Literary articles - Carson McCullers 2024

Sexless Faces, Abnormal Bodies, and White Trash Girls: Grotesque Women in Southern Gothic Literature

Lili Veronika Németh

The Grotesque of the Belle or How McCullers critized the South

McCullers' The Ballad of the Sad Café ironizes the values of the South by presenting the Southern Belle archetype in a grossly grotesque way. This paper will aim to focus on the three possible protagonists of the story, since it is the outward and inward flaws of these characters that shows and introduces the reader a symbol through a character, and thus a motif in the short story.

Our foremost and only female protagonist is Miss Amelia, a woman in her thirties who in fact, might not be a woman at all. The very first description tells the readers that her face is ”sexless” and her eyes ”turn[ed] inward” (McCullers, 2) in such an extreme way that it seemed like they communicate with each other. This description is significant in two aspects: Amelia is far from a typical female; in fact, the narrator does not consider her a woman at all. Who are sexless in literature or in a culture? Angels or monsters – both mythical characters. This argument might be worth remembering for the paper will elaborate on it later.

The second distinguishing feature are her eyes, that are turned inward. The reader later acknowledges that Amelia is in fact deformed -she is cross-eyed - but not in such an extreme way as Lymon is. Turning inward might mean that Amelia is, in a way, more conscious of herself than most, and is different as a result of it. That the eyes turn inward can also mean it is focusing on something other than the outside world, like another center. Now, our female protagonist is a central figure in this story because the people in town all know her: she lends money to the rest of the habitants, heals the sick and her liquor is otherwordly.1

Her behaviour by the end of the play indeed might suggest she is an angel in aid. Yet her outer appearance is monstrous: she is way taller and darker and that is ”not natural for a woman”. Or at least, not in that dark and distant town that is her environment, her context. She might also be peculiar and supernatural, since she does not conform in any way to the image or concept these southern townspeople might expect from a woman. Amelia asserts herself, is financially independent and her hobby is to sue people which indicates she is aggressive. These previously listed characteristics are all generally associated with a man. She also dresses like a man (McCullers, 2) and is not decent at all (McCullers, 26). And since the context is southern, an affluent woman was called or supposed to be called a Southern Belle and Amelia is the complete antithesis of this role, this idea.

So who is the Southern Belle who the writer paints as a toxic symbol of the values of old? The answer is the hunchback Lymon. Ugly and grotesque in his appearance (McCullers, 3) the man's first true act when facing a problem is to break into tears (4). Miraculously, it works. Amelia takes pity on him and later on even falls is love with him. But Cousin Lymon is not at all masculine: he ”struts” (8) is curious and social – indeed, he is the one to create a social circle around Amelia, he is the one who ”cajoles” Amelia to buy a piano; it is because of him the Café is born – and he is, above all, narcissistic and whimsy; like a spoiled princess or a child2.

”The Belle, the representative of Southern womanhood is infantilized”3 claims Ioana Baciu in her interpretation of the story because children are in some ways inferior to adults; and Lymon is inferior, physically (8). Within the story we can see a whole paragraph describing that Lymon simply takes over the leadership of the household, just as he takes over Amelia's most personal things as well. It was usually a wife's responisibility to care and uphold both the household and keep the social circle fresh, and this is exactly what Lymon does.

Moreover, and this is a key moment, the only person whom Amelia talks about her father, her childhood, the old and beloved times is Lymon, a catalyst to both her nostalgia and later her downfall (McCullers, 16). Amelia deeply resonates and lives with the memory of her father: she was raised by him since her mother died early, she lives in his house and smokes his pipe and keeps those objects closes to her which once belonged to him. She wants to be her father in a way, and the method by which she strives to reach this goal is to remember, to to travel back and Lymon, with his neverending curiosity and questions, seems to sate this wish of hers. He encompasses everything that Amelia might remember from the better days, before the death of her father and her marriage to Marvin Macy.

