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.
PlotThe majority of the novel’s action takes place over three days (Thursday,...
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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 10 June 2026.]
