- Home
- Books
- The Postman Always Rings Twice
- Madge Allen

Madge Allen
A lion tamer who offers Frank the wandering life Cora cannot share.
To continue her independent traveling life.
The book

At a glance
- Lion tamer
- Frank's brief lover
- Life on the road
- Cora's fixed ambitions
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeFrank meets Madge during an attempt to return to the road.
Her unusual work makes her independence practical rather than romantic.
She clarifies Frank's conflict between movement and settled life.
How Madge Allen Is Portrayed
- RoleLion tamer
- ConnectionFrank's brief lover
- MeaningLife on the road
- ContrastCora's fixed ambitions
Frank sees Madge while Cora is away, deepening Cora's distrust.
If you like The Postman Always Rings Twice
If you like James M. Cain
Explore authors with a similar voice, perspective, and influence.

Charles Bukowski
American poet and novelist of Los Angeles rooming houses, racetracks and the post office, who quit his job to write when a publisher offered him a hundred dollars a month. He came to Paris once, in September 1978, drank his way through a live television book programme and walked off the set — and French television has been replaying it ever since.
View author
Leo Tolstoy
Russian novelist who wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, then renounced the life that produced them. He spent six weeks in Paris in 1857, and on one April morning went to watch a man beheaded in the street — an hour he said destroyed his belief in progress and in the state, and which he was still writing about twenty-two years later.
View author
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The doctor of the Paris slums who wrote the century's blackest, funniest novel — and changed the sound of French prose.
View author