It could also be significant to point out that despite they had a role reverse, it is not Lymon who is the polar opposite of Miss Amelia, but her ten days husband, Marvin Macy. While Amelia is considered ugly and queer, Macy is literally to die for, because of his looks. There exists another huge disparity between the female and the male character regarding success and assertiveness. Amelia is a well-know and diligent businesswoman while Macy is nothing more than a petty criminal. Yet he has what Amelia lacks: the looks and the voice to win over anyone; a smug aura that draws Lymon in, and make people tolerate and accept him. If indeed Lymon is the Belle, then Macy is his worthy pair, the Southern definition of a macho4, who is good with people and good at small talks. Ehereas the only weakness of Amelia is that she is ”not at ease with people” (McCullers, 2).

Now, every character has a deformity, but Marvin's is an inward ugliness. He is just as cruel as Lymon is cruel with his words and rumours; yet Marvin's cruelty can be seen through his aptitude to be violent and aggressive. He only wants revenge, which in the old South was justified and correct. It was regarded as tradition even. But here he remains barbaric, in a very sharp contrast to Amelia's transcendental qualities and goals. Like the married couple in Faulkner's A Rose for Emily, they too extinguish and destroy each other, (i. e. one out of two has to die) simply because together they are a paradox. The tradition and values of the South destroy Amelia and leave her for good. This is what happens when Marvin and Lymon run off. Although Amelia does not die, her stubborn and dominant spirit dies; i. e. her characteristics which defines her are erased and thus, she does not exist in a metaphorical sense (Hendrick, 390).

There is one last issue we have to mention, and that is how style and narrative correlate so closely in this short story. McCullers' voice is lyrical, almost poetry with her haunting adjectives which so easily flows through the actions. This lyrical quality makes it so easy or the reader to mythicize the text. It is easy to generalize this way, to make Lymon an abstraction and representative of the South if he is described in such a mythical way. On the other hand, the grotesque is very much present through the exaggeration of the characters' flaws and virtues. The whole tale is time to time dragged back to reality with the morbid and the erotic allusions. Since the style is so allegorical, the reader might to start to feel the timelessness and limitlessness of the American South.

Yet the true message of the Ballad of the Sad Café is that the values have lost their beauty, lost their relevancy for the individuals who are lonely nevertheless the values around them. There is nothing heroic about carrying the dried ear of a man whom we fought and nothing heroic about wanting to go back to times past. The only value in the story was the Café, but the Café was born out of newfound companionship and the desire to belong. And still, that belonging is lonely, too.

1 Albert J. Griffith suggests a clear connection between Greek godesses and Amelia, emphasizing clear allusions to Athena (diligent healer and inventor). I would add that this myth narrative, later in my argumetn significant, is even more pronounced when focusing on Amelia's liquor, which is like Ambrosia, nectar of deities which had healing and enlightening qualities, but was otherwise fatal to humans. (Griffith, 46-50.)

2 Before that, in page 11, Amelia is the one who buys him presents and carries him to fairs to entertain him; and then carries him home on her very back. These acts depict a somehow unbalanced and ironic dynamic.

3 Baciu points out that instead of normal food or drink, Lymon is obsessed with sweats and talking. He remained in what Freud would call ”the oral stage” (4).

4 Tennesse Williams' Stanley Kowalski is exactly like that.

Works Cited

Baciu, Ioana. ” Femininity as Performance in Carson McCullers' ‘The Ballad of the Sad Café', ‘The Member of the Wedding' and ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter'” Web.

Griffith, Albert J. “Carson Mccullers' Myth of the Sad Café”. The Georgia Review 21.1 (1967): 46–56. Web.

Hendrick, George. “"Almost Everyone Wants to Be the Lover": The Fiction of Carson Mccullers”. Books Abroad 42.3 (1968): 389–391. Web.

McCullers, Carson, The Ballad of the Sad Café. New York: Bantam Books, 1983. Rivière, Joan. “Womanliness as a Masquerade.” Formations of Fantasy. Ed. Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan. London: Methuen, 1986. 35-44.