The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

The Ballad of the Sad Café is a novella by American author Carson McCullers, first published in 1951 by Houghton Mifflin as part of the author's short fiction collection The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories. The novella tells the story of a bizarre love triangle in a rural Georgia mill town, where a general store proprietress falls in love with a hunchbacked man—much to the ire of her convict ex-husband. Like much of McCullers's work, The Ballad of the Sad Café is a Gothic Southern tale of loneliness, social ostracization, and lives of quiet desperation.

Miss Amelia is a towering woman, both in physical stature and in energy, though her size has made her both awkward and friendless. She devotes her life to her father, and when he passes away, she takes over his business running the town's general store. Not long after her father dies, a handsome but troubled young man named Marvin Macy asks Miss Amelia to marry him, and she agrees, to the great confusion of the community.

From all appearances, Marvin possesses true feelings for Miss Amelia. His previously vicious nature completely turns around, and he transforms into a gentle, seemingly good person. He truly settles down after walking down the aisle with Miss Amelia.



But she has no intentions of being a typical wife, nor does she want a typical marriage. Miss Amelia is, after all, no typical woman in this small Southern town. She rejects her husband's affections, even after he gives up everything he owns to prove his love for her.

Just 10 days after their wedding, the marriage ends. Devastated, Marvin leaves town and goes on a rampage of robbing and killing. Eventually, he is apprehended and sent to jail.
With the scandal of her brief marriage still fresh in the minds of the townspeople, Miss Amelia does what she's always done. She keeps to herself and focuses on her work at the store.

Then, a hunchback arrives in town. Immediately, he brings out something in Miss Amelia that the community has never seen before. She is hospitable and kind, giving him free booze and asking him to join her for dinner. After going up to her apartments, neither the hunchback nor Miss Amelia appear for the next two days. Obviously, this generates considerable gossip, with the general consensus being that Miss Amelia murdered the poor hunchback.



But after a few days, the hunchback appears. He is happy and clean and healthy. He introduces himself as Cousin Lymon (he claims to be a distant cousin of Miss Amelia).

The change that Cousin Lymon brings over Miss Amelia also brings changes to the general store. Miss Amelia begins selling whiskey and offering dinner each night at the store, thereby providing the town with its only café. The townspeople watch with shock and awe as Miss Amelia launches something like a married life with Cousin Lymon. She treats him with ease, gentility, and openness, sharing everything she has, and Cousin Lymon is the devoted and attentive partner in return. The only thing neither she nor the townspeople tell Cousin Lymon about is her first marriage to Marvin.

Six years go by, and Marvin's brother, Henry, receives a letter informing him that Marvin is out of jail. The following month, Marvin shows up in front of the general store. With Miss Amelia out of town, Marvin trains his attentions on the hunchback. He follows Cousin Lymon around town, unnerving Cousin Lymon to the point that the hunchback decides to try to win him over, whoever he is. With a crowd of onlookers forming, Cousin Lymon attempts to befriend Marvin. Miss Amelia arrives home and finds the two men getting acquainted, and she is livid.



From then on, Cousin Lymon's energies no longer focus on Miss Amelia. He follows Marvin around all day until they both wind up at the café in the evenings. Marvin takes advantage of Cousin Lymon's admiration and convinces him that they must destroy Miss Amelia as payback for the way she broke Marvin's heart.

Miss Amelia is beside herself, trying to run the store, win back the affections of Cousin Lymon, and drive Marvin off. She is unable to separate the two men, and it finally reaches a point where Cousin Lymon demands that she allow Marvin to move in with them. Though she clearly does not want to, Miss Amelia does want to do whatever possible to retain her relationship with Cousin Lymon and get things back to the way they were. She agrees, and Marvin moves in. In the meantime, she ties a punching bag to a nearby tree and beats the living daylights out of it on a regular basis. A fight, it would seem, is imminent.

The day of the fight arrives. Miss Amelia and Marvin will square off at the store, with the whole town in attendance. At 7:00, with Cousin Lymon watching from the counter, Miss Amelia and Marvin spar. They grapple for some time with no clear leader. Once they start to wrestle, Miss Amelia takes control, pinning Marvin and closing in on victory. Then, Cousin Lymon jumps from his place on the counter onto Miss Amelia's back, scratching at her until she goes down. This allows Marvin to pin her. The fight is over. Miss Amelia has lost.



She retreats to her bed while Cousin Lymon and Marvin rob her blind. Anything they don't take, they destroy, including her whiskey still. The two men leave town and are never seen in those parts again. Meanwhile, Miss Amelia boards up the store, and she, too, is never seen again. Occasionally, a townsperson will see a light flickering in her window above the boarded store, but that's the only indicator that Miss Amelia still lives and breathes.

Down the road from Miss Amelia's, a chain gang toils away on the highway. They sing together, and their music is beautiful.