The Member of the Wedding | Carson McCullers

The Member of the Wedding | Carson McCullers | In a green and crazy Summer

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The Member of the ...

	The Member of the Wedding Carson McCullers Mariner Books, 2004 - 176 pages average customer review:based on 74 reviews view larger image
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The novel that became an award-winning play and a major motion picture and that has charmed generations of readers, Carson McCullers's classic The Member of the Wedding is now available in small- format trade paperback for the ﬁrst time. Here is the story of the inimitable twelve-year-old Frankie, who is utterly, hopelessly bored with life until she hears about her older brother's wedding. Bolstered by lively conversations with her house servant, Berenice, and her six-year-old male cousin ? not to mention her own unbridled imagination ? Frankie takes on an overly active role in the wedding, hoping even to go, uninvited, on the honeymoon, so deep is her desire to be the member of something larger, more accepting than herself. "A marvelous study of the agony of adolescence" (Detroit Free Press), The Member of the Wedding showcases Carson McCullers at her most sensitive, astute, and lasting best.

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Eloquent, lovely, and sad

This is my very favorite book and, in my opinion, far superior to "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter."

I was not an adolescent when I read it--I was 23--but I was astonished by how often McCullers was able to perfectly describe what I had believed to be indescribable experiences. In some ways I think that my attachment to the book grew from my ability to relate to Frankie's anxiety. The pace of the book, which all takes place during one stereotypically oppressive southern summer, becomes more frantic as Frankie's anxiety mounts. Her efforts to belong, to be a member of something, push her to force attachments with others even while she knows they are superficial. I'm certain that, on this point alone, readers who remember the desperation to belong during their adolescence will relate to the novel. McCullers also conveys Frankie's longing for something to happen, to take her beyond the repetetive tedium of her young life and infuse it with adventure. When Frankie takes this task into her own hands, the results are harsh and startling.

What truly makes McCullers and this slim novel so amazing is her prose, which is both so sparse and crisp and yet so eloquent and expressive. Every word seems so deliberate that I couldn't believe there could be a more perfect way to depict the scene. At the novel's start, I will always remember the sentence, "At last the summer was like a green sick dream, or like a silent crazy jungle under glass."

I wish I could convey how much this book gripped me. It made me feel that my experiences were shared in a much deeper way than I ever could have imagined or hoped. "The Member of the Wedding" is funny, distressing, and deeply sad: as perfect a novel as I've ever read.

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In a green and crazy Summer

It seems that nobody can write about desolation like Carson McCullers. The sense of not being part of something is common to her stories. "The Member of the Wedding" is her third novel, published in 1946, six years after her début with "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter". Shorter in scoop than that other book, nevertheless as deep, this little novel is an unforgettable tale of a misplace childhood.

Frankie is in her early teens. Her older brother, who lives abroad, is getting married, and this is the biggest excitement of her life. The girl sees in the event the chance of abandoning her boring life, populated mostly by the servant, Berenice, and her cousin John Henry. Her father is virtually an absent figure, and this is the family link missing in her life.

The girl seems to have spent all the time trying to connect with something or someone. "This was the summer when for a long time (Frankie) had not been a member" is stated at some point. The way of overcoming this problem is growing up, becoming an adult, therefore, a member. On the other hand, she expects to become very close friends with her brother and sister-in-law when the three of them would travel all around the world all the time. Frankie seems to fail to recognize that a couple doesn't want a third member.

Since she is not happy with herself, the girl chances her own name to F. Jasmie and later to Frances. However much the surface is different, her interior is in the same state of discontentment. Throughout her journey, the girl will come across half a dozen characters who will affect her somehow. A soldier tries to seduce her. It is a victory to the protagonist, since only women - and not teenagers - get involved in such an affair. In "The Member of the Wedding", McCullers deals frankly the sexual awakening of her character, and the loss of Frankie's innocence.

Colors are extremely important in McCullers' prose. The very first line states that it was a green Summer. We are frequently remembered that Frankie has gray eyes, and Berenice, one blue and another one brown. Other senses are also touched when the girl, the maid and the cousin listen to a tuner working on a piano.

Early in "The Member of the Wedding" Frankie says that `it looks to me like everything has just walked off and left me'. This sense of not being part of anything accompanies the character the whole time. In the end, this is a feeling that we all have in our lives. And writing about this specific girl in the 1940s, McCullers is talking about the world and time in history.

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There now are more members in my world

As I age and read more--wondering always why, in this contemporary America, did it take me so long to enjoy reading; worrying always why, in this even-newer America, is this next generation reading, and enjoying it, lesser still--I understand better a just past world. I understand it better because of the reality reading reveals--the truths of both non-fiction and fiction.
J.D. Salinger's daughter once remarked her father couldn't keep straight the people in the world from the people in books with the people only in his head. Lucky man. . .(Lucky me. . .I do know Holden Caulfield; I know Holden Caulfield better than I know. . .
. . .and now, I also know Frankie (F. Jasmine) Addams and her closest adult companion, Berenice Sadie Brown. Thanks, Carson McCullers, for peopling up my world.

