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Abstract: THE THEME OF BONDAGE AND LIBERATION IN THE SELECTED PLAYS OF TENNEESSEE WILLIAMS

ABSTRACT

Tennessee Williams is generally regarded, along with Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller, as one of the greatest American dramatists of the twentieth century. This reputation rests upon more than forty years of critical acclaim achieved by Williams’s two masterpieces- A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie- by a body of works that also includes the Pulitzer prize winning drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and more than sixty other plays, prominent among them being The Rose Tattoo, Sweet Bird of Youth, Orpheus Descending, and The Night of the Iguana.

Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1911, but for two decades, from the age of seven until he graduated from the University of Iowa at the age of twenty-seven, Williams lived in the Midwest. He stayed largely in St. Louis but spent three years at the University of Missouri in Columbia and made trips to visit relatives in Memphis and Mississippi. In 1938, Williams moved to New Orleans briefly and then to New York, where he fully launched his career in writing plays. He is generally considered as the southern playwright because his writings regret the romanticism of the culture of the south which seems to be in sharp contrast to hostile modern and suffocating environment of the north. His imagination is fashioned from memory, fantasy and deep longing for love and rescue, coupled with a sense of despair and marginalization. The past mingled in the present situation in the character’s life portrays not only their escape into illusion from reality, but also a strong presence of the ambivalence and the consciousness-raising sensitivity of the dramatist’s poetic mind.

Emerging into prominence just as the second world war came to a close, Tennessee Williams offered theatre-goers a new “plastic’ theatre, more caustic than the escapist dramas of the war years, but nevertheless more engagingly sensitive than the social dramas of the 1930s. His theatre has been more vital than ‘the exhausted theatre of realistic conventions” and has aimed to supplant the later with a plastic theatre employing “unconventional techniques”, offering his audiences a view of reality distilled through a “poetic imagination”. His plays have been called by critics as “black comedy plays” for they present the social catastrophe, predicament and psychoanalysis of the misfits or solitary beings in a symbolic manner that is manifested through the nostalgic mood i.e. through narrator’s memory, elaborate production notes, the use of scrim, slide projections, music, lightening effects and the visual symbols like glass menagerie, moth, iguana besides the subtler religious myths. 2

The extra-sensory perception and heightened emotionalism of Tennessee Williams’s writings have inspired numerous attempts at interpretations over the years. For readers and critics his plays exude extreme impulsive feelings even after so many years of acquaintance with his work. Inspite of increasing concern and criticism there are a number of areas that need to be explored to resolve certain unanswered question about Tennessee Williams than about any other major contemporary playwright. Even though the form of the plays is deviated from conventional standards as well as their seemingly secret yearnings shame the society and they are shunned from mainstream society; yet the plays are still held to be more successful due to their inner probing of a lost person in the corrupt and materialistic world of the twentieth century.

Various approaches and studies suggest that his writing is the voice of the common man and woman. His art is combined with the other experiences and ideas of his life in the deep well of his unconsciousness. Hence his plays invite a constant re- evaluation.

The present study offers another perspective to analyse Tennessee Williams as a dramatist of the individual. An attempt has been made to investigate not only the theatrical self of the playwright but also the thematic design and skilful language structure in order to understand the playwright’s feelings toward human anguish and saturation in the bewildered and protesting age of the post world war II period of twentieth century.

The existing scholarship on Williams’s works is voluminous no doubt, but still it is not exhaustive. Tennessee Williams’s plays have received attention from scholars and critics on various grounds. However, the concept of bondage and liberation is central to any issue or theme of Williams. Therefore, the importance of an in-depth study of the concept of bondage and liberation becomes evident when we recognize that bondage and liberation is that pivot around which the other themes and issues of Williams’s plays revolve. And finally, this investigation stakes its claims to importance because it proposes to assess Tennessee Williams’s style and technique, through this study of his concept of bondage and liberation.

It is hoped that the study will find favour with the students of contemporary American drama and help them grapple with the complexities of Tennessee Williams’s thematic and theatrical manoeuvres.

The work has been divided into six chapters. Chapter-I (Introduction: American Theatre) traces the evolution of American Theatre with special reference to the historical background of the American drama and the spurt of American dramaturgy during the post world war II period of the twentieth century. Chapter-II (Tennessee Williams- A dramatist and an Artist) sketches the growth and success of the playwright’s as a dramatist of the modern era focusing the impact of modern civilization on his memory and desire. Chapter-III (A theoretical framework) deals with the theoretical basis of the theme of bondage and liberation and it also takes 3 into account the related themes of loneliness and isolation. Chapters-IV & V respectively make in-depth analyses of four plays of Williams’s plays- The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Orpheus Descending and The Night of the Iguana. Chapter-VI (Conclusion) evaluates how far the complexity of the basic theme remains validated in the plays chosen for the study.

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Bondage and Liberation: A Study in the Selected Plays of Tennessee Williams by Dr. Jayshree Singh (Kama) Tennessee Williams derives his themes from psychoanalysis, conferred upon American drama by the influence of Freud’s theories given in the books namely Suppressed Desires and Interpretation of Dreams. Sigmund Freud became popular in America during the early twentieth century. These all occur due to sexual maladjustment and if there is an unconscious repression of sex drive (libido), it results in unconscious conflicts and this psychological dualism of man’s nature originates hostile impulses and we find split-personality lives. Tennessee Williams was suffering from Oedipus complex because in his earlier life, he could not get attached to his father; he found convincing attraction in his mother. While leading a Bohemian lifestyle in New Orleans, he became aware that he had homosexual tendencies. His unconscious rationalization or repression made him explore the world of gaiety and frivolity. Unconsciously it affected him and it found expression in his writings, in the form of portraits—at times as that of his sister and at others in his own.

The characters in Tennessee Williams’ plays attempt to create an aura of illusions in order to either forget the unpleasant reality of human existence or to avoid certain experiences of the past. Sometimes they are also fed up with this material 4 life and the worldly-wise people who inhabit it. Such illusions serve as an escape for them and also enable them to remain disguised in a make-believe world.

About the Author Dr. Jayshree Singh (Kama) was born and brought up in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. She attended St. Angela Sophia Hr. Sec. School in Jaipur. She cleared National Cadet Core, “C” Certificate. She is working on the post of lecturer in the English Department of Bhupal Nobles Post-Graduate Girls College, affiliated to Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur. She received her Ph.D. in English Literature from Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, in October 2007 and M.Phil. (English Language Teaching) from the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, in March 1993. She was granted the permission by the Post Graduate Research Studies Center of Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, to supervise and guide Master’s/Ph.D. Candidates on August 5, 2008.

Dr. Singh contributed many research articles on interdisciplinary subjects at local, regional, national, and international levels, both within the country and outside the country of India. She can be reached at:[email protected]/[email protected]. Dr. Singh is the active member of Indo-German Society, Jaipur for International Interschool Education Exchange Programmes and Interdisciplinary work.

(2009, paperback, 174 pages)

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CHAPTER-I

INTRODUCTION: AMERICAN THEATRE

The first American literature was neither American nor really literature, because it was the work mainly of immigrants from England - an interesting account of travel and religious writings. The earliest colonial travel accounts are records of the perils and frustrations that challenged the courage of America’s first settlers. William Bradford’s History of Plimmoth Plantation describes the cold greeting which the passengers on the ship Mayflower received when they landed on the coast of America in 1620. Francis Higginson’s New England’s Plantation was published in 1630. These accounts over the years became literature for the earliest settlers Germans, Dutch, Swedes, French, Spaniards, Italians and Portuguese.

The English immigrants who settled on America’s northern seacoast, appropriately called New England, came in order to practise their religion freely. They were either Englishmen who wanted to reform the Church of England or people who wanted to have an entirely new church. These two groups combined in what became Massachusetts, came to be known as “Puritans” 1 so named after those who wished to “purify” 2 the Church of England. The puritans followed many of the ideas of the Swiss reformer John Calvin. Through the Calvinist influence, the Puritans emphasised the then common belief that human beings were 6

basically evil and could do nothing about it, and that many of them, though not all, would surely be condemned to hell. Over the years the Puritans built a way of life that was in harmony with their somber religion, one that stressed hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety. These were the puritan values that dominated much of the earliest American writing, including the sermons, books and letters of such noted Puritan clergymen as John Cotton and Cotton Mather.

During the latter half of the seventeenth century, the Atlantic coast was settled both in the north and the south. Colonies-still largely English-were established. The American poets who emerged in the seventeenth century adapted the style of established European poets to the subject matter confronted in a new environment. Anne Bradstreet was one such poet who captured the colonial experience and established her place as one of America’s most notable early writers. Michael Wigglesworth and Edward Taylor produced the finest seventeenth century American verse, influenced by their early experiences in England.

The history of American theatre is one of the increasing productions starting with casual performances such as that of the play let Ye Bare and Ye Cubb in 1665 followed by professional ones introduced by the Hallam Company which arrived from London in 1752 and gave The Merchant of Venice at its inaugural performance in Williamsburg. In 1761 David Douglas had to advertise Othello as a ‘Series of Moral Dialogues”, when he led the recognized Hallam troupe into Newport, Rhode Island. Even after the Revolutionary war it was necessary to call plays by the 7

more innocent name of ‘operas’ and to announce “The School for Scandal” as a “Comic Lecture in Five Parts on the Pernicious Vice of Scandal.” 3

Inspite of the initial difficulties, the stage spread over the country - first on the Atlantic fringe, then, into the Middle West by means of touring companies travelling about three thousand five hundred cities from a few centers, chief of which was New York’s Union Square and became a mass production industry. A “Theatrical Syndicate” for this purpose was established in 1896. Androboros the very first play printed in the States in 1714 sounded a sharp note of satire. Royall Tyler wrote The Contrast (1787) and The Georgia Spec or Land in the Moon (1797); both the plays were based on an American subject and social criticism.

Such plays delighted the audiences with American characters or “Stage Yankees” bearing such flavoursome names as Nathan, Yank, Solomon Swap, Lot Sap Sago, and Deuteronomy Dutiful.

Thomas Godfrey, an American initiated the romantic drama neo- Prince of Parthia in 1736. It is continued by William Dunlap, who was the most prolific adapter of German and French Plays. The first professional dramatist of America, William Dunlap (1766- 1839) came forward with a comedy called The Father. His important claim is evident in his work A History of the Early American Theatre, which was published in 1832.

As the decades passed new generations of American-born writers became important. Boston, Massachusetts was the birthplace of 8

one such American-born writer - Benjamin Franklin, whose style he formed came from imitating two noted English essayists, Addison and Steele. His most famous work is his Autobiography. The practical world of Benjamin Franklin of self improvement stands in sharp contrast to the fantasy world created by Washington Irving who provided a young nation with humorous, fictional accounts of the colonial past and these tales of colonial America remain his most enduring contributions to American and world literature. His best work is the short story “Rip Van Winkle”.

Another writer, James Fenimore Cooper’s novels helped to create American mythology that is most popular today: the story of the cowboy and the winning of the American West. Philip Frenreau, one of the first poets of the new nation, wrote in a style which owed something to English models. In collaboration with Hugh Brackenridge, another early national writer, Freneau wrote a college commencement poem in 1772 entitled “The Rising Glory of America.”

During the Revolutionary War Freneau became an ardent supporter of the American cause. While on sea duty he was captured by the British and placed aboard a prison ship, an experience which inspired a long poem entitled “The British Prison Ship.”

One of the first American naturalist poets is William Cullen Byrant who wrote “Thanatopsis” meaning “View of Death” which represents a sharp break from the Puritan attitude toward man’s 9

final destiny. He treats death as part of nature. He has themes of typical nineteenth century American verse.

The next notable American poet, Edgar Allan Poe was also a master of the prose tale and the first great literary critic. He was a major Romantic writer. Both in his poetry and in his short stories he wrote about dying ladies, about sickness, about abnormal rather than normal love. The next great American Romantist, however, drew on America for both characters and settings and his work, He was a shy New Englander named Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose favourite puritan theme was Puritan New England. The Puritan punishment of sexual sin becomes the vehicle for his best novel, The Scarlet Letter, a treatment of the effects of sin on the human spirit. “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” illustrates another side of his art: his concern for the supernatural.

Remarkably, the Southern Colonies never enacted laws to prohibit the building of a theatre or the public performance of a drama. Drama in colonial New England, on the other hand, was a major target of Puritan prejudice.

In Calvinist New England the profession met with much less sympathy, and as soon as magazines started to be published there in the eighteenth century, they were immediately pushed to the forefront of the public war of words. However, irrespective of their attitude, almost all the arguments for the condemnation or toleration of theatrical performances used moral criteria that make a distinction between the drama and the theatre. The controversy over the legalization of theatres became less prominent after the 10

Revolutionary War. With the repeal of the 1774 anti-theatre act and the burgeoning national self-confidence after the Revolution, the situation changed. Most of the major cities constructed theatres or dedicated buildings to theatrical performances and dramatic entertainment became part of the staple amusement of all classes of American society. It was decided that the specific tasks of the drama and theatre in the newly established American society should differ from the European models.

The theatre’s national utility in the newly established republic became paramount. It was regarded as an important “instrument for the formation of national character.” 4

For some the evolution of a new American man called for a specifically American comedy: “We have foibles peculiar to ourselves, which seem to require the assistance of “the laughing muse.”5 Many demanded a national drama, which they defined not only as a drama on American incidents and manners but also as one that inspired a flamboyant patriotism.

The American theatre had to reflect democratic ideals not only in the plays it produced, but also in its policy of pricing and style of acting. Anti-British sentiments had always been strong in the American theatre, although English actresses and actors were highly admired. By the mid nineteenth century the concept of national drama was redefined: nationalism was no longer synonymous with spread-eagle chauvinism, but it came to mean “American originality” 6 as contrasted with English conventionality. A national - or as most critics preferred to write, a native-drama 11

was to depict “the new revelations of thought and experience” 7 in the United States and had to stand by American democracy. The tragedy of an average human life, for instance, was considered more appropriate for the American stage than the tragedy of kings and nobles, and American equality would provide domestic tragedy with new heroes: “The schoolmaster is one of the modern heroes.”8 As regards comedy and farce diversity of life in America and its multicultural society was thought to be a particularly rich mine, however originality was limited to new spectacular effects brought about by an elaborate stage mechanism, plots and characters followed a stereotyped pattern, especially so in dramas on national incidents or ethnic types. But generally a national drama no longer meant a patriotic, but rather a “local drama, in other words one drawn from national sources illustrating periods and events in American history, or presenting the features of national peculiarities, habits and manners.”9

The critic of the American Whig Review warned against nationalism turning into parochialism and argued that American drama did not depend on the dramatists’ choice of American localities or subjects, but on the literary quality of their dramatic treatment. “After the civil war, a genuinely American drama was developed in the direction of theatrical nationalism, and consequently Brander Matthews argued against the conception of American drama as a local art and in favour of its universality and American play had to present American characters in an American setting and tone.” 10 12

One of the landmarks in American drama was the appearance of Fashion (1845) by Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie (1819-1870). It is a satire on the pretensions of a newly-rich New York woman, who drags into her conversation badly pronounced French phrases, boasts of her elegant European acquaintances and is properly taken in by a slick hair-dresser who passes himself off as a French Count. It was highly successful having the very unusual run of twenty-two nights. Edgar Allan Poe, writing for the Broadway journal called it a “very bad play”, objecting especially to the use of asides. He wrote:

compared with the generality of modern drama, it is a good play; compared with most American drama it is a very good play; estimated by the natural principles of dramatic art, it is altogether unworthy of notice.11

Poe was somewhat prejudiced, for Fashion certainly is far from being contemptible. It is, moreover, the first successful instance of theatrical genre which belongs particularly to the American stage- it is shrewd, good-natured ridicule, the latest examples of which can be recognized in such plays as The Show-off and the First Year.

It was the mode in England for distinguished writers to try their hand at poetic drama, and we find in America George H. Boker (1833- 1890) making his version of the oft - dramatized story of Francesca da Ramini. It was in blank verse, was first performed in 13

1855, and was twice revived, once in 1882 by Lawrence Barret, again in 1901 by Mr. Otis Skinner. Another and better known poet Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) wrote a tragedy entitled Leonara or The World’s Own, which was first performed in 1857 and considered a fine achievement.

One of the visiting actors in the middle years of the century was Dion Boucicault, an Irishman who, at the age of nineteen, had written a successful comedy of society life called London Assurance.He founded a theater in Washington and later the New Park Theater in New York. His works were The Octoroon, Streets O’ London, and the popular version of Rip Van Winkle, which had its first performance in London in 1865. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, Boucicault’s spy romance Belle Lamar and Bronson Howard’s Shenandoah were written to picture slavery of Negroes and they were historical pieces to capitalize on the Civil War.

The conditions of the American theatre did not offer much encouragement to native playwrights, yet a few talented and persistent writers devoted some of their time to it. James A. Herne (1839-1901), an actor-manager, was successful with American characters and scenes, and won an honorable place in the dramatic history of his country. His first play, Hearts of Oak, appeared in 1879 and his last, Sag Harbour, in 1900. His most popular piece Shore Acres had to wait almost ten years for a production, though in time it was recognized as a sincere and highly effective representation of American rural life. Denman Thompson in The Old Homestead, William C. DeMille, and Steele 14

Mackaye (1842-1894) are a few of the writers who helped to establish a native tradition. Hazel Kirke (1879), by Steele Mackaye, ran two years in New York, sent ten companies on the road and lasted thirty years on the boards.

Bronson Howard (1842-1908) continued the use of native subjects Howard was born in Detroit and came to the craft of the playwright via the columns of the New York Tribune and the Evening Post.

At about the turn of the nineteenth century, probably the most widely known of American playwrights was Clyde Fitch (1865- 1909), whose work includes The Climbers, The Girl with the Green Eyes, The Truth, The City etc. His very first play Beau Brumel (1890), with the title role enacted by Richard original pieces, adapted French Comedies for use in English, and found a hearing not only in America but also in England and France. Another writer who made use of European technique while dealing with American themes was Mr. William Gillette was born in Hartford in 1855. His most popular pieces included Held by the Enemy (1886) and Secret Service (1896), both Civil War Plays, and the dramatization of Dr. Conan Doyle masterpiece, Sherlock Holmes (1899).

Several writers who earlier had attained distinction as poets also gained success on the stage. One of these was William Vaughn Moody (1869-1910), author of The Great Divide and the Faith Healer. The first of these plays, performed in Chicago in 1906, with Miss Margaret Anglin playing the principal woman role, 15

created something like a sensation because of its dramatic first act.

When in 1910 the Shakespeare Memorial Theater in Stratford was dedicated, the opening production was a prize play, The Piper, by the American poet, Josephine Preston Peabody Marks. Other plays by Mrs. Marks are Marlowe and the Wolf of Gubbio, but interesting as these dramas are, they were not strong enough to break the spell which seems to ban poetic drama from the modern stage. Poets such as Olive Tilford Dragon, William Ellery Leonard, Ridgeby Torrence, and Edna St. Vincent Millary gained, if not great popular, successes, at least appreciative audiences in many little theaters.

The poet Mr. Percy Mackaye (born 1875), a son of the actor- manager Steele Mackaye, has experimented in many forms. His Sappho and Phaon has an intricate plot with a play within the play, and a Greek fable for its main subject. In the Canterbury Pilgrims he has woven a pleasant story around Chaucer’s famous characters. A Thousand Years Ago is a romance of the orient; while Mater and Anti-Matrimony are social comedies of the present day. Jeanne d’ Arc has had many successful performances with Miss Julia Marlowe as the Maid. One of the best of Mr. Mackaye works is The Scarecrow, founded on a fantastic New England legend. It has a fresh, vigorous theme opportunity for pathos, humor, irony; and as interpreted by Mr. Frank Reicher in the chief part it was a remarkable exhibition of virtuosity as well as welcome change from the stereotyped creations of the stage. Mr. Mackaye has also made important 16

contributions to the art of pageantry and to the production of outdoor mosques.

Almost alone among writers for the stage stands Mr. Charles Rann Kennedy, an Englishman who has for some years made his home in New York, in that he has chosen in several cases to treat religious subjects. Mr. Kennedy’s best known work, The Servant in the House (1908) shows through a sort of allegory the influence of the man of Nazareth. The Terrible Meek (1911) might be called a modern mystery portraying in a very reverent manner the human side of the tragedy of the cross. In The Winter Feast and The Flower of the Palace of Han the author has used respectively Scandinavian and Chinese legends. Mr. Kennedy has gone back to the life of Jesus for his theme in The Chastening (1927). Another religions drama The Fool by Mr. Channing Pollock is concerned with the difficulties the sincere clergyman encounters in carrying out the principles of love and forgiveness which he is supposed to preach.

