The Member of the Wedding
Encyclopedia
The Member of the Wedding is a 1946 novel
by Southern
writer Carson McCullers
. It took McCullers five years to complete—though she interrupted the work for a few months to write the short novel The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
.
She explained in a letter to her husband Reeves that it was "one of those works that the least slip can ruin. It must be beautifully done. For like a poem there is not much excuse for it otherwise."
She had originally planned to write a story about a girl who was in love with her piano teacher. Then she had what she called "a divine spark". "Suddenly I said: Frankie is in love with her brother and the bride...The illumination focused the whole book."
Frankie Addams, who feels disconnected from the world—an "unjoined person". She dreams of going away with her brother and his bride-to-be on their honeymoon, following them to the Alaska
n wilderness. She has no friends in the small Southern town in which she lives. Her mother died giving birth to Frankie and her father is a distant, uncomprehending figure. Her closest companions are the family's African American
maid, Berenice Sadie Brown, and her six-year-old cousin, John Henry West.
The novel is more concerned with the psychology of the three main characters and an evocation of the setting than with incident. Frankie does, however, have a brief and troubling encounter with a soldier. Her hopes of going away having been disappointed — her fantasy destroyed — a short coda reveals how her personality has changed. It also recounts the fate of John Henry West, and Berenice Sadie Brown's future plans.
For Yaeger and the British novelist and critic Ali Smith
, this is to sentimentalize the work. They suggest that such a reading misses much of its profundity, darkness, and what Smith calls its "political heft". It should be seen, according to Smith, as a "very funny, very dark novel" and a "combination of hope, hopelessness and callousness." Its theme, says Smith, is "why people exclude others and what happens when they do."
Other critics, including McKay Jenkins, have highlighted the importance of themes of racial and sexual identity. Frankie wishes people could "change back and forth from boys to girls". John Henry wants them to be "half boy and half girl". Berenice would like there to be "no separate colored people in the world, but all human beings would be light brown color with blue eyes and black hair." For them, Jenkins suggests, the ideal world would be "a place where identity…is fluid, changeable, amorphous."
Another critic, Margaret B McDowell, has also stressed the role of Berenice Sadie Brown (and to a lesser extent John Henry West) in counter-pointing Frankie’s story.
Judith Halberstam
, in her book Female Masculinity, uses the character of Frankie to illustrate the pressures on girls to "outgrow" their tomboyishness, arguing that masculinity is tolerated in girls only as long as they ultimately conform to gender expectations in adulthood. In the example of Frankie, she argues, we can see that "the image of the tomboy can be tolerated only within a narrative of blossoming womanhood; within such a narrative, tomboyism represents a resistance to adulthood itself rather than to adult femininity."
Critics such as Elizabeth Freeman
and Nicole Seymour view the novel as "queer" -- as challenging gender and sexual norms. In her article on the novel, Seymour argues that McCullers queers the human developmental schema (childhood-adolescence-adulthood) through various narrative methods. These methods include the novel's strange tripartite structure; its depiction of personal difficulties with narrativizing, "the refusal of dynamism, and the use of the literary devices of repetition and analepsis." Seymour concludes that "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."
McCullers herself adapted the novel for a Broadway
production directed by Harold Clurman
. It opened on January 5, 1950 at the Empire Theatre
, where it ran for 501 performances. The cast included Ethel Waters
, Julie Harris
, and Brandon De Wilde
.
Waters, Harris, and De Wilde reprised their stage roles, with Arthur Franz
, Nancy Gates
, and Dickie Moore joining the cast, for the 1952 film version. The screenplay
was adapted by Edna
and Edward Anhalt
and directed by Fred Zinnemann
. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress
for Julie Harris, in her debut screen appearance.
A 1982 television adaptation, directed by Delbert Mann
, starred Pearl Bailey
, Dana Hill
, and Howard E. Rollins, Jr.
.
The 1997 film version, adapted by David W. Rintels and directed by Fielder Cook
, starred Anna Paquin
, Alfre Woodard
, Corey Dunn, and Enrico Colantoni
. Rintels used the original novel rather than the play as his source material.
The Young Vic theatre in London produced the stage version of The Member of the Wedding in 2007, directed by Matthew Dunster. Frankie Adams was played by Flora Spencer-Longhurst and Berenice Sadie Brown by Portia, a member of Philip Seymour Hoffman
's LAByrinth Theater Company
.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Southern
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
writer Carson McCullers
Carson McCullers
Carson McCullers was an American writer. She wrote novels, short stories, and two plays, as well as essays and some poetry. Her first novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts of the South...
. It took McCullers five years to complete—though she interrupted the work for a few months to write the short novel The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
The Ballad of the Sad Café is a novel by Carson McCullers.-Plot:The Ballad of the Sad Café opens on the set of a small, isolated Southern town...
.
