Carson McCullers' collection The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories was first published in 1951. One of the stories has an Alabama connection.
McCullers is probably best known for two novels, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter [1940] and Member of the Wedding [1946]. She was born on February 20, 1917, in Columbus, Georgia, and died in Nyack, New York, on September 29, 1967, only 50 years old. After high school graduation, she moved to New York City to study music at Julliard. The story "Wunderkind" in this collection, her first published work, is probably autobiographical from that experience.
She soon abandoned music and began to study creative writing. Besides the two novels already mentioned and this collection, she published two others novels and a variety of plays, poems and other items. Her relatively short life was characterized by chronic health problems, marriage, divorce and then remarriage to aspiring writer Reeves McCullers, and infatuations with various women that were never consummated.
Many of McCullers' writings explore the loneliness of her characters and its effects on their lives, and that applies to her story "A Domestic Dilemma". The story first appeared in the magazine section of the New York Post newspaper on September 16, 1951. As the tale begins, Martin Meadows leaves his New York City job for the journey to his suburban home and wife Emily and two small children. When he arrives, he finds the kind of chaos that's become all too frequent in his life. His wife is day drinking more and more, often neglecting the children to the point of problems.
Martin's company had transferred him to New York. "The change from Alabama to New York had somehow disturbed her; accustomed to the idle warmth of a small Southern town, the matrix of the family and cousinship and childhood friends, she had failed to accommodate herself to the stricter, lonelier mores of the North. The duties of motherhood and housekeeping were onerous to her. Homesick for Paris City, she had made no friends in the suburban towns. She read only magazines and murder books. Her interior life was insufficient without the artifice of alcohol."
Emily's husband even hired a maid from Alabama, but that doesn't help. The secret drinking continues, with Emily often calling him at work the next day to apologize for her behavior the night before. She is totally lost in her new environment, and Martin has been unable to help her.
I wonder if some of McCullers' own experience when she moved to New York just out of high school found its way into this work. "A Domestic Dilemma" is well worth reading, like all the items in this collection. McCullers was a wonderful writer. You can read a more detailed analysis of the story here.
A film based on McCullers' first novel was released in 1968. Although the work is set in small town Georgia, the movie was filmed in Selma. You can see the Edmund Pettus bridge in the background of this title card below. I'll be doing a future post on the film and novel, both of which are excellent.
