a subtle masterstroke of not belonging, the eponymous wedding happens offstage: we see the buildup and the aftermath, with only a few retrospective details of the event itself.

“The wedding was like a dream outside her power or like a show unmanaged by her in which she was supposed to have no part.”

Passing through the valley of the shadow of death sex

“There was an uneasy doubt that she could not quite place or name.”

Frankie’s mother died giving birth to her, and she’s known other people who died. But it’s the shadow of puberty, sexuality, and sex that lingers more darkly and puzzlingly. The pain of no longer being able to share her father’s bed. Misunderstandings of things seen and heard. Her misreading of a potentially dangerous situation made me shudder with vicarious fear over many - familiar - pages.

A wedding is a happy occasion, but the mood of the story is heavy with increasing foreboding, albeit sprinkled with touching moments and gentle humour. The final tragedy is unexpected, unnecessary, and powerful.

Image: Taylor Flanagan as Frankie, Chelsea Manasseri as Berenice, and Jago Mystiek as John Henry. Photo by by Errich Petersen (Source.)

Radical

Segregation is “the unseen line”, but neither McCullers nor her characters think “colored” people should be separated and there’s a very matter-of-fact and accepting conversation about a cross-dressing gay man (using terminology of the time).

At the last supper before the wedding, Berenice and Frankie put the world to rights and get existential. Berenice would have “no separate colored people”, with everyone having light brown skin, blue eyes (like her glass eye), and black hair. And no war. Frankie wants material things like planes and motorcycles for everyone, “a better law of gravity” (I love that!), and for people to be able “instantly change back and forth from boys to girls”. How radical is that for 1946?

Multisensory

It’s words on a page, but vividly so. Pages permeated by music (as all McCullers’ works are - she was offered a place to study piano at Juilliard). Here, it’s the recurring “jazz spangle” of a piano-tuner in a neighbours’ house, leaving melodies unfinished.

I’m sure I’d know the fragrance of Sweet Serenade if I ever encountered it. And bridging words, visuals, and scent, is lavender: usually an aromatic plant, but here, the colour of lips, ears, sky, and an evening.

Relishing revisiting

I first read this poignant novella about a tomboy near-teen, when I was a tomboy teen: desperately wanting to be adult, but wary too. Longing to belong, but also yearning to be uniquely myself, if I could only figure out what that was.

I’ve read it at least a couple of times since, and again, now my own child is beyond a teen. It’s all so true, even though it’s set in a time and place I’ve never been.

This was the first McCullers I read, and one of the first American books I read. A schoolfriend, who is still a close friend, suggested it, and I went on to read all McCullers’ other books more than once. Catherine, thank you.

Image: Carson McCullers (Source.)

Quotes

• “The summer was like a green sick dream, or like a silent crazy jungle under glass.”

• “The sound of whistling, and it was a grieving August song that did not end. The minutes were very long.”

• “The lavender sky had at last grown dark and there was slanted starlight and twisted shade.”

• “Noises at twilight had a blurred sound, and they lingered.”

• “Their voices bloomed like flowers… She had the feeling that unknown words were in her throat, and she was ready to speak them. Strange words were flowering in her throat and now was the time for her to name them.”

• “The trees were poison green. There was a jellied stillness in the air.” show less

One August, during the dog days of summer, 12-year-old Frankie's soldier brother Jarvis comes home from military service in Alaska to marry his fiancee, Janice. Frankie, now calling herself F. Jasmine, becomes obsessed with her brother's wedding, and she is determined to go away with her brother and his new wife after the wedding. F. Jasmine will tell this to anyone who will listen to her, which really boils down to her African American housekeeper Berenice and her 6-year-old cousin John Henry. It's obvious from the beginning that this will not end well.

***Spoilers***

Frankie/F. Jasmine/Frances is at an awkward period in her development. She no longer considers herself a child, but adults still treat her as a child. It's normal to feel show more lonely and left out at that age. It is not normal act out on those feelings with kitchen knives or loaded pistols. I didn't identify with Frankie; I was scared of her. I felt the absence of parental authority and guidance. Frankie's father is barely present in the novel. I'm not sure what responsibility Berenice has for Frankie. She makes suggestions about what Frankie should do, but she doesn't seem to have the authority to make Frankie do anything or to restrict her movements. Frankie is uncomfortable with her sexuality, and this is projected onto her cat, Charles/Charlina, and onto John Henry, who plays dress-up in women's clothes and plays with Frankie's doll. Frances latches onto her new friend, Mary Littlejohn, with the same fervency she exhibited for the wedding. I'm left with a feeling of dread about how this relationship will end. show less

A coming-of-age novel, of sorts, about a twelve-year old girl growing up in the American South during World War II, a girl who becomes obsessed with the idea of her brother's wedding and somehow convinces herself that when it's over, she will go off with them and into another, freer life.

Carson McCullers' writing style is a little odd. It is, on the surface, very plain, even unsophisticated, but at the same time it often has a strange, oblique quality to it. It takes some getting used to, but I'd already done so once, over the course of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, which I loved. It had to win me all over again when I started this one, and that took a while, but by the end it was absolutely working for me. And McCullers does an amazing show more job of capturing what it's like to be at that in-between age. Not just the usual cusp-of-adolescence stuff either -- inklings about sex, a longing to escape the confines of childhood and find or make one's own place in the world -- but also the, for lack of a better phrase, existential crisis of it all. I'd almost forgotten what that's like, and it hit me with quite a shock of recognition to see it represented so well here. show less

Twelve year old Frankie is a girl on the brink of moving from the innocence of childhood into the life of adults. She's led a simple and sheltered life so far it seems, but the news of her brother's engagement and approaching wedding brings about a turning point into that transition from girl into womanhood. She's made starkly aware that there is *more* out there and she very keenly feels the desire to be a part of something bigger, better, and more intimate than she's ever known.
I appreciate the qualities of the novel - it's a very well written and unique coming-of-age story - but I didn't...like it. I think, though, that I didn't enjoy it exactly *because* it's so well done: it reminds me too much of that awful, awkward feeling at show more that age of both wanting so desperately to be an adult but also hating the idea of growing up. show less

Wow, this was even more amazing than I remembered. I think it had been over 20 years since I read it. I had read more recently HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER - and boy, I thought that I loved that; but I only loved one of the two plots of that story, whereas this was 100% amazing through and through.

I had to look up the year that child actress Anna Paquin starred in the TV movie version of this - 1997. I found that movie too literal, and Paquin cast too young; she was so small, and Frankie was supposed to be so tall. The scenes with the solder were VERY disturbing when played with such a small girl. That said, I'll never forget her performance in the climactic scene.

I did not recall how close to the end of the book the wedding happened - show more i.e. how little "happened" afterward, or rather how crammed all the "after" was into so few pages, as was the wedding itself. Which is part of the writing's power. I think McCullers is just amazing in how she brings her stories to a head, making the payoff as good as the journey, which is not a common thing in a modern novel. Usually you get a really good bunch of pages but summed up with kind of an anti-climax; or, you get a real whopper of a narrative arc and ending, but don't enjoy the journey so much. MEMBER OF THE WEDDING is flawless - maybe being relatively short at only about 150 pages is a help. Modern novels probably just go on too long.

I won't bother with much of a plot summary. Southern eccentricity, lots of mood and pictures of intimacy; 12-year-old Frankie spends the dog days of a deep-South summer in anticipation of her big brother's wedding. She's on the cusp of big change, and at times truly manic in her passions and her desire to quit town for good. There's something very powerful in stories about girls this age that always draws me in McCullers is the best.. show less