A (Time-) Travelling Freak Show:
Developments of the Freak from Carson McCullers to
Contemporary Literature
University of Amsterdam Faculty of Humanities
Master Thesis: Literary Studies- English
Jente Claessen June 2014
Supervisor: Dr. Roger Eaton Words: 22,969
Note to the Reader:
For anyone willing to take the time and effort to read my thesis I want to state that it is not my intention to use the term freak in an offensive or discriminatory way. Rather, with the use of ‘freak’, I want to draw from its basis in the American freak show and the entertainment industry that surrounds it, in which it was commonly used. By referring to a character as freak I therefore do not mean anyone who is disabled or otherwise physically handicapped, but a character whose ‘abnormality’ is used in terms of staging and performance. Through examining the portrayal of the freak and its developments I hope to critically engage in the acceptation and normalization of those who would historically be referred to as freaks.
Table of Contents Title Page
Note to the Reader 2
Table of Contents 3
List of Figures 4
Introduction 5
1. Aspects of the American Freak Show 8
1.1 The World of the American Freak Show 8
1.2 The Freak Performer 12
2. The Freak in Carson McCullers 17
2.1 “The Ballad of the Sad Café” 17
2.2 The Member of the Wedding 23 2.3 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter 28
3. Portrayal of the Contemporary Freak 34
3.1 Facts in Fiction 34
3.2 World of Magic Realism 39
3.3 Choosing the Freak Life 43
3.4 The Female Freak 47
Conclusion 53
List of Figures
Figure 1: Chang the Chinese Giant 9
Introduction
Ever since the eighteenth century the word freak has entered “common usage in reference to a particular type of performance of human abnormality” (Chemers, 6). Closely linked to
scientific classification, the term was used for everyone who had physical or mental
disabilities, or otherwise “failed to match a perceived average” (6). The connotation of human deviancy with performance, however, became widely accepted only with the development of the freak show and its exhibitions of human abnormality. However, since the peak of the freak show around the mid-nineteenth century, much has changed in both the acceptance as well as understanding of the freak (Bogdan, “From Specimen to Stage”, 56). Rising awareness of the cruelty of exploitation, scientific progress, developments in disability and queer studies, as well as new forms of media changed the perspective on freakishness considerably. Bogdan argues that freak shows have not disappeared, but are “recuperated by other media in
different, less recognizable forms”, such as reality television and talk shows (“From Specimen to Stage”, 56). How are these changes reflected in the portrayal of the freak in literature? More specifically, how has the portrayal of the freak developed from the freak show, to novels by Carson McCullers, and finally to contemporary literature? In order to answer this question the first chapter will consist of a short overview of some aspects of the American freak show important to this thesis. The chapter focuses explicitly on the accepted customs used to sell the freak to an audience in order to make profit. It will also look deeper into the life of the freak performer within this world of staged disability and elaborate lies. The background will ultimately shed more light on the idea that the performer is more than a disabled body on stage, but needs careful staging and modes of presentation to become a freak (Bogdan, “From Specimen to Stage”, 73).
Secondly, this thesis will look at the portrayal of the freak in three novels by Carson McCullers: “The Ballad of the Sad Café”, The Member of the Wedding, and The Heart is a
Lonely Hunter. As one of the most well known writers of the Southern grotesque,
McCullers’s fiction is “populated by freaks; character defined by corporeal anomalies” (Adams, 89). Her novels are therefore a good place to start with research into the portrayal of the freak in literature. However, though the appearance of freakish characters is common in McCullers’s works, their portrayal takes on a different form. Whereas the freak show presents overt freakishness and disability on stage, this remains hidden in the South, “but nonetheless endure[s] in furtive or closeted forms” (Adams, 95). McCullers’s freaks leave the world of staging and stigmatization, yet need to adapt to a society in which they are considered
outcasts and misfits. Their freakishness needs to remain hidden in regionalism which
McCullers defines as: “bounded, caught and restricted” (Mass, 231). Even more so, the life of Mick in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is largely based upon that of McCullers: “Mick Kelly’s destiny […] is the author’s projection of her future in the South, had she not escaped”
(Presley, 20). It was not until later that McCullers realized that Mick could have been saved by “a place where she could relish being different, a sympathetic community in which she could find uncritical acceptance” (Presley, 24). Unsurprisingly, by placing her freaks in a society which she even longed to escape, McCullers’s freakish characters are a product of the Southern society and its custom to exclude all forms of abnormality (Adams, 91). Whereas freakishness was overtly exposed in the freak show as new form of amusement, this chapter will focus on how McCullers portrays her Southern freaks in isolation, loneliness, struggle to find a community, and desire to flee.
The final chapter of this thesis will examine the developments in the portrayal of the freak in comparison to Carson McCullers’s works and the freak show in four specific contemporary novels: Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus, Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex, and Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry and The Passion. All contemporary novels house characters who struggle with bodily handicaps and deformities, whether this is in the form of a winged woman in Nights at the Circus, a legendary boatman’s daughter in The Passion, a hermaphroditic young girl in Middlesex, or a Dog woman and floating princesses in Sexing
the Cherry. Not unlike the freaks in McCullers’s novels, these freaks stand out based on their
physical appearance, but is their freakishness portrayed in the same fashion? In order to give a clear overview of the developments in the portrayal of the freak in McCullers’s novels,
published from 1940 till 1951, and their contemporary counterparts, this chapter will compare and contrast some specific aspects of the characters in all novels. Moreover, as the American freak show lies at the basis of freakish characters, are aspects of the contemporary freak in any way comparable to those of the freak performer? These in-depth discussions of the changes or similarities in freakishness are divided into several subheadings: Facts in Fiction, World of Magic Realism, Choosing the Freak Life, and The Female Freak. Within these four subheadings, the freaks who inhabit the contemporary novels are discussed in terms of the search for truth and scientific explanations recurrent in the 21st century. Moreover, the world of restriction and isolation commonly found in McCullers is replaced with a world of myths and magic. Finally, this chapter looks into the portrayal of the freak based on femininity, and the acceptance of their own freakishness. Overall, within these subdivisions, how have the freaks changed from the portrayal of freakishness in McCullers’s work, or how are they
similar? Are there still aspects of the American freak show visible in the contemporary literary freak?
1. Aspects of the American Freak Show 1.1 The World of the American Freak Show
The fascination with, and popularity of, the grotesque and exciting world of the human freak show came with “the union of commercial and scientific interest, the birth of mass culture, and the demographic changes that gave rise to freaks shows in the nineteenth century. Freak shows were part of a broader development of mass entertainment that included amusement parks, circuses, dime museums, and vaudeville” (Adams, 10)1
. Enjoying great popularity, the freak show became known in many different settings, ranging from travelling circuses and sideshows, to several dime museums of which P.T. Barnum’s American Museum was perhaps the most successful (Bogdan, 32)2. With the help of advertising via posters and photography, the freaks exhibited in the museum were its biggest attraction, and the museum’s popularity as “a major new form of amusement” shows in the “estimated forty-one million costumers. The enterprise was more than a success. It was a national force” (Bogdan, 32-35). Though not all exhibitions of freaks were as institutionalized as the American Museum, the performers and acts on stage, as well as the tricks used to lure public remained quite similar over many different types of exhibitions. The freak performers were the biggest attraction of the sideshows and museums; most commonly found in all types of freak exhibitions were “an astonishing array of corporeal wonders, from wild men of Borneo to fat ladies, living
skeletons, Fiji princes, albinos, bearded women, Siamese twins, tattooed Circassians, armless and legless wonders, Chinese giants, cannibals, midget triplets, hermaphrodites, spotted boys, and much more” (Thomson, 5)3
. Though these abnormal bodied performers drew attention, most viewers “remained skeptical, therefore, persuasion usually was necessary in order to extract payments from them” (Ostman, 121). As Robert Bogdan explains in his research on the American freak show and its history, there was much done to advertise the shows
throughout the country, for instance in newspapers, via pamphlets, posters, public stunts and much more (98). The freak show’s popularity was established in creating a feeling of curiosity
1. Many reflections upon the popularity and acceptation of the freak in society are based on Rachel
Adams’s book Sideshow U.S.A.: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination.
