The Member of the Wedding 747emotionally left his only daughter. Similarly, the
summer has intensified a sense of isolation and
separateness for Frankie. Rejected by her female
friends for her awkward tomboyish ways, and no
longer completely content with the companionship
she once found in John Henry and Berenice, her
sense of loss is compounded by the abandonment
of her brother who, through his engagement and
impending marriage, chooses another woman over
the sister who idolizes him. It is the sense of con-
nectedness that drives Frankie throughout the book.
Frankie becomes acutely aware of the loss associated
with death; in addition to the death of Ludie Smith,
she enumerates a formidable list of those who have
passed on: her mother, her grandmother, the son of
a family friend killed in Italy, a neighbor, Lon Baker,
who is murdered in an alley, a shopkeeper, and a
telephone company repairman.
Conner Trebra
cominG oF aGe in The Member of the Wedding
It is early Friday evening, the endless dog-days
of August 1944. In a summer suspended by wait-
ing and uneventfulness, the revelations of the
next three days will alter Frankie Addams’s life
significantly. Frankie sits in her kitchen with Ber-
enice Sadie Brown and John Henry West. She is
bare-footed, wearing a BVD undervest and blue
gym shorts, with brown, crusted elbows and wild
hair grown out from an early summer crew-cut.
She has become restless and discontent since the
spring, noting an unnamable shift in her world.
She is distressed by her significant physical growth.
No longer able to pass comfortably through the
shaded scuppernong grape vines, under which she
and John Henry once sat escaping the oppressive
heat, she fearfully calculates that by age 18 she will
become a nine-foot-tall freak. Indulging in child-
ish pastimes holds no interest for her; she rejects
her role as the leader of the swimming pool dig-
gers and no longer writes plays while sitting in the
arbor. While too old to continue sleeping with her
father, she is “too young and mean” to be included
as a member of a club composed of slightly older
girls. One moment she is lashing out at Berenice
and John Henry, the next she is sitting in the black
cook’s lap seeking comfort. Frankie is nearly 12
and five-sixths years old, teetering on the brink of
maturity, and the maelstrom of feelings she experi-
ences embody the space found between childhood
and adolescence.
Earlier, her brother Jarvis and his fiancée Janice
stopped by on their way to Winter Hill where they
are to be married that Sunday. Their visit invokes a
nameless, squeezing feeling in her heart, and Frankie
remarks aloud that the “world is a sudden place” and
thinks of how it is always “fast, loose, and turning.”
The wedding becomes an escape from the unpleas-
ant endless monotony of her life, as well as a vehicle
for her completion. She has found the “we of me.”
By the end of the evening her desire and plans to
join the couple in their marriage consolidate.
Awakening Saturday morning, Frankie has
changed her name to F. Jasmine; this reflects a
decidedly more feminine and mature character and
mirrors the “JA” of the engaged couple. Dressed
in “her most grown and best,” F. Jasmine spends
much of the day wandering the streets downtown,
impulsively telling strangers about the wedding and
her plans. On seedy Front Street, while chasing
after the elusive organ music of the monkey-man,
she meets a red-headed soldier, on leave and drunk.
In his stupor, he mistakes Frankie for an older girl,
which both titillates and frightens her, and asks
her to meet him at the Blue Moon Hotel later
that evening. During her last supper with Berenice
and John Henry—she will not be returning after
the wedding—she shares cigarettes and talk of
love and philosophy with the black cook. It is as F.
Jasmine that she commits what she fears is murder
by hitting the red-headed soldier on the side of the
head with a pitcher as he makes unwanted sexual
advances toward her.
On the day of the wedding F. Jasmine’s plans, to
join the newly married couple in their life together,
fail miserably. Dressed in an orange satin “grown
woman’s evening dress” and silver shoes, F. Jasmine
wishes only to be “known and recognized for her
true self.” Yet the adults at the wedding continually
refuse to see her as grown and insist upon calling
her Frankie. However much passion she feels, in
the final moments, F. Jasmine is unable to express
her love and yearning to either her brother or his
bride. As the couple makes their way to the car that