SOURCE: "Dinesen's 'Monkey' and McCullers' 'Ballad': A Study in Literary Affinity," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 1, No. 3, Spring, 1964, pp. 184-90.

[In the following essay, Phillips compares Isak Dinesen's short story "The Monkey" (1934) with The Ballad of the Sad Café and argues that Dinesen's tale was a likely source of inspiration for McCullers.]

Originality is the quality most remarkable in the writings of Carson McCullers. Her novels and stories, with their poetic simplicity and Gothic elements, their freakish characters and malevolent plots, hold a unique place in contemporary American literature. Because her work has been unique, the fiction of Mrs. McCullers has been subjected primarily to textual analysis. A few isolated critics have noted the correspondence between Mother Lovejoy, in the 1958 McCullers play, The Square Root of Wonderful, and Amanda Wingfield, of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie (1944). But Square Root has been universally acknowledged to be Mrs. McCullers' least inspired creation. No one, however, has noted the influence of Isak Dinesen upon her work. Especially revealing is a comparison of Miss Dinesen's long story, "The Monkey" [in Seven Gothic Tales, 1934], with Mrs. McCullers' celebrated novella, The Ballad of the Sad Café.

The following discussion is not to be construed as a conjecture that Mrs. McCullers has deliberately borrowed from the Danish author. But "The Monkey" can be seen as a very probable inspiration for the McCullers work, and affords a partial understanding of the sources and invention of a work which in our time has become a minor though cryptic classic. Brewster Ghiselin has noted that for any artist production .. . a process of purely conscious calculation seems never to occur. The writer uses the sum total of his past to fabricate the new. An artistic creation is an extension of life, and as such "is not an elaboration of the established, but a movement beyond the established" [Ghiselin, The Creative Process: A Symposium, 1955]. Such is The Ballad of the Sad Café, which marks a movement well beyond the established characterizations and action of "The Monkey" it resembles in many aspects. The result, of course, is another individual work of art.

We know that Mrs. McCullers is familiar with the work of the Danish author. Indeed, she was moved by the death of Miss Dinesen to write one of her infrequent essays ["Isak Dinesen: In Praise of Radiance," Saturday Review, March 16, 1963]. In that piece Mrs. McCullers stated that she first read Seven Gothic Tales—in which volume "The Monkey" was published-in 1938. (The Ballad of the Sad Café was published in 1943.) Mrs. McCullers praised the tales for their brilliance, control, and deliberation, three qualities very much evident in every piece she herself has written. The case is clearly one of affinity for a kindred spirit.

Part I of "The Monkey" establishes a world very analogous to that of The Ballad. The Prioress ruling over Closter Seven performs a role similar to that of Miss Amelia in the small Southern town. Amelia provides necessities through her store, cares for the sick, and owns most of the town's property. The Prioress' pet monkey, furthermore, is curiously reminiscent of Amelia's companion, the dwarf Lymon. Of the former we are told, "When she was at her card table, a place where she spent some of her happiest hours, the monkey was wont to sit on the back of her chair, and to follow with its glittering eyes the course of the cards as they were dealt out and taken in." Lymon continually surveys Miss Amelia and her customers in the café, and is humoured as a plaything. Both the monkey and Lymon are small love objects for strong, sexless women. The protective attitude of the Prioress toward the monkey when children bombard it with chestnuts is akin to Amelia's protection of Lymon from the scorn and derision of the town. Both stories employ a group of characters who function as a chorus, and articulated conscience. The old women of Closter Seven, sitting in the sun and commenting on the strange actions, parallel the gossips of The Ballad, who conjecture the existence of hideous atrocities where there are none.

Boris, of "The Monkey," is the counterpart of Marvin Macy. Both men possess fabulous reputations: Boris is described as appearing to be "a young priest of black magic." Later in the tale we find Boris being pursued by authorities as one of the "corrupters of youth." Marvin Macy, we are told, "was not a person to be envied, for he was an evil character. . . . For years, when he was a boy, he had carried about with him the dried and salted ear of a man he had killed in a razor fight. . . . Yet in spite of his well-known reputation he was the beloved of many females in this region. . . . These gentle young girls he degraded and shamed." Boris remains constant to the character and actions performed by Marvin Macy throughout the story.