Plays satirizing smart society have not been very numerous, though the New York Idea (1909), by Mr. Langdon Mitchell, was a success in that field, as were also many of the pieces by Clyde Fitch. There have been serious pictures of social life, such as The Easiest Way, Paid in Full and Five Feathers, all by Eugene Walter, The Boss and Salvation Nell by Edward Sheldon, The Lion and the Mouse by Charles Klein, and Kindling by Charles Kenyon. There are portrayals of the conflict between the younger and the older generations, such as The Goose Hangs High by Louis Beach; plays founded on the biography of celebrated people, like 17

Georg Sand and A Road House in Arden by Philip Moeller. Also studies of racial difficulties were presented in such plays as in The Nigger by Edward Sheldon. There have been odd but interesting and successful imitations, or adaptations of ideas from oriental sources, as in Kismet by Edward Knoblaugh and in The Yellow Jacket by Hazelton and Benrimo. Comedies by Jessee Lynch Williams including Why Marry? And Why Not is an imitation of Shaw’s style. Plays dealing with geographical sections have been numerous: Desire under the Elms by Mr. O’Neill; Hell Bent for Heaven by Mr. Hatcher Hughes, Sun Up by Miss Lulu Vollmer, Icebound by Mr. Owen Davis, and This Fine Pretty World by Mr. Mackaye. Mrs. Mary Austin in The Arrow Maker has given a fine study of one of the characteristic traditions of Indian life - a subject which so far has been seldom used. Outward Bound by Mr. Sutton Vane and On Trial by Mr. Eliner Reizenstein, have both introduced novel themes and arresting situations.

Among successful women writers for the stage are Miss Rachel Crothers, who has produced a long list of dramas dealing with contemporary life and character. Some of her titles are A Man’s World, Three of Us, Nice People, A Little Journey and perhaps best of all Expressing Willie. Zoë Akins in Declassee and The Moonflower has gone abroad for her atmosphere and has taken up again the theme of the discredited woman in society. Susan Glaspell with Inheritors, Suppressed Desires and The Verge has portrayed local types and situations in America with a sort of passionate concentration. Edith Ellis, Mary Austin and Catherine Chisholm Cushing are well known in the dramatic field. 18

As early as 1911 the Drama League of America had begun to foster a literary drama of native and foreign origin. The Wisconsin Players at Madison and the Chicago Little Theatre led by the Englishman Maurice Browne and Ellen Van Volkenburg; Professor Baker’s 47 Workshop Theatre; The Carnegie Institute of Technology at Pittsburgh under Thomas Wood Stevens, Professor Frederick; H. Koch’s Dakota playmakers and his Caroline Playmakers some years later, the little theatres in Cleveland, New Orleans and Pasadena--these and other organizations began to dot the country with oases of “Culture.” 12

In time their efforts were supported by books like Kenneth McGowan’s Footlights Across America and by the pioneering magazine Theatre Arts founded in 1918 and edited by Mrs. Edith J.R. Isaacs, McGowan and Stark Young. Experiments in production, lighting and scenic design were undertaken by such artists of the theatre as Robert Edmond Jones, Lee Simonson, Norman Bel Geddes, Irving Pichel, and Kenneth McGowan. As one of the apostles of the movement Sheldon Cheney was to note later “we were thinking of the theatre only on the aesthetic side; thought to perfect it as a form of art expression.” 13

As early as 1914 and 1915, the movement reached a thumping climax. Naturally, this took place in New York’s Greenwich village which had become the Mecca to which every American devotee of art had to bring his oblations, unless he preferred the Medina of Harriet Monroe’s poetry circle in Chicago. During the autumn of 1914 several enthusiasts - Robert Edmond Jones, Philip Moeller, Hellen Westley, Lawrence Langner, Lee Simonson, Maurice 19

Wertheim, Edward man and others built a stage in the rear part of a store in Washington square. Calling themselves the Washington square players, they produced original one act plays. Presently they moved into the little Bandbox Theatre, and after the war, in 1919, a number of them founded the Theatre Guild which became the longest-lived “art theatre” 14 in America. It effected a characteristically American Compromise with business, but it brought the progressive European drama to America with plays by Ibsen, Tolstoy, Strindberg, Ervine, Shaw Molnar, Andreyev, Toller, Werfel, Kaiser and others, in addition to staging notable works by Rice, Barry, Howard, Anderson ,Behrman, O’ Neill and other natives.

In 1915 another group from Greenwich Village, summering in the artists’ colony of Provincetown, Mass, founded the Provincetown Players under the leadership of the adventurous “Jig” Cook, the playwright Susan Glaspell, Robert Edmond Jones and others. Returning to New York, these zealous disciples converted a stable in Mac Dougal Street, named it The Provincetown Theatre and made it the Theatre Libre of The Village. Artists from all fields, supplemented by members of the Washington Square Players, joined them. Here the new native drama began to appear in America when one of their numbers, a gaunt young man by the name of Eugene Gladstone O’Neill supplied them with several one-actors, short plays being in particular demand owing to the slim resources of the experimentalists. Although he was soon to be surrounded by a number of other original playwrights, his progress led him to attitudes reached thus far by no other 20

American or European dramatist whose work lies wholly within the twentieth century.

The longest and the most severe economic depression ever experienced by the Western World began in the U.S. with the New York Stock Market Crash of 1929 and lasted until about 1939. Before the Great Depression, governments relied on impersonal market forces to achieve economic correction; afterward government action came to assume a principal role in ensuring economic stability.

The impact of this depression was visible in the writings of American dramatists. The decade of thirties preponderated the irritants. The balloon of prosperity which burst in the stock-market crash of 1929 littered the nation with battered passengers. From ten to thirteen million unemployed clamored for food and work. Anger gripped the hearts of the sufferers and of their sympathizers among whom writers were naturally conspicuous since they were quick to respond to injustice or misery, and fascist rumblings put dramatists on their mettle or filled them with dread and despair. Especially the younger writers observed the Marxist explanation that capitalism was in the throes of death. Searching for some sign of hope, they dreamt of a world of collective effort nominated by the predatory and anarchic race for profits to which they attributed not only the sorry economic state of affairs but war, hatred and the frustration of personality. Looking abroad, they saw a new nation arising in Russia, despite the head-shaking and documentation of some disillusioned 21

reporters. The Soviets looked like the Promised Land to a number of the new and a few of the older playwrights.

Many of these playwrights were immature and some were sociologists rather than artists. It is significant that every young serious writer of any power Clifford Odets, Irwin Shaw, Sidney Kingsley, Lillian Hellman, John Wexley, Albert Maltz, William Saroyan etc. was directly or indirectly affected by it. Tennessee Williams in his book “Memoirs” was concerned at the increase in dehumanizing forces in modern civilization and in the play The Glass Menagerie - there is the reference to “the period of depression in the thirties when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy.” 15

In the aesthetic arts realism promotes accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of Contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative idealism in favour of close observation of outward appearances. Realism emerged in the United States in the work of Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. The Depression- era movement known as Social Realism adopted a similarly harsh realism to depict the injustices of U.S. society. Martin Esslin writes that “real” identifies little more than a mere photographic or journalistic “re” presentation of our world. What the stage gives us is an enhanced reality that itself becomes a sip, a metaphor, a dramatic symbol. According to David Rabe, one of America’s new playwrights says about plays following realism: 22

I mean the well-made play is an idea based on how Newton said the universe worked - like a big clock. It said theatre was a pictorial, scientific, objective form, so it invented the fourth wall. And it invented realistic behaviour. 16

By realistic behavior, he meant, the presentation of thought and feeling and realism, according to Bentley, embraces all writing in which the natural world is candidly presented. J.L. Styan calls:

Realism is something more of a realistic impulse, the desire to produce on the stage a piece of life faithfully. 17

The 1920s American realists writers are Rabe, Mamet, Shepard, Eric Bentley, whose mode of presentation focuses on the minority elements of society such as blacks, southern and feminists points of views while the 1960s New Realism writers like Fuller, Henley, Norman presented contemporary vision and provided the impulse to a growing tradition inherited from the experimental work of the absurdist theatre and experimentation of the 60s.

In the earliest years of the twentieth century, a few playwrights, like Moody, were influenced by the works of Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, Granville Barker and Galsworthy and some of the British plays had made their appearance in the New York theatre. Sociological problems had the appearance of realism, a 23

great dramatic movement, and the plays like The Nigger, The New York Idea, The Great Divide, The Easiest Way, The Scarecrow tentatively expressed in an unconventional way through the theatrical components (settings, actors, dialogue, situation and symbols) to elucidate theme. But it is more of a mechanical realism stemming perhaps from the sensation scenes of melodrama. Moreover, realism of setting was a major aspect of the newly matured drama that is revealed in the plays of Eugene O’Neill. His setting in Beyond the Horizon symbolises the change which the action of the play has brought about in particular characters. Realistic melodramas had been chiefly concerned with sailors, and firemen and farmers and other members of the commonalty. Clifford Odets plays Awake and Sing! (1935), Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine (1941) and the Searching Wind (1944) influenced the American audience. The Realism of theme in the new drama led to the crumbling of beliefs, the withering of conventions and the ideological and political conflicts have become savage and inescapable.

In the late 19 th and early 20 th century, the aesthetic movement was inspired by the principles and methods of natural science, especially Darwinism, which were adapted to literature and art. In literature, naturalism extended the tradition of realism, aiming at an even more faithful, pseudo-scientific representation of reality, presented without moral judgment. Characters in naturalistic literature typically illustrate the deterministic role of heredity and environment on human life. The movement originated in France, where its leading component was Emile Zola. In America it is associated with the work of writers such as 24

Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser. Although natrualism was short-lived as a historical movement, it contributed to art an enrichment of realism. Its multiplicity of impressions conveyed the sense of a world in constant flux.

No term is more often applied with less precision to American drama in the thirties than is “Naturalism”. R.H. Gardner writes:

Naturalism -whose influence, despite its obsolescence, has probably done more to shape the popular concept of theatre in this country than any other attempts to produce on stage the illustration of life exactly as it is lived off stage. 18

Therese Raquin conceived the first naturalistic drama The Oxford Comparison to the Theatre or the peculiarly American brand of naturalism fostered by Stephen Crane, Frank Morris, and Theodore Dreiser in the turn - of the century novel. Warren French writes:

A naturalistic character lives in a dream-world of intense but vague formulated desires.19

Clifford Odets, American dramatist of thirties, who presented middle-class consciousness or desires or ambitions which argues for an optimistic resolution to the social ills as well as the plight of the middle- class in United States, attempted to identify, those desires in his plays ‘Lefty’; Awake and Sing!’. He posed a new point of view of social issues - a mode of drama called “urban middle class naturalism”. 25

Expressionism was an artistic movement which began in Germany at the start of this century under the strong influence of the Swedish dramatist Strindberg (1849-1912), and reached its height in the decade 1915-1925. It manifested itself in painting and music, as well as in literature, where it’s most persistent influence could be seen in the theatre of the time. The central feature of expressionism is a radical revolt against realism. Instead of representing the world as it objectively is, the author undertakes to express inner experience by representing the world as it appears to his state of mind, or to that of one of his characters - an emotional, troubled or abnormal state of mind. Often the work implies that this mental condition is representative of anxiety -ridden modern man in an industrial and technological society which is drifting toward chaos.

Expressionist dramatists dislocated the time-sequence, wrote a stylized dialogue, used masked characters and violently distorted stage sets, and exploited such modern devices as the revolving stage and special effects in light and sound. German expressionists included George Kaiser (Gas, From Morn to Midnight), Ernst Toller (Mass Man), and Bertolt Brecht. This mode of German drama had an important influence on the American Theater. Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones (1920) projected, in a sequence of symbolic scenes, the individual and racial memories and the recurrent fantasies of a terrified modern Negro; and Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine (1923) used a variety of non-realistic means to represent the mechanical, sterile, and terrifying world which is experienced by Mr. Zero, a small and helpless cog in the impersonal system of big business. Though expressionism as a concerted dramatic movement did not endure, it has had an important effect on the writing and staging of such plays as Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth and Arthur Miller’s 26

Death of a Salesman, as well as on more recent non-realistic enterprises such as the “theater of the absurd”. Tennessee Williams in the production notes to The Glass Menagerie (1945) writes:

Expressionism and all other unconventional techniques have only one valid aim, and that is a closer approach to truth ...... Everyone should know nowadays the importance of the photographic in art: that truth, life, or reality is an organic thing which the poetic imagination can represent or suggest, in essence, only through transformation, through changing into other forms than those which were merely present in appearance.20

These “other forms” appear here and there in William’s plays (e.g., the objectification of the terror in Blanche mind in A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) by means of grotesquely distorted visual and aural images). The play Camino Real has an impact of Kaiser Expressionism.

Edward Albee, whose the American Dream (1961) contains numerous distortions has called his Tiny Alice 1964 “a metaphysical dream play”21 and it has tradition of dramatic expressionism that goes back to Strindberg’s dream plays. Albee’s Tiny Slice not only contains a number of familiar expressionist techniques (masks, visually expressed transferals of personality, symbolic distortions of reality) but derives in part from O’Neill The Great God Brown. 27

Cultural pluralism comprises more than ethnic difference; it focuses on the more general concept of the “other”, i.e. any member of American society that does not belong to the hegemony. Cultural pluralism concentrates on difference that lies in the combined aspects of gender, class and ethnicity as well as on the sexual identity, a “difference within, something culturally intrinsic.”22

The American Revolution reflected a dream of inclusiveness. Since the 1960s, the era of the Civil Rights Movement, this idea has been challenged by various minorities, which saw this ideal of universalism as excessively hegemonic. These newly empowered minorities may in some extreme cases be led to display the hegemonic tendencies generally exhibited by the established culture. A typical example of this paradoxical reversal of traditional power roles can be found in the excesses of political correctness, which David Mamet explores in his play Oleanna.

While the “American Melting Pot”23, which foregrounds fusion, loses importance in the American Society of the 1990s, the new multicultural playwrights, who emerged in the last thirty years or so, dramatize the facets of what is now called the American mosaic, in which people are compelled to reinterpret their ethnic and gender identities. This phenomenon was intensified by the appearance of post modernism in the 1960s that introduced the notion of marginalization. The advent of deconstruction in the 1970s, further contributed to enhance the status of minorities, as this school of thought and criticism sought to undo the logocentrism inherent in Western society. In short, cultural pluralism, or at least difference, “Otherness”24, deconstructs American universalism and liberal humanism, offering multicultural or feminist revisions of reality in the U.S. 28

The phenomenon of cultural pluralism in American theatre and drama is threefold. It manifests itself in performance; it has its origin in the canon of American drama and flourishes in the new (mostly contemporary) multicultural drama. These aspects, in turn, consistently reflect four major concerns: the process of revision of the melting pot; the ambivalence towards assimilation; the conflation of gender/class/race conflicts; and four the challenge to traditional realism. Stage representations of the assimilation/ differentiation dichotomy are dealt within the writings of Blackstone, Smith, Holton, Sorgenfrie and McConachie. Their perspectives take into account stage directions, theatre history, dramaturgy, intercultural directing and the structure of musical.

The dramas of canonical playwrights have already paved the way for such a dramatic motif. Writers like O’Neill and Williams have revised the American “Melting pot”, affirming the validity of cultural pluralism, albeit in a sometimes veiled or oblique manner. Articles by Miller, Bower, Robinson, Callons and Piette clearly point to the same conflict between assimilation and resistance, between margin and center.

The works of marginal or emergent multicultural playwrights who have recorded the disappearance of the American melting pot, deal with Asian- American, Hispanic-American, Jewish-American, African- American and women’s drama and they restate that gender, ethnic and class issues are inextricably intertwined. Thus the playwrights wish to transcend the narrow boundaries of conventional realism to express the new multicultural realities of the United States. 29

It was in 1915 the Province theatre joined hands with the members of the Washington square players and the native drama began to appear because of the demand of the experimentalists. O’Neill, significant writer of the early twentieth century, has been called a ‘melodramatist’25 and even “was compared to that morning star of Shakespeare’s Age, Christopher Marlowe”26, because his eagerness led to an intellectual discovery rather to a balanced artistry. He blended Europe and America in his thought and experiment with vitality. He employed raw personal passionate ideas on the stage and his plays reflected a general discontent with a materialistic America and treated social realities as manifestations of the struggle between man’s will and fate, between passion and circumstance and between forces of the inner self. He presented humanity struggling against injustices and facing racial prejudice, poverty, the frustrations of Puritanism and the effects of materialistic world which thwarts or perverts the spirit.

O’Neill has fortunately added qualities to the spirit of dialogue, characterization and dramatic construction that have given power to a considerable portion of his work.

In working out dialogues, he proved himself a master of American dialects. The art of characterization has been more impressively expressed by O’Neill. He has not been content with external portraiture, he has used an x-ray machine as well as a painter’s brush and it is this custom that turns his character into an attribute or neurosis. Therefore it becomes a demonstration of ideas about character instead of individualization. Sometimes, his people have been symbols rather than identifiable persons. O’Neill has at different times been the Jack London, D.H. Lawrence, Freud, Maeterlinck, and Andreyen of the American 30

theatre. Lavania in Mourning Becomes Electra, Dion and Anthony in The Great God Brown and John and Loving in Days Without End represent a new, dynamic concept of dramatic characterization in which psychoanalysis directly or indirectly exerts its influence. Possibly, the individual’s unconscious or simply his vaguely sensed self also recognizes itself O’Neill’s tormented half-personalities, so that the playgoer’s recognition of their reality is not in the final analysis purely cerebral. The plays like The Count of Monte Cristo and Beyond the Horizon are examples of O’Neill’s “Melodramadness”27, according to Virgil Geddes.

O’Neill also knows how to play on the nerves, alternating settings astutely, grouping characters effectively and allowing climaxes to explode at the most theatrical moment. Nor does he balk at any emphatic device, whether he employs the toms-toms of Emperor Jones, the masks of The Great God Brown, the asides of Strange Interlude, the Congo mask of All God’s Chillum Got Wings or the gorilla cage in The Hairy Ape. Invariably by action and other kinds of visualization, he succeeds in externalizing inner stresses, calling attention to them, discharging them theatrically. The one possibly serious difference between his effects and those of the greatest tragedians (including Chekhov) is that O’Neill’s characters are too often only pseudo tragic, since they lack greatness of spirit and stamina.

O’Neill, the son who was born to the popular actor James O’Neill October 16, 1888, proved himself an Ishmael like Herman Melville, but wholly by inner compulsion since the family was prosperous. 31

Having read Jack London, Kipling, Conrad, Ibsen, Wedekind and Strindberg, he started his first creative efforts by holding a job as a reporter and a columnist on the New London Telegraph; this revealed some shrewd political thinking and reflected Theodore Roosevelt’s trust bursting activities. His argumentative verses were contributed to the socialist newspaper the New York Call and to the radical periodical The Masses. The plays representing split personalities-The Great God Brown and Days Without End-recall the Scandinavian master’s expressionist style, just as his use of mask harks back to the Greeks. In 1914 he joined Professor Bakers Workshop at Harvard in 1914 and then joined the pilgrimage to Green with Village late in 1915 and became a produced playwright when the Provincetown players performed his one-act play Bound East for Cardiff in Mary Heaton Vorse’s Wharf Theatre at Provincetown. Publication in the Seven Arts Magazines and in the Smart Set promoted his reputation with the performance of Beyond the Horizon. In 1920 O’Neill began a steady ascent to fame; his plays received countless productions in America and abroad. After the collapse of the Provincetown playhouse and of the Greenwich Village Theatre, which he managed with Robert Edmond Jones and Kenneth McGowan, he became the Theatre Guild’s leading playwright and reached the great American public. Then the Nobel Prize in 1936 put an official seal on his international reputation, O’Neill being the only American dramatist to receive that honor. Finally, having made signal achievements in both tragedy and comedy, he retired in 1934 to write the largest cycle of plays in any language-Emperor Jones in 1920; The Hairy Ape in 1922, Lazarus Laughed in 1927, Dynamoin 1929, Marco Millions and Ah, Wilderness! in 1934. 32

The majority of the plays of social consciousness produced during the depression years suggest:

Social alternatives, either reformist or radical, or a play which demands personal or collective action.28

During the late twenties the most successful social drama was staged in the form of high comedy which usually offered a hero with little to lose, engaging in a personal rebellion against the forces of big business or industry. Although the hero was often accused, he generally demands his personal freedom of thought and own way of life without making a pronounced social commitment. While Barry and others, such as George S. Kaufman and his various collaborators, managed to include criticism of social programs and economic attitudes in such plays, the primary purpose of the social comedy was to entertain an audience, not inform it or arouse it to action.

