Lily Mae Jenkins is a very brief character in The Member of the Wedding, but serves as an extremely important reference throughout the story. For, Lily Mae is similar to Frankie in the sense that she struggles with her birth given identity. Although not fully cross-dressed like Lily Mae, Frankie deals with the struggles of being an androgynous girl in a time of soft-powdery women. Lily Mae is a revolutionary character who is far beyond her time, in the sense that at this time nobody spoke up about transgender, LGBT, etc. She provides more insight into the strict social constructs of the time, that are still somewhat present today. Bernice is appalled when describing Lily Mae to Frankie, but to Frankie it’s no big deal due to her own internal conflicts of becoming a woman. Frankie and Lily Mae seem like characters you would see in a modern story, not one from the 1940’s.
Berenice the black housekeeper suggests to Frankie that marriage is based on the unison of two genders . She suggests to Frankie that the possibility of a gender outside the normal male and female binary is not possible. The concept of a human being both genders comes into light in the novel when Berenice states her point even
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Despite the fact that he is sexually attracted to men and dresses like a woman. Frankie was an outsider due to the way she behaved,. She was influentially pushed into her gender appearance and behavior throughout the novel by Berenice. Lily Mae disputes gender norms and endeavors confirming to perspective gender roles by actually playing the woman in a relationship . The male body does not biologically correspond to male gender identifications and the same goes for female gender identification as exemplified to the audience through Lily Mae Jenkins. Berenice determination to push F. Jasmine into the gender norm just shows us how gender identification could be so limiting and