A Study Of Two Adolescent Girls’ Pursuit Of Freedom In Mccullers’ Two Novels

Carson McCullers is one of the major writers of South American literature in20thCentury. Her description of adolescent girls has significant meaning in research for itsstrong autobiographic flavor.This thesis, based on two texts The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and The Member ofthe Wedding, takes the two female protagonist of the two texts as research object,adopts Fromm’s theory about human’s existence problems combined with Simone deBeauvoir’s conception about female’s “otherness” to analyze the process in which thetwo adolescent girls, as the images of “other”, struggle in isolation to pursuit freedomand true “self” and finally grow into southern lady at the cost of losing selves from theperspective of freedom and love and discuss the deep reason for their failure of dreamand love.From the analysis of Carson McCullers’s life experience, a conclusion can bedrawn that the character of Mick and Frankie is deeply influenced by CarsonMcCullers. They are masculine and have a persistent quest toward love and the senseof belonging. Their deviant behaviors separate them from the other adolescent girlsunder the Southern patriarchal culture and they suffer from the sense of loneliness. Inorder to overcome the sense of loneliness, they adopt certain ways to escape from their“individuality” and freedom: submitting to the social authority and trying to befeminine, creating music or wring shows to pursue dream and dispel melancholy,trying to establish close “the we of me” relationships to seek the sense of belonging asa member of the world. However, due to the limitation of their female body and lack ofthe ability of love, Mick and Frankie’s dreams and love are shattered. Though havingstruggled, they give up their masculine personality completely and turn into a typicalSouthern lady ultimately.Through the analysis of the thesis, a conclusion can be drawn that under the Southpatriarchal culture system, no matter how hard to struggle, the rebelling adolescentgirls can hardly oppose the strong social anonymous authority but head for normalityand mediocrity as the society expects.