Since 1921 Kaufman has responded to nearly everything in American life, from its pleasant private vagaries to political mismanagement and the serious threat of fascism. His works have been one long cycle from comedy to comedy—To the Ladies, Merton of the Movies, Beggar on Horseback, Of thee I Sing, The Royal Family, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Daisy Mayme and Craig’s Wife etc.

Philip Barry, by temperament and circumstance, a genial writer, became a purveyor of problem comedies like He and She, Nice People and Mary the Third, Expressing Willie (1923), Holiday (1928), The Animal Kingdom, Hotel Universe etc., brought serious analysis of the neuroses of upper- class and intellectual individuals. 33

S.N.Behrman captured the driving forces of the contemporary scene of high comedy. His humanism lies in the comedy although do not solve any immediate problem yet his frequently static dramaturgy leaves desired theatrical interest. The plays such as The Second Man, Meteor (1929), The Misanthrope, Rain from Heaven (1934) etc., had more concentrated portrait of a man of the twenties and his milieu of “things disintegrating….some enormous transition - the final flicker of civilization.”31

His most charming and successful dialectical comedies were End of Summer, Wine of Choice, No Time for Comedy.

Sherwood was a showman and therefore hid his light in some trivial comedies and obvious melodramas. The plays written by him in thirties revealed a feeling for historical periods in Reunion in Vienna, the Petrified Forest, Acropolis, Idiot’s Delight and Abe Lincoln in Illinois; he deflated or humanized heroes and favored those characters that departed from traditional pomp, panache or heroism; and he revealed an antipathy for brutality and slaughter. In most cases he added a fourth dimension- namely, modern sex drama. Moreover the struggle between abolitionism and slavery in the thirties was also the theme of this American play. In this way, the playwright Sherwood successfully affirmed the power of the new world on the Western Hemisphere to survive the decline of the West.

Although such plays as Maxwell Anderson Both Your Houses (1933) and Saturday’s Children were hardly Marxist or communistic in their appeal, they were seriously critical of social institutions and prevailing national attitudes concerning everything from anti-semitism to the self- 34

perpetuating evil of commercial wealth. The corruption of justice in ‘Winterset’, hypocritical Puritanism in ‘The Wingless Victory’ and the predatory materialism of the land speculators in ‘High Tor’ illustrates the plight of an individual who takes a stance against social convention, who throws away an opportunity for grand riches for a chance to learn more about himself and enjoy living life for its own sake.

Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine (1923) centered upon the plight of an individual worker who has been replaced by automation after twenty-five year of faithful service to an uncaring business and John Howard Lawson had also dealt with the problems of individual success and ambition, but none seemed to have Barry’s genius for finding the balance between social comment and successful drama. John Gassner puts it:

he managed to strike a medium between social satire and vacuous entertainment.29

John Steinbeck profoundly contributed in the human story of homelessness and simple comradeship through his novel Of Mice and Men. Erskine Caldwell’s described social decay in a strong naturalist tragic-comedy Tobacco Road. Eminent novelist Thornton Wilder in his play Our Town had the genre of a classically poetic expression of the cycle of human existence from birth to death.

Placid realism and psychological upheavals of the twenties, the conflict between capital and labour, the neglect of the common worker became the subject matter of the group of New-Playwrights such as Clifford Odets, Emjo Basshe, Michael Gold, the Siftons and John Howard Lawson. Social scene of the American Society during the guilded age was presented 35

expressionistically and the striking “Jazz-drama” Processional was an example of insurgency in the dramaturgy of Theatre Guild in 1925.

Lillian Hellman had vise-like grip on her characters and subject whose two plays were a smashing hit produced under Broadway management. First was The Children’s Hour in 1934 a psychological tragedy caused by a neurotic brat and a homosexually inclined teacher, the second was The Little Foxes in 1938 drew an unmerciful picture of America’s rise of the fortune.

The humanist Sidney Kingsley drew picture of poor slum life and the gangster’s role in Dead End and of poverty and riches in The World We Make. John Wexley’s melodrama of prison life the Last Mile and a strike play Steel, expose of the Negro trial They Shall Not Die were the powerful contributions of dramatization.

The Actor’s Repertory Company, revealed Irwin Shaw’s expressionistic and macabre anti-war play Bury the Dead and his full-length comedy The Gentle People had symbolic representation of the revolt of the meek against their oppressors. Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock was a notable interpretation of classics.

Radical thought originating from Marxist dialectics in the thirties were represented in the Odets plays such as Waiting for Lefty; Golden Boy and Rocket to the Moon.Awake and Sing reveals this awakening in the bosom of a seedy family. Odets’ vision was volatile and angry therefore it prompted him to searing stretches of realism and to glowing insights into character. Thus the play ‘Awake and Sing’ conveyed liberation or enlightenment against the frustrations of capitalism and it appeared 36

pseudo-revolutionary pabulum because Odets blamed psychic disturbances on the social system and his beyond literal realism became strained and categorical.

During the early post war period, the Mississippi-born Tennessee (John Lanier) Williams (1914-1983) had his first successful production The Glass Menagerie (1945). Hitherto only slightly known for his overwrought study of small-town frustrations Battle of Angels and for his one-act plays collected under the title 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other One-Act Plays (New Directions, 1945), Williams came to be regarded as the most promising playwright of the decade. He won critical acclaim for his unique talent disclosed in the plays such as The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo,, Sweet Bird of Youth, Orpheus Descending, and The Night of Iguana. He was gifted with an empathetic understanding of the human condition and a talent for rendering incisive psychological portraits- Amanda Wingfield, Blanche Du Bois, Stanley Kowalski, Big Daddy Pollitt, Maggie “the cat”, and Serafina Della Rosa. Williams displays a brand of “personal lyricism” that has its appeal far wider than the boundaries of the U.S. geographical region where he was born. He offered theatergoers a new “plastic” theatre, more caustic than the escapist dramas of the second world war years, but nevertheless more engagingly sensitive than the social dramas of the 1930s.

Williams’s compeer during the early post-war period was Arthur Miller, the author of All My Sons and Death of a Salesman had been recognized in the Thirties by Theresa Helburn’s Bureau of New Plays and he was financially assisted to study drama at the Michigan University. He won the New York Drama Critics Circle award with All My Sons in 1947. His novelistic play The Man Who Had All the Luck produced on Broadway in 37

1944, this was about Anti-Semitism. In 1942 he worked on Ernie Pyle war film The Story of G.I. Joe and in 1944 his diary of experiences in army camps published under the title situation normal. His other plays Desire under the Elms and the Crucible were specimen of naturalism with poetic or at least theatrical imagination as well as of realistic technique with other (expressionist and symbolist) techniques. 38

“Notes”

1Carl Bode, “National Beginning”, Highlights of American Literature (Washington, D.C.: English Language programs Division Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs U. S. I. A., 1988) 5.

2Bode 5.

3John Gassner, ‘Eugene O’Neill and the American Scene: Discovering America”, Masters of the Drama (New York: Dover, 1954) 631.

4Jurgen C. Wolter, “The American Theatre as Seen by Its Critics: A Historical Survey; From the Devil’s Den to the Nation’s Temple 1746-1789: Struggling for a Foothold”, The Dawning of the American Drama: American Dramatic Criticism, 1746-1915 (Westport: Greenwood P, 1993) 9.

5Wolter 13.

6Wolter 14.

7Wolter 14.

8Wolter 14.

9Wolter 15.

10Wolter 19.

11Martha Fletcher Bellinger, A Short History of the Drama (New York: H Holt and Co., 1927) 354.

12Gassner 639.

13Gassner 639.

14Gassner 639. 39

15Tennessee Williams, “The Glass Menagerie”, An Anthology; American Literature 1890-1965, ed. Egbert S. Oliver (New Delhi: Eurasia, 1967) 243.

16J.L. Styan, “Introduction: Toward an Understanding of Realism in American Theatre”, Beyond Naturalism: A New Realism in American Theater, ed. William W. Demastes (New York: Greenwood P, 1988) 61-62

17Demastes 1.

18R.H. Gardner, “Clifford Odets: Middle Class naturalism”, Stage Left: The Development of the American Social Drama in the Thirties, ed. R.C. Reynolds (New York: Whitston, 1986) 90.

19Reynolds 90.

20Tennessee Williams, “Production Notes to the Glass Menagerie, 1945” Accelerated Grimace: Expressionism in the American Drama of the 1920s, by Williams, ed. Mardi Valgemae (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1972) 116.

21Valgemae 116.

22Henry, Louis Gates, Jr., “Beyond the Cultural Wars: Identities in Dialogue”, Profession (1993): 6-11.

23Richard Schechner, “An Intercultural Primer”, American Theatre Oct.1991: 28-31, 135-36.

24Marc Maufort, “Staging Difference: A Challenge to the American Melting Pot”, Staging Difference: Cultural Pluralism in American Theatre and Drama, (New York: Peter Lang, 1995) 1.

25Edmond M. Gagey, “Eugene O’Neill”, Revolution in American Drama (New York: Columbia UP, 1947) 41. 40

26John Mason Brown, “Christopher Marlowe to Eugene O’Neill” in Letters from the Greenroom (N.p: n.p., n.d.) n.pag.

27Virgil Geddes, “The Melodramadness of Eugene O’Neill”, Eleanor Flexner’s American Playwrights 1918-1938, Sept.1935: n.pag.

28Reynolds 1.

29Reynolds 6.

30Gassner 669.

31Gassner 672.

 41

CHAPTER - II

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS : A DRAMATIST AND AN ARTIST

Thomas Lanier Williams was born in an Episcopal rectory, in Columbus, Mississippi in 1911. In his early years he was pampered by his grandfather, his grandmother, his mother and his sister Rose. Walter Dakins, his grandfather was an Episcopal priest in Delta Country, around Clarksdale, Mississippi where he used to minister a number of small congregations in the South. These impressions proved quite valuable for William’s creative journey.

When he was seven years old, his domineering father shifted from the rectory in Clarksdale to an apartment in St. Louis, Missouri. His father Cornelius Coffin Williams was promoted in the central offices of the International Shoe Company to an important position. Tom found the big city of St. Louis crowded, dirty and unfriendly. For his ‘sissy’ tastes he was laughed at by other children and this drew him closer in relationship with his sister Rose.

His mother, Edwina Dakin Williams, being the daughter of a respected Episcopal priest, felt neglected in the city, so she undertook an active role in the Daughters of American Revolution for increased prestige.1 42

When Dakin, Tom’s younger brother was born, both the older children did not get attention, this made Tom and Rose feel isolated and affected their studies at school. To improve grades he was sent back to Clarksdale under his grand-parents’ care. He used to write letters to his sister Rose and ‘King Dakin’2. After a year he returned to St.Louis and followed writing as a vocation in order to escape the misery at home.

In his early teens he won prizes and got his creative writings published but he could not get closer to his father as compared to his younger brother Dakin.3

In 1928 he went on a tour via New York City to Europe, accompanied by his father. This colored his life as he had the chance to see Broadway, his first taste of big time theatre.

Meanwhile Rose, who lagged behind in studies, suffered from nervous disorders and depression, although efforts to desensitize her in many ways went in vain. She increasingly became isolated and felt an outsider. His journals and diaries revealed that he was horrified at the information of his sister Rose. In 1943 Rose owing to frontal lobotomy, got disabled permanently. “Tom felt guilty for not being with her during her crisis because she had been his soul mate from childhood.”4

After his graduation in 1929 Tom entered the University of Missouri at Columbia to study journalism. He enjoyed his writing classes, French and literature but not the class assignments, and on an invitation he joined a fraternity where he enjoyed parties and drinking. 43

On account of his poor military obligations, his father settled him into a dreary clerical job at Continental Shoes. This happened when Rose was undergoing peculiar psychosis.

He stayed at home for few hours, went to see movies and wrote every night which was the only way to be away from this psychic trap which Rose was going through and there was possibility of his becoming like that. At St.Louis he joined a theatre group, called the Mummers where his work became flesh.5

His grandparents encouraged him to join Washington University and they even sponsored his course of theatre program at the University of Iowa, where he acquainted himself with professional theatre people and learnt the business of theatre.

In 1938, at the time of Depression, when Tom found no other job, thought to settle again at shoe factory although he felt dissatisfied and suffocated to pursue his newly acquired skills in that environment. So he proceeded first to Chicago, then to New Orleans. There he got in contact with Bohemian life-style, which was amoral life of the Vieux Carr, the old and arty section of the city, whose lively conversation and colorful characters impressed his mind and he took it as his spiritual home. Meanwhile he sent the scripts of some short plays under the name of “Tennessee”6 in a contest for young writers sponsored by the Group theatre in Memphis, Tennessee where his grandparents were living after retirement. Tennessee Williams won a prize in the Group theatre contest communicated to him through a letter along with $100. This was followed by an offer from a New York agent Audrey Wood to help him with his career. 44

Meanwhile with the money that he received, he went on a tour to Mexico with his friend Jim Parrot, toured Camino Real, The Coastal Highway and Laguna Beach and stayed there in a rented Cabin and continued as a vagabond poet to search his identity as ‘Tennessee’ in order to adopt a new literary image of a playwright of sexuality and violence and rebellion against his Puritan background.

In 1938 he got increasingly interested in the life and works of D.H. Lawrence and felt a desire to meet Lawrence’s widow, and in Taos, New Mexico he met her, for he was touched by this poet-novelist and Williams’s works were greatly influenced by Lawrence who wrote movingly of his own childhood, his love-hate relationship with his mother and father, his tormented love affairs and his critique of the modern world, sexuality and acceptable attitudes of the society, that was generated by the impact of repressive Puritanism.

Williams, now ‘Tennessee’ returned to St. Louis and then proceeded to New York to meet Audrey Wood to conquer Broadway. Audrey was like an angel godmother, cared for his job and grants between his arrival in New York and his final success with The Glass Menagerie.7

The play Battle of Angels was produced by the prestigious Theatre Guild opened in Boston in December 1940. It provoked outrage due to Tennessee Williams vagabond experiences reflected in the play - his Delta background and his enthusiasm for D.H. Lawrence’s philosophy of sexuality. Hence this play could not make its place in Broadway. 45

His first failure led him to locate a haven in Key West Florida where he found congenial environment for his creative writings, here he also got engaged in a gay relationship and gathered around him a cluster of homosexual friends, which was reflected in his poems and short stories.8

Although he tried to keep it a secret, his brother Dakins was the first one to know about it. The truth of his being a gay was an embarrassing shock not only to his parents but also to the society; thus for many years he led a double-life.

St. Louis was his home-town but New York was the Centre of his professional life where he had an apartment. In Key West he owned a cottage and wanted to resume his artistic life, but instead he indulged in long swims, a relaxed meal, drinking and socializing. In this phase he was not so much a writer but a compulsive typist. He used to suffer from insomnia, resulting in his intake of sleeping pills and alcohol. Inspite of all this he continued writing. But he could not gain any monetary benefits from it.

When he was in thirties, he worked at a variety of jobs, but rarely for more than a month. Occasionally he won grants from Rockefeller Foundation or other groups that Audrey discovered for him, “in order to keep him alive until success comes.”9

In 1943, Audrey got for him a job to write dialogues for the popular stars of the era at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The Pink Bedroom was one such play, 46

he wrote the scenes but could not concentrate as he thought of writing a play about his family- a gentle drama that had been taking form in his mind over the years.

Finally he wrote The Front Porch Girl or The Gentleman Caller, based on the story of Rose’s sad efforts at attracting young men or on his mother’s efforts to contribute to DAR in order to form her social circle in new place St. Louis. In 1943 he focused his mind to take up this theme of tragedy, which revolved around his sister’s madness on account of her hideous surgery.

He drafted the ideas that lying dormant in his subconscious memories about their stay in the old apartment in St. Louis which was a nightmare for three of them especially Rose, Tom and Mother; the unhappiness and poverty, love and frustration of not only this family but also of refugees from the South and his own need to escape the trap. But in the beginning these ideas were badly bowled-headed by the theatre company and he proceeded to California with the money he saved and re-worked this idea and renamed it as Glass-Menagerie and when Audrey Wood read it, she was sure of success with this masterpiece of writing.

The Glass Menagerie opened in Chicago, in midwinter, at the end of 1944. The play was a smashing hit at the box office from Chicago to New York where it had 561 performances and the 34 year old author had 24 curtain calls on the opening night, eventually leading him to win the New York Drama Critics Award for Best Play and the Donaldson and Sidney Howard Memorial awards. All this finally he was positioned him as the outstanding dramatist of postwar America. 47

Even before Menagerie was translated into a successful film, Williams was at work on more plays: the first a co-authored play based on a D.H. Lawrence’s short story You Touched Me! (1945) which was not received well. The second was a remarkably spell-binding play named A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). This powerful production, his collaboration with the brilliant director Elia Kazan, once again won the author the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Donaldson award. This classic confronted the standards of decency current among the filmmakers at the time, becoming a landmark as the first “adult film”10.

Finding himself “the King of the Mountain”11 his struggle to reach the top became more intense and this frenzy was visible in his flurry of new plays, travel, films and fresh contacts with old friends and new lovers. During this phase his reacquainting with Frank Merio proved beneficial to live life in discipline and in driving away his loneliness.

Another Southern play, Summer and Smoke (1948), was professionally staged by one of his supporters Margo Jones in 1952 and had a fair run on Broadway although could not gain critical acclaim, so Williams revised it with a new script called The Eccentricities of a Nightingale (in 1964). In the meantime it was made into a film in 1961 and later a television play, yet it could not get the attention that Menagerie or Streetcar got.

He experimented with different forms, including a novel about his experiences in Rome, called The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone in which he drew an ironic contrast with the decadent American expatriates who settled there. “The stream of consciousness novel was made into a beautiful film with Vivien Leigh and Warren Beatly, but attracted little praise.”12 48

He tried a comedy namely The Rose Tattoo where he mentioned symbolically his joyful companionship with Frank Merio, a Sicilian- American.

This play was a modest success on Broadway in 1951, won only the Tony Award, it slowed down his triumphs and later the play was turned into a movie and was filmed in his neighbourhood in Key West.13

His old friend Jay Laughlin, owner of New Directions Press, published two separate volumes of his poetry as well as several collections of his short stories, but could not achieve accolades that he received from his plays.

Williams’s greatest disappointment was at the failure of an experimental piece called Camino Real in 1953. It was a wildly surrealistic play. William found himself that he was too avant-garde for popular theatre. His luck changed since 24th March 1955 when Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won the Drama Critics Award, the Donaldson and the Pulitzer.

Orpheus Descending followed on Broadway in 1957 a revised script of the Battle of Angels. He involved pagan Greek mythology instead of the Puritanical Christian one. But it turned out to be an obscure symbolic play which failed once again. Thereafter in 1974 Williams presented theater goers with yet another version of the play entitled Battle of Angels that earned favourable reviews.

A year later, in 1958, he produced two short plays namely Suddenly Last Summer and Something Unspoken, produced by Garden District. Both were noted for their paradoxical qualities. The subject matter dealt in these 49

plays is the frontal lobotomy of his sister Rose- the painful chronicle that the family had to face; the homosexuality- which Tennessee Williams was going through in his promiscuous relationship with his friend Frankie and the psychotic state of Rose and Tennessee Williams owing to madness and dementia. Thus these plays became more of a “sensual wallop” 14 rather a dramatic statement. These revived in 1995.

In 1959, Sweet Bird of Youth revealed for all to see the decadent Mr. Williams. He portrayed himself as a sad old woman actress, whom he had known for many years; here he exposed his alcoholism, drug addiction and pathetic reliance on young predators. “Its subject was concerned with Tennessee Williams’ unstable relations with his directors Kazan and Audrey wood”15, with mother, grandfather and his sister; with his friend Frankie. He lost touch of all his dear ones due to his addictions and “psychopathic state.”16 This play was revived in 1975.

The Night of the Iguana, his last great success, opened at the end of 1961. It displayed the full sense of his alienation from other people, his weariness with life and his sense that he was abandoned even by God. In 1976 and 1988, it had its revival and enjoyed a favourable reception.