The Prioress, Boris' beloved Aunt Cathinka, named after the deity of mercy, resembles Amelia in her compassion for the sly and unloved. She and Amelia, in addition, both have a fondness for property. The Prioress, determined and strong, too old to possess her handsome nephew, sees a surrogate in young Athena Hopballehus, and achieves sublimation by proposing that Boris marry her. It is at this point that the character we may recognize as a true prototype for Miss Amelia is introduced.

Athena lives in a house which is "now baroquely dilapidated and more than half a ruin." Miss Amelia's house is "very old. There is about it a curious, cracked look that is very puzzling until you suddenly realize that at one time, and long ago, the right side of the front porch had been painted, and part of the wall—but the painting was left unfinished and one portion of the house is darker and dingier than the other." Both tales take place in autumn, and the landscapes are described in images of despair, with a feeling for what Miss Dinesen calls "the sad heart of autumn."

Athena lives alone with her father, a man who is continually involved in a great lawsuit. Of Amelia we learn, "She would have been rich as a Congressman if it were not for her one great failing, and that was her passion for lawsuits and the courts." The duplication of this detail seems singularly fortuitous. The most striking parallels, however, are to be found in the appearance of the two characters. "Athena was a strong young woman of eighteen, six feet high and broad in proportion, with a pair of shoulders which could lift and carry a sack of wheat." Mrs. McCullers describes Amelia as "a dark, tall woman with bones and muscles like a man." Amelia Evans is six feet, two inches tall. Boris looked at Athena and "wondered if she had ever heard of love." Mrs. McCullers states, "Miss Amelia cared nothing for the love of men."

Both Athena and Amelia are prevented from having a normal love affair by an obstacle greater than that of physical size. Each possesses a latent incestuous desire for her father; both have been sheltered too long by the male parent. Athena is, in her father's words, "the key of my whole world." Amelia's most prized possession is a large acorn she picked off the ground on the dark day her father died. Athena and Amelia have grown up in a male world, and their dress and actions underscore their inability to accept the traditional feminine role. Insecure, they foster their great strength as a protection against the demands of the normal world.

To each of these stalwart heroines, a proposal of marriage is most alarming, and apparently unmotivated. Both stories explore what Miss Dinesen has termed "the tender and dangerous emotions of the human heart." Mrs. McCullers elaborates: "Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain." It is obvious that Amelia consents to marry Macy in hopes of securing a replacement for her deceased father. When Macy tries to consummate the marriage—thereby destroying the father-image-she rejects him. Amelia seems devoid of any sexual feeling, much less of desire. Athena likewise rejects Boris, and is shown to be totally innocent of sexual knowledge.

A key to both stories is the legend which Boris recalls, "the old ballad about the giant's daughter, who finds a man in the wood, and surprised and pleased, takes him home to play with. The giant orders her to let him go, telling her that she will only break him." In each case, the giantess is indeed capable of breaking the body as well as the spirit of the beloved. Both Athena and Amelia will not tolerate being loved by any other than their fathers. This ancient ballad recalled by Boris is, in fact, the "ballad" of the sad café. That subconscious incestuous love is the motivation here is reinforced in part VIII of "The Monkey" when the Prioress recalls a tale said to be in her great-grandmother's memoirs, a tale concerning the Duchess of Berri, who was allegedly pregnant by her father.

