Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Department of English and American Studies
English Language and Literature
Anna Strnadová
Tennessee Williams’s Southern Belles Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: Mgr. Martina Horáková, Ph. D.
2013
I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
______Anna Strnadová
Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor, Mgr. Martina Horáková, Ph.D. for her useful advice, inspirational remarks and encouragement
Table of Contents
Introduction ...... 5
1. The Southern Belle Figure ...... 8
2. Tennessee Williams's Southern Belle ...... 13
2.1 Blanche DuBois ...... 15
2.2 Maggie the Cat ...... 18
2.3 Amanda Wingfield ...... 20
3. Sexuality of Williams’s Southern Belles ...... 23
3.1 Sexual Relationships of Williams’s Southern Belles ...... 29
4. Reality and Illusions ...... 33
5. Conclusion ...... 40
Works Cited: ...... 43
English Resumé ...... 47
Czech Resumé ...... 48
Introduction
Tennessee Williams, one of the most famous playwrights of the twentieth century, truly excels in creating highly striking female characters. Williams lived his childhood in a family that was not happy. When his parents quarreled over the education of their children, Williams always felt closer to his mother than to his father. Above all, he had a very close relationship with his sister Rose whom he worshipped as a child (Hoare). Therefore, women played a very significant role in
Williams’s life and they affected his writing career to a large extent. He once claimed in an interview: “All my relationships with women are very, very important to me” [...] “I understand women, and I can write about them” (Gussow).
The different female characters in Williams’s plays are based on his female relatives who in various shapes and forms played a crucial part in his development both as a sensitive adult and as a literary artist. His aunt Belle was the prototype of Blanche DuBois of A Streetcar Named Desire (Gussow), the character of Laura
Wingfield of The Glass Menagerie was based on his sister Rose, and the faded
Southern belle Amanda Wingfield of The Glass Menagerie was his mother (Hoare).
In this thesis, I focus on Williams’s heroines who are closely related to the American South and its figure of the Southern belle. As the Southern belles, they are “women who are aware of acutely being watched and heard because they have been reared in a culture with a strict decorum for the accepted behaviour of its women” (Hovis 171). In general, Williams’s Southern belles are mentally fragile
5 and narcissistic women who are unable to live up to the Southern belle’s reputation. They are so fragile that they are often unable to face the real world and therefore they create their own illusionary worlds. These heroines live in the past most of the time and they recall their youth constantly. All of them are very feminine and some of them are overtly sexual. Such open sexuality clashes with the beauty ethic of the South which wants its women to be charming and flirtatious but never abandon their purity (Seidel xvi). Therefore, the Southern belles in
Williams plays often struggle with a situation of impossible tension: whether to exhibit themselves as sexually available or not.
In this thesis, I will focus on three plays written by Tennessee Williams.
These are A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), and
The Glass Menagerie (1944). Each of these plays introduces a remarkable female character. A Streetcar Named Desire is represented by Blanche DuBois, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Maggie the Cat, and The Glass Menagerie by Amanda Wingfield.
I will analyze each character and I will suggest that all of them fulfill the image of the Southern belle to a certain extent. I will also argue that desire is a driving force of the plays and I will examine each heroine’s approach towards sexuality. I will try to manifest that when Williams’s Southern belles repress their sexual needs, they suffer with mental problems.
The thesis is divided into four chapters. In the first chapter, I focus on a description of the Southern belle figure and I depict the Southern belle's distinctive attributes in detail. The second chapter provides a descriptive analysis of the selected Williams’s characters and it draws attention to their fulfillment of the Southern belle figure. The third chapter deals with sexuality. I aim to
6 emphasize the importance of open sexuality in Williams’s plays and I will inquire sexual relationships of Williams’s female characters The fourth chapter focuses on his heroines' different approaches towards reality and illusions. Finally, I provide a short comparative analysis based on the previous chapters. I summarize the features of the Southern belle occurring in the three analyzed plays and
I compare and contrast the impact of the Southern belle figure on Williams’s female characters.
7
1. The Southern Belle Figure
Culturally, the ideal 19th century belle formed part of the myth created around the ante-bellum South, widely known as the Old South. This myth of the Southern belle is based on a variety of ante-bellum attributes which contribute to the image of the Southern belle as the archetype of a desirable Southern
American woman. Although the character of the Southern Belle is related to the specific period of history and has become a mythical figure, it has taken deep roots in Southern American society. The interpretation of the Southern belle type has become a stereotype that is resilient to disappear and needs to be examined under new circumstances.
The word “belle” is of French origin and it means “beautiful”. It evokes expected noble origin of the Southern belle, perceiving her as a descendant of
French colonial aristocracy. In the 17th century French Huguenots colonized the American South, an area that lies in the present southeastern and south-central
United States. These settlers prospered as planters, they founded plantations, gradually became affluent, and eventually established a newly emerged American upper class (Hirsch xxiv-xxxvii). Thus the initial Southern belle is a daughter of a wealthy Southern plantation owner. Beauty and elegance were seemingly the most important features of the Southern belle but the myth itself was not based only on belle’s physical appearance, it “rested on a set of very strict class, race and gender traits” (Oklopčić). Naturally, the Southern belle came from
8 an upper class family, she was of a white race necessarily, and she followed gender rules established by the sexual politics of the Old South.
Since the belle’s main goal to achieve in her life was to marry a wealthy
Southern gentleman, she needed to do her best and get herself a husband before she turned twenty. Although it was usually her family which arranged the courting, if she “was pretty and charming and thus could participate in the process of husband-getting, so much the better” (Seidel 6). However, the rules of belle’s behaviour towards men was strictly set, the Old South “being a society that prefers its lovely women to be charming and flirtatious coquettes who never yield their purity” (Seidel xvi). The Southern society placed its belles on pedestal but also made great demands on them and any demonstration of seductive behaviour was incompatible with the image of purity and unspoiled nature which was supposed to be the essential attribute of the Southern belle. This policy created a situation of insoluble tension for the belle because “she is asked to exhibit herself as sexually desirable for appropriate males, yet she must not respond herself sexually” (Seidel xvi). This Seidel’s point is crucial for reader’s subsequent understanding of the motivations and sexual behaviour of Tennessee Williams’s Southern belles.
Patricia Fra-López describes Southern gender policy as a strategy which followed the 19th century Victorian cult of domesticity, the cult committed to promoting its true woman as the champion of chastity. Her role was strictly set in the family as wife and mother and she served as “the guardian of moral purity”
(Fra-López). The Southern society’s attitude towards sexual behaviour of its gentlemen was considerably more relaxed. As mentioned by Hovis: “while the white ‘massa’ was down in the slave quarters regularly indulging his own
9 sexual appetite, his wife was securely ensconced in the big house upholding the virtues of the Old South. In compensation for denying her own libidinal needs, she was made the emblem of moral virtue” (Hovis 173). Such requirements of the Old South’s society that wanted its women to comply with the image of the pure Southern Belle made those women subdue their sexual needs. The belles, who were constantly under the influence of such requirements, often suffered from their repressed instincts. Seidel explains that these instincts used to be
“displaced into other forms of behaviour” and caused that the belles’ acting was often “‘high-strung’, nervous, ‘hysterical’, ‘hypochondrical’” (Seidel xv). It seems that the society both repressing women’s sexual needs and emphasizing their physical appearance is only harmful to the Southern belles because it contributes to their mental insecurity and instability.
