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The Member of the Wedding, by Carson McCullers

 Mar 28, 2011  Chris Saliba

The Member of the Wedding, by Carson McCullers - Carl Van Vechten Carson McCuller's 1946 novel, The Member of the Wedding, is a sensitive and humorous portrait of youthful alienation.

Carson McCullers died fairly young and left behind a modest yet affecting oeuvre of literary work. Plagued by health problems throughout her life, the American writer died in 1967 at the age of fifty. She wrote four novels and miscellaneous short stories, plays, essays and poems. While not a major writer, her work has been praised by the likes of Gore Vidal, Graham Greene and Edith Sitwell. Novels like The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding continue to enjoy a devoted following.

Themes of the Alienation and Loneliness of Youth

The Member of the Wedding is McCullers's third novel. It was first published in 1946, when the author was still in her late twenties. The novel is set in the South (McCullers was born in Columbus, Georgia), and centers around 12-year-old Frankie Addams at a critical period in her adolescence. Afraid and feeling deep isolation, Frankie learns that her older brother Jarvis is to marry. She irrationally decides that on the wedding day she will somehow join her brother and his bride to become a third member of their wedding.

Frankie's obsessive fantasy about leaving her lonely home (she has no mother, and her father is a distant figure) and finding love and completeness in her brother's marriage is certain to come undone. The family's African-American maid, Berenice Sadie Brown, and Frankie's younger cousin, John Henry West, provide most of Frankie's close company. There's a touch of self-loathing in this intimate circle. The warm and down-to-earth Berenice tries to reason with Frankie and talk her out of her foolishness, while John Henry West reinforces the limitations of her claustrophobic world.

For example, after Frankie's bitterly disappointing experience of the wedding, the six-year-old John Henry West gives a ho-hum, sing-song commentary on the events of the day:

"The show's over and the monkey's dead," John Henry quoted, as he settled himself in the next to the last bus seat beside her father. "Now we go home and go to bed."

1 Frankie can only be devastated when the reality that Berenice warned against comes crashing in on her, and she soon turns angry at the world. The magical and comforting world of belonging is not to be; alienation and loneliness remain Frankie's dreary lot.

Humour in The Member of the Wedding

Carson McCullers achieves a wonderful balance in this novel of alienation, adolescence and loneliness. The Member of the Wedding mixes humour, pathos and poetic imagery into a highly accomplished whole. McCullers writes in a still, sparse prose. Impressionistic images are built up throughout, giving an overall feeling of a sleepy town late in the afternoon. McCullers's novel seems stuck in a time frame of late afternoon stillness, boredom and loneliness.

This does not mean The Member of the Wedding is solipsistic and overly inward looking. McCullers brings to her novel a strong Southern flavour. There is much humour and irony, especially in language and setting. The dialogue of Berenice, with her no nonsense commonsense and advice, is often full of droll comedy . The novel also has some superbly realized farcical moments, like when Frankie goes to see the fortune teller Big Mama. In another scene Frankie somewhat self-mockingly speculates on her future:

"If the train went to Chicago, she would go on to Hollywood and write shows or get a job as a movie starlet – or, if worse came to worse, even act in comedies."

The final result of this original and strange novel is an evocation of youth and alienation that is highly personal without being mawkish or sentimental. Carson McCullers relives the pain and uncertainty of youth, showing how we pass through these difficult times but remain scarred nonetheless.

Source

 McCullers, Carson. The Member of the Wedding. New York: Penguin Modern Classics, 1946. ISBN: 0-14-008248-4