Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Because Flagg first published Fried Green Tomatoes in 1987, the novel’s treatment of racial issues may strike modern readers as outdated in certain respects. The clearest examples of this are the novel’s frequent use of the n-word and its relatively casual depiction of the Ku Klux Klan. Although characters like Idgie are critical of the KKK—she says at one point that she “think[s] a bunch of grown men getting liquored up and putting sheets on their heads is pretty damn funny”—they nevertheless maintain friendly relationships with possible Klan members like Grady (54).

With that said, the novel condemns racism, which it examines from multiple perspectives. The flashbacks to Whistle Stop take place during the Jim Crow Era, and the effects of this are on display throughout the novel.  Restaurants are segregated, for instance, forcing Idgie to serve her black customers from the back door of the cafe. Other forms of discrimination may not be legally mandated but are nonetheless powerful: A KKK rally prevents Big George from taking his daughter to see Miss Fancy the elephant in Birmingham, and Artis is charged with attempted murder simply for drawing a knife to cut a dog loose.

Fried Green Tomatoes also devotes a great deal of attention to colorism, with the very different fates of twin brothers Artis and Jasper raising questions about the privilege enjoyed by lighter-skinned people of color. Although there are obvious temperamental differences between the boys from a young age, it’s equally clear that the very dark-skinned Artis could never work his way into the black middle-class as Jasper does. Jasper’s acceptance into his wife’s “exclusive” family is explicitly based on his fair coloring: “[I]f Blanch’s father had been disappointed in Jasper’s lack of formal education and background, Jasper’s color and manners more than made up for it” (319).

The novel also depicts some of the unique challenges that face Jasper’s light-skinned children. In particular, Clarissa’s thoughts on “passing” as white suggest that it isn’t simply a matter of securing better treatment, but also a way of avoiding feeling like an outsider in the black community: “[S]he was tired of the stares of the other blacks when she rode the freight elevator before; and besides, she was in a hurry” (296). Conversely, Naughty Bird loses her lover, Le Roy, for a lighter-skinned woman and becomes obsessed with making her complexion fairer and her hair straighter. Not only is the black population of Whistle Stop confined by their race, but also by the finer details of their appearances.

This complexity also characterizes Flagg’s depiction of the relationship between the novel’s black and white characters. With the exception of Idgie, whose nonconformity extends to interracial relations (as a child, for instance, she sneaks over to Troutville to play), most white characters display some level of prejudice. Evelyn, for example, grows up thinking that black men are dangerous and that black people in general “were amusing and wonderful, childlike people, to be taken care of” (308). Although Evelyn later reevaluates her attitudes in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement, she retains her “old fear of black men” into the 1980s (309).

The description of blacks as “amusing and wonderful, childlike people, to be taken care of” is reminiscent of the way Mrs. Threadgoode describes former servants like Sipsey. It raises the question of whether the novel is depicting its black characters as happy in subordinate positions. This is a topic Flagg raises when she describes Jasper’s alienation from his grandchildren, who are “embarrassed by the way he bowed and scraped to white people” (320). Reflecting, Jasper “wishe[s] it could have been different,” but also realizes that he “had gotten through the only way he had known how”—the implication being that his deference and good humor were a survival strategy (320).

Although most obvious in the frame narrative, concerns about death and aging are present throughout Fried Green Tomatoes. The story of Evelyn and Mrs. Threadgoode’s friendship largely takes place in a nursing home for the elderly, and the novel ends shortly after Ninny’s death. Flashbacks and newspaper clippings, meanwhile, follow the life stories of several characters (Ruth, Artis, Jasper, Smokey, etc.) to old age or death, while also depicting the rise and fall of Whistle Stop and its diminishing of the way of life.

The novel’s characters respond in various ways to these reminders of their own and others’ mortality, but no one is more distressed by aging and death than Evelyn. After a cancer scare and her mother’s death, Evelyn “beg[ins] living with one foot in the grave. When she look[s] at her palm, she even imagine[s] that her life line [is] getting shorter” (62). Ironically, her fear of becoming sick and dying is so intense that it prevents her from living fully. The challenges associated with aging as a woman further exacerbate Evelyn’s feelings. In some ways, society enforces Evelyn’s sense that her life is effectively over, as it values women for their attractiveness and reproductive capacity. At 48, Evelyn has raised two children to adulthood and is currently going through menopause. Having already fulfilled the societal expectation of motherhood, she’s now viewed by many as “old and fat and worthless” (233).

Over the course of the novel, however, Evelyn’s perspective on aging shifts. This is in large part thanks to her friendship with Mrs. Threadgoode, who not only emphasizes Evelyn’s relative youth, but also redefines what it means to be old. As she says of being 86, “I don’t feel any different. Like I say, it just creeps up on you. One day you’re young and the next day your bosoms and your chin drops and you’re wearing a rubber girdle. But you don’t know you’re old” (219). Although this account of aging could be considered disconcerting—in fact, Mrs. Threadgoode herself admits she’s often shocked when she sees herself in the mirror—it’s liberating in that it places importance on personal feelings rather than societal attitudes. The implication is that growing older doesn’t need to entail renouncing one’s goals and desires or retreating from the world. Life in Rose Terrace Nursing Home tends to bear this theory out; in one of the novel’s subplots, the 83-year-old Vesta Adcock runs away to a hotel room with an 80-year-old man, as interested in sex and romance as ever.

Ultimately, none of this alters the fact that death is inevitable. The novel ends with the death of one of its liveliest characters, Mrs. Threadgoode. The shift in Evelyn’s mindset makes this reality bittersweet rather than simply bitter. By spending so much time around Mrs. Threadgoode and learning that elderly woman looks forward to being reunited with her deceased husband and son, Evelyn learns to view death in more familiar terms: “[S]he was not as scared of getting old or dying as she had once been, and death did not seem all that far away. Even today, it was as if Mrs. Threadgoode was just standing behind a door” (388). The final image in the novel is not one of death, but of life, as Idgie hands out honey at a roadside stand. Although elderly, Idgie is otherwise unchanged and seems in some sense to be an eternal fixture in a rapidly evolving world.