58 pages • 1 hour read
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
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Section 1 (Pages 3-98)Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Summary: Pages 3-39
Fried Green Tomatoes’ frame story opens in December of 1985 as a middle-aged woman named Evelyn Couch visits her mother-in-law at Rose Terrace Nursing Home. She is eating a candy bar in the visitor’s lounge when another resident—an 86-year-old widow named Ninny Threadgoode—begins reminiscing about a small railroad town called Whistle Stop. There, Ninny was raised by the Threadgoode family after her parents’ death. “Poppa” and “Momma” Threadgoode had eight children, including Cleo, the man that Ninny would later marry. Many of Ninny’s memories involve the youngest child, Idgie, a character who features as a tomboy and a troublemaker.
Each week when Evelyn and her husband Ed visit the nursing home, Mrs. Threadgoode seeks out Evelyn. Although she skips backward and forward in time, her recollections center on the Threadgoodes. They were a prominent family in the area, although their store went under because of their generosity: “Cleo said Poppa’s fortune had walked right out the door on him in paper bags. But then, none of the Threadgoodes could ever say no to anybody” (26). The family remained well liked, particularly the eldest son, Buddy, who was handsome, charming, and flirtatious. Idgie idolized Buddy and was devastated when he was hit by a train: “She ran away the day of the funeral. Just couldn’t stand it. And when she did come home, all she did was go upstairs and sit in Buddy’s room for hours on end” (37).
There are flashbacks of life in Whistle Stop throughout the story, including excerpts from the local news bulletin, the Weems Weekly. The bulletin follows events such as a 1929 dispute over who owns a meteor that crashed into a local’s home and the success of Essie Rue, one of the Threadgoode daughters who plays organ music for radio ads in 1931. The bulletin also announces the 1929 opening of a cafe owned by Idgie and a woman called Ruth Jamison. The cafe serves out-of-work freight hoppers for free, and one drifter, a man named Smokey Phillips, immediately falls in love with Ruth: “Smokey hadn’t seen a neat and clean woman in months, and this one was the prettiest woman he had seen in his entire life” (20).
Summary: Pages 40-78
Evelyn’s life is outwardly successful, but privately she’s unhappy: “While she had been raising the required two children—‘a boy for him and a girl for her’—the world had become a different place, a place she didn’t know at all” (40). Her daughter is far more open about sex than she ever was. Ed is distant and has had an affair. Now he spends most of his time watching TV, hunting, and fishing. Evelyn has few friends and feels uncomfortable among both feminist and conservative women.
Over time, Evelyn begins to warm to Mrs. Threadgoode, sharing candy and snacks with her each week. Evelyn has been phobic about her health since her mother’s death from cancer, but simultaneously fantasizes about suicide. When Mrs. Threadgoode spots Evelyn crying, she consoles her, saying that she’s “just going through a bad case of menopause” and advises her to take hormones (67).
Many of Mrs. Threadgoode’s stories feature Sipsey Peavey, a black woman who was nanny to the Threadgoode children before becoming the cook at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Sipsey adopted George Pullman from a train passenger when he was a baby. George grew up to marry a woman named Onzell, who worked alongside her husband and mother-in-law at the cafe. “Big George” and Onzell had four children—Jasper, Artis, Willie Boy, and Naughty Bird—and Mrs. Threadgoode marvels at how different all of them looked: “[Onzell] was a pecan-colored woman, with red hair and freckles […] [She] had the twin boys and Jasper was light like her, and Artis was so black he had blue gums” (73). The novel depicts the twins’ 1917 birth in a flashback.
In another flashback, Flagg describes a 1933 dispute between Idgie and Grady Kilgore. Idgie has been serving the black residents of neighboring Troutville out the cafe’s back door. When Grady, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, confronts her, Idgie threatens to reveal that Grady is having an affair. Grady backs down, saying he will “talk to the boys,” or the other members of the local KKK (54).
Meanwhile, the Weems Weekly covers events like the 1932 formation of a club devoted to pure-bred pigs and a 1935 local production of Hamlet “by the English playwright Mr. William Shakespeare, who is no stranger to Whistle Stop because he also wrote last year’s play” (70).