In 1963 The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore opened on Broadway, provides an illustrative example to view that stage as a place to fashion his works in progress. His “paranoiac state”17 was identified in Small Craft Warnings originally named Confessional Memoirs and Moise and The World of Reason described “his outrageous behaviour which led him to fall from popularity.”18 50

He wrote a number of short plays during the final decade of his life along with a couple of books of short stories, a novel and a few longer plays. The five plays were based loosely or extensively upon autobiographical and confessional materials: Out Cry (1973) later revised as the Two Character Play (1975); In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969); Vieux Carre (1977); Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1981) and The Red Devil Battery Sign which presents an apocalyptic urban jungle. Differing from William’s self-parodies and autobiographical works, Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980) was based on the lives of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda.

His last play retitled A House Not Meant to Stand in 1982 was performed on the Goodman Memorial Theatre’s main stage. The final act was a Slapstick Tragedy that explicates Tennessee Williams as a broken drunken, incoherent, grotesquely comic, pathetic paranoid in his stature while a coterie of “artistic” young people used him for their own aggrandizement. His death in 1983 was itself a source of confusion and curiosity.

He was laid to rest in the city of St. Louis which he despised and his brother Dakins continually pursued a suspicion that Tennessee was murdered before he could change his will.19

Tennessee Williams’s plays show his own distinct style of presenting his imagination, but it does not have a consistency. He is sensitive and emotionally stimulated to relive the predicament of the characters in the plays instead of being intellectual to present their feelings in a real life situation. His dramas are the epitome of American contemporary culture and he responds and revises his narratives according to the criticism of the 51

audience. His play Battle of Angels narrates the visionary artist who feels isolation as he is a sexual rebel in the conservative south. Partially this is Williams’s own image formed on the basis of his wanderings and more from his reading of books.

Mostly the characters of the play are the stereotypes like chattering Church ladies, crude local men and the obligatory brutal sheriff, sex-starved housewives, etc. The impressions of D. H. Lawrence are expressionistically related.20

The success of The Glass Menagerie made Williams discovers a treasure in his own family and his own experiences.

For the next few years, he wrote of his mother, the super-annuated southern belle, his father, the brute male, his sister, the lost innocent, and himself, the lonely poetic misfit.21

Eventually, he added his grandfather and his brother to the mix. Later he began to use the actors; he traced their triumphs and failures.

Gradually, his subject of concern is sexually oriented or it is overt expression of homosexuality. His dramas reflect his religious ideas, his sense of God’s silence and cruelty.22 52

Most of his plays autobiographical in their content and form and portray Tennessee Williams in mask, playing the central figure in the play. He personalises the universal problems with his own experience and in a significant style he becomes grotesquely garrulous in the description of his unworldly characters. From beginning to the end, he is the “Laureate of the Lost” and centralises the psychoanalysis of the outsiders.

Their protest against The American dream was either neglected or dealt with unsympathetically and such characters were named as fugitives, misfits or alienated beings, trapped in their self- created predicaments.23

He continues to talk about the artist, his life, his alienation, and his torments. “He often pictures people in a trapped or terminal situation, fighting for their lives against insurmountable odds.”24

He loves underdogs- Bohemians, misfits, prostitutes, alcoholics and street people. His especial sympathy goes out to those who are hungry for love, for security or those just who need rest for the night.

His early voice is more close to reality and gothic in style, later as he moves to maturity in his talent he becomes a visionary and creatively uses signs and symbols through non - realistic theatrical and expressionistic techniques, which were part of the plastic theatre. Thus he becomes more abstract in his message and creates an impression on the public.25 53

After his near-death experience in 1969, he confesses about his own conflicts, his sense of shame, his loss of critical acclaim, his fear of madness, his awareness of the old age and death. These final plays, are nonetheless fascinating works, especially Out Cry or The Two character Play, a play in which the whole theatrical experience deconstructs his personal life before our eyes.

The plays that have earlier traced the young poet searching for truth, now become chronicles of the old artist, facing death. As his final days approach, he contemplates the immortality of art, the mortality of the artist.26

From his first “battle” with the angles of darkness to his late horror at God’s silence, he seeks moments of grace, often finding this in human communication rather than in meditation or prayer. As he says in one of his earliest plays, his anguish is noticeable.” We’re all of us locked up tight inside our own bodies. Sentenced - you might say - to solitary confinement inside our own skins.”27

Tennessee Williams has become a part of popular culture on account of his encouragement to a variety of the riches of regional language, domestic portraits and idiomatic language features of his artistic presentation, free expression of emotions and the complex feelings that draw laughter and silence. “The plastic theatre, the “presentational” devices of oriental theatre as well as the techniques of film are the instruments of his discovery in creative expression.”28 54

Tennessee Williams derives his themes from psycho-analysis, conferred upon American drama by the influence of Freud’s theories given in the books namely ‘Suppressed Desires’ and ‘Interpretation of Dreams’. Sigmund Freud became popular in America during the early twentieth century. “He contradicted the earlier view that sexual deviation is the form of degeneracy; rather he scientifically named them as abnormal psychic disorders like neuroses, hysteria, hypochondria, irrationality and hypertension.”29 These all occur due to sexual maladjustment and if there is an unconscious repression of sex drive (libido) it results into unconscious conflicts and this psychological dualism of man’s nature originates hostile impulses and we find split-personality lives. Tennessee Williams was suffering from Oedipus complex because in his earlier life he could not get attached to his father, he found convincing attraction in his mother. While leading a Bohemian life-style in New Orleans, he became aware that he had homosexual tendencies. His unconscious rationalization or repression began to explore the world, the world of gaiety and frivolity. Unconsciously it affected him and it found expression in his writings, in the form of portraits- at times as that of his sister and at others in his own.

In the play Orpheus Descending Mrs. Torrance and in A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche Dubois symbolically refers to his mental state. In these plays sex, which was considered a taboo, is treated by Williams in a shocking and revolutionary manner. He generated the germ of the new spirit of freedom for woman to find sexual fulfillment (symbolized by the West) and this idea is in conflict with the moral Puritanism of New England. Actually he tries to balance his mental delirium through wish- fulfilment of his repressed desires which had been controlled by the Puritanical code of conduct taught by his mother Edwina Williams. 55

In the early years of his life, he suffered the disintegration of the marital relationship of his parents as his father led a cavalier life-style. As a result, there was no communication between the father and the children, therefore both suffered from Oedipus and Orestes complex respectively.30

Later on when they grew older they had to undergo conscious suppression of their sexual impulses, and this is indicated in The Glass Menagerie where Laura, the image of Rose, faces depressive disorders, she feels isolated and miserable amongst the worldly beings and

escapes into her own world, consisting of collection of fragile glass animals suggesting her delusions while Tom who is the spokesperson of the memories of Tennessee Williams’s life, tries to precipitate his stress and unhealthy family dynamics by going to movies at night or recreating his vulnerability in his creative writings.31

In the play A Streetcar Named Desire Blanche Dubois undergoes emotional disturbances on account of countering continuous deaths of many dear ones, and even she loses Belle reeve- the ancestral property- in mortgage which is the only source of income for her and her family. Then her desires are exploited and her wishes remain unfulfilled on account of this loss, as she is always dependent on the kindness of strangers and 56

suffers from hysterical syndrome. Tennessee’s own wish fulfillment is expressed by Blanche’s loss of emotional support and her sexual urges.

Williams’s anti-heroic portraits illustrate Freudian structure of personality which is divided into three components: the id, the ego, and the superego. He sees a person’s behaviour as the outcome of interactions among these three components.

The id is the primitive, instinctive component of the personality that operates according to the pleasure principle. Freud referred to the Id as the reservoir of psychic energy and it houses the raw biological urges (to eat, sleep, defecate, and copulate and so on) that energize human behaviour.

The ego is the decision-making component of personality that operates according to the reality principle. The ego mediates between the id, with its forceful desires for immediate satisfaction, and the external social world, with its expectations and norms regarding suitable behaviour.

The superego is the moral component of personality that incorporates social standards about what represents right and wrong. In some people, the superego can become irrationally demanding in its striving for moral perfection. Such people are plagued by excessive feelings of guilt.

According to Freud, the id, ego and superego are distributed differently across three levels of awareness, which is necessary to understand conflict and tyrannical sex and aggression. 57

Perhaps Freud’s most enduring insight was his recognition of how unconscious forces can influence behaviour. He also realises that dreams often express hidden desires.

Freud proposed that the ego and superego operate at all three levels of awareness. In contrast, the id is entirely unconscious, expressing its urges at a conscious level through the ego. Of course, the id’s desire for immediate satisfaction often triggers internal conflicts with the ego and the superego. These conflicts play a key role in Freud’s theory.32

The behaviour is the outcome of an ongoing series of internal conflicts. These internal battles take place between the id, ego and superego in a routine manner, because the id wants to gratify its urges immediately but the norms of civilized society frequently dictate otherwise.

The norms governing sexual and aggressive behaviour often are the result of these unconscious battles; they can produce anxiety that slips to the surface of conscious awareness.

In A Streetcar Named Desire Blanche Dubois searches to explore herself through self-deception and she projects her beauty in dim lighted bulbs or cleansing herself with water off and on while Stanley Kowalski who is defied, challenged and baffled by Blanche’s airs, and in order to control his aggression against Blanche, he tries to show his irritation by slamming the door, by kicking the things and by screaming at Stella. Actually he displaces his anger into irrelevant targets and ends up lashing out at Stella 58

whom he loves the most. Finally at the end the conflict of id and ego in Stanley Kowalski leads to the physical exploitation of Blanche, he shows his sexual aggression by violating the feminity of Blanche.

She becomes the victim of dementia and like a fugitive she is institutionalized at asylum and she survives through her demented state by being dependent on the kindness of strangers.33

Blanche finds protection and security in Mitch, who confides in her about his sick mother and betrays himself as a boy with an Oedipus complex. He wants to escape his mother yet loyally worships her. But the tragedy for Blanche occurs, when sadist Stanley reveals to Mitch all her past and destroys his illusion.

Reality principle gets into the clash with pleasure principle. Mitch in a state of disillusioned disgust, who has his mother attachments block, is unable to bear unclean image of Blanche and leaves her in a state of shock and this agony of her metaphysical disgust makes her nymphomaniac.34

As the various door of escape are closed to her and she finds Stanley across her one remaining path, her mind is unable to cope with this impossible conflict. She closes the door to reality and escapes to a psychotic world where gentleman callers will give her shelter, and she utters 59

I can smell the sea air, the rest of my time I’m going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I’m going to die on the sea. You know what I shall die of? (She picks a grape) I shall die of eating an unwashed grape one day out on the ocean. I will die with my hand of some nice-looking ship’s doctor, a very young one with a small blond mustache and a big silver watch. “Poor Lady, they’ll say” the quinine did her no good. That unwashed grape has transported her soul to heaven. (The Cathedral chimes are heard) And I’ll be buried at sea sewn up in a clean white sack and dropped overboard – at noon 0 in the blaze of summer- and into an ocean as blue as (Chimes again) my first lover’s eyes! 35 (SCND, sc.-xi, 136)

Thus her psychotic adjustment becomes more serious than a neurotic disorder and her predicament brings catharsis of the audience. Audience gets aware of her escape to psychosis. Tennessee Williams is able to depict Blanche’s sickness, by dramatizing the dark unconscious force with which Blanche grapples and by which she is defeated, the dramatist like the psychoanalyst, makes it possible for others to be purged of guilt and fear. To understand and participate in Blanche’s fate is to escape it.

Such stereotypes whose mental representations perpetuate a needed sense of difference between the ‘self’ and the ‘object’ and for them ‘object’ become the ‘other’ - “Stereotypes arise when self-integration is threatened. 60

They are part of our way of dealing with the instabilities of our perception of the world.”36

Williams’s characters are corruptly fallen into illusions in the corrupt world and get hysterical at the merest breath of reality. “To overcome their self- disintegration their desire for falling into the promiscuous relationship or in wish-fulfilment appears contradictory to their desire for intimate companionship.”37

The description of one of the few men who belong to the group of dementia, the Reverend T. Shannon of The Night of the Iguana shows how these same qualities clash and often promote mental collapse.

Shannon is a man of great charm and some madness ... he is a man of irreconcilable elements in his nature. He is a puritan with a sexuality that he spends his life, his nerves, in a violent but unsuccessful effort to hold in check. He has cracked up twice: A third time is imminent it seems.38

This descriptions echoes Williams’s assessment of his own character-“A mixture of the Puritan and Cavalier strains and I am rebellious Puritan.” 39In attributing such a mixture to Shannon, Williams emphasizes the effect of this conflict that has on the sanity of the individual.

Williams includes a female character Hannah Jelkes, who although o has experienced a near mental breakdown, possesses the empathy necessary to help Shannon wrestle with his “blue devils” (NI, Act-iii, 93). Like 61

Williams’s women, Shannon is unable to control his sexual appetite, has a history of mental illness and says to Maxine and Miss Fellows that he is “at the end of his rope”40 (NI, Act-i, 64). He is charged of being defrocked minister and his arrival at the Costa Verde parallels the asylum that Blanche seeks with Stella and Stanley.

Tennessee Williams’s portrays insanity of the most memorable characters; they face confinement as the result of their inability to retain their sanity. His plays present to the public such characters whose behaviour makes them unfit for societal interaction. His writings about insanity contribute to his unique vision of humanity. It is because of his sister Rose that he wrote so often about insanity; not merely because he was obsessed with her madness, but because her madness strongly suggests him to override it before it conquers him. “His interest in the sensitive individual destroyed by society finds an appropriate vehicle in the subject of madness: the ravaged mind results from the brutality and destructive nature of the society.”41

Thus A Time article on Williams dated 9 March, 1962 called Tennessee Williams the “nightmare merchant on Broadway.”42

Tennessee Williams’s gaze encompasses the masochistic pleasure, whose focus is on the object of desire that enslaves the freedom of other by one’s gaze which works at two levels i.e. “‘plastic’ and ‘dynamic’ levels.” (NI, Act-i, 5)43

In his stage notes, he asserts that his settings are not real. They are transformations that lead to the truth in a pleasant disguise 62

manner, and there in lies the pleasure which is beyond human reason, beyond the reality of life or experience of life. The scenes of the play represent his memory or insight or intellect to present the reality of life, and the reflections bring audience closer to the nostalgic ruined past through symbolism that enable the poet to express his characters’ feelings and emotions on the stage. This is a sort of purely private thrill of release of real experiences in a non-realistic manner which is an unusual freedom to break away from the exhausted theatre of realistic conventions. Tennessee Williams calls this pleasure “self-indulgence” (NI, Act-ii, 92). The pleasure he felt was the pleasure of being able to communicate pleasure. He writes in his ‘Memoirs’:

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. 44

Tennessee Williams’s plays construct the world of a separate existence of such characters, whose portrayal gives existential pleasure to the audience. “He wants to break completely with the past and to work out an original relation to the universe of those who in anguish become lost or fugitives or isolated beings or artist.”45

One may define it as resistance or protest or even resignation, this describes existentialism as a personalism where the other person’s desire becomes one’s own object of desire and begins to 63

reflect on the personality. This causes conflict and tries to enslave another person or another person tries to enslave oneself.

Therefore Williams’s description of human psyche depicts an attitude or outlook that emphasises human existence - and wants to put individual freedom into focus; it renders human life possible, which affirms that every truth and every action implies both an environment and a human predicament. Thus he is Nietzschean in his expression for he emphasises more on self- responsibility or self indulgence. Tennessee Williams in his plays has very exquisitely handled the psycho-dynamic potentials of characters developing and flourishing in extreme situations.

Moreover the pleasurable and conflicted Williams’s opinion becomes clear more elaborately when he says “Freud sex is used to enlighten existence” 46. In his plays, all characters, women included, are seen with desire, but not with a desire to control. There is sense of loss because the potential sexual power of each person is beheld with pleasure and fear, which seems to be dangerous or metaphysically disgusting. It places the man or woman into displacement or disillusionment therefore sexuality and resistance signifies polarity in the portrait of his characters. Even a masochistic act becomes a sign of erotic desire that implies the resistance of an existential being and hence carries an identity into conflict,

but Williams has clearly evoked the audience’s desires and denies them purgation and purification of a complex 64

competing emotions, an uncertain richness of possible responses. 47

The play The Night of the Iguana conveys Nietzschean assertion that “God is dead” 48 which is an exaltation of evil and is accepted as part of destiny. The liberation of the mind according to him does not make possible purification rather he believes that freedom for man lies in the acceptance of things as they are. His theory of individual will to power professes metaphysical rebellion. Sartre too feels that man’s freedom compels him to make himself into something instead of being something. “The human being transcends itself”. “To “exist” means, etymologically is to stand out, to step out.” 49

Shannon, the uncertain minister, in The Night of the Iguana searches God, collects “evidence” (NI, Act-i,76) but only gets aware of God’s “Oblivious Majesty”(NI, Act-i,76). In the absence of convincing proof of God’s existence, Shannon suffers from existential dread, a fear that the world is absurd and without meaning, a fear that beyond the grave lays absolute nothingness. In the midst of his spiritual crisis, the Christian minister is saved, ironically not by Christ, but by Hannah Jelkes, a woman who resembles “a saving sorceress, expert at healing.” 50 Administering a potion of poppy seed tea, Hannah performs a function similar to that of art, “She alone knows how to turn... nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live.” 51 65

The figure of Hannah illustrates an existential faith in the power of human beings to create meaning through art and to bring salvation to others by means of the healing power of art. Ironically, the woman is characterized as the “Thin – standing - up female Buddha” functions as a Christ like redeemer in a play that duplicates a Christian archetype.” 52 (NI, Act-iii, 93),

Affirming life over death, Iguana demonstrates “how to live-with dignity after despair.” 53 Acceptance of the human conditions and courage in the face of despair are Williams’s affirmative responses to the apparent meaninglessness of life.

The play Orpheus Descending transcends both life and death in the face of metaphysical emptiness and divides line between illusion and reality, gains dramatic power by the playwright’s poetic and artistic ability, and it plays “the emotional record of his youth” 54. Art, in Williams, means playing the opposites - on one hand it is the manifestation of inner reality i.e. depression, frustration against corruption and senselessness of society’s pervasive violence while on the other hand it is a release or illusory liberation from the past that is stored in memory. Williams finds beauty in unlikely places, discovering the light in the dark. In his art the sociology or psychology dominates the aesthetic vision. Williams attempts to objectify the subjective memories of Mrs. Torrance by recapturing the past through memory. It is revealed in the beginning that “the mercantile store for lady was reality, harsh and drab, but her confectionary.... was where she kept her dreams”(OD, Act-iii,).55 In order to provide a visual 66

verification of this “the confectionary blooms into a nostalgic radiance, as dim and soft memory itself”(OD, Act-iii, 556).

In the act three, the back room of the store has been transformed physically into her father’s garden, which lady associates with youth and love and life in contrast to the space associated with buying and selling, formerly a male province that she now inhabits because of illness of her husband.” Thus it is a house of illusion or art where lady chooses to inhabit over “truthful” realism.” 56

But violence has invaded the Garden and Jabe her husband (the very ‘Prince of Death’) sets fire to this realm of art in order to bring back the mercantile nature of human relationships that are completely of loneliness and unconnectedness, for everyone’s being is “sentenced.... to solitary confinement inside our own skins.” (OD, Act-ii)

Thus Tennessee Williams’s Theatre is the place where one goes to escape ambivalence and to resist being objects of identification. Williams’s gaze saw the alloy of pleasure and pain he could create for both himself and the audience. His individual brand of desire seized that glimpse which became a true pleasure, a true problem.

Tennessee Williams’s memories of the bygone days spent at St. Louis are reflected in a shape of “that dreadful city”, the city of pollution. 57 67

In New Orleans, being famous as Southern playwright, the trauma of his youth that he experiences at St. Louis becomes the image of his writings. He spent only eight years at Mississippi with his grandfather-grandmother and mother and the other twenty-five years in St. Louis.

Tom sensed his mother’s misery when they moved to St. Louis. Through her eyes, he therefore analysed the feeling of being an outsider and it became a dominant theme in his writing. While for his father, this city appeared a place of opportunity for he was able to procure a managerial job with the largest shoe company in the world.