2. This paragraph and chapter is heavily based upon Robert Bogdan’s research into the success and
history of the freak show and the freak. More information can be found in his book Freak Show: Presenting
Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit.
3
. From the introduction of Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. A collective work of essays on the concept of the freak show, from which many ideas are presented in this chapter.
among the crowd before the sideshow was even there, via “advance couriers (publicity announcements in newspaper format distributed in advance of the show’s arrival); in addition to advertising the big-top attractions, circus couriers—[…]—often contained short, pithy, stylized descriptions of the featured freak attractions”, as shown in figure one (98). All in all, the freak show was booming business, in which the promoters and show management did not shy away from taking extreme measures to attract their audience. All the hard work paid off, with Barnum’s Museum at the peak of its success around 1850 (Bogdan, 35), the staging of freaks was a popular form of amusement throughout the nineteenth century at least up until the first decade of the twentieth century, when its decline set in (62). The sideshows, circuses and dime museums were known throughout the entire country, if not the entire world, because of the disproportional amount of advertisement, and its popularity still finds its way into the literature this thesis is concerned with.
Fig. 1: Chang the Chinese Giant. An example of the descriptive advertisements of freak performers. Picture from an advance courier for P.T. Barnum’s Greatest Show on Earth, 1881. Ron Becker Collection, George Arents Library, Bird Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. Freak Show:
Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. By Robert
Bogdan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Page 99, figure 30. Print. 4
4
. Picture from Robert Bogdan’s Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. The text below the picture as printed with the figure in this book.
In order to make profit of the freaks, freak show owners developed many different ways of selling and staging the freakishness of their performers. This staging was in fact the playing out of elaborate lies to emphasize bodily abnormalities, and through it underscore the difference between the freak on stage and the paying audience. As Chemers5 states in his studies on the freak: “the strategy of stigma management generally employed by the freak show is plain: the tactical exaggeration and exacerbation of perceived deviance for the purpose of parting gawkers from their money” (24). In order to create a freak who would emphasize the contrast between normality and abnormality, staging was more than just
putting a disabled person up on stage, there was need for elaborate lies and stories. “Showmen fabricated freaks’ backgrounds, the nature of their condition, the circumstances of their
current lives, and other personal characteristics. The accurate story of the life and conditions of those being exhibited was replaced by purposeful distortion designed to market the exhibit, to produce a more appealing freak” (Bogdan, “The Social Construction of Freaks”, 25)6
. This process of making the freak more appealing was not only done via the stories narrated about the performers, but also in the way they were presented up on stage. Besides the fabrication of backgrounds, posters, and the talker outside the freak show to attract the crowd, Bogdan recognizes “two specific modes of presenting freaks: the exotic mode and the aggrandized
status mode” (“The Social Construction of Freaks”, 28)7. Based on the background story that was created around the phenomenon of a particular freak performer, he or she was staged in a similar way to emphasize the grotesque and let the audience believe it was true. Whereas the freak presented in the exotic mode “received an identity that appealed to people’s interest in the culturally strange, the primitive, the bestial, the exotic”, the aggrandized mode lay “claim to the superiority of the freak” (Bogdan, “The Social Construction of Freaks”, 28-29). Most performers who fell in the second category were presented in contrasting positions with an able bodied person right next to them, or had to show how they were still capable of doing everything that ‘normal’ people could despite their handicap. They were “presented as physically normal, or even superior, in all ways except for the particular anomaly that was
5. From Michael Chemers’s Staging Stigma: A Critical Examination of the American Freak Show. This
chapter draws heavily from his research into the social practice and acceptance of freakishness.
6. Bogdan’s essay “The Social Construction of Freaks” is published in the collection of essays Freakery:
Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. This essay is a short overview of his most important points as
published in Presenting Human Oddities.
7
. For further information, see: Bogdan, Robert. “Ch. 4. Exotic and Aggrandized: Modes of Presenting Freaks.” Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. Italics from original source.
their alleged reason for fame” (Bogdan, “The Social Construction of Freaks”, 30). Whichever mode was used, all of them had the goal of presenting the freak in a more interesting and fascinating way to capture the attention of the audience. In the mid-nineteenth century “with the serious intent of getting the audience to believe the façade”, later on with more humor to ridicule the freak performer (Bogdan, 114). As Bogdan argues, the freak is more than just physical deviancy, but “a frame of mind, a set of practices, a way of thinking about and presenting people” (3). There was need for a particular way of presenting the freak in order to gain attention, fame, and most of all profit for the freak show to keep in business.
Ever since the freak show gained popularity as a form of amusement, it has had its connections to the world of science and medicine. Often professionals, or people who claimed to be professionals, were asked to ‘examine’ the freak in order to provide the show with a sense of professionalism and realism8. “Freak shows had always drawn on ethnographic and medical discourses to grant legitimacy to the fantastic narratives they wove around the bodies on display. The signatures and commentary of doctors, explorers, politicians, and royalty appended to promotional pamphlets provided confirmation of the freak’s authenticity” (Adams, 28). It was, therefore, another good sales trick from the freak show’s management; by providing the audience with sources that were presented as reliable and professional the audience was convinced to believe in the freak’s façade. Moreover, freak shows were a fascinating place for people who worked in the medical field, as it “provided [physicians and natural scientists] with a reliable supply of rare corporeal anomalies for examination”
(Adams, 28). There was a distinction between the freaks who endured bodily anomalies known as ‘born freaks’ or lusus naturae, and those who performed as freaks with disabilities, but were in fact completely healthy (Bogdan, 6). A freak who belonged to the latter category was called a “gaffed freak: the fakes, the phonies—the armless wonder whose arms are tucked under a tight fitting shirt, the four-legged woman whose extra legs really belong to a person hidden from the audience, or the Siamese twins who were in fact two” (Bogdan, 8). Though these freak often pretended to have real physical deformities, they were considered fakes, whereas “the ‘born freak’ was publicly acknowledged as having esteem” (Bogdan, 8). Even with this distinction between the gaffed freak and the born freak, the freak show presenters used knowledge from the field of medicine and science to create a narrative around both types
8. Based upon the work of Adams in Sideshow U.S.A., page 27-31. For further information see also
Chemers’ Staging Stigma, ch.2 and ch.3, specifically page 66-75, or Bogdan’s Presenting Human Oddities, page 62-67.