Seidel further presents two distinctive types of the belle which are both represented in the novels of Southern writers. Their characters are in strong contradiction, nearly opposite, because “where one is sweet, the other is sensual; where one is praised for her virtue and beauty, the other is narcissistic and vice- ridden” (Seidel xiv). The historically older type of Southern belle follows the Old
South myth, which evokes an era that disappeared after the Civil War, however, it still serves as “a mirror of the long lost romanticized past” (Fra-López). Therefore, in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, writers were usually too idealistic about the belles’ characters, creating heroines who were overly pure and noble.
Modern Southern writers, such as Tennessee Williams, were more critical towards the Southern belle phenomenon and started to write about the other type
10 of belle. This girl or woman was different from the Old South type of belle; she had a darker side in her with the destructive characteristics. Williams excellently depicted some of these characteristics in his plays, namely nymphomania, narcissism, neurosis or even insanity. The writers often used this wicked belle to
“indict the Old South or to describe the New” (Seidel xiv). The Old South’s values became obsolete and with the arrival of the 20th century and the New South,
Southern womanhood happened to be found “helpless in the grip of the presently constituted world, while its old world of social position and financial security is a Paradise Lost” (Gassner 391). In the modern American world, there was no place for the Old South’s belle. Since the 1920s, after a significant change in economic, political, and social situation in the United States that allowed women, even in the American South, to vote, work, and get educated at universities. According to
Oklopčić, “a new discursive space on the meaning of the Southern belle mythology was opened. It, for sure, rested on criticism and judgment rather than on eulogies.”
On the contrary, the Southern belle figure was now used to demythologize the Southern myth since she served as the embodiment of such virtues as beauty, passivity, submissiveness, virginity, and asexuality, which proved to be the unstable and destructive property in modern society.
However, such a strong myth could not disappear. Diane L. Coates and Tom
W. Rice did extensive research in 1995 which is described in the essay “Gender
Role Attitudes in the Southern United States” and according to them, “it seems quite possible that a conservative culture, including Southern belle mentality is at least in part responsible for the more traditional gender attitudes in the South”
(754). This research supports my claim that Southern belle phenomenon has taken
11 deep roots in Southern society’s heart and mind. Coates and Rice further comment on research that “the myth of genteel lady shapes traditional gender role attitude among many White Southerners, and our empirical research provides no evidence to the contrary” (754). Thus, I suggest that the image of the Southern belle is embedded in Southern cultural and social history and it is reflected in Southern literary and cultural heritage.
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2. Tennessee Williams's Southern Belle
As mentioned previously in the introduction to this thesis, Tennessee
Williams truly excels in creating highly striking feminine characters. His heroines are not easy to comprehend but they are worth both reader’s understanding and evaluation. In his essay “‘Fifty Percent Illusion’: The Mask of the Southern Belle in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and ‘Portrait of a Madonna’” Hovis pays tribute to Williams’s “unforgettable female leads, the southern belles” (171). According to Hovis, Willams’s Southern belles are “strong, articulate, assertive – yet often tender and vulnerable.” (171). Reader cannot fail to notice a great deal of ambiguity in Williams’s female characters but
Williams himself explains that “human relations are terrifyingly ambiguous”, adding that “if you write character that isn’t ambiguous you are writing a false character, not a true one” (qtd. in Da Ponte 263). I agree with Da Ponte who calls
Williams’s heroines “an incredibly varied portrait gallery of female types which he had succeeded in investing with one common quality – an ability to fascinate”
(Daponte 263). Although not all of them are generally admirable or very much liked, there is none that would not be interesting as a character. There are three
Williams’s heroines to be examined in this thesis, with an occasional support of another heroine of his. This three women – Blanche DuBois, Maggie the Cat, and Amanda Wingfield – serve as the example of Williams’s attitude towards the Southern belle figure.
13 Williams, who himself descended from colonial settlers and pioneers, put emphasis on social class origins and family backgrounds of his heroines. The main source of inspiration for Williams’s heroines was his own family. In a 1975 interview with the New York Times, he says: “In my early plays I created from my family – my sister, mother, my father’s sister. Blanche is really my aunt Belle. She was a Sunday-school teacher in the South. I have based Blanche on her personality
– not on her life. She was the prototype of Blanche. She talked like Blanche – hysterically, with great eloquence” (Gussow). However, the woman with whom
Tennesse Williams had the most intimate relationship was his sister Rose and she was also the one who affected the works of Williams most. Lyle Leverich, the author of Williams’s biography Tom: the unknown Tennessee Williams, claims that “‛throughout his life, Tennessee Williams had only two overriding devotions: his career as a writer and his sister, Rose’” (qtd. in Hoare). The troubled life of Rose
Williams is further traced by Philip Hoare, who describes Williams's sister as outgoing, pretty, but reserved girl. He depicts Rose’s teenage years when her high spirits turned into a kind of hysteria and this was the beginning of her tragic fall which later became inspiration for Williams’s female characters. Rose is an example of the modern “doomed” Southern belle. She strived to achieve the Southern belle’s main goal, which is to marry to a Southern gentleman at an early age, but she could not succeed. As mentioned by Hoare, Rose’s relationships were unstable and inconstant, serious depression took hold and as she “lacked self-confidence”, her failure in social activities was “diagnosed by her psychiatrist as a fear of sex”, schizophrenia and dementia. Following Rose’s fate, it is more than evident that some female characters of Tennessee Williams are
14 directly based on his sister’s because Williams drew inspiration for his plays from her appearance and her fragile state of mind.
Tennessee Williams’s heroines share plantation origin in general which marks them inevitably as the Southern aristocrats. Besides, they are raised in the Southern tradition of idealization of feminine beauty. They perceive themselves as objects of beauty which need to be appropriately decorated
“in order to sell well” (Oklopčić), therefore they depend heavily on “the exterior beauty markers – dresses, hats, jewelry, perfumes, and cosmetics” (Oklopčić).
Similarly to Tennessee Williams’s sister Rose, his heroines often suffer from
“the dislocation of personality, the struggle with suppressed desire (some of them sometimes abnormal), the inability to adjust to the circumstances of a seemingly hostile environment” (Da Ponte 262). They strive for recognition and achievement but it is often the mentality of the Southern belle that prevents them from success.
The approaches of Williams’s individual female characters towards the Southern belle figure are examined in the following sections.