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DARK AND MELANCHOLIC COMING OF AGE STORY...

This is a book about Frankie Adams, a twelve year old girl coming of age in the South during World War II. We see her world through her eyes, so that the reader gets a skewed version of the world around Frankie. Clearly all is not right with her, as her brother is getting married and Frankie thinks that she will be going off with her brother and his bride. Frankie spins a total fantasy around this concept. She does not think that two is company and three is a crowd.

Why does she do this? There are many reasons. Some of them are rather dark. Frankie's mother died giving birth to her. Her father has remained a widower, letting Frankie sleep in the same bed with him until she was about twelve, when he finally gave her the boot. Her best friend is her six year old first cousin, John Henry. He likes to sleep over, and when he does, he sleeps in the bed with Frankie. She caresses him when he sleeps, and even takes to licking him behind his ear while he slumbers. She also has apparently had a sexual encounter of some kind with a neighborhood boy, an incident about which she will not speak. The author weaves these details into the story, glossing over them, leaving the reader feeling shocked. This feeling is exacerbated by the almost casual interjection of these details.

There is so much emotional trauma in Frankie's life that it is amazing she can function at all. Also distressing to Frankie is the fact that she is isolated from children her own age. The neighborhood girls, who are just a little older than her and whom Frankie envies, shun her. Her father pretty much ignores her, leaving her upbringing to the housekeeper, Bernice. When it comes time to buy her a dress for her brother's wedding, she is sent off to buy the dress by herself. It is little wonder that the dress she ends up purchasing is totally unsuitable. Her feeling of isolation is palpable to the reader.

Although Frankie is somewhat of a tomboy, she likes getting dressed up, slathering on lipstick, and taking a walk through the town, calling herself F. Jasmine, looking older than her years. In this guise, she meets a soldier, who takes her for being much older. It comes as no surprise when it all goes horribly wrong. Yet, Frankie is evidently a survivor and manages to fend for herself.

The moment of truth for Frankie arrives when her brother's wedding finally takes place, but by then that event is almost anti-climactic, as events continue to buffet Frankie, leaving her more isolated that ever before. Still, she continues on, not seeming to have learned anything all from her experiences, an emotionally troubled child suffering a severe disconnection from the world.

This is a thematically complex story told through the jagged fragments of the life of a young girl, one who views the world in a disjointed, unrealistic way, her world view clouded by inner demons that are never given a voice. It is a story that is dark and melancholic, leaving the reader to ponder upon a life so young, yet so despairing.

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A Disturbingly Entertaining One Day Read

Carson McCullers twists and wrings every prickled feeling out of her young protagonist into a disturbingly entertaining one-day read. The Member of the Wedding is a slow, detailed painting of only two days in the life of twelve year old Frankie Addams: the miserable, sour August day in Georgia when she hears that her brother is getting married, and the eventful hours she spends roaming her town on the day before the wedding.

McCullers does a compelling job of coaxing the reader into the frustrated, tortured world of Frankie's mind. We mourn with her on the subject of her unfortunate height and hideous crew haircut, which cast her from the petty adolescent society. We alternately resent and pity her pathetic six-year-old cousin John Henry West, and strain with her to win even a fleeting moment of respect from her distant watchmaking father. It is her relationship with Berenice, the family's cook and babysitter, that is the most vivid and human. If not for Berenice's sensible and tart remarks, I would have lost patience with Frankie and the book quickly.

The few complaints I have could not be remedied without taking the unique edge off of the book's message. At times it is difficult to follow Frankie in her delusional dreams of becoming part of her brother's new family. In reality, the book has very little to do with the wedding; it is glossed over in a page or two, the concentration being more on the great expectations and the subsequent downfall. I do wish that there had been more background with the relationship between Frankie and Jarvis (her brother), which would have made her fantasies of running off with him more understandable. As it was, they were very nearly strangers and I was frustrated with Frankie for being so stupid that she thought there was even a possibility of being a part of their post-wedding lives. The title is a bit misleading as well; member of the wedding connotes actually being in the wedding party, and Frankie was merely an observer. There are also incongruities in relation to Frankie's age throughout the book, which may actually serve more to highlight both the child and the teenager in her. For instance, the tantrum she throws when she is not included on the honeymoon seems ridiculously childish, yet she remains composed as she drinks beer in a seedy bar with a drunken soldier. It's too bad the book deals in such delicious subtlety and psychological darkness, or it would be wonderful for readers who are closer to adolescence themselves. As it is, the book is more suited to readers older than sixteen, at least.

All in all, this piece conveyed beautifully many of the painful themes of humanity and the life of a young, freakish girl desperately trying to find her place in the world. A tasty read that you won't be able to put down if you enjoy gnawing on rich, real human themes.

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