The Border And Structure Of Feeling

The Member of the Wedding,published in 1946,is regarded as the most mature work of Carson McCullers,an important female novelist in Southern Renaissance.Set in a small town of the American South and based on the four-day experience in summer of the female protagonist,this novel depicts the everyday life of marginal characters in a turbulent society featured by the raging Second World War and rapid urbanization.As the accelerating urbanization proceeds on a national scale,the urban-rural gap is getting larger and larger.The American South is inevitably influenced under this atmosphere.This novel describes the everyday life of individuals in rural areas and their lives are featured by boredom,loneliness and depression.As far as McCullers is concerned,the reason responsible for this boring life lies in urbanization.Great changes have already taken place in the South due to the gradual invasion of northern industralization and urbanization,leading to various transition.Faced with these abrupt changes,southerners are in a dilemma between keeping tradition and accepting fresh things.They live in pains without knowing how to find a way out.Raymond Williams,the pioneer of cultural materialism,analyzes the social and cultural transition displayed in British literary works in The Country and the City published in 1973.He originally puts forward “the border”.It is characterized by transition in both geographical space in which the country changes into the city and transition in cultural space in which the traditional lifestyles change into modern ones in the process of urbanization.“Structure of feeling” is a keyword in Williams' s cultural materialism and is also a word Williams devotes himself to in his whole life.It is used to refer to people's experiences in a specific period and can be seen as the culture of that time.This thesis aims to explore the transition in southern rural areas in this novel in terms of rural-urban relationship.The thesis mainly consists of five chapters.Chapter One introduces Carson McCullers and her third novel The Member of the Wedding,some relative researches on the author and the work both at home and abroad,the theoretical framework employedin this thesis and the significance and outline of the thesis.Chapter Two demonstrates the manifestation of “the border” in The Member of the Wedding,which is presented from geographical transition and cultural transition.Chapter Three explores the realistic reasons contributing to Carson's focus on “the border”,including the author's living experiences both in the southern country and in the northern city,and some social aspects such as the vigorous urbanization process in the America South as well as the second World War.Chapter Four analyzes “structure of feeling” at that time.Two characters will be analyzed in this chapter.Frankie fights against the patriarchy by unconventional dressing,Frankie fights against male-female binary opposition,and Frankie longs for the city and the outside world.Berenice struggles for equal economic relationship with her employer Mr.Smiths and she refuses to be the subordinate of the male.Chapter Five moves to a conclusion.It presents a summary of the study and shows the findings of this thesis.McCullers subtly captures the “structure of feelings”when tradition and modernity meets and collides with each other in her work,expressing her hope for establishing a harmonious society.This also displays her deep humanistic concern for modern people.