She explained in a letter to her husband Reeves that it was "one of those works that the least slip can ruin. It must be beautifully done. For like a poem there is not much excuse for it otherwise."
She had originally planned to write a story about a girl who was in love with her piano teacher. Then she had what she called "a divine spark". "Suddenly I said: Frankie is in love with her brother and the bride...The illumination focused the whole book."
Plot
The main action of the novel takes place over a few days in late August. It tells the story of 12-year-old tomboyTomboy
A tomboy is a girl who exhibits characteristics or behaviors considered typical of the gender role of a boy, including the wearing of typically masculine-oriented clothes and engaging in games and activities that are often physical in nature, and which are considered in many cultures to be the...
Frankie Addams, who feels disconnected from the world—an "unjoined person". She dreams of going away with her brother and his bride-to-be on their honeymoon, following them to the Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
n wilderness. She has no friends in the small Southern town in which she lives. Her mother died giving birth to Frankie and her father is a distant, uncomprehending figure. Her closest companions are the family's African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
maid, Berenice Sadie Brown, and her six-year-old cousin, John Henry West.
The novel is more concerned with the psychology of the three main characters and an evocation of the setting than with incident. Frankie does, however, have a brief and troubling encounter with a soldier. Her hopes of going away having been disappointed — her fantasy destroyed — a short coda reveals how her personality has changed. It also recounts the fate of John Henry West, and Berenice Sadie Brown's future plans.
Critical interpretations
The Member of the Wedding is told from the point of view of Frankie, who is a troubled adolescent. But for some critics it is a mistake to view The Member of the Wedding as simply a coming of age novel—a "sweet momentary illumination of adolescence before the disillusion of adulthood," as it is sometimes regarded, or as Patricia Yaeger puts it, "an economical way of learning about the pangs of growing up."For Yaeger and the British novelist and critic Ali Smith
Ali Smith
Ali Smith is a British writer.She was born to working-class parents, raised in a council house in Inverness and now lives in Cambridge. She studied at the University of Aberdeen and then at Newnham College, Cambridge, for a PhD that was never finished. She worked as a lecturer at University of...
, this is to sentimentalize the work. They suggest that such a reading misses much of its profundity, darkness, and what Smith calls its "political heft". It should be seen, according to Smith, as a "very funny, very dark novel" and a "combination of hope, hopelessness and callousness." Its theme, says Smith, is "why people exclude others and what happens when they do."
Other critics, including McKay Jenkins, have highlighted the importance of themes of racial and sexual identity. Frankie wishes people could "change back and forth from boys to girls". John Henry wants them to be "half boy and half girl". Berenice would like there to be "no separate colored people in the world, but all human beings would be light brown color with blue eyes and black hair." For them, Jenkins suggests, the ideal world would be "a place where identity…is fluid, changeable, amorphous."
Another critic, Margaret B McDowell, has also stressed the role of Berenice Sadie Brown (and to a lesser extent John Henry West) in counter-pointing Frankie’s story.
Judith Halberstam
Judith Halberstam
Judith Halberstam, also Jack Halberstam, is Professor of English and Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California. Halberstam was an Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California at San Diego before working at USC...
, in her book Female Masculinity, uses the character of Frankie to illustrate the pressures on girls to "outgrow" their tomboyishness, arguing that masculinity is tolerated in girls only as long as they ultimately conform to gender expectations in adulthood. In the example of Frankie, she argues, we can see that "the image of the tomboy can be tolerated only within a narrative of blossoming womanhood; within such a narrative, tomboyism represents a resistance to adulthood itself rather than to adult femininity."
Critics such as Elizabeth Freeman
Elizabeth Freeman
Elizabeth Freeman may refer to:*Elizabeth Freeman , the former slave*Elizabeth Freeman , suffragist and civil rights activist*Betty Freeman, American photographer and philanthropist...
and Nicole Seymour view the novel as "queer" -- as challenging gender and sexual norms. In her article on the novel, Seymour argues that McCullers queers the human developmental schema (childhood-adolescence-adulthood) through various narrative methods. These methods include the novel's strange tripartite structure; its depiction of personal difficulties with narrativizing, "the refusal of dynamism, and the use of the literary devices of repetition and analepsis." Seymour concludes that "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."
Adaptations
The book has been adapted for the stage, motion pictures, and television.McCullers herself adapted the novel for a Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
production directed by Harold Clurman
Harold Clurman
Harold Edgar Clurman was a visionary American theatre director and drama critic, "one of the most influential in the United States". He was most notable as one of the three founders of the New York City's Group Theatre...
. It opened on January 5, 1950 at the Empire Theatre
Empire Theatre (New York City)
The Empire Theatre in New York City was a prominent Broadway theatre in the first half of the twentieth century. It opened in 1893 with a performance of The Girl I Left Behind Me by David Belasco. The Empire continued to present both original plays and revivals until 1953. Its final show, in May...