2.1 Blanche DuBois
“It is a French name”, explains Blanche the origins of her name, “it means woods and Blanche means white, so the two together mean white woods. Like an orchard in spring!” (499). She further adds that her family is “French by extraction. Our first American ancestors were French Huguenots” (499). By saying this, Blanche indicates that she comes from a family of French settlers. In the 17th
15 and 18th century most French immigrants did exceptionally well and became prosperous plantation owners. Additionally, many French colonists were of the old aristocratic families and Blanche values the aristocracy a lot. Therefore, when she mentions her family’s French origins, she points out both property and nobility of her family. It is no wonder that Blanche feels “frank hatred of the wastrel fornication of her male relatives” (Berkman) which means losing Belle Reve plantation, the DuBois family home. She feels that she “took the blows” in her face and her body and that she cannot be accused of letting the estate go. Blackwell points out that Blanche was “a dutiful child, remaining with her aged parents long beyond the marrying age for most women and later staying behind to try to save the family estate, while her sister, Stella, went out to find her place in the world”
(Blackwell 10). I suggest that Blanche’s sense of duty had a serious negative impact on her future demeanour because her own personal needs were not met.
After losing Belle Reve, Blanche arrives in New Orleans at her sister’s Stella and her husband’s Stanley apartment and after a while, she has to reveal that she is completely out of money. The only thing she possesses is her suitcase full of dresses and cheap jewelry. This property of hers, even though “cheap and artificial, represent Blanche’s only inheritance and Blanche’s only future insurance; they remind her of the life she used to live” (Oklopčić). Blanche, who is the aging
Southern belle, is partially aware of her fading beauty but otherwise, she boasts about her appearance and mostly her figure to Stella:
BLANCHE: I want you to look at my figure! [She turns around] You know I
haven’t put on one ounce in ten years, Stella?
16 STELLA [a little wearily]: It’s just incredible, Blanche, how well you’re
looking (476).
But this is not enough to calm Blanche’s nervousness down she needs constant reassuring about her good looks. Blanche’s pitiable property does not only remind her of better times she had known, it also serves as a calculated attempt to be seen as sexually attractive to new male admirers. Blanche heavily depends on men's admiration for her own sense of self-esteem, although she acts like a woman who has never known debauchery. As she tells Stanley who found her “documents”:
“These are love letters, yellowing with antiquity, all from one boy”(489). Blanche, who seemingly honours the Southern Belle’s moral principles, would never admit that she has been promiscuous because it would mean indignity for her as the Southern belle.
The boy Blanche is talking about is her dead husband Alan. Blanche married at the age of sixteen to a very young boy she was in love with. Unfortunately, he happened to be homosexual and “whatever the goodness of Blanche and Allan’s exchanges of affection and shared poetic sensibilities, a solidification of their intimacy through the telling of certain truths never succeeded in coming about”
(Berkman). After Blanche finds out the shocking truth about Allan, she condemns him and he commits a suicide. After this experience with men, she has taken many lovers [Blanche’s sexual behaviour and desires are discussed more deeply in following chapters], and eventually acquires a reputation of the town’s prostitute.
Finally, she seduces a young school boy and is forced to leave her job and hotel room in Laurel. That is why Blanche seeks refuge in New Orleans at Stella’s. There she meets Mitch, a friend of Stanley, whom she hopes to marry. By marrying,
17 Blanche wants to escape poverty that haunts her as well as her bad name. She
“clings to the antebellum chivalry codes which obliged men to protect women in return for their contribution to cultural and social capital, their attention, love and, of course, wealth” (Oklopčić). Although Blanche does not posses any wealth anymore, she sees the marriage to Mitch as her last chance. Nevertheless, Stanley eventually finds out about Blanche’s past and he reveals it to Mitch. Mitch rejects
Blanche and this fact only supports Blanche’s crumbling self-image and sanity.
The final step to Blanche’s downfall is brought about by Stanley’s rape of her which is the moment of his destroying the last remainder of her sexual and mental esteem. After that, Blanche is taken to a mental asylum.
2.2 Maggie the Cat
Similarly to Blanche, Maggie also comes from the Southern family. However, there is no mention in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof about her being descendant of any aristocrats. If Blanche is “a proud symbol of doomed aristocratic South refusing to settle for the new industrial squalor” (Cafagna 120), Maggie is much more practical, so to speak “a woman of practical means” (Cafagna 120). Although she cares about her social standing, she is not concerned with the illusion of aristocracy. Maggie comes from a poor background but she does not try to disguise it. She is not afraid of confessing that she “always had to suck up to people [she] couldn't stand because they had money and [she] was poor as Job’s turkey” (907) and when her sister-in-law Mae is mocking her about her background, she answers sweetly: “All my family ever had was family – and luxuries such as cashmere robes
18 still surprise me!” (919). When Maggie marries Brick, the second son of a rich plantation owner, she climbs the social ladder and for the first time in her life, she has some possessions. However, Brick’s affluent father Big Daddy is dying of cancer and Maggie, equally to the rest of her husband’s family, is determined to get her share of Big Daddy’s property. She is the Southern belle who is well aware of her good looks but she also understands that her beauty cannot last forever.
Therefore, she perceives money as the way to keep herself attractive because she can invest it in her Southern belle’s charm.
Maggie has not reached her thirties yet and even more than Blanche, she accentuates her youthful appearance. Maggie is well aware of male admiration which she proves by saying: “How high my body stays on me! – Nothing has fallen on me – not a fraction...” (904) or by telling Brick about Big Daddy’s looks: “he always drops his eyes down my body when I’m talkin’ to him, drops his eyes to my boobs and licks his old chops!” (887). Maggie is flattered by such behaviour of men, however, Bricks thinks of that talk as of “disgusting” (887) since he does not finds
Maggie desirable anymore. She further provokes him by telling him:
“Other men still want me […] I have kept my figure as well as you’ve kept
yours, and men admire it. I still turn head on the streets. Why, last week in
Memphis everywhere that I went men’s eyes burned holes in my clothes […]
there wasn’t a man I met or walked by that didn’t just eat me up with his
eyes and turned around when I passed him and look back at me” (904).
Maggie acknowledges that her physique is her only actual property and she wants to make use of it because – as the Southern belle – she relies on its potency.
19 While she tells this story to Brick, she is changing her clothes, posing before the mirror, it is Maggie in her most seductive pose since she intends to make Brick jealous. Nevertheless, Brick is still indifferent to her longing, although it seems that
Maggie and he had “a satisfactory sexual relationship early in their marriage”
(Blackwell) which Maggie declares by saying “You were a wonderful lover… Such a wonderful person to go to bed with!” (892). Before Brick and Maggie got married,
Brick had been spending lot of time with his best friend Skipper. After their marriage, Maggie “decide[s] that Brick’s close friendship with Skipper indicated homosexual tendencies” (Blackwell 12) and wants to split them up. Skipper eventually admits his feeling for Brick but he is condemned by both Brick and Maggie. Then Skipper dies in a car accident and Brick, who is depressed about the loss of his best friend, rejects Maggie because he is disgusted with her and he blames her for Skipper’s death. He also starts drinking heavily. Similarly to Blanche
DuBois, Brick begins drinking after the loss of a close person. However, Maggie’s determination, resoluteness, and devotion finally force Brick to become partially closer with Maggie again.