of freaks9. “The gaff was only the extreme of this misrepresentation” (Bogdan, 10). Although research into science and medicine, as well as the authorial voices of doctors and other professionals, provided the freak show with a basis for the stories created around anomalous bodies, the medical field eventually became a reason for the decline in popularity. “Whereas the nineteenth-century science supported and legitimized the growth of the freak show, the twentieth-century science began to undermine it by medicalizing human variation and stripping exhibits of their mystery” (Bogdan, 67). Regarding the anomalous bodies as
diseased, perhaps even curable, not only the mystery disappeared, the bodies became a subject of scientific research only and “exhibits were no longer open to public speculation” (Bogdan, 64). It was not long before many freaks disappeared from the public eye and got a new status as “patients of physicians, to be viewed on hospital rounds and in private offices, by
appointment only” (64). 1.2 The Freak Performer
In this world of amusement where lies and tricks were normal every-day practice, there are different opinions on the exploitative status of the freak shows and the treatment of its performers. “Seen by many as crude, rude, and exploitative, the freak show is despicable, a practice on the margin, limited to a class with poor taste, representing, as one disability rights activist put it, the ‘pornography of disability’” (Bogdan, 2)10
. This opinion, though quite harsh, is shared by David A. Gerber11, who discusses the position of the freak performer in terms of exploitation, oppression, and degradation (38). He explains that the performers who had atypical bodies “had to endure the oppression of unwanted attention—that desire of others to stare at them that forms a basis of the marketing power of the freak show” (48). He even states that: “[the display for amusement of people with physical anomalies] has also been conceived as evidence of a basic human desire, […], to make trained pets of humans, valuing them the more particularly if they are exotic or anomalous and trained to be passive and submissive” (43). The place that freaks take up on stage is merely for the amusement of the normal-bodied audience; an audience who happily pays to gaze at the horrors of the deviant body. This, however, is perhaps too strong a rejection of the influence of the freak show and
9. As shown in the discussion of several famous freaks in Robert Bogdan’s Presenting Human Oddities,
“Profiles of Presentation”, page 119.
10. For more information, see Presenting Human Oddities, “Conclusion: Freak Encounter”, page 267. 11
. This chapter draws from Gerber’s “The ‘Careers’ of People Exhibited in Freak Shows” published in
is a bit one-sided with regard to the reasons of its success. Robert Bogdan takes on an opposing position, in which he argues that although the freaks are staged for their
abnormality, it provided them with a better position in society than without the freak shows12. “Some [people who were exhibited] were exploited, it is true, but in the culture of the
amusement world most human oddities were accepted as showmen” (268). These freaks were the stars of the show, without them there would be no exhibition in the first place, “the freak show was a place where human deviance was valuable, and in that sense valued” (268). Because of their respected position as performers and artists, Bogdan argues, they were also more accepted in the society of the normal-bodied audience (269). However, not all freaks rose to great fame; those who did not had less financial profit and may have found a harder time to get by in society without experiencing marginalization or discrimination. Their choice to perform in a freak show, even to endure exploitation as a performer, was to “find refuge in a world where there were others similarly situated. If they did not find fortune and fame, they found acceptance and more freedom than either custodial institutions or the mainstream might provide […] they belonged with their own kind and they were not competent enough to prosper in the larger world” (Bogdan, “The Social Construction of Freaks”, 35). Overall, the freak show one the one hand certainly did create the idea that the disabled body was a form of amusement, on the other hand they “represent successful attempts by disabled people to gain control of the process of stigmatization” (Chemers, 19).
One of the strongest arguments used to support the idea that the freak show helped disabled people to regain the control of how they were presented on stage, and therefore how they were viewed by the audience, is the successful freak. Take for instance the life of Charles Stratton, who performed under the name of General Tom Thumb,13 and enjoyed great fame throughout his life (Chemers, 50). “Performing as a ‘freak’ provided for Stratton wealth, security and international fame” (Chemers, 51). Though other critics have argued that Stratton later in life fell to shame over his career, neither his boss P.T. Barnum, nor his wife Lavinia left any evidence: “no writings left by Stratton himself, nor Barnum, nor Lavinia suggest that Stratton was unhappy with his fortunes, his performance career, or with Barnum himself”
12
. An argument which Bogdan explains again on page 268 of his book Presenting Human Oddities, Gerber rejects this idea on page 39 of his essay “The ‘Careers of People Exhibited” published in the collection of essays Freakery.
13. Charles Stratton suffered from dwarfism and performed under the name of Tom Thumb, later
together with his wife Lavinia, and was one of the most popular freak acts. For further information see Chemers’s Staging Stigma, page 50-55.
(Chemers, 52). It shows that although Stratton needed to devote his entire life to the role of Tom Thumb, including a staged wedding to Livinia and the pretence of having children, he still felt that he choose the right career path for him. Stratton was not the only freak who thought this way; his opinion was shared by Otis Jordan, otherwise known as the Frog Boy (Chemers, 103). “[Otis Jordan] felt that he was entitled to choose his own career path,
whatever it might be, and reported to Bogdan that in the freak show he had found community, personal satisfaction, and sufficient compensation to live a certain level of lifestyle” (106). Or, in Jordan’s own words: “the woman who was complaining about his being exploited ought to talk to him about it. […] How can she say I’m being taken advantage of? Hell, what does she want for me—to be on welfare?” (Chemers, 106). Both performers leave no doubt that it was their own decision to go up on stage and perform their freakishness with use of their bodily anomalies to make a living. In fact, their disabilities made that they had an opportunity to have a better life than it probably would have been had they been normal-bodied; their fame and respectability as a performer increased their quality of life. As Bogdan argued before, “a freak was defined not by the possession of any particular quality but by a set of practices, a way of thinking about and presenting people with major, minor, and fabricated physical, mental, and behavioral differences” (267). Not just any freak could take on a
position on stage and be as successful as Stratton or Otis Jordan. In fact, it was the creation of a real theatrical identity which was difficult to perform. The freak, therefore, needed to be involved in the presentation of his own freakishness and the narrative which was created around it to enjoy economic benefit. “For those in the amusement world it was the sucker who was on the outside”, the normal-bodied audience who gazed at them, but perhaps even more those who thought all freaks were exploited and needed saving (Bogdan, 272)14.
The hermaphrodite, in some shows presented as the bearded lady, holds a special place within the world of the freak show and the entire entertainment industry. These freaks who performed as bearded ladies attracted most attention by the combination of masculine and feminine features15. They were therefore often presented in the aggrandized mode, which focused on the difference between the feminine body and lady-like status in contrast with the masculine beard, as shown in figure two. “They were typically pictured striking feminine poses in elegant surroundings, wearing fashionable dresses and with their hair done in the latest style” (Bogdan, 224). The biggest challenge for the freak show hosts was convincing
14
. In a comment on “Revolt of the Freaks” in Bogdan’s Presenting Human Oddities, page 270-272.