Williams learned his cinematic techniques for six months at MGM Theater Company, where “he had spent twenty years at the movies before he went to Hollywood.” 58

His father earned a good salary, yet he was a miser. Just as his mother held back affection, his father held back money and it resulted into warfare. Cornelius, lusty and boisterous took his disappointment out in drinking; Edwina, aggressively puritanical resorted to scolding. She would use Tom as her confident while his father called him “Miss Nancy”. Being caught between father and mother he would escape to Forest Park, it was perhaps at the zoo that he first envisioned his household as a menagerie; each member was caught in a separate cage.

The Glass Menagerie belongs wholly to St. Louis. The opening descriptions of the Wingfield apartment in “one of those vast hive- 68

like conglomerations of cellular living-units” clearly situates it on Enright Avenue, where the events of Glass Menagerie took place in 1933. The alley and the several blocks of identical red brick apartments were led with their iron fire-escapes. The Tivoli theatre where Tom “went to the movies” 59(GM, Scene-v) still operates on Delmar Boulevard and the Jewel Box where Laura used to play hookey, still decorates Forest Park. The Soldan high school which Laura used to attend and felt on her intimidating walk still stands.

Although Streetcar was the New Orleans Play, still it had its beginning at St. Louis. First titled the “Poker Night”, it recalled Cornelius Collin Williams’s (his father) poker games at the Kitchen table of another apartment at 5 South Taylor, one of their frequent moves, always near the park. The streetcar that used to travel from “Desire” to “Cemeteries” 59 (SCND, sc.-i) was preceded by the many trolleys Tom Rode on his Saturday trips to the Mercantile Library in Downtown St. Louis, that city had one of the most extensive streetcar systems in the country.

Of his early short plays, thirteen derived playwright’s memories from St. Louis, as opposed to five in New Orleans and five in Mississippi The Long Goodbye, called a Mississippi play. It pictured Tom taking leave of the St. Louis apartment on Enright Avenue. Portrait of a Madonna, the background study for A Streetcar Named Desire, recorded Rose Williams’s hallucinations and the actual St.Louis incidents which contributed to her schizophrenia. While teaching a Sunday school class at the Church of St. Michael and St. George, she repeated gossip that 69

the minister, the Reverend Karl Morgan Block, had Jewish blood. (There was growing Anti-Semitism in St. Louis at the time). Dismissed from teaching for spreading rumours, she was so upset that she had to go to the hospital. Something Unspoken recalls a D.A.R. meeting at 6634 Perishing Avenue in University City when Edwina Williams was regent of the Jefferson Chapter in 1936. The family lived there at the climax of Rose’s mental troubles when she had to be confined to St. Vincent’s Asylum nearby. Suddenly Last Summer recreated this crisis, with “Edwina as Mrs.Venable and Rose a Catherine.” 60Williams changed the setting to the Garden District of New Orleans for its brilliant metaphor of the Venus flytrap.

Many of his unforgettable characters: Laura, Amanda, the Gentleman Caller, Gooper and Sister Woman, Princess of Sweet Bird, and Esmeralda of Camino Real could be traced to persons he knew in St. Louis. Of these, those who would have the most lasting effect on his life and work were Hazel Kramer and Esmeralda Mayes. Tom promptly fell in love with Hazel and was equally attached to her mother, “Miss Florence.” 61 The playwright Williams’s frequent use of the name “Flora”, even the character of Flora Goforth in The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore might hark back to Miss Florence. Hazel was remembered in the story “A Field of Blue Children”, and as La Nina in The Red Devil Battery Sign. But it was Esme who became his close friend for the next thirty years.

Going on to Soldan High School, at fifteen he took Hazel to see the 1925 “Stella Dalla’s” and was moved to write a film review, 70

which was published. Hazel was his companion on trips to the Art Museum and to the Musical theatre. Rose Williams attended typing classes only briefly in Jan.1924 at Soldan High School. Tom had ascribed those experiences to Laura in The Glass Menagerie. Tom was abnormally shy and noted with envy such Soldanites as Edward Meisenbach, who was on the yearbook staff and president of the Honour Society, sang in the Glee Club, and was the tallest boy in class pictures - Tom was always the shortest. Later, he used Edward as half of a composite portrait of “The Gentleman Caller.” 62

The move to Enright Avenue in September 1926 got him enrolled in the University High School where he won a five-dollar prize for his answer to the question “Can a good wife be a good sport”. His reply, published in Smart Set of May 1927, purported to be from the wronged husband, citing “My Own Unhappy marital experiences”. At seventeen he sold a horror story to the pulp magazine, Weird Tales. He continued the journalistic path in his last two years at University High, whose 1929 year book listed him as an assistant editor of publications.

In his seventeenth summer, his grandfather took him on an extensive European tour which included Paris, Cologne, and the battlefields of France and the ruins of Pompeii. The nine travel articles Tom published in U. City Pep were well observed. Graduation was the first example of his social phobia.

He was not shy with his intimate neighbourhood group, Esme, Hazel and friends, but along with Rose, was a regular at their 71

Saturday night games of bridge. The dual personality he cultivated was emerging, for his friends apparently were not aware of his writing accomplishments but thought of him as a willing prankster and a “marvelous dancer”.

In a personal interview, Esmeralda Mayes Treen with Allean Hale, July, 2, 1985 disclosed about Blue Roses. She said that this phrase was spoken by one of her father’s friend’s wife Mrs. Moser who on telephone in German accent reported to her mother that her husband Dr. Gustav Moser was suffering from Blue Roses. Esme’s father when heard this, went into hysterics because it was Pleurosis. Many years later ‘the blue roses’ appeared in The Glass Menagerie. Esme remembered that Rose would dearly love to have a beau but, when a boy would join their card games, she was petrified and could only giggle. The others were not aware of Rose’s increasing mental problems. Beautifully dressed and well- mannered, she ‘got by’. And Tom, always solicitous, insisted on including her in all their activities. When Hazel deserted Tom for Edward Meisenbach, Tom satirically used him as a Dale Carnegie mouthpiece and referred his sister as “Emily Meisenbach that Kraut” left to Wisconsin and Tom left to the University of Missouri, where Esme joined a year later.

Williams did not sometimes bother to change the names of his earlier acquaintances. Rose, for example had been in love with a real Richard Miles as portrayed in the story “The Difference between a Violin Case and a Coffin”. She had a classmate Ariadne Pazmezoglu, daughter of the Greek consul to St.Louis, became the original “Princess Pazmezoglu” in Sweet Bird of 72

Youth. A less exotic classmate, Nellie Ewell, becomes Alma’s rival in Summer and Smoke.

Missouri University was in fact the place where Tom became a playwright. Having exceptional opportunities at a tender age of 19 he wrote his first play, Beauty is the Word which won sixth honourable mention in the 1930 contest and praise in the local newspaper. Its theme was prophetic of later plays, in its substitution of Art for Religion. His entries in essay and fiction won honours as well, and two stories, “A Lady’s Beaded Bag” and “Smothing by Tolstoi”, were published in school periodicals. A more important story, “Big Black: A Mississippi Idyll” 63 perhaps the earliest example of Williams finding his territory. His second play, Hot Milk at Three in the Morning, was later revised as Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry. His successes led to a play writing course and his first exposure to dramatic literature. He was most impressed by Strindberg and O’Neill and may have recalled Miss Julie and the Hairy Ape when he wrote Streetcar.

At the workshop where he chanced to see one-act plays in Harvard, he heard about the University of Iowa, whose theatrical programme was the Mecca for Midwestern drama students of the thirties, so he was led there to have his professional education in theater. At Missouri University in St. Louis he joined a fraternity and made friends who would be remembered in his plays: Harold Mitchell as Mitch in Streetcar, Jim Connor as Jim O’Connor in The Glass Menagerie. Names of other “Brothers” would enter his work: Moise, Venable, Dobyne- and some of the college atmosphere of 73

“Ole Miss”, mentioned in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, may have come from “Old Mizzou” instead. 64

Tom’s writing progress at Missouri was interrupted by the Depression and the fact that he failed R.O.T.C. This enraged his father and he took Tom out of school in his junior year and put him to work in the shoe factory. Tom so hated the factory that he later subtracted the three years spent there from his age. “I felt that I was entitled to those three years.” 65

He had to dust 1000 shoes every morning and type orders on a duplicating machine the rest of the day. He described his drudgery in an unpublished story, “Stairs to the Roof”,

The duplicating machine is a monster with gaping jaws that will devour him, crush him between its gelatined rolls, if he doesn’t feed it fast enough... the pile of untyped orders climbs higher while those he has finished are whisked from his desk....

In the story, the typist climbs to the roof of the factory and jumps to his death. In real life, on the eve of his twenty-fourth birthday, Tom had a nervous breakdown and was sent to his grandparents in Memphis to recover; the free-time there enabled him to write his third play, Cairo, Shanghai Bombay, which was produced. The applause and the exhilaration of seeing his work on stage directed him further towards playwriting. Years later he admitted that the factory years had been valuable: “They gave me first hand 74

knowledge of what it means to be a small wage earner in a hopelessly routine job.” 66

He made one friend there - a polish fellow named “Kowalski” 67, who was the most famous male character of the play Streetcar.

Even while working all day at the factory, he had set himself goals: writing poems during lunch hour and a story every weekend. In 1937 Clark and Tom set up what they called “the literary factory” in Clark’s basement, where Tom turned out a prodigious number of stories and plays. The first version of 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Kingdom of Earth was written there. Tom’s acquaintance with Clark’s sister, a social worker, might have given him material for two early plays, The Dark Room and Hello from Bertha.

In 1936, The Mummers were a radical theater; its director Willard Holland needed a curtain-raiser. Having heard of Tom writing plays, he asked him how he felt about compulsory military training. Tom delivered a twelve minute satire, “Head lines” and converted real life failure into dramatic success. In the mummers he found his milieu, where he came across with day labourers, waitresses and clerks etc. His play Fugitive Kind was set in men’s flophouse, peopled by skid - row characters that had been hard hit by the Depression. William’s story “The Malediction” (later the play The Strangest Kind of Romance) reflected this atmosphere. “The reviews of the Fugitive Kind upset him very much.”68 75

His classmates, at Washington University where he did playwrighting course of Professor Carson, stated that he was pathologically shy, especially in a group situation. Years later, Williams and A.E. Hotchner, who was in class, each wrote about growing in St. Louis. 69 The Glass Menagerie and the film King of the Hill took place in the same Delmar neighbourhood.

His journals of these years show his struggles with depression i.e his fear of being insane just like his sister; his “Blue devils” expresses his feeling of being “like a coiled spring.” 70

His family trauma had been his thorn-in-flesh, the basic fact of his life, subject matter for many of his seventy plays. It was in St. Louis that the worst experience of that life took place: his parent’s discord, his sister’s tragedy, his own confinement in Barnes Hospital’s psychiatric ward. In St. Louis he wrote the collection of plays called American Blues that brought him to the New York agent Audrey Wood, who steered him to success on Broadway for the next thirty years. He converts his trauma into art. Before he died, he said:

I’m glad I spent those years there. They were like the irritant in the Oyster Shell. I was forced to become more and more introspective, and that made me a writer. 71 76 77

“Notes”

1Edwina Williams Dakin and Lucy Freeman, Remember me to Tom (New York: Putnam’s, 1963) n.pag.

2Tennessee Williams, Memoirs (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1975) 19-23.

3Williams, “Preface: The Man in the Overstuffed Chair”, Tennessee Williams: Collected Stories (USA: New Directions, 1985) vii-xvii.

4Leverich Lyle, Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams vol. 1 (New York: Crown, 1995) n.pag.

5Williams, “Something Wild….” Where I live: Selected Essays, eds. Christine R. Day and Bob Woods (New York: New Directions, 1978) 7-14.

6Richard Leavitt, The World of Tennessee Williams (New York: Putnam, 1978) n.pag.

7Williams, Letter to Audrey Wood 12/43, In Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams vol. 1 (1920-1945) ed. Albert J. Devlin and Nancy M. Tischler (New York: New Directions, 2000) n.pag.

8Donald Spoto, “The Kindness of Strangers”, The Life of Tennessee Williams (Boston: Little, 1985) n.pag.

9Williams, “Letter to Audrey Wood, 2/23/45, from Chicago”, In Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams vol. 1 (1920-1945) ed. Albert J. Devlin and Nancy M. Tischler (New York: New Directions, 2000) n.pag.

10Schumach Murray. “The Face on the Cutting Room Floor” The Story of Movie and Television Censorship (New York: Morrow, 1964) 71-79. 78

11Williams, “On Streetcar Named Success”, Where I Live (New York: New Directions, 1978)15-22.

12Maurice Yacowar, Tennessee Williams and Film (New York: Ungar, 1977) 84-91.

13Yacowar 25-31.

14George W. Crandell, The Critical Response to Tennessee Williams (Conn.: Greenwood, 1996) 166.

15Brenda Murphy, Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan: Collaboration in the Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992) n.pag.

16Esther Merle Jackson, The Broken World of Tennessee Williams (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1965) n.pag.

17Albert J. Devlin, ed. Conversations with Tennessee Williams (Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1986) 146.

18Williams, Memoirs (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1975) 202-27.

19Dakin Williams and Shepherd Mead, Tennessee Williams: An Intimate Biography (New York: Arbor House, 1983) n.pag.

20Williams, The Theatre of Tennessee Williams vol. 1: Battle of Angels, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie (New York: New Directions, 1971) n.pag.

21Claudia Cassidy, “Fragile Drama Holds Theater in Tight Spell”, Chicago Tribune 27 Dec. 1944: 11.

22Thomas P Adler, “The Search for God in the Plays of Tennessee Williams”, Renascence 26 (1973): 48-56. 79

23Jacob H. Adler, “Night of the Iguana: A New Tennessee Williams?” Ramparts 1:3 (1962): 59-68.

24Foster Hirsch, A Portrait of the Artist: The Plays of Tennessee Williams (NewYork: Kennikat, 1979) n.pag.

25Judith Thompson, Tennessee Williams’s Plays: Memory Myth and Symbol (New York: Peter Lang, 1987) 13-23.

26Foster, n.pag..

27Williams, The Theatre of Tennessee Williams vol. 1, (New York: New Directions, 1971) 50.

28Nancy M. Tischler, Student Companion to Tennessee Williams (Westport: Greenwood P, 2000) 23.

29W. David Sievers, Freud on Broadway: A History of Psychoanalysis and the American Drama (New York: Cooper, 1970) 36-40.

30Easther Merle Jackson, “The Anti- Hero in the Plays of Tennessee Williams”, Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Stephen S. Stanton, (New Jersey: Printice, 1977) 87-99.

31Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards, Backgrounds of American Literary Thought (New Jersey: Prentice, 1952) 360-367.

32Robert Bechtold Heilman, “Tennessee Williams’s Approach to Tragedy”. Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Stephen S. Stanton (New Jersey: Printice, 1977) 17-18.

33Jacqueline O’ Connor, Dramatizing Dementia: Madness in the plays of Tennessee Williams (OH: Bowling Green State UP, 1997) 11. 80

34Priyadarshi Patnaik, “Bhayanka Rasa and Bibhatsa Rasa”, Rasa in Aesthetics: An Application to Rasa Theory to Modern Western Literature (New Delhi: D.K. Printworld, 2004) 179-189.

35Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire (New York: New Directions, 1947) all subsequent references to this edition will be referred to as SCND.

36O’ Connor, 12.

37O’ Connor 12.

38O’ Connor 6.

39Nancy Tischler, Tennessee Williams: Rebellious Puritan (New York: Citadel, 1961) 16.

40Williams, “The Night of Iguana”, The Best American Plays 1957-1963, ed. John Gassner (New York: Crown, 1970) all subsequent references to this edition will be referred to as NI.

41Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards, “Intellectual Currents of the Twenties: Freudianism and others”, Backgrounds of American Literary Thought (New Jersey: Printice, 1974) 354

42O’ Connor, Dramatizing Dementia 6.

43John Timpane, “Gaze and Resistance in the plays of Tennessee Williams”, The Mississippi Quarterly vol. 48 Issue 4 (Mississippi State U: n.p.) 1995, 2002: 1.

44Williams, Memoirs vii.

45Foster, n.pag. 81

46Sigmund Freud, An Outline of Psychoanalysis (New York: n.p., 1949) n.pag.

47Timpane 6.

48Frederick Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufman, (New York: Viking, 1954) 447.

49Alfred Stern, ed. His Philosophy and Existential Psychoanalysis (San Juan: Puerto Rico, 1964) 120.

50Frederick Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967) 60.

51Nietzsche 60.

52Sylvan Barnet, “Limitation of a Christian Approach to Shakespeare”, Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. Laurence Michel and Richard B.Sewall (CT: Geeenwood, 1978) 199-209.

53Seymour Peck, “Williams and the Iguana”, New York Times 24 Dec. 1961, sec. 2: 5.

54Williams, “The Past, The Present and The Perhaps”, Orpheus Descending, in Tennessee Williams: Four Plays (New York: New American Library, 1976) vi, vii.

55Williams, “Orpheus Descending”, The Great American Plays, ed. John Gassner (New York: Crown, 1970) All subsequent references to this addition will be referred to as OD.

56Williams W. Demastes, “Tennessee Williams’s ‘Personal Lyricism’: Toward, an Androgynous Form”, Realism and the American Dramatic Tradition, ed. Thomas P. Adler (Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1996) 185. 82

57Allean Hale, “Tennessee Williams St. Louis Blues”, The Mississippi Quarterly vol. 48 (Mississippi State U: n.p.) 1995: 609.

58“St. Louis Outnumbers New York City as Movie House Center”, Greater St. Louis (Columbia: Library of Missouri) Aug. 1924: 28.

59Williams, “The Glass Menagerie”, An Anthology American Literature 1890-1965, ed. Egbert S. Oliver. (New Delhi: Eurasia ,1986) n.pag.

60Dakin Williams and Shepherd Mead, Tennessee Williams: An Intimate Biography (New York: Arbor House, 1983) 42.

61Esmeralda Mayes Treen, Personal Interview with Allean Hale (N.p.: n.p.) July 2, 1985.

62Edward Meisenbach’s many activities come to six lines in the Soldan scrip (1929): 88.

63Philip Kolin, “No Masterpiece has been overlooked: The Early Reception and Significant of Tennessee Williams’s Big Black: A Mississippi Idyll”, AN & Q (N.p.: n.p., n.d.) n.pag.

64Allean Hale, “How a Tiger Became a Cat”, Tennessee Williams Literary Journal? 1 (Winter 1990-91): 33.

65Robert Rice, “A Man Named Tennessee,” New York Post April 30, 1958: n.pag.

66Williams, “Facts About Me”, Where I Live, 60.

67Donald Spoto, “The Kindness of Strangers” (Boston: Little, 1985) 44. 83

68Personal Interview, Oct.1995, with Douglas Wixson, Author of Worker Writer in America: Jack Conroy and The Tradition of Midwestern Literary Radicalsim, 1889-1900 (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1994) n.pag.

69A.E. Hotchner, “The Secret year of Tennessee Williams”, ed. Shepherd Mead (Washington: U Magazine) Spring 1977: 9.

70Edwin Arlington Robinson, Tristram, in the Williams Family Library, Special Collections (St.Louis: Olin Library, Washington U, n.d.) n.pag.

71Lois Timnick, “A Visit with Tennessee Williams”, St. Louis Globe Democrat Sept.10, 1974: 84.

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84

CHAPTER - III

A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Tennessee Williams is essentially a dramatist of the individual. His primary concern is not how one gets along with others, but with himself. The basic premise which provides the impulse to his creative activity is, in his own words, “the need for understanding and tenderness and fortitude among individuals trapped by circumstances”. He disowns any acquaintance with political or social dialectics, preferring to call himself just “humanitarian”.

Amongst the various complex themes which Tennessee Williams has explored in many of his plays, the theme of bondage and liberation or release from bondage is also significant. Bondage and liberation have been a principal concern of religious thinkers, philosophers, anthropologists and sociologists. Artists and creative writers have also treated them as quotes, metaphors and means of expression or expression itself. The human situation and its predicament assume depth and meaning in the context of bondage and liberation. It is, therefore, always a complex theme and Williams has treated it as such. For example bondage might not necessarily lead to liberation bringing about a moral or spiritual upliftment of its characters. To look for this paradigm in the context of bondage and liberation would be according to it, a too simplistic meaning to the whole issue. 85

The characters in Tennessee Williams’s plays attempt to create an aura of illusions in order to either forget the unpleasant reality of human existence or to avoid certain experiences of the past. Sometimes they are also fed up with this material life and the worldly-wise people that inhabit it. Such illusions serve as an escape for them and also enable them to remain disguised in a make-believer world.