2.3 Amanda Wingfield
Amanda’s character often reflects a domineering personality but sometimes she exposes her tender personality as well. According to Blackwell, Amanda
Wingfield is “a little woman of great but confused vitality, clinging frantically to another time and place” (Blackwell 10). She is inclined to memories of a vanished past of her youth as “she is aware that she is beyond what her culture considers to
20 be her “prime” and therefore “engages in an elaborate scheme of denial, which involves a repetition of some critical moment from the past that marks a missed opportunity” (Hovis 175). She is the oldest one of the belles presented in this thesis, a mother of Tom and Laura. Abandoned by her own husband, Amanda, despite her cheerful manners, feels cheated because she played “the role of the belle without receiving the promised economic and psychosexual compensation”
(Hovis 175). Although she wants the best for her children, she cannot understand that what they most want is quite different from what she wants for them. She desperately searches for any “gentlemen callers” who would court her daughter
Laura. “Stay fresh and pretty!” says Amanda to Laura after their family dinner, “it’s almost time for our gentlemen callers to start arriving” (404). Then she starts recounting her favourite story, apparently in the same way like many times before, telling her children about how “One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain – your mother received – seventeen – gentleman callers!” (402). Unfortunately, in
Amanda’s eyes Laura fails in being Southern belle as she is simply not able to stand the “coquettish behaviours Amanda prescribes” (Hovis 177). Amanda is deeply worried that Laura will became an old spinster, saying: “I’ve seen such pitiful cases in the South – barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of sister’s husband or brother’s wife! – stuck away in some little mouse trap of a room – encouraged by one in-law to visit another – like birdlike women without any nest – eating the crust of humility all their life!” (409). She thinks that marriage is the only choice for a young girl to survive in the Southern world.
Finally, when there is a gentleman caller announced to come, Amanda sets herself to the task of preparation with a determination that cannot be seen
21 otherwise than grotesque. It almost seems as if is her who expects her gentleman caller to come and court her. She even wears “a girlish frock of yellowed voile with a blue silk sash. She carries a bunch of jonquils – the legend of her youth is nearly revived” (434). This act reminds of Blanche DuBois who is also strongly attached to the old robes and jewelry of her girlhood. The moment Amanda is seen by Tom and the gentleman caller, there is a startling contrast between the faded woman coming from her dingy kitchen and the young Southern belle she used to be.
Although Amanda may be seen as giddy and frivolous, her life is tough. When her husband deserted her, she found herself faced with an empty and meaningless life.
She then began to fabricate things with which to fill her life and started to live alternately between a world of illusion and a world of reality. This fluctuation between these two worlds is her only defense against the boredom and emptiness of living.
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3. Sexuality of Williams’s Southern Belles
Undoubtedly, Tennessee Williams is an author deeply interested in sexual relationships of his characters and in sexuality itself. Williams, who does not regard human sexuality as anything to be ashamed of, explains: “Sexuality is a basic part of my nature” (Gussow). As a homosexual, Williams used to be accused of writing transvestite dramas but the dramatist denies such accusations and proclaims: “I never considered my homosexuality as anything to be disguised.
Neither did I consider a matter to be over-emphasized. I consider it an accident of nature”. (Gussow). In another interview, he further comments on this topic: “I see no essential difference between the love of two men for each other and the love of a man and a woman; no essential difference, and I’ve examined them both”
(Berkvist). Love has many forms and it refers to a variety of feelings and emotions.
It can describe a deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person or it can refer to a sexual desire. It is desire that is the headstone on which Tennessee Williams’s plays are built and Williams was aware of erotic drive in his plays on which he comments as following: “My desire was to give these audiences my own sense of something wild and unrestricted that ran like water in the mountains, or clouds changing shape in a gale or the continually dissolving and transforming images of a dream” (Williams 278). He managed to realize his desire when he created his unique Southern belles who are both dreamy and passionate.
Williams’s heroines mostly struggle with the question of whether to repress
23 their sexual desires or not. In Williams’s approach to the given topic, desire is dangerous, even lethal. José I. Badenes, who examined desire in plays of Tennessee
Williams, points out that “On the one hand, repressed and oppressed desire kills a person’s inner being, on the other hand, expressed desire can kill an individual physically, psychologically, or socially” (Badenes). Nevertheless, desire continues to be the driving force of Tennessee Williams’s plays, as “a cohesive force, bringing characters together in the face of both an advancing materialism and death”
(Hooper, Sexual Politics 8). Hooper even argues that “the state of desiring holds more importance than the relations that follow its consummation”, therefore desire does not need to be necessarily a “prelude to, or part of, human relationships”, it might be an end of it instead (Hooper, Sexual Politics 9).
Different female characters in Williams’s plays take different approaches to sexuality and desire. Amanda Wingfield rejects any kind of open sexuality and its expressing. Since Amanda’s husband has left her, she represses her sexuality and becomes deeply emotionally attached to her children whom she scolds unfairly.
Sexuality is a very delicate topic for Amanda. When Tom brings slightly suggestive remark about her gentleman callers (403), Amanda is horrified that there should be any hint of indecency. She responds swiftly: “I understood the art of conversation! […] Never anything coarse or common or vulgar” (403). Further, she dismisses anything openly sexual such as books by D. H. Lawrence, which belong to Tom and which she returns to library. When Tom asks her angrily why she did so, she answers: “I took that horrible novel back to the library – yes! That hideous
book by that insane Mr. Lawrence [TOM laughs wildly] I cannot control the
output of diseased minds of people who cater to them – [TOM laughs still
24 more wildly] BUT I WON'T ALLOW SUCH FILTH BROUGHT INTO MY
HOUSE! No, no, no, no, no!” (412).
Amanda is aware that the world has changed and the Southern belle’s virtues are no longer popular but because she was born as the Southern Belle and she belongs to the Old South mentally, she cannot accept any display of open sexuality in her house.
While Amanda represents the utmost case of repressing any sexual needs,
Blanche’s attitude is sometimes very similar to that of Amanda’s, sometimes quite opposite. It seems that both of them struggle with “a sense of lost sexual power”
(Clemens), of not being objects of sexual desire anymore. Amanda reacts by total repressing of sexuality in herself, Blanche partly by suppressing it, partly by succumbing to it. When Blanche arrives in New Orleans, she carries a heavy emotional baggage with her as her past is filled with serious incidents. The
16-year-old Southern belle Blanche married Allan Grey whom she loved but who turned out to be a homosexual. When Blanche learned on his condition, she reprobated him and Allan committed suicide under the influence of Blanches rejection. Blanche loses control over her sexual demeanour and she becomes sexually profligate. Da Ponte sums this up by saying that “Death and desire followed one another with shattering rapidity” (267).
