The Member Of The Wedding [ペーパーバック]

I am amazed at the largely negative reviews of this book. While I will acknowledge Carson McCullers hadn't consistently produced fine literature, 'The Member of the Wedding' has to be considered one of her best. In short it chronicles the summer of a twelve year old girl growing up in the American South during WW II. She has reached the age where she doesn't quite fit into this world. Her emotions reach the boiling point as the day of her brother's wedding nears. ...at that's about it. Sound dull? Anything but.

What really makes this book special are the characterizations and the extremely rich prose. Very few modern writers can produce such eloquent and simple prose, ... perhaps Margaret Atwood comes close. I found myself feeling such empathy for our leading character, ... and I'm a middle-aged man. So don't think this is a book for little girls. Its appeal trancends both age and gender.

Bottom line: simply wonderful. Read it NOW!

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.

In The Member of the Wedding, by Carson McCullers, Frankie's wish to be with her brother and his wife-to-be symbolized her frantic need to escape the stagnant monotony her young life had become. Trapped in an awkward world of adolescence, Frankie no longer fit in. School was out and she had no friends her own age with whom she could associate. She felt isolated. John Henry was too young for her to relate to and though Berenice was in many ways her only source of emotional support, she was a permanent fixture of the kitchen from which Frankie so desperately wanted to flee. Somehow, someway, Frankie was going to leave.

There was, however, one problem. Frankie knew, perhaps subconsciously, that she was too young to take charge of her own life. In a desperate attempt to find a solution to her dilemma, Frankie dared to dream. Janice and Jarvis were going to sweep her off her feet and take her with them to far off lands. With them, she would meet all the people she believed they knew. Though her fantasy was very obviously absurd, it served to fill her with hope, anticipation and joy. Her conviction in the realization of this dream was so persistent that she did not hesitate to verbalize her plan.

Thus, the reader is drawn into Frankie's storybook fantasy, discovering at the same time her inconsolable need to feel connected. If read at face value, many would surmise that Frankie's behavior simply merited stricter discipline; that she was way out of line; a spoiled child who had to have her way or knives would fly. Tennessee Williams stated, "Frankie's attempt to take out a membership in love is the main theme of the novel." If by love he meant the need to be accepted, then Frankie proved Tennessee Williams right in more ways than one.

The onslaught of adolescence can be brutal. Seemingly overnight, we are too tall or too short, too skinny or too chubby and what we are unexpectedly left with is what we perceive as a bloated, distorted image of what we once were. Frankie's height made it impossible for her to play under the boardwalk with the other children, who now taunted her with such remarks as, "Is it cold up there?" In all likelihood, Frankie supposed her new height meant she was an adult. She certainly was tall enough to be one, but the older girls in the neighborhood did not accept her in their club. Her own father distanced her when he told her that she was too old to sleep in the bed with him, tenderly calling her, "a great big long-legged twelve-year-old blunderbuss." Hurt by multiple rejections, Frankie changed her name to a more mature, feminine one. She doused herself with perfume and scrubbed the dirt off her elbows. She even accepted a date. Yet, when F. Jasmine listened to the news on the radio, she could not fully comprehend everything. Even the dress she had purchased for her brother's wedding was too large and sophisticated for her and met with Berenice's stern disapproval. However, none of this mattered much as long as F. Jasmine had her dream to cling to, but when Janice and Jarvis told her she simply could not join them, shattering the dream she had meticulously built, F. Jasmine broke. Stranded between two worlds in which acceptance was off-limits, she was forced to learn what loneliness meant.

One could easily consider F. Jasmine's need to feel connected as the mere folly of a bored 12-year-old child, yet it is painfully clear that her "attempt to take out a membership in love" was not superficial. When she cried out, "They went away and left me," she meant more than just the physical loss of Janice and Jarvis. F. Jasmine had lost the little child within her. Frankie was gone and along with her, so were those carefree days spent under the boardwalk with the other children; so were the safe nights tucked away in bed with her papa. What Frankie would soon learn, however, was that only time would heal her broken spirit. A new beginning lay just around the corner, one that promised bigger dreams. As Berenice had stated, "Things will happen."