Member of the Wedding

 Carson McCullers wrote the novel Member of the Wedding in 1946. its about young Frankie in a troubled love life and wanting to run away with her brother and his fiance.



Author Biographical Information

 * Carson McCullers was born on February 19, 1917 and died September 29, 1967. She wrote novels, short stories, and two plays, as well as, essays and some poetry. She wrote The Member of the Wedding when she was 23 years old and it's one of her best novels that is known. The other novel was Reflections in a Golden Eye.

Setting: Historical Information

 * The main action of the story begins during the evening of the last Friday in August 1944 and ends the evening of the following Sunday. The setting takes place in a small southern town.

Genre

 * This is a coming- of- age novel about a troubled 12- year old girl named Frankie.

Plot Summary

 * Frankie Addams is a young, confused 12 year old, living in the American south in 1944. The book is framed around her main frustration with feeling like she belongs to no group, that she is disconnected with the world around her. The daughter of a jeweler and a mother who died in child birth, she is highly stubborn, but also unaware of the reasons for her own emotions. She spends the main action of the book, which begins on the Friday of August and ends two days later, obsessed with her brother Jarvis's wedding on Sunday to Janice Evans.

Characters
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/memberwedding/summary.html
 * Frankie Addams - The novel's protagonistand the story's main character. Some adjectives for her are: confuzed and stubborn.
 * Berenice Sadie Brown - The Addams family maid. some adjectives for her are: patient and not shy.
 * John Henry West - Frankie's six-year old cousin. his death foreshadows frankie's dying childhood. Ajectives for him are: intelligent and a demeanor to Frankie.
 * Royal Quincy Addams - Frankie's father. All that is mentioned about him is that he works in his Jewery shop. Adjectives: quiet and serious.
 * Soldier - He is in town for three days. he represents the harshness of adulthood to Frankie. Adjectives: quiet and sullen.
 * Jarvis Addams - Frankie's older brother. He is the source to all of Frankie's desires and fanatasies. Adjectives: absent.
 * Janice Evans - Jarvi's fiancee. She represents Frankie's great wish to be adult and to connect with other people.
 * Barney Macken - Frankie's summer romance.
 * Uncle Charles - John Henry's great uncle. HE dies and this irritates Frankie because it pulls away the excitement of the wedding.
 * Evelyn Owen - Frankie's only friend. She moves away to Florida.
 * Honey Brown - Berenice's foster brother. He lives with Big Mamma. Adjectives: crazy.
 * T.T. Williams - Berenice's lastest beau. works in a restaurant and eventually marries Berenice.
 * Ludie Freeman - Berenice's first husband. he died the same year Frankie was born.
 * Big Mamma - Berenice's mother. She is a future teller and is correct about Frankie's future.
 * Mr. and Mrs. Marbun - Former houseowners of Frankie's house. they represent how ignorant Frankie is.
 * Mary Littlejohn - Becomes Frankie's new friend. Two years older than frankie. Adjectives: Friend and mature.
 * Aunt Pet and Uncle Ustace - Frankie moves in with them.

Author's Style

 * McCullers style is used in third person limited. The narrator almost exclusively describes Frankie's experience and point of view. Her tone is different in each section of the story. In the first part it is more dream-like, in the second part it's more circumspect, and in the third part it's generally simple and striaght forward.

''' " A last difference about that morning was the way her world seemed layered in three different parts, all the twelve years of the old Frankie, the present day itself and the future ahead when the three of them would be together in all the many distant places." ''

Setting

 * The story begins during the evening of the last Friday in 1944 and ends the evening of the following Sunday. A brief denouement covers the events that take place after that weekend, up until November.

Themes

 * Theme One - the rules of life that separates one person from another.
 * Theme Two - The way that surface changes, impression and thoughts can believe what exists beneath.
 * Theme Three - Sexual and emotional development.

Symbols

 * Color


 * Eyes


 * Playing cards

Significance of the Opening/Closing Scenes
In the beginning Frankie expresses her feelings and fears about marriage to Berenice, her housekeeper and her 6 year old cousin John Henry. Berenice thinks it's just jealousy and doesn't think anything about it. At the end of the novel Frankie and her father get ready to move in with Frankie's Aunt and Uncle symboling a new chapter in their lifes after the wedding.

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/memberwedding/summary.html

Memorable Quotes
 The They in this case is Jarvis and Janice. Frankie was thinking about the engaged couple in Winter Hill, while she is separate from them, alone at home. She is conforted by this and still thinks she belongs with them somehow. 
 * " They are the we of me."

' Frankie responds to Berenice's remarks during dinner that people are all caught, by the factt that they were born one way or another." '
 * " Yet at the same time you almost might use the word loose instead of caught. Although they are two opposite words."

 This quote describes the jewelry store Mr. Addams works in, when Frankie visits him and learns about Uncle Charles's death. It signifies the shift between adulthood and childhood.
 * " Her father went back behind the gray sour velvet curtain that divided the store into two prts, the larger public part in front and behind the small dusty private part."