Thus when coming to New Orleans, Blanche tries to re-establish her former
Southern belle’s purity. She tries to repress her sexual appetite and acts like a delicate flower that cannot be touched. Blanche mocks Stella and Stanley’s relationship, pretending that sexual desire does not mean anything for her and,
25 similarly to Amanda, she even acts as if she was horrified. Stella justifies her sexual relationship with Stanley but Blanche is intransigent.
STELLA: But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in
the dark – that sort of make everything else seem – unimportant.
BLANCHE: What you are talking about is brutal desire – just – Desire! (509)
Blanche further struggles with repression of her sexual needs which becomes especially difficult when a young boy enters the apartment. Blanche regards him with interest and tries to flirt with him. The young man feels significantly uneasy, he “laughs uncomfortably and stands like a bashful kid” when she touches his cheeks. Eventually, Blanche kisses his lips and exclaims: “Now run along, now, quickly! It would be nice to keep you, but I’ve got to be good – and keep my hands off children” (520). She knows that she has to avoid repeating her old mistakes in order to save herself.
On the one hand, Blanche acts as if she despised sexually passionate human beings, Stanley in particular: “He acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits! […]
Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle! And you – you here – waiting for him! Maybe he’ll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you!” (510). On the other hand, Blanche cannot dispose of her coquettish manner, she even admits to Stella that she flirted with Stanley (491). She struggles with the Old South's morality that is deeply rooted in her. She wants to live up to the Southern belle’s reputation, to be a charming coquette who never yields her purity but she cannot meet its expectations.
26 Maggie’s open sexual attitude is much closer to that of Stella than Blanche’s.
Maggie and Stella are voluntarily subordinate to their male partners. Unlike
Amanda or Blanche, Maggie has not lost her sexual power yet, and she is “proud of her ability to turn the heads of male onlookers” (Clemens). The only man who does not yield to her looks is by coincidence her greatly loved husband Brick. She provokes Brick by telling him how other men admire her when she walks the streets and that even his own father looks at her with sense of lust. Brick only answers that such talk is disgusting and Maggie bursts out: “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re an ass-aching Puritan, Brick?” (887). This proves that Maggie is able to talk about her carnal needs in a relaxed manner but Brick’s indifference towards her sexual longing makes Maggie desperate. She reveals her feelings for
Brick completely when she claims: “You know, if I thought you would never, never, never make love to me again – I would go downstairs to the kitchen and pick out the longest and sharpest knife I could find and stick it straight into my heart.
I swear that I would!” (892).
However, she is determined to win his attention back: “But one thing I don’t have is the charm of the defeated, my hat is still in the ring, and I am determined to win!” (892). Maggie is also the only one of the group who feels that sexual satisfaction is her right. “Do you make Brick happy in bed?” asks Brick’s mother Big
Mama. Magie fiercely answers back: “Why don’t you ask if he makes me happy in bed? […] It works both ways!”(903) It seems that whichever approach to sexuality
Williams’s Southern belles decide to take, they are never satisfied. Clemens points out that that Tennessee Williams creates “the sexual figure of adversity“ and I add that Williams’s heroines who are spurned by men due to their desire cannot find
27 happiness until they throw aside the mask of the Southern belle which is only harmful to them.
28
3.1 Sexual Relationships of Williams’s Southern Belles
Tennessee Williams usually created his female characters within the context of their relationships to men when each of his heroines finds herself in a very specific family or sexual relationship with a male character. According to
Blackwell, “men and women find reality and meaning in life through satisfactory
sexual relationships. His [Williams’s] drama derives from the characters’
recognition of certain needs within themselves and their consequent
demand for the ‘right’ mate. Frustration is the surface evidence of
the predicament of his female characters, but Williams is careful to
distinguish the underlying reasons for their behaviour” (Blackwell 9).
I agree with Blackwell because I also consider Williams’s female characters to be reliant on men’s affection. They have been struggling with men and relationships all their lives because the men are decisive factors of their lives.
To emphasize his heroines’ keen interest in men, Williams creates extraordinarily handsome and attractive male characters. Good looks and sexual attraction seem to be the driving force for Williams’s heroines when looking for their partners. Amanda admits making a mistake when she submitted to her husband’s appearance as she tells Tom: “That innocent look of your father’s had everyone fooled! He smiled – the world was enchanted!”, adding her advice that
“No girl can do worse than put herself at the mercy of a handsome appearance!”
(429). However, despite Amanda’s unheard advise, Blanche marries an extremely
29 good-looking young man Allan Gray. “I think Blanche didn’t just love him but worshipped the ground he walked on!” (533) remembers Stella whose husband
Stanley is the very embodiment of attractive masculinity. Similarly to Stella,
Maggie is strongly sexually attached to Brick’s handsome beauty. She praises his good looks: “You look so cool, so cool, so enviably cool” but she is also well aware of her weakness about it: “I wish you would lose your looks. If you did it would make the martyrdom of Saint Maggie a little more bearable” (892). What she means by her “martyrdom” is that Bricks does not want to sleep with her regardless her longing. The good looks of their men do not bring anything but suffering to these heroines but they simply cannot resist it.
Williams’s Amanda, Blanche and Maggie have been through different types of relationships but it seems that Williams’s view of marriage is that of strong sexual attraction. According to Hooper, Williams “presents marriage not as a settled state where minor disagreements stem from a range of domestic problems, nor as a tired convention where infidelity has become routine, but as something that is almost solely dependent on sexual compatibility” (Hooper,
“Warring Desires”). This claim may be supported by Maggie addressing Brick: “You
were a wonderful lover... Such a wonderful person to go to bed with, and
I think mostly because you were really indifferent to it. Isn’t that right?
Never had any anxiety about it, did it naturally, easily, slowly, with absolute
confidence and perfect calm, more like opening a door for a lady or seating
her at a table than giving expression to any longing for her. Your
indifference made you wonderful at lovemaking – strange! – but true...”
(892).
30 In this long speech, Maggie reminds Brick and herself of their formerly happy marriage when they had satisfactory sexual life which obviously means a lot to her. Similarly to Maggie’s relationship to Brick, Blanche’s sister Stella is strongly emotionally attached to her husband Stanley. She describes their satisfactory sexual relationship to Blanche: “I can hardly stand it when he is away for a night
[…] When he's away for a week I nearly go wild! […] And when he comes back I cry on his lap like a baby...” (478). Thus Williams points out that women might almost go crazy when not sexually and emotionally satisfied. I suggest that his heroines prefer sexual relationships to family relationships. They are oriented towards men as lovers, not fathers. It seems that they are not very maternal types. Amanda lives in her memories of her past youth while she hardly knows her own children.
Blanche has probably never thought about maternity, she is taken aback when she finds out about Stella being pregnant. Maggie’s case is slightly different. She wants a child not because of maternal instincts but to protect the Big Daddy's inheritance.
That is why she lies about her pregnancy to Brick’s family.
In general, Williams’s female characters are emotionally dependant on men.