the audience that the beard was real and the freak not a gaff. Madame Clofullia, The Bearded Lady of Geneva, was for instance thoroughly examined by a doctor prior to her performance: “[he] declared her hair to be genuine and ‘her breasts… large and fair, and strictly
characteristic of the female’” (Bogdan, 226). It is not by chance that the authorial voice of the scientist mentions these specific female features, as the bearded lady was considered erotic, “with her ‘rounded and well-developed figure’” (Chemers, 90). The erotic appeal lies in the contrast: a woman who looked so well-developed, yet entertained the idea that she might have a hermaphroditic body because of the beard. Elizabeth Grosz argues that there is “something intolerable, not about sexual profusion but about sexual indeterminacy: the subject who has clear-cut male and female parts seems more acceptable than the subject whose genitalia is neither male nor female” (61)16
. Playing with this clear-cut distinction, “most common sideshow and carnival images present a graphic, nongenital, lateral hermaphroditism by splitting the subject down the middle and dressing one half as male and the other as female” (61). This did not only make it easier for the freaks to perform the role of contrast between male and female, it immediately caught the attention of the public’s eye without any need for further explanation. In the case of the hermaphrodite presented in the form of the bearded lady, “it is not gross deformity alone that is so unsettling and fascinating” (Grosz, 64). It could not be, as it was hard in the first place to convince the audience that the beard, the symbol of freakishness, was real in the first place, let alone shock the audience with its monstrosity. “It seems to [Grosz] that the initial reaction to the freakish and the monstrous is a perverse kind of sexual curiosity. People think to themselves: ‘How do they do it?’ What kind of sex lives are available to Siamese twins, hermaphrodites, bearded ladies, and midgets?” (64). It is this curiosity which causes the popularity of the bearded lady, the ambiguity of her gender, whether or not she is real, and what remains hidden underneath her clothes.
Fig. 2: Madame Clofullia, the Bearded Lady of Switzerland. The bearded lady was presented as very feminine in her pose and dress, in contrast to the growth of a beard. Ca. 1860.
Collection of The New-York Historical Society, New York. Sideshow U.S.A.: Freaks and the
American Cultural Imagination. By Rachel Adams. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2001. Page 222, figure 39. Print. 17
17
. Text on the right side of the picture from the original source: Rachel Adam’s Sideshow U.S.A., page 222, figure 39.
2. The Freak in Carson McCullers
Established as Carson McCullers is as a writer of the freakish and grotesque in the American South, many scholars have commented upon her isolated and lonely characters. Whereas the freak show portrays its freaks as skilled and respected performers, McCullers does not. In her novels the freak is portrayed as a deviancy excluded from society on the basis of his bodily abnormalities. The novels discussed in this chapter show the hardship and struggles of the life of the freak off-stage, caught in the gaze of a restricted society. In opposition to the freak show, but more importantly in opposition to the contemporary novel, McCullers’s freaks are not powerful characters. It is through freaks in marginalization and discrimination that “The Ballad of the Sad Café”, The Member of the Wedding, and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, critically engage in breaking the norms of normality and abnormality. By putting freaks on stage it was never the principal aim of the freak show to break with norms and gain
acceptance of deviancy, rather they enforced society’s norms in order to make profit. As a new form of entertainment the travelling freak shows and dime museums’ priority was to make as much money as possible. McCullers’s freaks, on the other hand, are portrayed as isolated and marginalized in order to “mischievously disrupt the simple and fragile distinction between normal and abnormal”; they function as a mirror for the discriminating and narrow-minded society by which they are produced (Gleeson-White, “Thoughts on the Grotesque”, 119). Through this mirror McCullers shows her criticism of the strict boundaries between normal and abnormal in the South. Overall, the portrayal of the freak has developed from excessive performances on stage, to marginalization off stage. This chapter will therefore look deeper into the criticism of the heteronormative South and breaking with its norms by
analyzing McCullers’s freaks in terms of isolation, inability to find a community, fear of deviancy and the grotesque, usage of silent imagination, ambiguous genders, and the desire to flee the South. In order to examine all these aspects this chapter will start off with a closer look into “The Ballad of the Sad Café”, followed by The Member of the Wedding, and ends with The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
2.1 “The Ballad of the Sad Café” Grotesque Imagination
One of the biggest differences between the freak shows and the portrayal of McCullers’s freaks is that the latter lacks the expressiveness and opportunity to join an accepting community that the freak performers were so lucky to find. McCullers’s criticism of the
silent, desolate South shows in the first encounter with Miss Amelia caught in the cracked house in “The Ballad of the Sad Café”. The depressing house lacks not only the extravaganza of staged freakishness in the shows, but it also functions as Miss Amelia’s prison of silence. She is seen only sporadically behind the window: “it is a face like the terrible dim faces known in dreams—sexless and white, with two gray crossed eyes which are turned inward so sharply that they seem to be exchanging with each other one long and secret gaze of grief” (197). Arguably the house, or indeed the entire small Southern American town, is a metaphor for the spiritual and physical isolation of the townspeople and Miss Amelia (Broughton, 35). A reason for Miss Amelia’s isolation is her complete and utter silence; in contrast to the freak show performers she is unable to communicate or tell her own story. Even though Miss Amelia’s life is the centre of the short story, she ends up a bystander rather than an active participant—a white face behind the window. Even after the arrival of Cousin Lymon, Amelia remains a silent, withdrawn person to the townspeople. “Miss Amelia stood most of the evening in the doorway leading to the kitchen. Outwardly she did not seem changed at all” and “she seemed to be looking inward. There was in her expression pain, perplexity, and uncertain joy. Her lips were not so firmly set as usual” (McCullers, “Ballad”, 213). Only Cousin Lymon gets to see a more talkative side of the silent character, but “as a rule, Miss Amelia was a silent woman, not letting her tongue run wild on any subject that happened to pop into her head” (224). Though Miss Amelia herself speaks sporadically, her “feelings, fears and desires are conveyed through silence” (Free, 426). Strangely enough Miss Amelia finds herself the owner of the one public place in the entire town, a place normally for confessions and conversations, activities in which she rarely partakes and if she does only in private spheres with her cousin. The café is “not a confessional, [but] a place where the worst agonies of being are acted out”, and indeed acted out is the right verb as the emotion of love and hatred are never directly mentioned by the main characters, but only hinted at in body language and actions (Hoffman, 69). Miss Amelia is a woman for whom actions speak louder than words, and she shows her affection or hatred through behavior rather than speech.
Cousin Lymon is the typical freak when it comes to performing and staging his deviancy, but his past is clouded by silence which forms the basis for gossips and exclusion that McCullers’s freaks face in the South. In opposition to Miss Amelia, Cousin Lymon “once comfortably settled began to chat with everyone, […] picking his way along to inquiries which were downright intimate” (McCullers, “Ballad”, 211). He is described as “a type of person who has a quality about him that sets him apart from other and more ordinary human beings”; Cousin Lymon knows very well that a freak needs to be more than an abnormal body
(211). His appearance comes as no shock, in the light of the tragic aspect of a ballad there is already an air of expectation to the narrative, waiting for another freakish character to come in and disturb the harmony (Millar, 96). “This air of receptivity establishes the fictional world as a field already charged with the eventfulness of what will come. Thus, when a hunchbacked stranger appears one evening before a group of regulars on the steps of Miss Amelia’s store, he seems not to arrive from the outside but rather emerges from within the pregnant stillness” (Millar, 96). A stillness indeed, as Cousin Lymon not only takes in his place in Amelia’s house as if he has never lived anywhere else. But moreover, because when the hunchback enters the story, the only thing mentioned about his history is that he claims kin to Miss Amelia, and that he “was travelling” (McCullers, “Ballad”, 201). Thus, despite Lymon’s social skills and grotesque joy in drawing attention to his performances, the narrator does not tell, or know, anything about the hunchback’s life before. “Ironically, the very body that reveals his strangeness conceals details like his age” (Skaggs, 136). The physical deformities together with Lymon’s feeling for drama and attention conceal other stories, perhaps more secretive and dark. Not only his age is never revealed, the truth on whether or not he is really kin to Miss Amelia is never told either. Consequentially, many different stories and gossips spring from the silence that surrounds the hunchback’s origins. “Freaks do not occur in nature; they are produced by communities that use the physical body as the primary basis for judgments about inclusion and exclusion” (Adams, 91). The lack of information feeds rumors among the townspeople, and several of them spread after the appearance of Cousin Lymon, which make Miss Amelia as well as Lymon appear a freak. “Now this was the day that the rumor started—the rumor so terrible that the town and all the country about were stunned by it” (McCullers, “Ballad”, 205). Though these rumors are frequently untrue and very different in nature, it shows that both the silence of a character, but also the silence clouding a
character’s background accounts for much of the freakishness and grotesqueness that surrounds them.
