Frankie’s Names and Berenice’s Eye: Motifs of Selfhood in The Member of the Wedding
In Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding, both Frankie and Berenice embrace agency and alter their self-conceptions by experimenting with highly legible symbols of identity: names and eye colors. I illustrate the development of Frankie and Berenice’s self-conceptions by respectively tracing these motifs. I conclude by comparing their journeys toward selfhood.
Frankie’s names reflect her feelings of alienation from or inclusion in the world, and she experiments with selfhood by attempting to become a member of the global community. Her decision to refer to herself as “Frances,” in the final section illustrates that, in the wake of perceived exclusion from the world, she settles on a prescribed, Euro-centric version of self. In the first sentence of the novel, McCullers introduces the reader to the protagonist as “Frankie,” a diminutive of Frances which evokes immaturity (3). As “Frankie,” the protagonist is incapable of joining the world despite her desire to do so, allowing McCullers to suggest that worldliness registers as Frankie’s metric of mature selfhood. Frankie’s disappointment regarding her inability to join the world is suggested through her lack of exposure to the cold. She reflects jealously that, although John Henry is “only six years old,” he has “seen snow” in Birmingham (9). Frankie’s emphasis on John Henry’s age illustrates that she believes that her own maturation is suppressed by a lack of worldly exposure. McCullers follows this sentiment with a simple sentence beginning with Frankie’s name: “Frankie had never seen snow” (9). McCullers’ use of “Frankie” rather than “she” suggests that unfulfillment defines Frankie’s identity. By mentally attaching herself to Jarvis and Janice—people who she believes can bring her into the world with them— “Frankie” sheds this stilted stage of development.
Frankie embraces her version of mature selfhood when she becomes “F. Jasmine” (49). F. Jasmine’s identity is grounded in the fulfillment of Frankie’s desire to be a global citizen. The protagonist selects the name “Jasmine” because it begins with “J A,” allowing her to align herself with Jarvis and Janice (17). However, through this unique name selection, McCullers also illustrates that F. Jasmine is making a bid to be part of the world through them. When the book was published (1946), Jasmine was not yet a documented name in the U.S (“Jasmine”). It has Persian origins, suggesting that F. Jasmine attempts to form her sense of self by identifying with cultures and floras outside the “West.”1 The global nature of “Jasmine” is mirrored in this section by F. Jasmine’s desire to connect to non-Western cultures and fauna. One of F. Jasmine’s notable attempts to fulfill this desire is her search for the monkey-man: “the organ of the monkey man, the sound that always magnetized her footsteps …” (66). The compulsive nature of F. Jasmine’s search for the monkey-man and his monkey, an animal indigenous to the African and Asian continents, illustrates that seeking contact with Afro-Asian cultures is a constitutive aspect of her identity. In this second stage of development, F. Jasmine believes that she has secured her place in the wider world by identifying with cultures that she has never been in true contact with.
1.I put “West” in quotations to clarify that I refer to the “West” as a construct rather than as a cultural distinction that exists in a meaningful way.
The protagonist’s adoption of “Frances” in the final section suggests that she compromises over her globalist identity in the wake of perceived exclusion. Unlike Jasmine, “Frances” is a relatively common name in the U.S. and is associated with Western culture, meaning “from France.” The rooting of the “Frances” identity in disappointment is suggested by McCullers’ reversion to the name “F. Jasmine” when describing Frances’s experiences at the wedding before Jarvis and Janice refuse to take her with them on their honeymoon (145). After Frances’ humiliation, McCullers does not revert to F. Jasmine again, demonstrating that “Frances” is an identity accepted in the wake of exclusion. That Frances’s exclusion is not only from the couple but also from the world is suggested by John Henry’s recitation of a Tennessee Williams line on the bus ride home: “The show is over and the monkey’s dead” (144). By evoking the death of a monkey, a creature that compelled F. Jasmine’s sense of exploration, McCullers suggests that F. Jasmine’s globalist ambitions are dead. Although Frances expands her knowledge of the world beyond her small town by adopting a fascination for canonical Western literature, she is never again portrayed as a character who attempts to blur racial, cultural, and national lines. “Frances” is thus a Euro-centric, legally prescribed identity of compromise.
