Outside the pantheon of authors of modern Southern literature, Carson McCullers is arguably one of the best writers to emerge from the genre in the 20th century. With her intricate weaving of character development, she creates characters that strike the reader in memorable ways and come to life through the power of their own nature. Two such characters emerge from his famous short stories: Frankie Addams from The Member of the Wedding and Miss Amelia Evans from The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. These characters are unique because they both struggle to fit into society's ideal of Southern women and are isolated from the "normal" life of a Southern woman. Both Frankie and Miss Amelia face gender issues as non-traditional women attempting to assume masculine roles in their communities, where deviating from the "status quo" is considered untrustworthy and threatening; these problems end up detaching them from traditional Southern society. Because Frankie and Miss Amelia are not content with traditional Southern woman roles, their actions cause conflict in their behavior, their controlling mentality, and within their families. Frankie and Miss Amelia's behavior is generally seen as strange in each of their stories. . Frankie finds it very difficult to connect with other girls her age around her, girls who were once her confidants but "now they had this club and she wasn't a member...they had said she was too young and mean” (McCullers 265). ). As a result, Frankie spends her free time with her cousin half her age. She also has difficulty sleeping alone at night, and until the beginning of the novel, she previously slept in a bed with her father for comfort as a child. During her sleepovers with him... middle of paper ...... and a state of mind, a way of life that says 'I don't want realism, I want magic!.. .I'm not telling the truth, I'm telling what should be the truth! (Williams), pushing her to drastic actions like meeting a soldier in a bar at the age of twelve. Frankie clearly has an internal struggle with the age-old transition from girl to young woman, and lacking a mother figure, is forced to understand the changes occurring within her with strange company; this, along with her violent tendencies, separates her from her family and old friends. Her father's distance from his daughter also has a particular way of affecting her, as she "began to hold grudges against her father and they looked at each other with slanted eyes" (McCullers 276), causing her to isolated from the only parental figure she has, and who has never been constantly available to her from the beginning.