Carson McCullers’s work was well received in her lifetime by critics and the book-buying public, but the truest measure of her success may be the admiration so often expressed by other writers. Dame Edith Sitwell, for example, has called her ‘‘a transcendental writer,’’ combining ‘‘a great poet’s eye and mind and senses’’ with ‘‘a great prose writer’s sense of construction and character.’’ Tennessee Williams once called her the only great talent to appear in America since the 1920s. Since her death in 1967, her work has continued to earn the appreciation of readers, writers, and literary critics.

McCullers’s novels deal with many of the same themes that can be found in her first short story, ‘‘Wunderkind.’’ Her fiction is usually set in the South, and like Frances, her protagonists often exist in a state of psychological isolation, unable to communicate their strong feelings to others. They often have physical disabilities of some kind and lead lives that are unfulfilled in important ways; regardless of their physical condition, they seem to suffer from spiritual incapacities and are continually thwarted in their needs and desires. In an essay on other authors, McCullers once wrote: ‘‘Above all, love is the main generator of all good writing. Love, passion and compassion are all welded together.’’ The same could be said of McCullers’s own writing. Love and passion seldom work out for her characters, however, leading them to crushing defeats and disappointments; but the compassion with which she depicts their turmoil and loneliness may serve to redeem their suffering. By vividly recreating their misery in the reader’s mind, she can be seen to make them more than just suffering individuals, but poignant representatives of the human condition.

As the ‘‘first outing’’ of a writer who went on to notable accomplishments, critics often analyze ‘‘Wunderkind’’ for early signs of the themes and effects that mark her later work. Since it closely parallels events that had recently occurred in McCullers’s own life, it is usually assumed to be thinly-veiled autobiography, and critics have closely noted the differences between the story’s events and the known facts of the writer’s actual experience. The story’s sexual implications are often given minute attention—the many sensual images, the way McCullers establishes Frances’s conflicted feelings for Bilderbach, and particularly, the fact that McCullers’s own teacher was a woman, not a man. The contribution by Alice Hall Petry, included in this unit’s critical selections, is representative of this line of analysis. Other critics focus on the presentation of gender issues and McCullers’s dramatization of the particular pressures and conflicts faced by women in male-dominated fields, such as the classical music stage of the 1930s; the criticism in this section by Constance M. Perry is a strong example. While the presence of both themes in the story is difficult to deny, it is possible that critics have made too much of them, emphasizing them at the expense of other readings. Her sexual confusion is an important part of Frances’s crushing burden, as is the treatment she receives as a female—but these are not her only problems, and may not fully account for the arrest of her musical career. Whichever elements they stress, critics usually consider the story to be an account of adolescence in general, including its disturbing physical changes, the intense emotions teenagers often experience, the early stages of sexual awareness, and the challenging transition from childhood to adult pressures, demands, and responsibilities. Frances has many problems; they can be defined in many ways, and she herself is overwhelmed by the many ways they manifest themselves. Perhaps the simplest way to account for them is to observe that she is a teenager— a far-from-simple condition, and one that resists easy explanations, particularly when one experiences it directly. In her portrait of Frances, critics find a classic account of adolescent alienation and isolation, which McCullers allows readers of any age to experience in intimate intensity.