That McCullers’s freaks are different than the freak performers shows in how the exclusion of Miss Amelia and Cousin Lymon as freakish characters is based for a large part on the use of imagination rather than telling, for instance on the topic of sexuality. First of all Amelia’s gender remains unclear throughout the short story; she is regarded a very masculine woman. “[She] is grotesque, not merely because she is a woman but because she is both like a man and unreproductive” (Gleeson-White, “Two Bodies in One”, 112). Especially in her peculiar red dress Miss Amelia is more a male character dressed as a woman, than female. “She did not warm her backside modestly, lifting her skirt only an inch or so, as do most
women when in public. There was not a grain of modesty about Miss Amelia, and she frequently seemed to forget altogether that there were men in the room. Now as she stood warming herself, her red dress was pulled up quite high in the back so that a piece of her strong, hairy thigh could be seen” (McCullers “Ballad”, 243). Not only Miss Amelia’s gender blurring is considered queer, also her “rejection of sexual relations in favor of an asexual maternal love is viewed as an oddity” (Gleeson-White, “Two Bodies in One”, 102). Miss Amelia already struggles with maintaining human interaction, let alone adding her
androgynous body and sexual tension to that equation. Equally freakish Cousin Lymon is the only other character to who Miss Amelia feels remotely connected. However, in the short story there is never any clarity on whether or not the relationship between Lymon and Amelia is of a physical nature. Rather, “the author confuses and teases the reader” by seeding doubt in the sexual union of the “unnatural giant woman and the weakly dwarf” (Matlok-Ziemann, 268). Gossips go around town about the giant and the dwarf; some people are certain “these two were living in sin”, though others agree that “if those two had found some satisfaction of the flesh between themselves, then it was a matter concerning them and God alone”
(McCullers “Ballad”, 215). Thus, even though blurred genders and potential sexual relations are a source for gossips, the story does not lean one way or another. The truth on these grotesque topics remains hidden in the imagination of the author as well as that of the reader. Southern Society
The portrayal of the freak’s inability to escape the discriminating, gossiping South shows in Miss Amelia’s attempts to become somewhat accepted into society. “Freaks and queers suffer because they cannot be recognized by the dominant social order” (Adams, 90). Strangely enough, Miss Amelia seems quite well accepted and even respected in a role of leadership in the rural Southern town. Especially since the opening of the café Miss Amelia has secured a special status for herself among the townspeople. “The café was the warm center point of the town”, and “the people in the town were likewise proud when sitting at the tables in the café. They washed before coming to Miss Amelia’s, and scraped their feet politely on the threshold as they entered the café” (McCullers, “Ballad”, 239-240). In her café Miss Amelia has created a safe refuge for all people in the small society, which makes her a respected, though odd, member of the community. Even if Cousin Lymon’s appearance in town disrupts the peace, “many in the town were more than willing to accept them and their alliance” (Mass, 235). The bodily deformities of the hunchback and the potential of a grotesque sexual relationship between him and Miss Amelia remain discussed only in whispers. Perhaps driven by
curiosity, the townspeople attend the café even more frequently after the arrival of the dwarf, as “[he] was a great mischief-maker” but “queerly enough, in spite of this it was the
hunchback who was most responsible for the great popularity of the café. Things were never so gay as when he was around” (McCullers “Ballad”, 227). Where Miss Amelia reinforces mutual respect, Cousin Lymon takes care of entertaining the costumers. Although both
characters are somewhat accepted in their oddity, their physical deviancy is still the subject of gossips; freakishness off stage is not fully rejected, nor fully accepted. Yet as couple they find the South more bearable; Cousin Lymon is able to make the social connection that Miss Amelia in her silence could not (Millar, 97). Overall, the freaks are still of interest to the Southern society, but over the years the townspeople have grown accustomed to their queer looks and are more accepting.
Where the freaks in the freak show at least have an opportunity to tell their own story, the freaks in “The Ballad of the Sad Café” do not narrate their story, emphasizing the silence and isolation in their portrayal. Instead, the short story is told by a “third-person omniscient with an occasional authorial intrusion”, and the narrator is also a character who tells the story to an invisible audience, potentially the reader, from his memories (McNally, 40). From this narrator “the reader receives the details of the story and about whom he is left to speculate”, lacking insight into the inner dialogue of Miss Amelia or Cousin Lymon (McNally, 40). The narrator begins his story about Miss Amelia with reflections upon the desolate state of the town, “the town is lonesome, sad, and like a place that is far off and estranged from all other places in the world” (McCullers, “Ballad”, 197). When the narrator is finished telling his memories of the failed café and horrors of Miss Amelia’s life, he returns to the exact same state of the town, it is “dreary”, and “there is absolutely nothing to do” (McCullers, “Ballad”, 252-253). The narrator is an eye-witness to the grotesque happenings and narrates the
isolation and loneliness of the freaks in the South. The portrayal of the freak throughout the entire story is framed by someone else, leaving the audience no choice but to follow the narrator in his perspective upon the grotesqueness of the freakish characters. In some
instances the narrator “speaks directly to the reader (or, perhaps, a fictive listener) to tell him, in effect, to pay attention, to remember this detail or that, to see things this way or that way” (McNally, 42). Different than with the performing freak, the freakishness of the characters in the story is entirely based upon the interpretation of an outsider, even on behalf of the
behavior of the townspeople. “In the opinion of most people [Amelia] was well on her way in the climb up fools’ hill, and everyone wanted to see how it would all turn out” (McCullers, “Ballad”, 239). The narrative technique is therefore in McCullers’s short story an important
aspect in the portrayal of the freak, as it is entirely an outsider’s perspective and eye-witness account upon the main character and happenings in the story.
