“Sometimes I wish I had never knew Ludie at all,” said Berenice. “It spoils you too much. It leaves you too lonesome afterward. When you walk home in the evening on the way from work, it makes a little lonesome quinch come in you. And you take up with too many sorry men to try to get over the feeling.”
Anyone who has felt nostalgia can recognize what Berenice describes in this passage. She longs for her late husband, the man she loved most in the world and the man to whom she compares all others. She reminisces about the days when she would walk home from work with something stable and loyal to come home to. It is this stability that Frankie currently possesses, but wants to escape. She is bored with her small-town life and with the people she knows. Her closest relationships are with John Henry and Berenice, neither of whom is on her level emotionally or physically. Perhaps she is so unhappy because of a lack of fulfilling relationships in her life. Her father certainly plays a minute role in her life, seeing as she doesn’t even hesitate when writing his farewell note at the end of the novel. She sees the wedding not only as an opportunity to foster a relationship with Jarvis and Janice, but also as a chance to finally become a member of a cohesive unit.
Previous to this passage, Berenice says that before Ludie came into her life and showed her what she was missing, she was as happy as a queen. It is interesting to note that Frankie, at the same point in her life, should be experiencing the emotions of a naïve, carefree twelve-year-old. Instead, she is bitter and violent and sad. Like Berenice takes up with too many men, Frankie tries to find happiness in the wrong place. She tries to act older than her age, she threatens violence, and she sets her heart on a grand plan to run away with her brother and his new bride. Perhaps Frankie’s own “lonesome quinch” could be cured by doing the opposite of these things. So my question is, are Frankie’s actions bringing about her own unhappiness?
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