ABSTRACT
F. Jasmine (alias Frankie) Addams’s ruminations address a question that adolescents and social scientists alike have pondered over preceding decades: When and how does one develop a sense of ‘I’? While the foundations of ‘I’ are formed in infancy through the interactions of caretakers and child, adolescence does seem to be a time, at least in many contemporary, technologically advanced western cultures, when one is confronted with the task of self-definition. ‘I can’t ever be anything else but me,’ begins Frankie. However trying to find out who ‘me’ is becomes Frankie’s task in Carson McCullers’ (1946) novel, Member of the Wedding. The process of self-definition is something which scholars have attempted to understand from a variety of perspectives – historical, socio-cultural and developmental. While Frankie, herself is not concerned with all of these issues, she eloquently gives voice to some of the forces that help shape her ‘I’, her sense of identity, her place in the world.