They represent the kind of woman who is devoted to her man and they get their fulfillment in relationships. They struggle with feelings of loneliness which is overwhelming and which can be fatal: “Yes, I had many intimacies with strangers”, admits Blanche. “After death of Allan – intimacies with strangers was all I seemed to be able to fill my empty heart with. .. I think it was panic, just panic, that drove me from one to another, hunting for some protection...” (545-546). Therefore
Blanche sees Mitch as her last chance to escape her loneliness, she sees him as her protection. Similarly to Blanche’s panic, Maggie cries: “Living with someone you
31 love can be lonelier – than living entirely alone! – if the one that y’love doesn’t love you....” (891) but when she is asked by Brick if she would rather live alone, Maggie is horrified: “No! – God! – I wouldn't!” (891, original italics). She just cannot imagine leaving the person she loves. Although it has been said about Williams’s heroines that the driving force of their behaviour is sexuality, it seems to me that their shared feeling of loneliness is even more determining.
32
4. Reality and Illusions
T.S. Elliot wrote to his friend Tennessee Williams once, saying: “Humankind cannot bear much reality” (qtd. in Cafagna 119). I think that this quote precisely depicts Williams’s own attitude towards reality and illusion. Coming from an unstable family background, suffering from his sister’s mental illness, dealing with his own homosexuality, Tennessee Williams often took “refuge in his 'interior life of memories and fantasies’” (Hoare). Similarly to their author, Williams’s heroines are psychologically fragile, some of them even mentally disordered. His
Southern belles suffer from “disruptive forces in modern life that have shattered traditional values and have rendered obsolete the older civilized refinements”
(Da Ponte 267). They cannot adapt to the New South’s conditions and demands which call for independent, self-sufficient, and modern women. The problems they are dealing with cover all kinds of sexual and family relationships, ageing and the loss of beauty, and also of moral values. Therefore these women more or less intensely “seeks means of survival or escape” (Cafagna 119). Such escape is often provided by creating illusions about themselves and their surroundings or even retreating into illusionary worlds.
Amanda Wingfield and Blanche DuBois cannot bear the fact that their former beauty has vanished and they also struggle with the loss of sexual power.
Their form of escaping reality is recalling the past days of merry youth and gentlemen’s admiration. Before her daughter’s “gentleman caller” arrives, Amanda puts on her old girlish dress in which she “[led the cotillion] Won the cakewalk
33 twice at Sunset Hill, wore one spring to the Governor's ball in Jackson!” (434) and which reminds her of the days of glory she used to enjoy. She and Blanche also use the occasions to decorate their livings with pieces of furniture to make the place look more luxurious. Coming from formerly rich plantations, they simply cannot endure the attributes of poverty in which they live presently. Thus Amanda wants to recreate the illusion of a wealthy family and when the gentleman caller is announced, she frantically calls for improvements in her not so impressive apartment. She exclaims: “Thanks heavens I’ve got that new sofa! I’m also making payments on a floor lamp I’ll have sent out! And put the chintz covers on, they’ll brighten things up! Of course I’d hoped to have these walls re-papered....” (428).
Amanda admires the image of Southern aristocracy and she thinks that by creating the illusion of the Southern comfort she will impress the gentleman caller enough to make her daughter attractive in his eyes.
If Amanda’s memories of her youth do not do harm to her to a large extent because she is still able to distinguish between reality and illusion, Blanche’s situation is more complex. It starts with Blanche concealing her real age from
Mitch and other men, pretending to be Stella’s younger sister: “Yes, Stella is my precious little sister. I call her little in spite of the fact she's somewhat older than I.
Just slightly. Less than a year.” (499) Blanche constantly worries about her good looks. She insists on the light being turned off because she “won’t be looked at in this merciless glare” (473). Blanche has an overall strong aversion to light on which she comments as following: “I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than
I can a rude remark or a vulgar action” (499). She avoids direct light because it exposes the truth about her real age and appearance. When Mitch accompanies her
34 home one night, she invites him inside but immediately asks for darkness: “Let’s leave the lights off” (544), so he would not see her properly. But Mitch realizes that he has never seen Blanche in the light and wants to see her properly:
Mitch: You never want t go out in the afternoon! … What it means is I’ve
never had a real good look at you, Blanche. Let’s turn the light on here.
Blanche [fearfully]: Light? Which light? What for? (544)
Then Mitch tears Blanche’s paper lantern off the light bulb and she “utters a frightened gasp” (544). The light is destructive for Blanche since it represents revelation of her sins and secrets. She claims that the dark is comforting to her
(544) because the truth itself can be concealed in the dark. Blanche tries to hide the truth about her age and debauched past as well as her weaknesses and fears for future.
Another thing that Blanche disguises is her drinking. When she meets Stella in her new home, she immediately rushes for a drink. Although she is relatively a heavy drinker, she assures Stella: “Now don’t get worried, your sister hasn’t turned into a drunkard, she’s just all shaken up and hot and tired and dirty!” (474).
Blanche always masks her drinking with complaints about her nerves and frail condition. The origins of Blanche’s drinking lie in the trauma she experienced with
Alan’s death. Since his death, the Varsuviana polka, music of their last mutual dance, got stuck in her head and returns with every uncomfortable situation that
Blanche experiences. Thus she drinks and waits for the sound of the gunshot that always interrupts the Varsuviana polka in her mind. “Hearing again the gunshot
35 has purged, for a lovely moment, all the fear and ugliness of reality,
the impending disaster again shoved back into a schizophrenic haze, the lie
of beauty and youth restored like a promise made to herself that these
circumstances will never let her keep” (Cafagna 126).
Although Blanche drinks to chase away her painful memories and to calm herself down but the more she drinks, the less she is able to handle it.
Similarly to Blanche, Brick drinks to chase away his memories, disappointment at his life and the loss of his best friend Skipper. After Maggie brings Skipper face to face with his feelings for Brick, he gradually kills himself through excessive alcohol drinking. Before he dies, Skipper tells Brick about his feelings for him but Brick refuses him fiercely which he later regrets. As Maggie explains: “From then on Skipper was nothing at all but a receptacle for liquor and drugs…” (911). After Skipper dies in accident, Brick blames both Maggie and himself for Skipper’s death and he develops a drinking habit. Similarly to
Blanche waiting for the gunshot in her mind, Brick waits for “the click” that “[he] get[s] in [his] head when [he has had] enough of this stuff to make [him] peaceful.
(935) Brick later adds that “it's just a mechanical thing but it don’t happen except when I’m alone or talking to no one…” (936). He realizes that the click itself is his escape from reality to illusionary past and he does not want to be disturbed by
Maggie or anyone else who would remind him of painful present. Unlike Brick,
Maggie is only a moderate social drinker. Although Brick’s drinking troubles her, she defends him against Mae’s accusations when she says that she never trusts a man who does not drink (956).
