Norvell is an independent educational writer who specializes in English and literature. In this essay, Norvell counters critics' assertions that Mollie is a re.ection of McCullers's own "bizarre nonsexuality."

McCullers was an eccentric, and nothing about her was more eccentric than her sexuality. Especially because McCullers was a woman and a southerner who lived in less liberal times than now, this eccentric sexuality has always loomed large in studies of McCullers's life and her work. ("Especially" because sexual experimentation has been, in general, more tolerated in men than in women and because southern culture, in general, has given women less latitude than they have had in other regions to explore various roles and lifestyles.) Readers and critics alike, of course, are always tempted to see literary characters as barely disguised incarnations of their creators. The temptation is particularly strong when everything that is known or suspected...