Cousin Lymon's appearance fosters new emotions in Amelia. She loves Lymon as a possession, a pet, a beloved object incapable of attempting the role of sexual lover. In addition to his alleged kinship to Amelia, which should prohibit cohabitation, it is clear that his twisted body and broken back make physical love an impossibility. Lymon, then, is the monkey idol of Dinesen's Gothic tale, one of those "symbols which seem to have been the common property of all pagan iconoclasts," perhaps "due to the idea of original sin." Isak Dinesen gives us a Wendish idol for the goddess of love an idol whose front is the face of a beautiful woman and whose back is the face of a monkey. This juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness, the human and the bestial, is a personification of the dual nature of love. Mrs. McCullers expands upon this theme in The Ballad:

This lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. . . . A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

The proposal of marriage, because unforeseen and unwanted, is a great shock to Amelia and to Athena. It breaks into their solitude, their proud isolation.

"Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love . . . A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself." The proposal of marriage, since unforeseen and unwanted, is a great shock to Amelia and to Athena. It breaks into their solitude, their proud isolation.

The Prioress, eager to see Boris succeed, gives him an amber-colored love potion, which will make him forget himself for a few hours and seduce the unwilling Athena. In The Ballad Miss Amelia is first known for her homebrewed liquor which "has a special quality of its own . . . once down a man it glows inside him for a long time afterward. . . . Things that have gone unnoticed, thoughts that have been harbored far back in the dark mind, are suddenly recognized and comprehended."

The most salient similarity between the two stories is in the battle royal that occurs at the conclusion of each—Athena's fight with Boris when he enters her chamber to seduce her, and Amelia's fight with Macy over rights to Lymon. A brutal fistfight between lovers can scarcely be called a common conception for fiction; yet such is to be found in these two tales. In both stories, the bizarre fight is shown to be predictable and inevitable.

The fight in "The Monkey" is described to the length of three pages. A sample of the graphic scene will suffice:

Her powerful, swift and direct fist hit him in the mouth and knocked out two of his teeth. The pain and the smell and taste of the blood which filled his mouth sent him beside himself. He let her go to try for a stronger hold, and immediately they were in each other's arms, in an embrace of life and death.

Mrs. McCullers' version is equally fierce:

Then, like wildcats, they were suddenly on each other. There was the sound of knocks, panting, and thumpings on the floor. They were so fast that it was hard to take in what was going on—but once Miss Amelia was hurled backward so that she staggered and almost fell, and another time Marvin Macy caught a knock on the shoulder that spun him round like a top. So the fight went on in this wild violent way with no sign of weakening on either side.

Just as Marvin Macy never succeeds in making love to Amelia, Boris' struggle to seduce Athena is equally unsuccessful.

The morning after the fight, Athena promises the Prioress she will marry Boris, but that "whenever I can do so, I shall kill him." Her regard for Boris, prior to the fantastical metamorphosis of the Prioress at the conclusion, remains identical to that of Amelia for Macy. When the monkey attacks the Prioress, and forces her to the floor, we have Cousin Lymon leaping on Amelia in the Ballad's terrible climax. In the transmogrification of the Prioress, the iconic face of human love once more prevails, and under its benevolent aegis, Boris and Athena become partners together in life. Mrs. McCullers' ballad has no such happy ending.

There are other important similarities between the two tales. Miss Dinesen's wandering crew of hangmen, who have seen so much horror that they can weep on command, parallel Mrs. McCullers' sad chain gang. Miss Amelia at the conclusion of the Ballad, her face sexless and white, resembles for all the world the old Prioress, one of those beings whom Miss Dinesen describes as "old enough to have done with the business of being women." Miss Amelia was done before she had begun.

Despite the similarities, it should be noted that both stories are constructed upon the foundation of ancient fairy tale and myth, in which the world of giants (the supernatural order) is juxtaposed with the world of men (the natural order). The "larger than life" has proved invaluable to storytellers of all ages who wish to illuminate the little world of man. Swift's Gulliver discovers in the land of the Brobdingnagians the perils of the supernatural for life when he becomes the plaything of a giantess. That his end was a happy one, like Boris', proves nothing more than that the comic mask has temporarily displaced the tragic on the face of a neutral universe. Miss Amelia, having looked upon the tragic mask, must forever wear it.