Summary: Pages 79-98
It’s now February 1986, and Mrs. Threadgoode tells Evelyn about the summer Ruth first visited Whistle Stop: “[S]he had come over to be in charge of all the BYO activities at Momma’s church that summer. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two years old […] She’d never been away from home before, and at first she was shy with everybody and a little afraid” (80). However, Ruth’s good looks and gentle demeanor quickly won over Whistle Stop’s residents, and Idgie in particular, who up until that point “was like a wild animal” (80). Idgie began trying to impress Ruth—catching fish, attending family dinners, and joking around—and the two girls became friends: “[Y]ou could hear them, sittin’ on the swing on the porch, gigglin’ all night” (82).
Flashbacks to the summer of 1924 fill in the gaps of Mrs. Threadgoode’s story. Idgie invites Ruth to go on a picnic with her, leading her to an oak tree: “Then [Idgie] did the most amazing thing. She very slowly tiptoed up to it, humming very softly, and stuck her hand with the jar in it, right in the hole in the middle of the oak […] the sky went black as hordes of angry bees swarmed out of the hole” (85). Unharmed, Idgie presents a jar of honey to Ruth, who begins crying, exclaiming that Idgie could have died. After Ruth has calmed down and the two have eaten, Idgie lies with her head in Ruth’s lap and admits that she’d kill for Ruth.
Ruth realizes she’s in love with Idgie but feels obligated to return to her fiancé, Frank Bennett. Idgie lashes out when she learns this, breaking things, insisting that Ruth doesn’t really love Frank, and shouting that she hates Ruth. Soon after Ruth leaves, Idgie begins spending more time with Eva Bates—a former girlfriend of Buddy’s who runs a bar near the river. The two commiserate over their lost loves, and are implied to have slept together at least once: “[Eva] sat down beside Idgie, who was still crying, and said, ‘Now, sugar, I don’t know who you’re crying over, and it doesn’t really matter, ‘cause you’re gonna be all right. Hush up, now …you just need somebody to love you, that’s all…it’s gonna be all right…Eva’s here…’ and she turned off the lights” (98).
Section 1 Analysis
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe relies on a complex narrative structure, jumping back and forth between a frame story set in the 1980s and scenes set in Whistle Stop throughout the first half of the 20th century. The Whistle Stop narrative doesn’t proceed linearly either. Although the overarching story of Ruth, Idgie, and the cafe generally unfold in chronological sequences, there are many instances in which Mrs. Threadgoode (or Flagg, such as through newspaper clippings from Whistle Stop’s bulletin) recounts an event that took place several decades before or after the main narrative arc. The newspaper clippings depict day-to-day happenings of small-town life, and frequently involve people and events unrelated to the main storyline, further heightening the novel’s episodic feel.
These stylistic choices underscore one of Fried Green Tomatoes’ major themes: the significance of memory. As the novel progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that the era Mrs. Threadgoode describes in her stories is gone for good. The people who feature in her memories have died, and societal changes, like the declining importance of train travel, have entirely reshaped the character of the town. As a result, several characters in the novel come to feel that there is no longer room for them in society. For instance, for men like Smokey Lonesome, trains were not only a means of transportation but also a social network and a way of life. When the trains stop running, memories become the only place these displaced characters can feel at home. This emphasis on the past raises the question of whether the characters (and, perhaps, the novel) are romanticizing history. For instance, Mrs. Threadgoode remembers life in the 1930s and 40s as an idyllic period, though she also acknowledges the existence of racism and Jim Crow laws.
Sexism was also widespread at the time of the Whistle Stop narrative and plays a major role in the novel. Idgie’s family tolerates her gender nonconformity, but not all women are so fortunate. Eva Bates, for instance, has a reputation for sleeping around, and the Threadgoodes are uncomfortable when Buddy invites her to dinner. Ruth struggles with the societal expectation that she “be a good wife and mother,” when what she would really like to do is remain in Whistle Stop—implicitly, in a romantic relationship with Idgie (89).
The importance Flagg places on relationships between women (whether romantic or platonic) speaks to the pressure women face to conform to gender norms. As Evelyn’s situation at the beginning of the novel demonstrates, sexism is still a problem in the 1980s. Having lived the kind of life society expects of her—marrying, raising children, etc.—Evelyn feels a sense of emptiness once these milestones have been achieved, as well as a growing awareness that society no longer considers her useful or important. Evelyn is nearing menopause and infertility, and she is already past the age of desirability. The novel suggests that friendships, like that of Evelyn and Mrs. Threadgoode, are necessary for women to maintain self-esteem in a sexist world.
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