The illusions are synonymous with their artistic vision. They also serve as symbols of hope for their metaphysical being. The corrupt, dishonest and illegal ways of the world do not let them lead a normal life. Their fragile sensibility revolts against this corruption- ridden environment. The illusions are nothing but some kind of defense mechanism for survival. Thus, they find themselves totally misfit in this environment, which forces them to adopt an imaginative approach.

Although escape into the world of illusions give them some sense of hope, some meaning in life to cope with its ever-increasing pressures and tensions, this approach serves only as a temporary relief. But in the long run these characters become trapped in these very illusions. Hence illusions no more remain an escape from normal life; they become a bondage from which it becomes nearly impossible to release themselves. While the characters adopt such an approach, it discourages them to fight against adverse circumstances of real- life in any form; it weakens their inner strength to lead a normal life resulting in the disintegration of their inner-self. They even go to extent of deconstructing their idea of God resulting in a life of decay and degeneration. 86

The so-called “illusory-liberation’ ultimately suppresses their healthy growth. The frequent escape into the world of illusions inculcates in them a wrong notion of fulfillment, which in turn, further complicates their thought- process and they are incapable to retaliate with their own inner depression or apprehensions or deformity.

They continue to remain in their world of illusions for a considerable period of their lives. The nature of illusory escape varies from play to play.

In The Glass Menagerie, Laura is somewhat handicapped and unable to face her meaningless existence and so frequently retreats into the sanctuary of her room and begins to play with her glass animals. She wishes to remain in this state of illusion until the shattering of the glass menagerie when she is suddenly forced to face the shocking reality of this world. Shattering of the glass menagerie does not signify the shattering of her world of illusion; it does not mean any kind of liberation for her. At most it can be called only some release which too is of a momentary nature. This release does not lead to any spiritual or moral upliftment in her. The fact that Laura decides to go with the first man she comes across after her release confirms that her so-called liberation is as illusory as her illusion itself. In her case the liberation, makes her still more vulnerable. Thus, the concept of bondage and liberation remains a complex one in this play.

Remaining preoccupied with the past and its fantasies is the main concern of the play A Streetcar Named Desire. Even the fantastic world of the past 87

does not follow a uniform pattern- sometimes its fragile nature is perceptible while on certain occasions its wild or crude form can be discerned. Blanche’s superior airs, love of finery, love of beauty and the love of glorious tradition of the South sub-consciously reassert themselves. She tries to live or recapitulate the glorious image of the dead/dying past which is perceptible in her dress, manners, bathing ritual of cleaning again and again with water. This infact looks outlandish in the world of Stanley Kowalski who is governed by savage and deadly realism. Blanche makes her mythic descent from Bellereeve (“sweet dream”) into Elysian Fields (Greek Paradise of the happy dead). Symbolically she arrives or descends into Hell by boarding two streetcars named “Desire” and “Cemetery” respectively. In this play the conflict between illusion and reality or flesh and spirit inevitably assumes significance in the complex context of the bondage and liberation. Here Blanche is able to purge his guilty emotions through his illusions. Even this act of hers does not redeem her from her sin-ridden past.

While the fantasies of the past remain the concern in Streetcar, redemption of the past acquires the playwright’s preoccupation in Orpheus Descending. Here the degenerate character of the past is attempted to be redeemed through certain artistic device or symbols. Also, an attempt is made to forget the sterile nature of life through artistic renovation. It suggests their resistance against the norms of the society. Lady Torrance seeks refuge in her illicit relationship with Val Xavier, who is not innocent but corrupt. She does so in order to fulfill her barren world with her make- believe illusions. The illusory world of Lady Torrance and Val Xavier although apparently projects the release of their repressive anxiety against 88

the corrupt world, there is no redemption. The reason is their desires reflect the conflict between the flesh and the mind. The magic world of illusion/art clashes with truthful and harsh reality. Their art fails to purify their souls and transcend their needs of flesh.

In the famous play The Night of the Iguana the concept of bondage and liberation operates at three levels. One level is the projected level while the other is suggested. The projected level is represented by the ninety-year old poet Nonno, who does not see his bondage as bondage but it is only in the context of his liberation (death ) that we can infer that his earlier period is a bondage. Also, during the course of the play there are glimpses when he experiences liberation from the level of vulgarity and triviality. Then, is the case of iguana, which represents the primordial force and its release, symbolizes liberation from bondage in the physical sense. But this is purely external liberation as opposed to the old man where the whole phenomenon takes place internally. At yet another level is the daughter who serves as the connecting link between the two levels. In the aging father, she, in fact, finds something to hold on to .Thus her bondage to her father is in real terms a state of her liberation, for after his death there is a sudden void in her life and the playwright has been careful in leaving her just like that. This again compels one to infer that nothing has been said with finality.

Once the nature of illusions in the case of all the significant characters has been clearly understood, it would be pertinent to investigate what ultimately these illusory escapes do to them. 89

Whether each of them succeeds in liberating himself or herself from this bondage-like situation is going to be the main or the principle concern of our search. Whether the quest of each character leads him or her towards moral or spiritual path will also be investigated during this work. We may even be forced to conclude that what the characters attempt is merely an illusory world of wish-fulfillment.

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CHAPTER - IV

(A) THE GLASS MENAGERIE (B) THE STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

THE GLASS MENAGERIE

Tennessee Williams anticipates that

his true vocation as an artist will become a reality only after he has jettisoned his present way of life. Indeed, it will emerge only if he does so. In both cases, the act of escaping is presented as potentially humanizing. Moreover, his imprisoned state, in other words it means ‘bondage’, prepares him mentally for his anticipated freedom by developing fantasies of liberating adventure. It may be called as disillusionment or ‘illusory liberation’ or the release of repressive emotions. The release of psychic energy that represents human disorganization or disorder manifests primal conflict in the form of aggression, frustration, guilt, anxiety and disrupted behaviour and interferes with normal human enterprise.1

Tennessee William in his production notes to The Glass Menagerie continues with the same idea and says “he has kept up some tricky 91

secrets to present to the viewers or readers the reality of the ideas which are wrongly believed.”2

Williams is not involved in performing magic like a conjurer who presents truth falsely. Tom of The Glass Menagerie instead presents creatively through his vision and imagination the truth of life, which is indeed very enjoyable and has been presented through images, symbols and music and he does not state directly the predicament that beset a human’s life. In the process he convinces the readers to identify their problems, their difficulties with the characters that enact their roles and perform real-life situations in a non-realistic manner. Williams offers a manifesto for the theatre and he underlines:

the unimportance of the photographic in art: that truth, life or reality is an organic thing which the poetic imagination can represent or suggest….Only through transformation, through changing into other forms than those which were merely present in appearance.3

This unconventional expression in the art of dramaturgy enhances the poetic pleasure through the tricks of pleasant disguise and at the same time explicates the voice of the author implicitly on the conventions and traditions of the society. We can say the predicament is described in a non- realistic manner, without forcing the readers to accept the norms prevalent in the society.

Williams emphasises on the need for “unusual freedom of convention” in order to project a semblance of truth. He has named it “a new plastic 92

theatre which must take the place of the exhausted theatre of realistic conventions, if the theatre is to resume vitality as a part of our culture.”4

Williams directly confides in the audience the beginning of the play:

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.5 (GM. sc. - i, 243)

Tom’s lines pointedly distinguish the realistic from the nonrealistic theatre. The first, representational or illusionist drama, demands that its audience enter a world of make- believe so that they accept imitation as the real thing. The second, nonrepresentational or unillusionist drama, challenges its audience to revel in the conventions of make- believe.

False perception of truth, disillusioned appearance of truth is undoubtedly very pleasing because one does not actually experience the reality but the ironic and symbolic illusions give pleasure. Moreover, the mental attitude of a person when seen in a mirror and through the lens of a camera which hides the true feelings or thoughts or cover up his real intentions, even helps a magician to entrap himself in a nailed coffin and comes out without removing even one nail, he certainly mesmerises the viewers with a false idea. Similarly the delusion gives pleasure and dramatically misleads audience into suspension of disbelief. Tennessee Williams’s plays shows poetic truth through pleasant disguise in an expressionistic style by way of myths, symbols, light and music yet the playwright has been successful to keep viewers attached to the events in a surrealistic manner therefore the 93

personal lyricism of the poet becomes a pleasurable theatrical experience for the readers and his plays that have authenticates the struggle and anguish of the anti-hero of his plays and the psyche “existence precedes essence”6. Tennessee Williams’s use of non-realistic imagery or unconventional dramaturgy on the screen is explained in the lines by Tom: “who in hell ever got himself out of without removing one nail?” (GM. sc. - iv, 257)

Tom defies faith in the God-made destiny of human life; instead he wants to live for his own desire. The playwright has presented this reality not explicitly, rather through the structure of memory and desire in an expressionistic manner. This presentational device helps the author to purge the superfluities of the emotions through illusion and lead the audience to catharsis of identification with the real facts.

An emotional impasse has been framed around the characters, by Williams, by the use of the memory of the past in order to authenticate the instinct of self- preservation and to explore the psychological possibilities of his kind of expressionistic form. It was an effort to objectify inner experience, to use the stage as representation of impressions or moods of the writer. Williams informs us that all of the action is taking place in his memory and is therefore a projection of his emotions and distorted by his biased view.

As pointed out in the previous chapter on theoretical framework, it is our endeavour here to attempt an in-depth analysis of individual plays by Tennessee Williams. The first in order is The Glass Menagerie. 94

The play The Glass Menagerie is published in 1945 has certain autobiographical overtones. Tom is the self-portrait of Tennessee Williams’s world of art and life. The narrator is hardly an elaborate mask for Tom Williams, yet he like the playwright, experiences the hesitation to make a confident transition between adolescence and youth, dependence and independence. “His quest for relatedness and independence”7 is the imitation of his father’s escape from a too possessive love and from responsibility. Tom’s desire to break from his family, to discover his own individual path as well as his hunger for independence from the family and from the smothering love of an over-protecting parent makes this play an American classic. The psychodrama of wish-fulfillment becomes the universal theme.

Tennessee Williams becomes more and more entranced with a new form “undisguised self-revelation.”8 He becomes rebellious against the controlling mother figure Amanda. As myth- maker, she is regarded as unable to face reality. She retreats into a world of imagination and paradise that is no longer there. She is not just a peculiar old woman. She is a symbol of a dying civilization. Her Puritanical principles and possessive love hinder the growth and freedom of her son as a poet and artist.

This young man who is the epitome of bourgeoisie struggling ‘American Dream’, tries to escape from the ‘tender trap’ of not only her mother’s smothering motherhood, which is affected unknowingly by the period of depression in American Economy in 1930s, but also by the growing violence abroad. The narrator describes the repercussions of the thirties:

When the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for blind, their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and 95

so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy.

In Spain there was revolution. Here there was only shouting and confusion. In Spain there was Guernica. Here there were disturbances of labor, sometimes pretty violent, in otherwise peaceful cities such as Chicago, Cleveland, and Saint Louis.9

Tom predicts difficult and unpleasant situation especially of Americans who find themselves in a state of uncertainty. Americans attempt to guide or advise others without adequate experience or knowledge (especially the middle class). Huge debts weaken their economy. Such events during the thirties of the depression period precipitate protest and lawlessness and violence on the one hand while on the other there is the growth of fabricated values in the society. Socially people are dehumanized and demented.

The scenic imagination of the Wing field apartment symbolises the eternal struggle and William’s somber memories of St. Louis, where the girl polishing her glass animals closely follows his portraits of his sister Rose before her mental breakdown and the mother is clearly William’s own mother with her memories of Mississippi and of youth and springtime and happiness. The major change is his removal of his hated father, who is now but a smiling picture 96

symbolic of the love of long distance. But this change is useful in allowing Williams to avoid a portrayal he was not yet prepared to encounter, to simplify the story and to intensify Amanda’s demands, her paranoia and to help explain Tom’s guilt. The alteration of Rose’s infirmity to a physical one does not change her role drastically from that she has played in his life; and she still retains some of that withdrawal from reality that was the clue to her increasing schizophrenia.10

Thus we find that this American family reveals the perennial conflict between an individual’s needs and his/her perceived obligations. Laura’s future becomes the central obligation of this family. Williams frequently shows Amanda’s feelings for this lost lady, who is not suited for the marriage game, cannot earn a living in the modern world and has no role in a modern fragmented family. By the 1930s, the shrunken family, isolated from its relatives in its apartment or bungalow has no space for the superfluous dependents. Nor does it have any concern for the community. All that it remains preoccupied with the concern of the two members of this family Tom and Laura. Being helpless Amanda considers Laura as her sole problem while Tom experiences a sense of guilt for not being able to share the crisis of his sister.

Tom then returns to an earlier time and narrates his thoughts himself in flashback which is accompanied with music that heightens the susceptibility of autobiographical element and ecstasy of memory. 97

The first scene at the table uses pantomime of eating. This deliberate theatrical device emphasises the foolishness of realistic scenery and action, pointing to the deeper reality of emotions and attitudes. And when the play begins, the area behind the screen is lighted for the narrator’s words, it then rises as the dialogue commences and drops as it concludes, leaving the final words of the narrator to be accompanied by a dumb show on the part of Amanda and Laura. This force on the audience an awareness of the unreality of the presentation, emphasising that we have – for a few moments – entered into the mind of the narrator: The voice-over at the end, when we return to the pantomimed action again, can not hear the words of the actors, but allows our transition back into the present reality. We listen to the son and watch the women. It is a powerful theatrical effect.

He introduces his mother who is self-obsessed and paranoiac about her ability to hold seventeen gentlemen callers during her youthful days. She keeps reminding her children of being able to hold gentlemen callers by the art of conversation, they were mostly from affluent families. She expects the same stereotype approach from her daughter as well and is quite anxious about the arrival of callers at their house. While Laura without being concern of her mother’s thoughtfulness, says: I am just not popular like you were in Blue Mountains. (GM. sc.-v, 269)

Social liabilities to settle her daughter confine her desires and deluge her in her own illusion which she continues to relive through her memories. Laura is consciously suppressed, feels fugitive and apologetic on account of her being crippled and unable to face the world’s hypocrisy and imposed social norms. Thus she unconsciously represses herself into her collection of glass menagerie. Here the music glass menagerie is also being played for 98

it indicates the fragility, delicacy of her dream world, to which she identifies herself. This identification is disguised one; it gives her pleasure and illusive happiness.

Tennessee Williams says, it was a tune heard “not when you are on the grounds or in the immediate vicinity of the parade, but when you are at some distance and very likely thinking of something else.”11

Meanwhile Amanda appears on the fire escape steps, the sound of her ascent catches Laura’s breath and she thrusts the bowl of ornaments away and seats herself stiffly before the diagram of the typewriter keyboard as though it held her spellbound.

Here we can see the conflict between conscious awareness and unconscious personality of Laura. She understands her mother’s beck and call, as it can gain for her the world which her mother desires but deeply in her heart she behaves like a fugitive, unable to cope up with the real world, instead of being stereotyped, she is an archetypal character in the play as would become clear from the following interaction between mother and daughter:

AMANDA: Where have you been going when you’ve gone out pretending that you were going to Business College?

LAURA: It is, I just went walking.

AMANDA: Walking? Walking? In winter? Deliberately courting pneumonia in that light coat? Where did you walk to, Laura? 99

LAURA: All sorts of places – mostly in the park.

LAURA: I went in the art museum and the bird houses at the zoo. I visited to penguins every day! Sometimes I did without lunch and went to the movies; lately I’ve been spending most of my afternoons in the Jewel-box, that big glass house where they raise the tropical flowers.(GM. sc.- ii, 249-250)

Amanda finds it misleading and deceptive but to Laura it’s a pleasant disguise or a trick to get away from the truth. Amanda tries to explain her that Laura is living in illusion that is not sufficient to get independence and self-reliance. Nobody can achieve to emancipation in this way. This can only sicken the mind and body and slacken the progress.

Thus, in order to cheer her up Amanda retreats into her past and tries to probe whether she has ever liked any boy in her life. Laura replies in the affirmative and says that the boy used to call her ‘Blue Roses’ (GM. sc.-vii, 287). She says that young man is engaged to somebody, or has probably got married by now. Her withdrawn attitude to confront the facts reveals not only her subservient and submissive outlook to handle a situation but also her aloofness with the real world. Her mother convinces Laura that she is not a misfit; instead, she has to develop more charm and vivacity. Actually Amanda seems to be puritanical in her norms but at her heart she has some sort of opposition to male authority in society and she does not live in illusory ambition rather it is her concern and care and attempt to find solution to the mental state of Laura who also suffers from a noticeable defect of limping. 100

The dramatist finds that the convictions of the people are disillusioned because on one hand they have Puritan life style while on the other hand due to rapid industrialization and urbanization there is a liking for leading bohemian life. Unable to strike a balance they experience disappointment, but as they believe in conventional set up of “Rise and Shine” (GM. sc.-iv, 257), “Try and you will succeed” (GM. sc.-iv, 259), they become bold to face reality. These could be termed existentialists but there are others who feel isolated and hopeless in the meaningless and hypocritical world wherein they get discouraged and disillusioned. They can be called fugitives, artists, poetic figures, lost persons, outsiders, alienated beings who live in their own world of created myths, whims and fancies, whose predicament philosophically, psychologically is termed as bondage, i.e. they are caught in their own illusory escape and dream world, sometimes their passions are very fragile and imaginative while on other occasions they are so inflammatory that it can consume their self completely.

Tennessee Williams has tried to bring out this reality or truth by creating a deceptive impression. Tom says to Laura about Amanda:

Goody, goody! Pay’er back for all those “Rise and Shines” (lies down groaning) you known it doesn’t take much intelligence to get yourself into a nailed-up coffin, Laura. But who in hell ever got himself out of without removing one nail? (GM. sc.-iv, 257)

Amanda on the other hand has been described as “a little woman of great but confused vitality clinging frantically to another time and place.”12 101

She continuously romanticises her past shadow of her blue mountain world and she tries to explore new visions in those shadows but her spouting unwanted advice is rejected by her children. To Amanda whose self signifies natural life, believes that living a lonely life is to depend upon vacuum or void created by self-illusions. She believes loneliness and being fugitive is not freedom from responsibilities and reality. All her attempts to bring about improvement in her end in failure and they start considering her a maniac. She realizes this when Tom apologises to her for being very rude to him. The following words exude her intense love for them:

AMANDA: My devotion has made me a witch and so make myself hateful to my children. (GM. sc. - ii, 259)

Amanda’s anxieties are in large part economic and there is money behind many of her illusions: her mythical suitors were all wealthy men, as are her magazine heroes; she calculates the money Tom would save by giving up smoking. When Tom complains of the grimness of life in the shoe factory, Amanda replies with great enthusiasm:

Try and you will succeed! Why, you you’re just full of natural endowments! Both of my children they’re unusual children!” (GM. sc.-iv, 259)

If this is another of Amanda’s illusions, it is one shared by her fellow Americans, for “try and you will succeed” is the traditional motto of the American dream of success, the theme of confident, self-reliance canonized by the dreamers or romancers who believe in building America a nation. Indeed her desire co-incides with the American dream, this desire 102

of wish-fulfillment becomes a motive of achieving liberation for an enslaved huge middle class who face economic disaster and social catastrophe. “Yet her illusory search is alike Laura for a saviour, who will come to help them, to save them, to give their drab lives meaning implies alienating drudgery and the social trap”.13

Basically her struggle to fulfill her dream is another trap for it is only an illusory escape from the bondage of her desires. From one desire to another desire she keeps constantly falling in and falling out.

The quest of the characters’ liberation is illusory in this play, as they all have their desire or make –believe worlds, either to exist or to escape. Their freedom of thought and freedom of action are influenced by wish- fulfillment or from bondage of senses or desires. They are affected by the desires, hopes, fears and ambitions. Their liberation suggests gratification of their mental and physical necessities.

