Frankie in The Member of the Wedding

This study will analyze the misbehavior of adolescent girls as exemplified by the character of Frankie Addams in Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding and by the character of Beverly Ann Donofrio in her autobiographical Riding in Cars With Boys. The study will consider what makes an adolescent girl a "bad girl" or a "good girl," what leads them to misbehave, how each of the two girls sees herself, how each girl's culture judges her, and how this reader sees each of them.

There are similarities and differences between the two girls in terms of why they are "bad" in the eyes of those around them. They come from very different socioeconomic backgrounds, Beverly from a poor neighborhood, Frankie from a wealthier family with a cook and other conveniences. They live in different era---Frankie in the 1940s of World War II, Beverly in the 1960s, but both eras were ones of great turbulence. Children as well as adults were troubled and doubtful about the future. Beverly is an average, outgoing girl who doesn't really think much about her behavior or worry where it will lead her, until years later when she is a mother of a college-bound son. Frankie is a very bright girl with an active imagination who is thinking all the time about herself and her place in the world and what she wants to do. Beverly has a lot of friends and her life circles around her "bad" behavior with them. Frankie's best friend has moved away and now her only "friends" are her six-year-old cousin and a black

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nscience of a "good girl" inside of her. This is shown when she throws an egg at an innocent prep student: "I'll remember [his] look of disbelief as it changed to sadness till the day I die" (Donofrio 22). Frankie's story focuses on her brother's wedding day and Frankie's complex effort to make sense of her place in the world. She has grown quickly and is taller than other girls. She cuts her hair very short and engages in such misbehavior as firing her father's gun in a vacant lot and stealing knives. She is as angry as Beverly and as alienated from adults, but she is much more intellectual than Beverly. Her "badness" is more in her head than Beverly's is. Her father is not as mean as Beverly's father, but like Beverly's father he stopped paying much attention to her after she began to mature sexually. She is certainly as angry as Beverly about not feeling at home in the world, and just as confused about her place in the world. She certainly takes a different approach to finding her identity, changing her name and choosing to run off with her brother and his bride (McCullers 43). She feels powerless like Beverly, and wants to do the grown-up things that she sees as symbolic of having a place in the world. She buys a dress an

Category: Literature - F