A Mirror-phase Approach To The Ballad Of The Sad Café

Carson McCullers is one of the distinguished women writers in the twentiethcentury American literary history, whose masterpiece, The Ballad of the Sad Café, haswon her great popularity. It has charmed generations of readers by the uniquecharacters and their grotesque story which takes place in a dreary little town namedCheehaw. This novella introduces readers to a haunting tale of human triangle amongMiss Amelia, Marvin Macy and Cousin Lymon. Critics have focused more onMcCullers’ theme of “spiritual isolation” and the grotesque atmosphere expressed inthis work, but always neglected to explain the root of the weird love triangle depictedin the story. With the purpose of not capsulizing McCullers’ art into a narrowdimension, this paper applies Lacan’s mirror-phase theory to the explanation of therelationships between the heroine Miss Amelia and the other two male characters.Mirror-phase deals with the construction of self, which holds that the child fromsix months to eighteen months identifies with his reflected image in the mirror andhence obtains a sense of totality. From the Lacanian mirror-phase perspective, theabsurd human triangle depicted in the tale is actually the tale of Miss Amelia’sself-construction effort by connecting herself to the alienating image in the mirror.Such mirror image is represented by Marvin in the first part of the story and laterchanges into Lymon. Therefore, on the ground of Lacan’s theory, this paper is to offera different reading of the story by analyzing the cause, process and result of MissAmelia’s self-construction effort in the following three chapters respectively. ChapterOne deals with the reason why Miss Amelia needs self-construction by analyzing thephysical and mental instability and incompleteness of Miss Amelia. Chapter Twooffers a detailed explanation of the effort and process of Miss Amelia’sself-construction and therefore explores deeply the root of her relationships with theother two male characters. Chapter Three is an analysis of the unsuccessful result of Miss Amelia’s self-construction effort and concludes that due to the illusive nature ofthe mirror image, her self-construction based on the mirror image is doomed to fail inthe end. By offering a Lacanian reading of the text from the above three aspects, thispaper delves deeply into this absurd human triangle and thus exposes anddemonstrates the root of the complicated relations in this weird love story, so as toexplore a new interpretation of McCullers’s art in a broader sense.