While Berenice is approximately three decades older than Frankie, McCullers demonstrates that Berenice’s sense of self is no more stable than Frankie’s own. Berenice’s blue glass eye is mentioned five times in the novel and is alluded to when she discussed her ideal world with F. Jasmine and John Henry. The motif of Berenice’s eye suggests that she lives a life split between oppressive reality, perceived by her brown eye, and her ideal world, preserved by her blue eye. The disappearance of the blue eye motif in the third section demonstrates that the dissolution of community pushes Berenice to accept a conventional role. That Berenice’s blue eye represents her decision to break from a discriminatory reality becomes apparent when Berenice’s attention splits as Frankie vexes or insults her. When Frankie asks Berenice about the age at which she met her first husband, Berenice’s “dark eye look[s] up,” but her “blue glass eye seem[s] to go on reading the magazine” (27). Although this question is innocently intended, it is a reminder of loss. Berenice, when faced with this reminder, symbolically divides her attention between the real and the immaterial: the former being Frankie, who is asking the question; and the latter being the words on the page. Berenice once again symbolically splits her vision between the real and the ideal when Frankie tells her that she “ought to … be content with T.T.” (83). Facing this insult, Berenice encounters Frankie with “the dark live eye” and defends herself, stating that she has “as much right as anybody else to continue to have a good time …” (84). The omission of the blue eye from McCullers’ description of the insulted gaze emphasizes the dark eye’s role in physically attending to the demands of a sexist, racist reality. In the first two sections of the novel, Berenice defines herself by creating a protective barrier between her inner life and the perilous outer world.
Berenice’s blue eye also gestures towards the ideal because it allows her to participate in her own vision of a post-racial world. The role that Berenice’s blue eye plays in her idealism is most overtly stated when she discusses her vision of utopia with F. Jasmine and John Henry. Berenice states that in a just society “all human beings would be light brown color with blue eyes and black hair” (96-97). The blue eye allows Berenice to achieve greater aesthetic proximity to the post-racial individual who is free from racism. Berenice’s decision to wear a blue eye is a form of active participation in her ideal world. Nevertheless, her vision of a post-racial world eclipses the particularities of Black culture. By omitting Berenice’s blue eye from the final section, McCullers demonstrates that the dissolution of the community of Frances, John Henry, and Berenice causes Berenice to disengage from the ideal and resume a conventional gendered role. Berenice learns that the Addams family will be moving to “the new suburb of town” and she decides to quit and “marry T.T.” (158). Berenice’s decision to marry T.T. illustrates that she will once again enter a romantic relationship composed of gender expectations, the very form of relationship that harmed her repeatedly in the past. After Berenice decides to marry T.T., she experiences multiple tragedies that prevent her from distancing herself from reality. To care for John Henry, Berenice must squarely face the reality of death. She must also look squarely at reality as she cares for Honey in prison (161). The intensification of Berenice’s caretaking role and the dissolution of the multiracial, cross-age community alongside McCullers’ omission of the blue eye motif suggests that Berenice has lost her ability to dissociate from reality in a self-preserving way.
McCullers characterizes self-development for Frankie and Berenice in ways that are surprisingly similar given their differences in age and race, yet there are also considerable differences in their method of attaining selfhood. Frankie and Berenice experiment with their identities by adopting and altering highly legible symbols of identity. Rather pessimistically, McCullers leads the two characters to similar conclusions. Frankie embraces the “Frances” that she is expected to become, and Berenice relinquishes her independence to a conventional heterosexual relationship. Despite the similar results of their journeys, the two characters approach the quest of attaining selfhood in different ways. While Frankie believes that experiencing diverse cultures will grant her the worldliness that she needs to become herself, Berenice eschews diversity in favor of post-racial homogeneity. Their approaches also differ in that Frankie freely embraces fantasy to explore another version of herself (F. Jasmine), collapsing the line that divides her imagination from reality. For Berenice to claim selfhood, she must draw a strong line between the real and ideal—disassociating from an oppressive reality. These differences in approach highlights that, although the quest for self might result in similar conclusions for a young, white southern girl and a middle-aged southern Black woman, social circumstances, such as experiences of privilege or discrimination, allow Frankie to approach her selfhood through curiosity and fantasy while Berenice must approach her own selfhood through an ideological assimilation and disassociation.
Works Cited
“Jasmine: Popularity in the United States.” Behind the Name, www.behindthename.com/name/jasmine/top/united-states. Accessed 25 Feb. 2024.
McCullers, Carson. The Member of the Wedding. New York City, Mariner Books, 2004.
Authors Bio
Gwendolyn Davison (she/her) is a senior in Columbia College. She majors in history and concentrates in English. She has published creative pieces in Quarto and looks forward to taking the Columbia Publishing Course over the summer.