Miss Amelia’s ultimate inability to escape oppression is the moment when she goes from a rather queer looking masculine woman, who is a semi-accepted member of society, to a freak who breaks down and loses all sense. The deterioration becomes noticeable for the townspeople when Marvin Macy returns to the life of Miss Amelia. However, it has already started when Miss Amelia develops strong feelings for Cousin Lymon, who, in his turn, gets fascinated with Marvin Macy. These relationships are eventually destructive for Miss Amelia and make her end up all alone in the cracked and boarded up café (Stebbins, 38). Not only Miss Amelia is affected by the return of Marvin Macy, also Cousin Lymon’s life changes significantly, though he may not see it as pessimistically. “[Lymon] craves the one
relationship in which he is treated as monstrous rather than human. He becomes a victim of the success of his own performance” (Skaggs, 135). A performance much like the ones at the freak show: “he fluttered his eyelids, so that they were like pale, trapped moths in his sockets. He scraped his feet around on the ground, waved his hands about, and finally began doing a little trotlike dance” (McCullers, “Ballad”, 235). Though putting in his best efforts, Marvin Macy does not hesitate to insult Cousin Lymon: “Marvin Macy, alone of all the people in the yard, was unimpressed. ‘Is the runt throwing a fit?’ he asked, and when no one answered he stepped forward and gave Cousin Lymon a cuff on the side of his head” (McCullers, “Ballad”, 235). Apparently, Cousin Lymon feels the need to make an act out of his physical deformities, showing that in order for him to become a freak he needs some kind of performance (Skaggs, 137). Not only does Cousin Lymon’s performance make him a freak, it also amplifies the freakishness of Miss Amelia. “Sometimes he followed around in Miss Amelia’s footsteps— but these days it was only in order to imitate her awkward long-legged walk; he crossed his eyes and aped her gestures in a way that made her appear to be a freak” (McCullers, “Ballad”, 245). It shows that it is not queerness or physical abnormalities alone which makes a freak in “The Ballad of the Sad Café”, but also the performance of the freak, emphasized by the return of Marvin Macy. Furthermore, these performances of freakishness eventually make it
impossible for either Cousin Lymon or Miss Amelia to become a fully accepted member of the community.
2.2 The Member of the Wedding
Fascination with Freaks
The freak on stage enjoys a better position in society than the Southern freak as portrayed in
The Member of the Wedding, but at the same time the shows’ popularity is based on the
exclusion of abnormality which Frankie and John Henry face as well. These opposing stances show in the different reactions of both characters to the freaks they encounter at the fair. Adams argues that the “target of [McCullers’s] condemnation is a culture that makes freakishness a source of terror rather than recognizing in each individual what her character John Henry West describes approvingly as ‘a mixture of delicious and freak’” (91). The freaks do not only cause for a feeling of terror, but certainly also a feeling of awe, although the latter is not shared by Frankie. John Henry is completely stricken by a freak named the Pin Head: “she was the cutest little girl I ever saw. I never say anything so cute in my whole life” (McCullers, Member, 21). His fascination even shows later in the novel: “when Frankie threatened to take him to the Fair and sell him to the Freak Pavilion, he would only close his eyes and smile” (McCullers, Member, 98). The entire performance of the physically disabled person on stage to entertain the normal bodied visitor is more delicious than freakish for the boy, but Frankie thinks differently. “Frankie is at once terrified and secretly fascinated by the freaks at the fair” (Groba “Intolerable Burden of Femininity”, 137). Frankie’s fear is
explained by Adams in the notion that the freak show is a place where norms are reinforced, making the visitors see freaks as Other and completely deviant from the norm (97). For Frankie, however, “the sideshow is a place of fear, where her anxieties are heightened by identification with the freaks rather than assuaged by confirmation of her own normality” (97). In her insecurities about her own queer body, the girl feels more closely connected to the freaks than the normal people in the Southern town. “She was afraid of all the Freaks, for it seemed to her that they had looked at her in a secret way and tried to connect their eyes with hers, as though to say: we know you. She was afraid of their long Freak eyes” (McCullers,
Member, 20). Though both fascinated and repulsed by the deformed bodies and psychological
deviancy of the freaks, fear remains the overwhelming emotion in Frankie; she is scared she is a better fit for the Freak Pavilion and therefore irrevocably excluded from her small town society.
That McCullers’s freaks are abject and isolated rather than celebrated for their performances shows in Frankie’s deep fear of her own physical deformities. Frankie’s outer appearance is described is when she looks into a mirror: “Frankie looked, but her eyes were
gray as they always were. This summer she was grown so tall that she was almost a big freak, and her shoulders were narrow, her legs too long” (McCullers, Member, 4). Her body is the ultimate example of Bakhtin’s theory of the grotesque, it is in the “act of becoming” as she “encounters the uncanny when puberty estranges her from her old body and her old self” (Bell, 69). Opposing the body “in fixation”, Frankie’s body undergoes significant changes which come with the shift from childhood to adolescence (Brantley, 677). Changes which are extremely frightening for Frankie, whose body takes its first steps into the world of
adolescence, whereas she is not entirely ready to leave childhood yet. “’If you want my candy opinion,’ said Berenice, ‘that whole crowd of folks down yonder at the fair just give me the creeps. Ever last one of them.’ Frankie watched Berenice through the mirror, and finally she asked in a slow voice. ‘Do I give you the creeps?’ ‘You?’ asked Berenice. ‘Do you think I will grow into a Freak?’ Frankie whispered” (McCullers, Member, 21). Even though Berenice speaks specifically about the freaks at the fair, Frankie feels that the words might as well have been directed to her. Frankie fears that the changes of her body make her a freak, doomed to a life of exclusion and ridicule—the abnormality of society. Adams explains that in
McCullers’s works “freaks would be seen not as absolute Others, but as aspects of the self and, by extension, of a broader social order intent on securing the boundary between deviance and normality” (91). The freak is more than the illusion of a performance, the realistic
approach is that the abnormal is needed to establish the normal. A boundary which Frankie is afraid she might cross, or indeed that she has already crossed over to the side of the freak. Once crossed there is only exclusion, even Frankie recognizes that that there is a miniscule chance that “[freaks] ever get married or go to a wedding”, at the moment the most important happening in Frankie’s life (McCullers, Member, 20).
McCullers’s criticism on the sharp line between normal and abnormal, and the use of freakishness to secure that boundary, shows in the portrayal of Frankie as a girl balancing that line. It is unsurprising that Frankie struggles with the estrangement from her body and is confused about who she is or wants to be. “A primary necessity in a [wo]man is, according to McCullers, to establish [her] individual identity, and consciousness of self is the first abstract problem the human being solves” (Groba, “A Haven in the Age of Anxiety”, 87). Frankie is still very much involved in this search of individual identity and switches back and forth between several options. When she is first introduced as a tomboy it is immediately stated that “Frankie had become an un-joined person who hung around in doorways, and she was afraid” (McCullers, Member, 3). Frankie even says “I wish I was somebody else except me” (7), and later it is mentioned that “this was the summer when Frankie was sick and tired of being
Frankie. She hated herself, and had become a loafer and a big no-good who hung around the summer kitchen: dirty and greedy and mean and sad” (McCullers, Member, 22). Throughout the novel Frankie’s search for her own identity is accompanied by several names: whereas she is called Frankie in the first part, she is referred to as F. Jasmine in the second part and
Frances in the final section. Even though it seems that the names follow a process of
maturing, Seymour argues that “Frankie’s name changes do not reflect development toward mature, hetero-normative ends, but, rather, mark her failure to secure those ends”, and, “[the name changes] are performances, rather than markers, of growth and change" (303-304). The name change is a performance; Frankie forms an identity she thinks normative society expects of her, rather than that she finds her real self. Frankie’s inconsistency in choosing a name, garment, and behavior make her more freakish and excluded than an accepted member of hetero-normative society. Berenice, for instance, rejects F. Jasmine’s orange satin dress as cross-dressing, something unfitting for Frankie’s identity (McCullers, Member, 89). John-Henry’s idea that “people ought to be half boy and half girl” does not work for Frankie, as she feels the need to choose a side (McCullers, Member, 98); either be a tomboyish freak who will grow up a giantess and perform in a freak show, or become the Southern lady everybody expects of her. Finding her own identity proves much harder than it seems, as choosing the ‘right’ identity may save her from a life of lonely freakishness.
