The Subversion Of The “southern Myth”

Carson McCullers is one of the most important writers of America in the twentieth century,and one of the most celebrated Southern writers in America.As one of the most important members of the Southern Renaissance,Carson McCullers always described the Southern towns in her works,showing the loneliness and alienation of the Southerners.Meanwhile,as the second-generation writer of the Southern Renaissance,Carson McCullers began to rethink the Southern Myth,realizing the Southern Myth was not conducive to the development of the South.Hence,McCullers always criticized the traditional Southern ideology and lifestyle in her works.Her novella The Ballad of the Sad Cafe was published in 1943,describing a triangle love between Amelia,Lymon and Macy.By constructing a real Southern town,McCullers showed the subversion of the family and marriage,gender relations and rural life in the Southern Myth,revealing the illusion of the Southern Myth.The novella reflected McCullers’ resistance against the main ideology in the South and her wish to enable the Southerners to let go of the past and create the real equal and developed South.The thesis is made of three parts.The first part is a brief account of Carson McCullers’ life,a review of the studies The Ballad of the Sad Cafe both at home and abroad,the meaning of the Southern Myth,and the theoretical framework and the layout of the thesis.The second part which is made of three chapters is the body of the thesis.The first chapter analyzes the novella’s subversion of the family and marriage in the Southern Myth.The three major characters all lived in the broken families as apposed to the happy and warm families in the Southern Myth;Amelia and Macy’s marriage relationship and later her marriage relationship with Lymon were complex and grotesque.By describing these two aspects,McCullers revealed the illusion of the Family Romance.The second chapter is about the novella’s subversion of the gender relations in the Southern Myth.In the novella,Amelia was an androgynous “Amazon”,cousin Lymon was a clown who depended on others,and Macy was a wicked bully.All of them do not demonstrate the images of the polite Southern gentleman or the docile Southern lady in the Southern Myth.By representing their freak images,McCullers revealed the illusion of the Southern gentleman and the Southern lady.The third chapter analyzes the novella’s subversion of the pastoral life in the South.The class order in the harmonious pastoral life disappeared and polite villagers vanished in the novella.By representing the real life in the South,McCullers reveals the illusion of the Southern Pastoral Myth.The third part is the conclusion of the thesis,arguing that in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe,the Southern family and marriage relationship,the gender relations and the pastoral life to reveal McCullers’ subversion of the Southern Myth,which shows McCullers’ resistance against the traditional Southern ideology and her wish to set up a new and developed South.