36 Williams’s heroines always struggle with a difficult decision whether to face reality or retreat into illusion. That is, if they are able to decide. As Dianne Cafagna points out, Williams achieves “a delicate contrast between a woman who is fortified by illusion and one who risks all stability to 'face the crisis and choose to live in the real world’” (119). While Blanche and Amanda may be included in the first group, Maggie is strong enough to face harsh reality of life. Maggie is, same as Brick, desperate about mendacity in their lives, she only wants: “Truth, truth!
What’s so awful about it? I like it, I think the truth is – yeah!” (909). Blanche’s attitude towards truth is completely opposite to that of Maggie’s. After Mitch suggests being realistic about them, she strongly opposes: “I don’t want realism.
I want magic! [Mitch laughs] Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people,
I misrepresent things to them, I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!” (545). This is paradoxically Blanche’s only sincere moment in the play and when her confession is rejected by Mitch, she breaks down.
I also suggest that here is a connection between sexuality of Tennessee
Williams’s female characters and their mental condition. In her book Dramatizing
Dementia: Madness in the Plays of Tennessee Williams, Jacqueline O’Connor argues that “ever since the Greeks mistakenly associated hysteria with disorder of the womb, female sexuality and insanity have been linked by theories of cause and effect” (48). In Tennessee Williams’s plays, however, his heroines take different approaches towards sexuality which result in different outcomes of their mental disorders.
37 Mitch’s rejection is the breaking point for Blanche’s sanity. It is “the finding herself turned by her impulses toward truth in intimacy back into the whore- image from which, through truth, she struggles to escape” (Berkman). In the scene ten, Blanche is raped by Stanley who ostensibly justifies his act by saying: We have had this date with each other from the beginning!” (555). As a victim of sexual violence, Blanche suffers from what psychologists call the “rape trauma syndrome”
(Rollins, and White 105) to refer to the emotional and physical effects which a woman undergoes after a rape or attempted rape. Many abused women are more likely to engage in self-destructive behavior and they often experience a distorted sense of reality as well. The “victimization creates a negative sense of the world, where little seems meaningful and where the woman herself feels weak, needy, frightened and out of control. The woman’s image of the world, and of herself, can become imbued with negative overtones” (Ussher 266-7). Ussher further suggests that female victims of sexual violence are more likely to be labeled mad than man, with specific diagnoses of depression, alcohol or drug abuse, generalized anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders (267), all of which
Blanche displays throughout the play.
After Mitch’s dismissal and Stanley’s brutal sexual act, Blanche entirely retires to her own illusionary world. When she is to be taken to the asylum, after a short hysterical fit, she “extends her hands towards the Doctor”, saying “Whoever you are – I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” (563). She recognizes that her future now contains only the strangers she has tried to escape.
Oklopčić comments on Blanche’s departure from the Kowalski apartment:
“Blanche – homeless, ravished, and abandoned – gets confined inside
38 the boundaries of her own illusive fiction (asylum as sea resort, Doctor as
Southern gentleman) which makes her invulnerable to further assaults but, nevertheless, destroys her humanity”.
Unlike Blanche, Maggie speaks directly about her sexual needs, about her love to Brick and their lovemaking, about other men's admiration of her body.
Blanche always equivocates. This is how she talks to Stella about dating with
Mitch: “What I mean is – he thinks I’m sort of – prim and proper, you know! [She laughs out sharply] I want to deceive him enough to make him – want me...” (517).
Blanche’s deceit is almost successful, she almost seduces Mitch by acting as an innocent school teacher: “You’re a natural gentleman, one of the very few that are left in the world. I don’t want you to think that I am severe and old maid schoolteacherish or anything like that. [...] I guess it is just that I have – old fashioned ideals!” (525). Blanche’s lies and cheating only contribute to her fall in the end. This is not to say that Maggie never cheats. She tricks her in-laws when she fakes pregnancy which eventually brings Brick back to her. Maggie uses this trick only because she wants Brick “to give up his guilt and his dependency on illusion” (Cafagna 124) so she can also get rid of her own guilt for Skipper’s death and live with Brick happily again. At last Maggie’s white lie helps her to throw
Brick back to reality so they can be honest with each other.
39
5. Conclusion
In his plays A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass
Menagerie, Tennessee Williams deals with the figure of the Southern belle and its influence on his female characters. Williams demythologizes the Southern belle figure that embodies such virtues as beauty, passivity, submissiveness, virginity, and asexuality, which proved to be the unstable and destructive property in modern society. Unlike the Old South’s belles, Williams’s heroines have dark sides in them with the destructive characteristics. Williams excellently depicted some of these characteristics in his plays, namely nymphomania, narcissism, neurosis or even insanity.
Desire is the driving force of Williams’s plays. Williams’s Southern belles often find themselves in “a situation of insoluble tension” (Seidel xvi) because their sexual desire does not correspond with the Southern society’s set of moral rules.
Clemens sums it up by saying that “Tennessee Williams often constructed his female characters within the context of their relationships to men, yet he did so with an astonishing attention to women’s particular sexual, social, and familial roles in the South in the early twentieth century”. The Southern society which both represses women’s sexual needs and emphasizes their physical appearance is only harmful to the Southern belles because it contributes to their mental insecurity and instability.
Williams’s female characters deal with the loss of someone close to them.
Amanda has been abandoned by her husband, Blanche’s husband has died and she
40 is not able to start a new relationship, and Maggie is constantly neglected and rejected by her husband Brick. They struggle with feelings of loneliness which is overwhelming and which can be fatal because Williams’s heroines are emotionally dependent on men and they represent the kind of woman who is devoted to her man because she gets her fulfillment in the male-female relationships exclusively.
Additionally, Williams’s Southern belles struggle with the loss of their sexual power. While Amanda and Blanche are the faded Southern belles who are not able to cope with the loss of sexual power subsequent to their ageing, Maggie is still young and beautiful but Brick does not consider her to be sexually attractive anymore. Therefore, Williams’s Southern belles either overtly express hunger for sexual contact or they aim to repress their sexual needs. Amanda represents the utmost case of repressing women’s sexual needs as she also dismisses any display of open sexuality in her house. Blanche partially suppresses her sexuality and partially succumbs to it, while Maggie represents the open sexual attitude.
Maggie is also the only one of the group who feels that sexual satisfaction is her right. According to Badenes, “repressed and oppressed desire kills a person’s inner being [but] expressed desire can kill an individual physically, psychologically, or socially”. Thus, Williams’s heroines take different approaches towards sexuality which result in different outcomes of their mental problems. Amanda and Blanche cannot adapt to the New South’s conditions and demands which call for independent, self-sufficient, and modern women. The problems they are dealing with cover all kinds of sexual and family relationships, ageing and the loss of beauty, and also of moral values. Therefore, these women more or less intensely
41 “seeks means of survival or escape” (Cafagna 119). They find this escape in creating illusions about themselves and their surroundings or even retreat into their own illusionary worlds. On the contrary, Maggie tends to see things clearly, she tries with all her vitality to break through the sphere of falsehood, insincerity, self-delusion and untruthful morality. She is the only Southern belle presented in the thesis who “risks all stability to 'face the crisis and choose to live in the real world’” (Cafagna 119).
