Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding

Nicole Seymour (University of Arkansas at Little Rock)

Ed. by Stephen E. Meats, Pittsburg State University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1946

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

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Resources

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The Member of the Wedding

is Carson McCullers’s third full-length novel. Published in 1946, it followed the smashing success of her debut

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

(1940) and 1941’s controversial

Reflections in a Golden Eye

Member

has occasioned a significant amount of critical scholarship, and also bears the distinction of having been adapted more times than any of her other works. The novel centers on an androgynous twelve-year-old white girl named Frankie Addams – a descendant of

Heart

’s resident tomboy Mick Kelly, we might say – who struggles with adolescence in a small Southern town. However, like the majority of McCullers’s work, the novelconcerns itself more broadly with repressive social structures and the plight of the outcast under such structures.

Plot

The

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3226 words

Citation: Seymour, Nicole. "The Member of the Wedding". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 June 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=146, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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