Jim is a realist liberated person but is bound by materialistic American dream. As he himself admits:

Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged. (GM. sc. - vii, 291)

Similarly Amanda wants to properly feather the nest and plume the bird (Laura) and her own desires, so she gets herself in small business of the sale of hosieries and women’s inner wear. This is suggested by Tom who says: 103

Mother was a woman of action as well as words. She began to take logical steps in the planned direction. (GM. sc. - iii, 252)

Amanda is a realist but not a woman of chicanery. Her ideas are based on the acceptance of facts and the rejection of sentiment and illusion proves her to be practical. But all her attempts to spruce up her children are met with sullen response. That is why she dissuades Tom to go to late night movies and read books written by Mr. Lawrence, a man of diseased mind, who has suffused readers with psychotic illusions in their life. To the rebel in a puritan family, Lawrence serves as a symbol of freedom. The mother goes to the extent of returning the D.H. Lawrence book to the public library even before her son has read it. In response to her petty feminine restrictions and demands and to break away from the old, primitive independent male principle, Tom shouts:

Listen! You think I’m crazy about the warehouse? You think I’m in love with the continental shoe makers. You think I want to spend fifty five down there in that – Celotex interior! With fluorescent tubes! Look! I’d rather somebody picked up a crowbar and battered out my brains – then go back mornings! Go! I Every time you come in yelling that God damn “Rise and Shine!” “Rise and Shine!” I say to myself, “How lucky dead people are!” But I get up. I go! For sixty-five dollars a month I give all that I dream of doing and being ever! And you say self-self’s all I ever think of. Why, listen, if 104

self is what I thought of, Mother, I’d be where he is–Gone! (GM. sc.-iii, 255)

This conversation between Tom and Amanda justifies that the social limitations are the hurdles in the path of emancipation and his liberation. These hurdles are illusions, hence they are in a way the psychic bonds in which the middle class families find themselves entrapped and to escape this stress they find ways to relieve themselves–Laura is preoccupied in her collection of glass animals; Tom is crazy for movies, reading books, writing poetry and smoking. His reading of Lawrence’s books refers to his suppressed sexual desires. For sometime it indeed helps him find a solution to his non-conformist ways.

The archetypal poet Tom is in the bondage of self-fulfillment who ironically believes it to be liberation or an escape from the love and societal pressures that are the enemies of art. He seeks illusory liberation by leaving home and his mother to ensure self-preservation but at the same time his unwillingness to accept the reality kills something vital within the narrator’s self:

Tom, a man of imagination seldom finds fulfillment in a shoe factory; a boy seldom becomes a man under the watchful eye of a domineering mother; the break with the past is always painful for the sensitive man; and there is health in this drive to preserve one’s integrity and develop to one’s maturity regardless of the demands of the family.14 105

For Tom, to fall in love with his mother’s paranoia or to be concerned with her sister’s fragility or to accept the role imposed by society is to die. He makes an escape out of ugliness, censorship, repression and stifling love into a world of adventure, rootlessness and moral anarchy. The artist, as he perceives, lives in a world of polarities: masculine and feminine, past and present, conformity and non-conformity, control and chaos. He also discovers that his world is full of paradoxes.

The repetitive occurrence of “fire-escape” (GM. sc.- vii, 305) in the Wingfield apartment symbolically refers to Tom’s feelings. The image of fire-escape becomes a symbol of protection from vulnerability:

Due to his disillusionment with bohemia as a post-adolescent way of life, Tennessee Williams extends incredibility to the poet image and he gives a mysterious origin and visionary capacity and that makes the narrator, Tom, in the play more a prophet hero rather than a modern dislocated artist.15

These dream worlds without action or without practical approach to reality are great deterrents to the fuller growth of their personality. Such isolated characters in the real world find liberation in the illusory symbols and images. This is certainly an unreal relief for it does not take them out of their loneliness.

Then one day Tom comes with the surprise that he is going to get one gentleman caller for Laura. Amanda’s happiness is symbolically presented with the announcement that is celebrated with music. Her love for her kids 106

is like mother Mary. Suddenly her reaction to arrange preparations gets fussy. She says:

We can’t have a gentleman caller in a pig-sty! All my wedding silver has to be polished; the monogram table linen ought to be laundered! The windows have to be washed and fresh curtains put up. And how about clothes? We have to wear something, don’t we! It simply means I’ll have to work like a Turk. (GM. sc.-v, 267)

Here Amanda shows fighting spirit to face reality as a winner and she wants to lay the appearance of truth in a dignified manner but Tom feels that she is disguising the reality. She thinks she can disguise reality by superficially decorating the house or making Laura look attractive so that she can lure the gentleman caller. This is discernible in the following interaction between Laura and Amanda:

LAURA: Mother, what are you doing?

AMANDA: They call them ‘Gay Deceivers’!

LAURA: I won’t wear them!

AMANDA: You will!

LAURA: Why should I?

AMANDA: Because, to be painfully honest your chest is flat.

LAURA: You make it seem we were setting a trap. 107

AMANDA: All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be! (GM. sc.-vi, 273)

Amanda’s own self-deceitful ‘spectacular appearance’ (GM. sc.- vi, 273) is a pleasant trick to invite heart-warming legacy to woo the callers and that same she expects from Laura and Tom in order to materialize a caller’s arrival in the house and when Laura feels sick and reluctant to open the door for the caller she says:

I’m sick, too of your nonsense! Why can’t you and your brother be normal people? Fantastic whims and behaviour! (GM. sc.-vi, 276)

Here in the midst of anxiety and discomfort, the sound of music soothes the stuffy air of immobility and debility in Laura. The playwright uses music in creative ways for the Glass Menagerie; he requires a circus tune to be played in the background in order to create theatre experience. She holds herself and gets to the door to open it. ‘She seems like a frightened deer’ (GM. sc.-vi, 277) whose innocence and simplicity seems to be usurped by the pragmatic world and whose self-identity is reproachfully engendered by the fortune hunters of the civilized world. Her excuse to play victorala romanticises her escapist attitude. The music tied to the old victrola reminds Laura of her father, it is delicate as well as sad “It expresses the surface vivacity of life with the underlying strain of immutable and inexpressible sorrow.”16 It is Laura’s music to emphasise her state of mind.

Similarly, Tom who although has brought a friend Jim to his house, a caller in Amanda’s eyes, is himself being called ‘Shakespeare’ (GM. sc.-vii, 302) by his friend Jim. This shows that Tom too likes to live in his own reverie of 108

poetry which is the opposite of Jim’s pursuit of being a good public speaker in order to attain an executive post at a higher social level.

Tom and Laura are the desperate moralists who perceive life through their own imaginative vision and dream. Laura and Tom are being caught in a fugitive trap of illusion created by them. Whereas Amanda as well as Jim’s schematic schedule mirrors pragmatism which explores young American dream which is explicated by the playwright with the symbol of the pouring of rain showers that shows Amanda feeling fresh and enthusiastic about the scene that is prevailing in the house. The symbol of rain increases the effect of romance and her motive to socialise Laura with Jim becomes hopeful in such conditions. And Jim appears in this scene to liberate them from anxiety. Even Tom confides in him his boredom and says:

I’m starting to boil inside. I know I seem dreamy, but in side - well, I’m boiling ! - Whenever I pick up a shoe, I shudder a little thinking how short life is and what I am doing! Whatever that means, I know it doesn’t mean shoes – except as something to wear on a travelers’ feet! (GM. sc.- vi, 279)

While Laura recollecting her past days at school says to Jim that her clumping “to her sounded like thunder” and “……her seat was in the back row. I had to go clumping all the way up the aisle with everyone watching.” (GM. sc.-vii, 288) Laura’s psychic bondage with her debility deforms her opinion about the world. To her all eyes of watchers seem to be humiliating. Her regression becomes a railing to her emotional and 109

psychological growth. In order to release her repressive desires of being inferior in the worldly eyes her psychic bondage finds a refuge in a symbolic world of Glass Menagerie.

In order to resurrect and regain the lost hope of Wingfield Apartments Amanda decorates it with realistic preparations. The ‘Blue Mountains’ memory of old south helps Amanda to deck Laura and Laura comes out as a fragile and unearthly beauty: “She is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting.”(GM. sc. - i, 271)

Amanda’s real object is to get Laura married to a suitable caller and this becomes the restrictive goal and epitome of her illusions and when she gets a caller, her anxiety is distressed and this illusory liberation resists her to see and understand the truth and she creates a pleasant disguise for Jim to woo Laura.

Amanda still represents the fantasy of American dream, whose anxiety leads her into a state of paranoia while Jim’s indomitable optimism during the disappointing years of depression years, represents him as the emissary from reality who is the chief spokesman for the American dream. To Jim the warehouse is not a prison but a rung on the ladder toward success. He believes in self-improvement through education, and the lecture on self confidence which he reads to Laura is part of the equipment of the further executive. Jim is awed by the fortune made in chewing gum and rhapsodizes on the theme of the future material progress of America. He says, “All that remains is for the industry to get itself under way! Full steam - knowledge zzzzzzp! Money – zzzzzzp! Power! That’s cycle of democracy is built on!” (GM. sc. - vii, 293) 110

His pragmatic advice to Laura affirms his survival secret: A little physical defect is what you have. Hardly noticeable even! Magnified thousand of times by imagination. (GM. sc.-vii, 292-93)

He means imagination raises false illusions, if its vision is restricted to once flaws. Then imagination becomes a contemptuous lie and gives scope to terror and fear and infringes man’s liberty and defers advancement. He tries to discourage Laura’s inhibitions and remarks: Why, man alive, Laura just looks about you a little. What do you see? A world full of common people! All of ‘em born and all of ‘em going to die!” (GM. sc.-vii, 293)

In other words he wants to bring light Laura’s inhibitions of natural impulses, which have inflated her psychological problems and have led her into a trance, it is a state of being in bondage of illusions and symbolically related to her collection of glass menagerie. The central image in this play, from which the work takes its name, is Laura’s glass menagerie that illustrates the child-like fixation on a private world of make-believe animals, and fragile nature of this isolated girl. It indicates her lack of faith in herself and on account of this she has dropped out of school, has given up her education because of a clump, which as far as Jim knows, is practically non-existent. Jim, who is a figure of young American Dream, an image of reality principle, feels that “everyone excels in one thing and one has got to discover it.” (GM. sc.-vii, 293)

This pragmatic, dynamic approach and attitude convincingly unwinds Laura’s shyness and suspends her illusionary state through his determined and high-flown ideas to achieve success in life. He says, “He believes in the future of television!” (GM. sc.-vii, 293) 111

This belief of Jim reflects the changing world of knowledge and technology, where man foresees his vision being glorified through the medium of his intellect turning into creativity. On the contrary Laura’s ignorance and inhibitions have prevented her from being objective and progressive and so she finds her fragile reflections in the collection of “the tinniest little animals in the world which her mother calls them a glass menagerie!”(GM. sc. - vii, 294)

But Jim remains a source of light in Laura’s life for a time being, a bright soul to uphold her fragile vision, a kind of hope and freedom to her psychological fear and bondage. Similarly her mental state is metaphorically brought out by the playwright when she says to Jim, “Oh be careful – if you breathe, it breaks.” (GM. sc. - vii, 294)

Allegorically this small animal unicorn describes Laura’s feebleness and paucity of her existence. Taking it as a symbol of Laura herself, fragile and beautiful, the playwright plays with the more specific figure of the unicorn. Here we see the complete development of a complex idea, hinted at in the dialogue. This mythical figure from medieval iconography is identified with virgins and therefore with sexuality. Although it looks like a horse, the unicorn is not a horse but a unique creature. However when Jim holds it, she trusts him and she wants it to be in light, because its beauty brightens: “Here light is a symbol of truth and freedom which Laura finds in unicorn (a traditional Christ symbol).”17 When it comes in the hands of Jim, as the rain stops and the audible music comes from a distant Paradise Dance Hall it reinforces Laura’s desire to be trusted and to be relieved from the bondage and slowly she unfolds her limitations and gets into a relaxed mood to dance on the persuasion of Jim. 112

To her surprise, she feels inwardly nearly faint with the novelty of her emotions and she questions Jim why he used to address her as “Blue Roses.” Jim courteously relieves her from psychological complex bondage and boost up her confidence with his close touch and support. Thus when Jim accidentally breaks of its horn, he has not transformed it into a horse. It remains a unicorn, but is now a damaged unicorn, that manages to look like an ordinary horse. Laura symbolises her predicament with a unique glass animal unicorn. When the horn of unicorn gets broken it becomes very much similar to other animals. Allegorical interpretation of the unicorn’s broken horn leads to conclude that Laura too has now come out of her imaginative confined shell into an ordinary world with a man of reality principle. Her attempt to dance with Jim meanwhile there is transformation in her behaviour.

In some ways this is what Amanda has done to Laura, distorted her true childish nature to make her seem like all the normal young ladies being courted by nice young gentlemen. The “gay deceivers” (GM. sc.-vi, 273) are delightful symbols of Laura’s underdeveloped sexuality and Amanda’s pressures to make her appearance sexy. Laura’s pained responses to her mother’s cruel questions about her plans for the evening, exposes the anguish that this teasing causes to the sensitive girl.

Earlier her identity is completely overshadowed by her own created illusion. While being with Jim she is momentarily relieved of her pain and complexity of emotions, but it is not her true self. She has tried to liberate herself through her world of reverie but for society this behaviour is impractical and immaterial. 113

The turning point in the climax of situation comes when Jim discloses to Laura that he is already engaged to a girl named Betty and he remarks about its effects on him: “Love is something that changes the whole world, Laura?(GM. sc.- vii, 299)

This statement is paradoxical because incase of Jim, Love changes his attitude towards a pragmatic life while on the contrary Laura is upset with this piece of news yet she finds this occasion regenerating her confidence in herself and she accepts the way of life gifted to her by world or by God. When she is with Jim, she is lit “inwardly with altar candles,” and when Jim withdraws after kissing her, Williams informs us that “the holy candles in the altar of Laura’s face have been snuffed out. There is a look of almost infinite desolation.”(GM. sc.-vii, 300)

Gentleman Caller Jim O’ Connor who is “an emissary from a world of reality” (GM. sc.-i, 243) equates happiness with success, disappoints audiences because he fails to rescue Laura from her “abyss” (GM. sc.-vii, 305) and “deadening withdrawal” (GM. sc.-vii, 305). Although Jim is pragmatic but his state of self-delusion is the result of his self-love that one day he would attain social poise and this false notion in the midst of industry and technology dehumanises him as a human being.

The extinguished candle strike a blow on Laura’s psychic and sexual emotions and left her in an almost infinite desolation but simultaneously purely projects the guilt of Tom who is unable to bring change in her destiny. This imagery “blowing her candles out” (GM. sc.-vii, 305) signifies her loss of art which comprises of the collection of mythical animals and her loss of high school hero- this led her into madness. 114

Tennessee Williams is deliberately theatrical in his use of special lighting. To bring sensitivity on the stage, he uses the device of coloured spotlights to emphasise not only the person he is portraying on the stage but also to designate a colouring to the attitude of an individual character and to his memory of the scene. The flickering candle light of Jim’s scene with Laura is not enough to sustain the illusory liberation; at the end of their scene this illusion collapses and there is complete darkness and desolation at the end. The magic of Prince Charming’s kiss cannot work and the “little silver slipper of a moon” on which Amanda has asked Laura to wish, it becomes an ironic image of Laura’s crippled condition. Jim who has come as the savior to the Friday night supper is an abysmal failure. In the after-dinner scene, he offers Laura the sacrament – wine and “life-savers” in this case – and a Dale Carnegie version of the Sermon on the Mount – self-help rather than divine help – but, to no avail. “Both Laura and Amanda’s life are ‘in the dark’ and Tom announces the final failure of her unredeemable alienation”18. The only suggestion he gives to Laura in order to survive is: “For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura – and so goodbye.”(GM. sc.-vi, 305)

He means to attain victory over her predicament and to redeem her poetic illusion i.e. physically emotionally mutilated. The only alternative is compassion; she is too fragile to live in a malignant world.

But to Amanda it means ‘an ominous cracking sound in the sky’ (GM. sc.- vii, 301) and she calls Tom as the manufacturer of illusions which she compares with the imagery of moon whose stability is always being endangered by storm and thunder and their darkness is cast over the whole sky and hides the moon within it. Similarly Tom in the opinion of Amanda tries to go on moon or wants to search his world of dreams which 115

is surrounded with complexities of real life therefore he is enmeshed in corrupted and vulgar world. Tom explains his choice of a life role in these words:

I didn’t go to the moon, I went much further – for time is the longest distance between two places………, I left Saint Louis, I descended the steps of this fire-escape for a last time and followed, form then on, in my father’s footsteps……… (GM. sc.-vii, 304)

Ironically Tom thinks himself safer than Laura. Tom is unable to bring out Laura and Amanda from the social catastrophe, though he appears as the angel of the ‘Annunciation’. He denies the world of belief and in a bitter speech to his mother calls himself “EL Diablo” with him Christian terms appear only as imprecations. This suggests: “modern Christ escape from a nailed coffin”.19

It signifies how everyone’s predicament in the play The Glass Menagerie explicitly or implicitly is in bondage of their own make-believe world. Some are restrained by their fragile illusions. It is a type of psychological defense mechanism. Some are limited by social conventions and some by unnecessary psychological walls of stress. All want to break or shatter these in their own way but their ways of reaching to liberation are varied. Some release their stress of their critical conditions on the corrupt earth through their imaginary world which means bondage of their senses i.e. the non-acceptance of the reality and when they find a way out of it, then it is for them liberation, which is ironically an illusory liberation and they again trap themselves into bondage of their desires. 116

Tennessee Williams in the mask of Tom at the end suggests Laura to glitter her world with light rather being always confined in the sheen flames of burning candle, because real liberation from psychic bondage is–“Open your self, create free space; release the bound one from his bonds! Like a newborn child, free from the womb, be free to move on every path.” 117

STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

According to Williams the message of Streetcar Named Desire is “If we don’t watch out the apes will take over.”20 The same idea can be put as “the crude forces of violence, insensibility and vulgarity can overpower the embodiment of light and culture.”21

Rejection of the spirituality by Stanley makes him do unusual acts to attract attention, while suppression of sexual desires alienates her from her own real self. In this way the primitive struggle between light and dark, between good and the devil, between innocence and corruption, between illusion and reality cause the most elemental conflicts in the thoughts and actions of the characters. Their desires, hopes and fears lead to the internal primitive struggle. They opt for such actions which are socially unacceptable and even alienate them and making them misfits within their own environments. Yet their thoughts and actions symbolise the illusory pleasure in which they live to liberate themselves from their self- disintegration. Their spirit or flesh, both are in bondage of wish-fulfilment. This ironically denotes their liberation from the corrupt world of darkness and evil. The characters in the play are disillusioned, their non-acceptance of the reality drives them away from the ultimate truth i.e. the realisation of pure consciousness .It happens because their unstable attitude makes them surrenders their real self to their own make-believe world, and this is the predicament in which they are trapped.

Stanley’s physicality on stage brings out his manliness in a bohemian and a cavalier style. 118

Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence, dependently but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens. Branching out from this complete and satisfying center are all the auxiliary channels of his life, such as his heartiness with men, his appreciation of rough humour, his love of good drink and food and games, his car, his radio everything that is his, that bears his emblem of the gaudy seed bearer. He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images flashing into his mind and determining the way he smiles at them. (SCND. sc.-i, 29)22

His violent aggression and passionate nature can be seen when he tears the paper lantern off the light bulb. His other rough acts display his informal unconventional way of life – tossing the meat package to Stella, ruffling Blanche’s rich clothes, throwing the radio out of the window, breaking plates when he is insulted and handing Blanche a one way ticket to Laurel. “These acts of discourtesy indicate his virility and his animal joy in all his movements and attitudes.”23

In one of the lasts scenes, the shrieks of Blanche indicate his crude behaviour: “he has assaulted in order to rape her on account of her provocation.”24 119

Ironically Stanley hides vulnerability beneath taunts and boasts; his cruelty defends his world. The feeling of vulnerability is the world of illusion that Stanley has constructed around him. His fear of loosing his wife, who is the strongest pillar of his illusionary world of freedom and privacy, makes him hit Stella for he is afraid that Blanche’s provocation may distance his wife from him and he cries for her just as a father would for his baby and then begs Stella to return to him. His cruelty is revealed by Eunice, their neighbour upstairs who is also one of the witnesses of his aggression on his wife. This is also expressed in the following interaction:

STANLEY: Stella.

EUNICE: You can’t beat on a woman an’ then! Call’er back! She won’t come! And her goin’t have a baby! …………You stinker! You whelp of a Polack, you! I hope they do haul you in and turn the fire hose on you, same as the last time!

STANLEY: Eunice, I want my girl to come down with me! (SCND. sc.-iii, 60)

Another instance of his illusion or his vulnerability is being threatened when he overhears Blanche and Stella conversing with each other about himself.