Secured Society
The freak show, according to Adams, displays “the abject elements that have been banished from visibility but nonetheless endure in furtive or closeted forms”; it portrays freakishness and grotesqueness which remains hidden in McCullers’s portrayal of the freak (95). This banishment of freakishness, and the fear of becoming a freak, shows the downside to glamorous and successful staging of deviancy. Besides the fear that the townspeople may brand Frankie a freak, the few encounters she has with other characters who deviate from the norm also remain hidden in the shadows. For instance in her nightly visits to the Blue Moon café, but it is even more evident when Frankie walks in on a romantic encounter between two boys in a dark alley.
“She was walking home when all at once there was a shock in her as though a thrown knife struck and shivered in her chest. F. Jasmine stopped dead in her tracks, one foot still raised, and at first she could not take in just what had happened. There was
left eye; she had half-seen something, a dark double shape, in the alley she had just that moment passed” (McCullers, Member, 74).
Although Frankie is shocked because the scene reminds her of her brother’s wedding, it does show that deviance from heteronormative behavior must remain hidden in the dark. The homosexual relationship between the two boys does not fit the norms of Southern society. “It is another formation defined by its otherness—forced into an alley, unacceptable to society’s eyes” (Jewett, 98). Not only are these two boys forced to hide their ‘abnormal’ behavior, Frankie is rejected from the town’s social life because of her freakishness as well. Frankie has earned her status as freak as “McCullers’s characters become freaks when their unusual bodily appearances are coupled with exclusion from communal bonds” (Adams, 106). She is not invited to join the club of neighborhood girls, instead she is left by herself to “sometimes [go] around to the alley behind the clubhouse […]. She stood in the alley and watched and listened. They were very long, those parties” (McCullers, Member, 12). Once again all which slightly deviates from the norm is considered freakish, and is pushed into the shadows to become invisible to the Southern town. It worries Frankie that she is rejected from
participation in society; “I think they have been spreading it all over town that I smell bad” (McCullers, Member, 12). Together with Frankie’s notion of her body as freakish and “the exclusion from the community of her peers” Frankie is considered an outsider and “longs to leave the South for just about anywhere” (Mass, 236).
Frankie is portrayed as caught in her status of freakishness and in a society which does not accept her abnormality, yet unlike the performers in the travelling freak shows she cannot escape. Gleeson-White argues: “[Frankie’s] desire to ‘bust free’ resembles the impulse of the grotesque that cannot endure the contours of the normal—classic—identity” (“Revisiting the Southern Grotesque”, 115). The only way to flee is via fantasy and performance outside reality, a restriction which Berenice describes as ‘caught-ness’: “’we all of us somehow caught. We born this way or that way and we don’t know why. But we caught anyhow. I born Berenice. You born Frankie. John Henry born John Henry. And maybe we wants to widen and bust free. But no matter what we do we still caught’” (McCullers, Member, 119). Frankie, however, responds that she does not want to be caught and instead dreams of travelling the world. The wedding of her brother is Frankie’s greatest fantasy; she imagines herself joining her brother and sister-in-law on their honeymoon. “She dreams of finding a place in some form of collective—a ‘we’—she associates this state more with movement and change than with stasis and fruition” (Millar, 89). In her fantasy Frankie not only becomes part of a longed
for ‘we’, she also gets to shake off the narrow-minded standards of the Southern community. “’Here today and gone tomorrow. Alaska, China, Iceland, South America. […] Here today and gone tomorrow. All over the world. It’s the damn truth. Boyoman!’” (McCullers,
Member, 117). Throughout her travels, Frankie imagines, she will get accepted as a member
by everyone she meets: “we will have thousands of friends, thousands and thousands and thousands of friends. We will belong to so many clubs that we can’t keep track of all of them” (McCullers, Member, 118). The only way to escape the cruelty of rejection by the
townspeople and her fear of becoming a freak is via fantasies of the wedding and travelling. They are Frankie’s attempts to flee and her dreams show a chance of acceptance and the ability to establish her own identity beyond that of freak. Though Frankie fears the freak shows because it confirms her abnormality, its performers seem better off as showmen in a community of peers, than she as prisoner of a narrow-minded Southern community.
Despite Frankie´s desires to flee the South, she is once again portrayed as a character who cannot escape its norms and has less freedom than the freak show performers. First of all Frankie has great dreams of travelling the world, going to cold places or joining the army, but the furthest she crosses society’s boundaries is when she enters the Blue Moon café.
“The Blue Moon was a place for holiday soldiers and the grown and free. The old Frankie had known she had no valid right to enter there, so she had only hung around the edges and never once had she gone inside. But now this morning before the
wedding all of this was changed. The old laws she had known before meant nothing to F. Jasmine, and without a second though she left the street and went inside”
(McCullers, Member, 58).
As a symbol of Frankie’s changed identity and rebellious idea to side with the freakish and go against the hetero-normative Southern society, the Blue Moon is the place she all of the sudden dares to enter. Frankie visits the café “in search of escape from an unbearable
everyday reality”, however, her expectations of escaping and having a connection with other visitors is destroyed with meeting a young soldier (Groba, “A Haven in the Age of Anxiety”, 95). Whereas Frankie first feels close to him, “the illusion of connection and belonging is shattered” as soon as they go up to his room (Groba, “A Haven in the Age of Anxiety”, 97). Although the soldier’s intentions are clearly different than Frankie’s, she does not realize this until it is nearly too late: “there would steal over her a mysterious uneasiness that lasted until she realized what was wrong”, and, “it was the forewarning hush that comes before an
the world of the café, Frankie is left by her brother and his wife after the wedding, forcing Frankie to give up her dreams of escaping. “Growth is accompanied by loss—loss of ideals, dreams and people. But Frankie has moved on and is consumed with her new best friend” (Bell, 72). The dreams of freedom are replaced by Mary Littlejohn, the death of John Henry and the marriage of Berenice; it seems that Frankie is accepting of these changes and takes on a Southern identity first rejected by her freakish side (Mass, 241). Frankie’s insight that the South is “a place for freaks like her” shows even more when she and Mary are forbidden to visit the Freak Pavilion at the fair (Mass, 242). “Mrs. Littlejohn said it was morbid to gaze at Freaks” (McCullers, Member, 161). There is no longer place for the visibility of freakishness, not within Frankie self, nor on the stage of the freak show.
