The member of the wedding Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The member of the wedding - Essay Example Jasmine and proceeds to try grown up things, like going to a bar and drinking, making a date with a much older military man, and dresses nicely with perfume. It is noticeable that both of these personas – Frankie and F. Jasmine – have the same obsession, which is to leave the town. In the end, Frankie seems to settle into her own identity of who she is in that moment, which is neither a boy, a woman, nor an adult, but is, in fact, an adolescent girl and it is only then that Frankie stops obsessing about leaving the town and settles into the normal life of schoolwork and hanging out with a best friend. Frankie Addams, while ostensibly a tomboy is also confused, as she is perched on the boundaries of childhood and adulthood, as well as straddling the lines between masculinity and femininity, while being subjected to sexuality that is presumably beyond her tender years. The masculine/feminine dichotomy is shown by the fact that Frankie has a boy’s name, and is, by all accounts, a tomboy, yet also puts on Sweet Serenade perfume (White, 1985, p. 89). In one scene, Frankie is cussing like a man, and threatening to shoot every person who said that she â€Å"smelled bad† with a pistol, then John Henry repeats that Frankie smelled like â€Å"a hundred flowers† because of her perfume (McCullers, 1946, pp. 610-611). The feminine side is further shown when Frankie dreams about changing her name to F. Jasmine Addams (McCullers, 1946, p. 616), although this name is still a blend of the masculine and feminine. The Jasmine part is definitively feminine. Yet calling herself à ¢â‚¬Å"F. Jasmine Addams† denotes a certain sound of masculinity. According to Groba (1994), in quoting Simon de Beauvoir, this is to be expected when young girls who rebel against society and refuses to accept the roles that others have thrust upon her, yet does not have the courage to completely repudiate the roles. This leads the young girl to either take flight from reality, as