, where it ran for 501 performances. The cast included Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues.Her best-known recordings includes, "Dinah", "Birmingham Bertha",...
, Julie Harris
Julie Harris
Julia Ann "Julie" Harris is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame...
, and Brandon De Wilde
Brandon De Wilde
Andre Brandon deWilde was an American theatre and film actor. He was born into a theatrical family in Brooklyn. Debuting on Broadway at the age of 7, De Wilde became a national phenomenon by the time he completed his 492 performances for The Member of the Wedding and was considered a child...
.
Waters, Harris, and De Wilde reprised their stage roles, with Arthur Franz
Arthur Franz
Arthur Franz was a B-movie actor whose most notable role was as Lieutenant, Junior Grade H. Paynter, Jr. in The Caine Mutiny. He also appeared in Roseanna McCoy , Invaders from Mars , Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man and The Unholy Wife , among others...
, Nancy Gates
Nancy Gates
Nancy Gates is a retired American film and television actress.-Film:Gates, born in Dallas, Texas, entered acting at a young age, receiving a contract with RKO at the age of 15. Her first screen appearance, uncredited, was in the 1942 film The Magnificent Ambersons. That same year she had her first...
, and Dickie Moore joining the cast, for the 1952 film version. The screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
was adapted by Edna
Edna Anhalt
Together with then husband Edward Anhalt, screenwriter Edna Anhalt enjoyed some considerable success in a ten year stretch from 1947 to her retirement in 1957. This stretch was capped with an Oscar win for Elia Kazan's 1950 film Panic in the Streets, and another nomination two years later for The...
and Edward Anhalt
Edward Anhalt
Edward Anhalt was a noted screenwriter, producer, and documentary film-maker. After working as a journalist and documentary filmmaker for Pathé and CBS-TV he teamed with his wife Edna Anhalt, née Richards, during World War II to write pulp fiction...
and directed by Fred Zinnemann
Fred Zinnemann
Fred Zinnemann was an Austrian-American film director. He won four Academy Awards and directed films like High Noon, From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons.-Life and career:...
. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress
Academy Award for Best Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
for Julie Harris, in her debut screen appearance.
A 1982 television adaptation, directed by Delbert Mann
Delbert Mann
Delbert Martin Mann, Jr. was an American television and film director. He won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Director for the film Marty...
, starred Pearl Bailey
Pearl Bailey
Pearl Mae Bailey was an American actress and singer. After appearing in vaudeville, she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946. She won a Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly! in 1968...
, Dana Hill
Dana Hill
Dana Hill was an American actress and voice actor with a raspy voice and childlike appearance, which allowed her to play adolescent roles into her 30s...
, and Howard E. Rollins, Jr.
Howard Rollins
Howard Ellsworth Rollins, Jr. was an American television, film, and stage actor. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Coalhouse Walker, Jr...
.
The 1997 film version, adapted by David W. Rintels and directed by Fielder Cook
Fielder Cook
Fielder Cook was an American television and film director, producer, and writer whose 1971 television movie The Homecoming: A Christmas Story spawned the series The Waltons....
, starred Anna Paquin
Anna Paquin
Anna Helene Paquin is a Canadian-born New Zealand actress. Paquin's first critically successful film was The Piano, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1994 at the age of 11 – the second youngest winner in history...
, Alfre Woodard
Alfre Woodard
Alfre Ette Woodard is an American film, stage, and television actress. She has been nominated once for an Academy Award and Grammy Awards, 17 times for Emmy Awards , and has also won a Golden Globe and three Screen Actors Guild Awards.She is known for her role in films such as Cross Creek, Miss...
, Corey Dunn, and Enrico Colantoni
Enrico Colantoni
Enrico Colantoni is a Canadian actor, probably best known for portraying Elliot DiMauro in the sitcom Just Shoot Me!, Keith Mars on the television series Veronica Mars, and Sergeant Greg Parker on the television series Flashpoint. He has also had supporting roles in such films as The Wrong Guy, ...
. Rintels used the original novel rather than the play as his source material.
The Young Vic theatre in London produced the stage version of The Member of the Wedding in 2007, directed by Matthew Dunster. Frankie Adams was played by Flora Spencer-Longhurst and Berenice Sadie Brown by Portia, a member of Philip Seymour Hoffman
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Philip Seymour Hoffman is an American actor and director. Hoffman began acting in television in 1991, and the following year started to appear in films...
's LAByrinth Theater Company
LAByrinth Theater Company
LAByrinth Theater Company is a non-profit, Off-Broadway theater company based in New York City.An inclusive, multicultural ensemble of almost 100 established and emerging theater artists led by Artistic Directors Stephen Adly Guirgis, Mimi O'Donnell and Yul Vasquez, LAByrinth Theater Company...
.