2.3 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Caught in Silence
McCullers’s portrayal of the freak in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter combines well with Adams’s definition of characters considered freakish only when physical deformities are combined with isolation (106). Though physical deformities may be less obvious than in for instance Cousin Lymon, silence and isolation are excessively shown in John Singer. As a deaf-mute Singer has learned to speak, but ever since he met his obese friend Antonapoulos “he had never spoken with his mouth again” (McCullers, Heart, 14). “The two mutes had no other friends, and except when they worked they were alone together” (McCullers, Heart, 9). The friends have created a perfect little bubble in which they live a lonely, yet comfortable life. Unfortunately, when Antonapoulos is taken away to a mental health clinic Singer stays behind with a shattering feeling of loneliness and depression; a direct result of the
discriminative stance of the South. “To the other characters in the novel [Singer] is the embodiment of that sense of isolation, of separation from the community, which makes their lives wretched” (Kohler, 417). For Singer, the only relief from his life of silence was
Antonapoulos, but as soon as he is left alone “he could not sleep and his body was very restless” (McCullers, Heart, 14). Singer is not accepted in society, nor has he the
opportunities to escape it; he is left to “[wander] through the streets of the town, always silent and alone” (McCullers, Heart, 15). A “universalized loneliness [which] came to be read as the grotesque”, as that which remains hidden in silence lies in the grey area where normality moves into abnormality (Free, 428). Singer’s inability to express himself makes him literally imprisoned by his own physical impairment and when the only person he could communicate
with is gone, there is no one left to feel connected to. “In many eyes there was a look of somber loneliness”, and though Singer gets a great many admirers through the New York café, he keeps to himself and continues his lonely walks through town, especially at night (McCullers, Heart, 175). In the portrayal of the isolation of the freak, McCullers shows how depressing the lack of acceptance really is.
That Singer is bound and restricted in McCullers’s South shows once again in the use of different narrators who tell his story, aside from a few insightful passages. In these
different viewpoints “Singer stands at the centre of the grouping of characters, but remains almost as enigmatic to the reader as to his fellow lonely hearts” (Millichap, 11). In his inability to communicate and explain his own identity, Singer becomes the ideal victim of gossiping townspeople. With “many eyes” watching him:
“it came about that various rumours started in the town concerning the mute. […] [They] were rich and varied. The Jews said that he was a Jew. The merchants along the main street claimed he had received a large legacy and was very rich man. It was whispered in one browbeaten textile union that the mute was organizer for the C.I.O. A lone Turk […] claimed passionately to his wife that the mute was Turkish. He said that when he spoke his language the mute understood. And as he claimed this his voice grew warm and he forgot to squabble with his children and he was full of plans and activity. One old man from the country said that the mute had come from somewhere near his home and that the mute’s father had the finest tobacco crop in all the county. All these things were said about him” (McCullers, Heart, 177).
Singer is not only caught in silence and branded freak because of his physical impairments, he is also caught in each identity created for him by others. “Certainly it is because [the other characters] know so little about him that they are free to imagine him as they wish him to be, so that the image of him which they fashion is really a projection of their own desires” (Evans, 190). Much like Biff Brannon’s ever watching eye, the rest of the town becomes an ever watchful society in which Singer is caught. Whereas the barman simply states that he “likes freaks”, the others feel the need to justify their claims by convincing each other that it is the truth; that Singer really does understand them (McCullers, Heart, 17). The theme of isolation is not narrated through physical silence alone, but even more so through the creation of unjustifiable and illegitimate stories—like the stories created around the freak performers on stage.
realistic stance towards freakishness than in the shows, is also portrayed in Mick Kelly. Mick has her own way of escaping the real world which is not always kind to her: “with her it was like there was two places—the inside room and the outside room. School and the family and the things that happened every day were in the outside room. Mister Singer was in both rooms. Foreign countries and plans and music were in the inside room” (McCullers, Heart, 145). Much like Frankie in The Member of the Wedding, Mick flees in fantasies and dreams, many about travelling or belonging to a group, in order to escape the depressing norms of society. Mick’s personality is hidden deep inside the inner room which is inaccessible to the outside world, “it is that perfectly orderly world of ideals where everything works out, the private garden where she has the necessary freedom to imagine, to design, and to produce artistic creations that express her distinctive personality and ambition” (Groba, “Female in Deep South”, 90). Though Groba argues that music is the one connection between Mick’s inner room and the real world and that an audience will “break her out of her isolation”, this is more a fantasy as presented in the freak show than a realistic achievement (91). She struggles, for instance, with writing down the music that she hears in her head and Mick realizes that “there was so much she didn’t know about how to write music” (McCullers, Heart, 211). “Thus music becomes and effective symbol of the gap between the ideal and the real”, leaving Mick with only the silent thoughts of her inner room as possible escape (Groba, “Female in Deep South”, 92). Unfortunately, Mick cannot enjoy the escape route of her inner room for long, as the financial troubles of her family force her to take on a job. “The job is the
beginning of adulthood for her and the end of youthful dreams” (Reece, 47). Not even music can help her escape the pressure of society’s norms: “but now no music was in her mind. That was a funny thing. It was like she was shut out from the inside room. Sometimes a quick little tune would come and go—but she never went into the inside room with music like she used to do” (McCullers, Heart, 307). As a child Mick was caught in silence, yet at least had wild fantasies in which she could show her creative personality, but as soon as she conforms to the norms of adulthood there is no escape; once again the freaks in the show are better off than Mick.
Attempts to Escape
As argued before, the freaks in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter are caught in a web of isolation, loneliness, and silence, in other words: McCullers’s depressing realistic view of the life of the freak off stage. There are, however, a few attempts to break out of the restrictions and
Kelly, Biff Brannon, John Singer, and Jack Blount, all find themselves lonely and frustrated participants of society, unable to fit in anywhere. “A person frustrated in his attempts to include himself tends to resort to violence”, violence which shows itself in different ways (Tinkham, 386). Mick “wasn’t a member of any bunch” and a tendency towards violence is found in her, when she feels the urge to write swearwords on the wall (McCullers, Heart, 95). “She crossed over to the opposite wall and wrote a very bad word—pussy—and beneath that she put her initials, too” (McCullers, Heart, 37). The violence in Mick is more directed towards herself, or at least does not affect the people around her. This changes when violent riots occur more often on the streets, and Jake Blount is a supporter: “we meant to start riots—stir up all the big trouble we could. Our ultimate goal was freedom—but a real freedom, a great freedom made possible only by the sense of justice of the human soul” (McCullers, Heart, 139). Blount has a great interest in the social problems occurring in town, such as exploitation and racism, yet his attempts at violence to escape these issues do not bring him any relief. “Mrs. McCullers had created a confused, brutal world, shown a
momentary order in it, destroyed that order, yet in the very destruction, in the very moment of despair, shows us the foundation of a possible order in the tragic revelations of defeat”
(Millichap, 12). Defeat is the only way to achieve order in the personal and social lives of Mick and Blount, which means that both need to conform to society’s rules instead of escaping via ideals and violence. Whereas Mick finally takes on a job and abandons her fantasies about fleeing town, Blount remains alone and frustrated. Despite of his efforts to communicate and willingness to belong to a community, his violent behavior causes him to leave town walking, as he “was so strong and ugly no one wanted to take him in” (McCullers,
Heart, 304).
Where the freak show provided its freaks with a community of like-minded abnormal characters, the characters of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter try to overcome isolation through communication as well. Once again Singer is the centre of the story, and the other characters find a way to communicate their fears through him. “All these people are drawn to John Singer, the mute, because they believe he knows some inner certainty and calm which they lack. Even his silence seems a form of uncommitted wisdom” (Kohler, 420). Mick ascribes certain powers—godlike powers—to Singer, who is both in her inner, as well as her outer room. Only the ever watching Biff Brannon notices this peculiar situation: “Biff narrowed his eyes. How Singer had been before was not important. The thing that mattered was the way Blount and Mick made of him a sort of home-made God. Owing to the fact he was a mute they were able to give him all the qualities they wanted him to have” (McCullers, Heart, 204).