To conclude, sexuality plays probably the most important role in Williams’s plays. His Southern belles try to “find reality and meaning in life through satisfactory sexual relationships” (Blackwell 9) but they are constantly under the influence of the Southern society’s restrictive moral values. Therefore,
Williams creates “the sexual figure of adversity” (Clemens) since his heroines are spurned by men due to their desires and they cannot find happiness until they throw aside the mask of the Southern belle which is solely harmful to them.
42
Works Cited:
Badenes, José I. “The Dramatization of Desire: Tennessee Williams and Federico
García Lorca.” Tennessee Williams Annual Review. 10 (2009). Web. 10 Dec. 2012.
Berkman, Leonard. “The Tragic Downfall of Blanche DuBois.” Modern Drama.
(1967). Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
Berkvist, Robert. “An Interview with Tennessee Williams.” New York Times. 21 Dec.
1975. Web. 1 Apr. 2013.
interview75.html> Blackwell, Louise. “Tennessee Williams and the Predicament of Women.” South Atlantic Bulletin. 35.2 (1970). Web. 1 Nov. 2012. Cafagna, Dianne. “Blanche DuBois and Maggie the Cat: Illusion and Reality in Tennessee Williams.” Critical Essays on Tennessee Williams. Robert A. Martin., G. K. Hall. New York: 1997. Print. Clemens, Bernadette. “Desire and Decay: Female Survivorship in Faulkner and Williams.” Tennessee Williams Annual Review. 10 (2009). Web. 17 Nov. 2012. Coates, Diane L., and Tom W. Rice. “Gender Role Attitudes in the Southern United States.” Gender & Society. 9.6 (1995). Web. 1 Nov. 2012. 43 Da Ponte, Durant. “Tennessee Williams’s Gallery of Feminine Characters.” Critical Essays on Tennessee Williams. Robert A. Martin., G. K. Hall. New York: 1997. Print. Fra-López, Patricia. From Jezebel to the Southern belle: (mis) representations of the female in classical Hollywood film: Jezebel (William Wyler, 1938) and Gone with the wind (Victor Fleming,1939). per.pd> Gassner, John. “Tennessee Williams: Dramatist of Frustration.” The English Journal. 37.8 (1948). Web. 2 Nov. 2012. Gussow, Mel. “Tennessee Williams on Art and Sex.” New York Times. 3 Nov 1975. Web. 1 Nov. 2012. Hirsch, Arthur Henry. The Huguenots of Colonial South Carolina. South Carolina UP, 1999. eBook. Hoare, Philip. “Obituary: Rose Williams.” Independent. 12. Sep. 1996. Web. 11 Apr. 2013. 1362925.html> Hooper, Michael S.D. Sexual Politics in the Work of Tennessee Williams: Desire Over Protest. 1st ed. New York: CUP, 2012. Print. ---. “Warring Desires: Sex, Marriage, and the Returning Soldier.” Tennessee Williams Annual Review. 10 (2009). Web. 10 Dec. 2012. 44 Hovis, George. “‘Fifty Percent Illusion’: The Mask of the Southern Belle in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and ‘Portrait of a Madonna’.” Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Tennessee Williams - Updated Edition. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007. Print. O’Connor, Jacqueline. Dramatizing Dementia: Madness in the Plays of Tennessee Williams. 1st ed. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997. eBook. Oklopčić, Biljana. “Southern Bellehood (De)Constructed: A Case Study of Blanche DuBois.” Americana. 4.2 (2008). Web. 2 Nov. 2012. Rollins, Judith C., and Priscilla N. White. “Rape: A Family Crisis.” Family Relations. 30.1 (1981). Web. 17 Apr. 2013. Seidel Lee, Kathryn. The Southern Belle in the American Novel. Tampa: University of South Florida Press, 1985. eBook. Ussher, Jane. “Women’s Madness: A Material-Discursive-Intrapsychic Approach.” Pathology and the Postmodern: Mental Illness as Discourse and Experience. Ed. Dwight Fee. London: Sage Publications, 2000. Print. Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. 1947. Tennessee Williams: Plays 1937- 1955. NY: Lib. of Amer., 2000. 467-564. Print. ---. “Camino Real." Playwrights on Playwriting: From Ibsen to Ionesco.” Ed. Toby Cole. Cooper Square Press, 2001. Print. ---. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. 1955. Tennessee Williams: Plays 1937-1955. NY: Lib. of Amer., 2000. 873-1005. Print. 45 ---. The Glass Menagerie. 1944. Tennessee Williams: Plays 1937-1955. NY: Lib. of Amer., 2000. 393-465.Print. 46 English Resumé The aim of my Bachelor Thesis is to analyze the selected female characters in the three plays of Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass Menagerie. The thesis focuses on the analysis of the tragic Southern belles who are generally mentally fragile and it particularly examines their relationships with the male characters. My aim is to argue that desire is a driving force of the plays and I also suggest that when Williams's Southern belles repress their sexual needs, they suffer with mental problems. The thesis is divided into four chapters which are mostly based on the textual analysis of the plays. The first chapter concentrates on the Southern belle figure and it describes the Southern belle's distinctive attributes. The second chapter provides a descriptive analysis of the selected characters and it draws attention to their fulfillment of the Southern belle figure. The third chapter deals with sexuality and sexual relationships of Williams's heroines. The fourth chapter focuses on their different approaches towards reality and illusions. The conclusion provides a short comparative analysis based on the previous chapters. I summarize the features of the Southern belle occurring in the three analyzed plays and the impact of the Southern belle figure on Williams's female characters. 47 Czech Resumé Cílem mojí bakalářské práce je analýza vybraných ženských postav ve třech hrách Tennesseeho Williamse Tramvaj do stanice Touha, Kočka na rozpálené plechové střeše a Skleněný zvěřinec. Práce se zaměřuje na analýzu postav tragických jižanských krásek (anglicky „Southern belles“), které jsou většinou psychicky nestabilní, a jejich vztahů k mužům. Mým záměrem je dokázat, že touha je hnací silou těchto her. Dále také navrhuji, že v případě, kdy Williamsovy Southern belles potlačují vlastní sexualitu, trpí psychickými problémy. Práce samotná je rozdělena do čtyř kapitol, které jsou z většiny založené na textové analýze daných her. První kapitola se soustřeďuje na obraz postavy Southern belle a popisuje její charakteristické znaky a vlastnosti. Druhá kapitola podává výklad vybraných postav a upozorňuje na jejich naplnění obrazu Southern belle. Třetí kapitola se zaměřuje na sexualitu postav a jejich partnerské vztahy. Čtvrtá kapitola se zabývá jejich rozdílnými přístupy k realitě a iluzím. Závěr je krátkou srovnávací analýzou založenou na předchozích kapitolách. Shrnuji v něm charakteristické rysy Southern belle, které se objevují ve vybraných hrách, a dopad obrazu Southern belle na vybrané Williamsovy ženské postavy. 48