ABSTRACT
Carson McCullers's juxtaposition of tomboys and nontraditional families is one of the primary ways in which she critiques heteronormative institutions and rituals; explores queer identities; and meditates upon issues of race, sexuality, and membership in the body politic. Frankie Addams' gender expression also speaks to the queerness of adolescence as a developmental period in which intense physical and emotional changes may lead to disruptions in one's identity. In The Member of the Wedding, McCullers uses language to "queer heterosexuality by revealing that it is neither natural nor universally pleasurable". In many tomboy narratives and sentimental novels, authority figures like teachers, parents, and even older friends and siblings discipline young female protagonists to conform to gender and sexual norms. Frankie's "wild" displays of emotion parody the sentimentalism that is conventionally associated with heterosexual marriage and wedding rituals. The narrative draws upon sentimental conventions to reimagine Frankie's surrogate family, but her portrayal of its final dissolution is markedly unsentimental.