BLANCHE: “He acts like an animal, has an animal habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There’s even something-subhuman- something not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something-ape-like about him, like 120

one of those pictures I’ve seen in – anthropological studies? Thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by and there he is – Stanley Kowalski – survivor of the Stone Age! Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle! And you – you were – waiting for him! May be he’ll strike you or may be grunt and kiss you! That is, if kisses have been discovered yet! Night falls and the other apes gather! There in the front of the cave, all grunting like him, and swilling and gnawing and hulking! His poker night! – You call it – this party of apes! Somebody growls – some creature snatches at something – the fight is on! God! May be we are a long way from being made in God’s image, but Stella – my sister - there has been some progress since then! Such things as art – as poetry and music – such kinds of light have come into the world since then! In some kinds of people some tendered feelings have had some little beginning! That we have got to make grow! And cling to, and hold as our flag! In the dark march toward whatever it is we’re approaching ……. Don’t – don’t hang back with the brutes!” (SCND. sc.-iv, 72)

In order to do away with his fear of being distanced from his wife, he looks for an opportunity every time to find out clues about Blanche’s past. His 121

malicious fury and his overt hostility is exhibited when he is able to break her visionary world by scoffing at her posing of purity, which she tries to search in ‘Elysian Fields’ (SCND. sc. - i, 15) where his sister Stella and her brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski lives. The following dialogue between Stanley and Stella reveals Blanche’s disguised behaviour:

STANLEY: What’s all this stuff for

STELLA: Honey, it’s Blanche’s birthday.

STANLEY: She here?

STELLA: In the bathroom

STANLEY: Washing out some things?

STELLA: I reckon so.

STANLEY: How long she been in there?

STELLA: All afternoon.

STANLEY: Soaking in a hot tub?

STELLA: Yes

STANLEY: Temperature 100 on the nose, and she soaks herself in a hot tub.

STELLA: She says it cools her off for the evening.

STANLEY: And you run out an’ get her cokes, I suppose? And serve ‘em to her Majesty in 122

the tub? [Stella shrugs] Set down here a minute.

STELLA: Stanley I’ve got things to do.

STANLEY: Set down! I’ve got the dope on your big sister, Stella.

STELLA: Stanley, stop picking on Blanche

STANLEY: That girl calls me common!

STELLA: Lately you been doing all you think or to rub her the wrong way, Stanley and Blanche is sensitive and you’ve got to realize that Blanche and I grew up under very different circumstances than you did.

STANLEY: So I been told. And told and told and told. You know she’s been feeding a pack of lies here?

STELLA: Now please tell me quietly what you think you’ve found out about my sister.

STANLEY: Lie Number one: all this squeamishness she puts on! You should just know the line she’ been feeding to Mitch. He thought she had never been more than kissed by a fellow! But sister Blanche is no lily! Ha- ha! Some lily she is!

STELLA: What have you heard and who from? 123

STANLEY: Our supplyman down at the plant has been going through Laurel for years and he knows all about her and every body else in the town of Laurel knows all about her. She as famous in Laurel as if she was the President of the United States, only she not respected by any party! This supplyman stops at a hotel called the Flamings.

BLANCHE: Say, it’s only a paper moon, Sailing over a cardboard sea – but it wouldn’t be make- believed if you believed in me!”

STELLA: What about the – Flamings?

STANLEY: She stayed there, too.

STELLA: My sister lived at Belle Reve.

STANLEY: This is after the home place had slipped through her lily white fingers! She moved to the Flamings! A second class which has the advantage of not interfering in the private social life of the personalities there! The Flamingo is used to all kinds of goings on. But even the management of the Flamingo was impressed by Dame Blanche! In fact they were so impressed by Dame Blanche that they requested her to turn in her room- key------for permanently! 124

This happened a couple of weeks before she showed here.

BLANCHE: ‘It’s a Barnun and Bailey world, Just as phony as it can be – but it wouldn’t be make- believe. If you believed in me!”

STELLA: What contemptible lies!

STANLEY: Sure, I can see how you would be upset by this. She pulled the wool over your eyes as much as Mitch’s!

STELLA: It’s pure invention! There’s not a word of truth in it and if I were a man and this creature had dared to invent such things in my presence.

BLANCHE: Without you love, it’s a honky- tonk parade! Without you love, It’s a melody played in a penny arcade…….. (SCND. sc.-vii, 97-99)

The song sung by Blanche arouses irony of the situation because Blanche wants Stella to believe in her tragic sufferings and disturbed past. She wants her sympathy and compassion but beyond her imagination, she finds a bestial rowdy character Stanley Kowalski, Stella’s husband. She develops an attitude of arrogance and disgust against him; she faces the repercussions of his cruelty in ‘Elysian Fields’. While Blanche’s desire follows the same path, as she had in Bellereeve, Stanley and his entourage raucously ride the Streetcar named Desire. 125

Like D. H. Lawrence, Williams presents desire as synonymous with life and its opposite is Cemeteries. Before the play begins, Blanche uses desire to escape from death, but in the Elysian Fields, the world of seven card stud, her past desires turn to present death, and Williams summons our pity with light, music, repetition and her past images that she displays like diamonds...25

When she first appears at ‘Elysian Fields’ through the streetcar which is ironically named ‘Desire’ (SCND. sc.-i, 15) she hears. A sailor whistling a tune “Somebody loves me, I wonder who” (SCND. sc.-i, 15) satirises Blanche’s illustrious desire to find a resting, happy place at her sister’s home. Descending into the underworld described as ‘The Elysian Fields’ in the French Quarter, She symbolically refers it in her speech: “They told me to take streetcar named desire, and then transfer to on Cemeteries and ride six blocks get off at Elysian Fields! (SCND. sc.-i, 15)

She is shocked when Eunice shows her the room which is used as bedroom and its door opening towards the bathroom. Eunice says while defensively noticing Blanche’s look: “It’s sort of messed up right now when it’s real sweet.”(SCND. sc.-i, 17)

In order to get hold of herself at this situation she is able to find liquor bottle that indicates her running away from reality. When Stella arrives, her response is not natural: 126

BLANCHE: What are you doing in a place like this? Why that you had to live in these conditions? (SCND. sc.- i, 20)

She appears totally nervous while speaking. This can be seen in her behaviour--her tamping of cigarette while disclosing how she ended up with her teacher’s job before the spring term. It can be also discerned in consuming of drinks simultaneously which gives her strong feeling of pleasure and buzzes her through mental exhaustion that she finds herself in her broken world i.e. because of her loss of Bellereeve, her meager income and the untimely deaths of near ones force her to leave her real world.

Her incongruous and eccentric attitude conceals her depravity when she meets Stanley Kowalski for the first time. Readers find themselves in a state of disbelief when Blanche says: “She rarely touches liquor.”……. “It’s hard to stay looking fresh. I haven’t washed or even powdered my face and here you are!”(SCND. sc.-i, 30)

The writer uses symbols like screeching of cat twice in this scene- I which indicates the frightening gestures of Blanche, that gives her premonition that is about unusual to happen and screen images like the music of the polka are raised while Stanley and Blanche are conversing. This denotes the sensuous excitement and the former’s unrefined style leaves her floundering helplessly, she feels sick.

Stanley seems to be very much concerned about the loss of Bellereeve and he doubts on Blanche for her costly dresses, jewellery, perfumes etc. in her trunk and he holds her responsible and convinces Stella about 127

Blanche’s hypocrisy. In the meantime Blanche is busy in the bathroom soaking herself in the tub to quieten her nerves which have got exhausted due to ordeals she had undergone.

Without herself being aware she has remained under the bondage of these material possessions. To her confused mind they symbolise “liberation” or means of liberation, an escape into her world of dreams. When Stanley digs out of her trunk her alluring and aristocratic luxuries, they signify to him her rotten past. Even while Stanley is engrossed in such thoughts about her, Blanche comes out of the bathroom in a red satin robe to show her intimacy, she looks for this in Stanley, even though feeling insecure. This is evident here:

Hello, Stanley, here I am, all freshly bathed and cented, and feeling like a brand new human being. (SCND. sc.-ii, 37)

This shows her passion and admiration for her appearance. When she is talking to Stanley, her brother-in-law, ‘blue-piano’(SCND. sc.-ii,43) a dance band strikes up polka tune that hints ironically at the sexual paradise where a lusty couple lives and the desire of a third adult between them would head only for ‘Cemetery’(SCND. sc.-i,15).

The foregoing analysis suggests the degenerated Stanley’s primordial impulses are depicted in his animalism, his sham marriage and his pleasure with women, his crude ideas about sexual classifications. Blanche’s primeval sensitivity lies in her memories of being young and richly clad lady, a native of cultured place, Mississippi, a woman of beauty and civilized customs. 128

Stella plans an outing for Blanche and herself to a well-known restaurant-‘Galatories’- in order to lessen the shock of Blanche’s recent displacement from Bellereeve to ‘Elysian Fields’. For Stella the bright light of the restaurant holds no sinister aspect, nor does she appreciate the light’s threat to the youthful illusion which Blanche seeks to maintain. Her sister does not realize that she is taking her sister to the one well-known restaurant where Blanche becomes self-conscious and feels tormented. She says to Stella: “Let’s leave - here everyone can see how old I really am!”(SCND. sc.-ii, 27)

She purchases the adorable little paper lantern at a Chinese shop on Bourbon to put it over the light bulb because “I can’t stand a naked light bulb any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action”. (SCND. sc.-iii, 55)

She wants to move out of the yellow streak of light again and again either at hotel Galatoires or at her sister’s house ‘Elysian Fields’ in order to hide her growing age and to fulfill her repressive desires which are suppressed either by her own ‘vanity’ or by ‘hard knocks’ that have taken place in her life. Blanche’s exaggerated behaviour to search her self continually dramatises the world around her unnaturally. From one point of view she is the navigator of her own life while from the other hand she indirectly influences her sister Stella and her brother-in-law Stanley. Their apartment is a stage where she sails through her past and present simultaneously.

When she arrives at Elysian Fields, her aim is to explore the shadow of that desire which she has inherited from her forefathers in Belle Reeve. But this becomes anguish for her because she is not able to convince how she has 129

lost that big plantation and why she has still remained single. Moreover her comments upon Kowalski’s behaviour and appearance add fuel to her predicament. Stanley Kowalski’s examining looks injure her heart deeply and she expresses paroxysms of hate or dislike for him.

During the scene of Poker Night, Stanley’s house which is quite small and dimly lit to adjust his friends, his wife and his sister-in-law suggests a sort of lurid nocturnal brilliance, and it conveys that their life is overshadowed with falsehood and blindness. Their will is under the control of illusory light, unreal life style and artificial pleasures gained from the games like poker, and the pleasures they procure by consuming liquor and non-vegetarian food.

Here again Blanche seems to be anxious about her appearance and inquires about Mitch, who comes in her life as a vague hope. While talking about the upstairs neighbours, Blanche and Stella get into a streak of laughter. It is at once interrupted by Stanley: “You hens cut out that conversation in there!” (SCND. sc.-iii, 50)

Williams for a dramatic reason weaves a musical fabric. Innocuous Latin music is played in the background when Stanley and his friends are busy in playing poker. After returning from the party along with Stella, Blanche’s act of playing loudly the radio makes Stanley fulminate and offensive. He even turns off noisome radio in which Latin-American Rumbha music is being played but soon it is turned on by Mitch to soothe the tension in the house during the Poker Night. Then Mitch slips out of this game somewhere and meets Blanche, he offers her beer. She retorts: “I hate beer.” (SCND. sc.-iii, 52) 130

As against her earlier denial, she asks for cigarette and gets romanticized in Mitch’s company. Bittersweet music “Polka tune” (SCND. sc.-vi, 96) is played by the dance band when she is dancing with Mitch, symbolically portraying the complex figure of Blanche Dubois at the moral level. On the one hand Mitch imagines that Blanche is a reincarnation of his dying mother, while on the other hand it also suggests Blanche’s continued loss of reality. Blanche tells Mitch about the tragedy regarding her homosexual husband Allan and the words destroyed him. While the two are conversing “Varsouviana” music is introduced which revives the memory of Blanche’s tragic past. But Blanche wants to listen to “It’s not a pretty little polka” (SCND. sc.-viii, 105) because it enables her to forget her past, symbolizing her illusory liberation.

Actually it reminds her of her marriage to an attractive boy who had looked towards her for spiritual security but had committed suicide on being discovered a homosexual.

Blanche’s choice has involved her in the suffering of others; she suggests that she is the effective cause of her husband’s death. She describes the critical moment to Mitch when she had withdrawn “sympathy” from a morally helpless being:

He’d struck the revolver into his mouth, and fired – so that the back of his head had been – blown away! It was because – on the dance floor – unable to stop myself – I’d suddenly said – “I saw! I know! You disgust me….” And then the search light which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for 131

one moment since has there been any light that’s stronger than this – kitchen – candle. (SCND. sc.-vi, 109-110)

When she sees the inscriptions written on the silver case of cigarette which is gifted to Mitch by a girl who is no more now, she shares his sorrow in these words: “The little there is belong to people who have experience some sorrow.” (SCND. sc. -iii, 54)

The symbols like silver case given to Mitch or naked light-bulb to Blanche remind them of reality of their respective situations. Their critical condition psychologically is in bondage of the senses and they desire to escape into the world of togetherness and intimate relationship. Such a kind of release of emotions from reality is a disillusioned state of their minds or is an illusory liberation.

Indeed Blanche’s chosen illusory images help her to liberate her anguished self. For her “The lantern is perhaps the major symbol of the play. It projects Blanche’s vulnerability to protect herself from the grimness and cruelty of reality.”26

Her statement justifies her illusion: “I bought this adorable light coloured paper lantern at a Chinese shop on Bourbon. Put it over the light-bulb! Will you, please!” (SCND. sc.-iii, 55)

The hanging of a cheap paper lantern over a “naked light-bulb” (SCND. sc.- iii, 55) may seem the most casual of actions, but this act is integral to the development of this play. Without it, the highly charged scene between Mitch and Blanche in the latter part of the play cannot take place. The 132

purchase of the lantern gives Blanche an opportunity to seek the help of Mitch to install it. She only meets him minutes before; still she does not miss the opportunity to involve him in the seemingly insignificant- modification of her living space. More than that she uses the event to cast the first thread of the web in which she hopes eventually to catch Mitch.

Inspite of feeling disgust with her metaphysical being she considers her life as complete nothingness and does not sink into desperation rather she woos her would-be-protector Mitch. Her reminiscences of being an old maid school teacher are averted by Mitch, that enhances her illusions about herself and she appreciates Mitch for such gallantry.

In addition, her illusions increase with each passing day. She tries to show her superiority to Stanley which is clearly visible in this dialogue: But beauty of the mind and richness of the spirit and tenderness of the heart – and I have all of those things aren’t taken away, but grow! (SCND. sc.-x, 120)

It makes him realise his gaudy seed-bearer appearance. He also realizes his cultural variation through the presence of Blanche and in his anxiety he slashes Stella. Subsequently Blanche Dubois looks for a proper resting place and corners herself in Eunice’s apartment, upstairs along with Stella.

Meanwhile all the boys in the house mitigate his anger and leave him and Stanley sobs and cries loudly her name to call her back. This crisis projects the bondage in marital relationship. Even though she suffers violence through her battered husband, she cannot restrict herself from being with him. She tries to convince about her understanding with her husband in this manner: 133

STELLA: Yes, you are, Blanche. I know how it must have seemed to you and I’m awful sorry it had to happen, but it wasn’t anything as serious as you seem to take it. In the first place, when men are drinking and playing poker anything can happen. It’s always a powder-keg. He knows what he was doing… He was as good as a lamb when I came back and he’s really very, very ashamed of himself.

BLANCHE: How could you come back in this place last night? Why, you must have slept with him!

STELLA: I said I am not in anything that I have a desire to get out of ……….. oh, well, its his pleasure, like mine is movies and bridge. People have got to tolerate each other’s habits. I guess. (SCND. sc. - iv, 65)

Basically Stella’s marital adjustment with Stanley confirms her belief in Puritan principles. So she has her own way of protest, which is liberation but it is an existentialist attitude. It signifies her freedom of choice and her own way of survival but within the norms of society and religion. Therefore she remains an earthly being or non-fugitive being, who look for her path of salvation in marital relationship.

Stella wants to survive in the midst of messy circumstances with her own dignity. She is trying to face reality. While Blanche’s conflicting impulses 134

that stands for the bondage of the senses, projects her roughly a combination of the Puritan and Cavalier traits. Although she criticizes her sister for leading a marital relationship which is bestial in nature, but she herself slips into vulgarism. Blanche tells Stella that the only way to live with Stanley “is to go to bed with him.” (SCND. sc. - iv, 69)

While waiting for Mitch, Blanche toys amorously with a newspaper boy, who has just had a cherry soda:

Cherry….You make my mouth water. (SCND. sc.-v, 84)

Later that night, Blanche mocks at Mitch, “Voulex – vous coucher avec moice soir?” (SCND. sc.- iv, 88) With this poor little joke, she takes a risk by destroying her pure Southern Belle image in Mitch’s eyes.

Blanche tries to shield her rebellion of being lost in a hostile world through illusion:

But it does not last long because she is guilty of being uncompassionate towards her homosexual husband Allan and her intolerable pain at the suffering she confronts at the loss of her ancestral place Bellereeve, fails her to redeem dramatic dementia.27

Her fragile mental state leads her into nymphomaniac state. She hides reality by emerging radiant in the easily destroyed Chinese lantern over the naked bulb or by her ritual expiatory baths in a “Della Robbia blue jacket) 135

the blue of the robe in the Old Madonna pictures” (SCND. sc.-ix, 135). All this conveys her world of magic or theatrical device of tricks that Williams conjures up for her to show her pain that lies at her subconscious memory. So when she finds Stella in a gross and pitiful marital situation, she says:

Pull yourself together and face the facts….. You’re married to a madman. Stop it let go of that broom. I won’t have you cleaning up for him. (SCND. sc. - iv, 66)

Actually Blanche is unrealistic in her protest, because “she dreams of an ideal world more than into which she was born.”28

This only isolates her from such messy conflicts and entraps herself in an imaginary world of her own. The path pursued by Blanche is illusionary; her broken visionary world which is a death in life becomes a psychic bondage of disillusioned emotions. It may suspend one’s pain for sometime but it does not relieve the sufferings rather it isolates a person due to his or her own critical condition. While Blanche guides Stella to give up this kind of ‘messy’ life, she herself falls into an adulterous relationship.

Blanche’s interference in Stella’s life acquires a grotesque nature. Stella unknowingly utters the words for Stanley like “Pig-Polack-disgusting-vulgar- greasy!” – All this provokes Stanley to throw vengeance both on Blanche as well as Stella and he says:

them kind of words have been on your tongue and your sister’s too much around here! What do you two think you are? A pair of queens? 136

Remember, What Huey Long said- “Every man is a king!” And I am the king around here, so don’t forget it! (SCND. sc.-viii, 107)

This frightens Stella but she belongs to an old genteel, Puritanical gothic culture of Belle Reeve, Mississippi, her role and image is of an anodyne to each character in the play, i.e. to her husband and to her sister. She fulminates against the system of leading a life-in-death in the French quarter of New Orleans, Elysian Fields. Yet she does not turn neurotic or phlegmatic when she is beset with untoward developments in her house. She somehow holds herself in the reality of the situation unlike make- believe world of her sister Blanche. She is expecting a baby and tries her best to convince her husband Stanley not to be rude with her sister Blanche as she has already been going through crisis in her life.

STELLA: You needn’t have been so cruel to someone alone as she is.

STANLEY: Delicate price she is.

STELLA: She is, she was, you didn’t know Blanche as a girl. Nobody, nobody, was tender and trusting as she was. But people like you abused her, and forced her to change.

STANLEY: A contemptuous liar, a make -believer of stories, who pulls the wool over the eyes. (SCND. sc.-viii, 111)

But Stanley contradicts Stella and he reveals to her about Blanche’s relationship with Mitch and with false amiability he hands over an envelope 137

to Blanche – which contains a ticket to Laurel from where she has come to his house and convinces Stella by saying that:

And wasn’t we happy together? Wasn’t it all okay? Till she showed here……(SCND. sc.- viii,112)

Stella meanwhile feels a kind of shuffling progress within her body and asks Stanley to take her to the hospital. Symbolically the procreation suggests Stella’s struggle for the liberation of her metaphysical self and stability in her marital relationship strongly with Stanley. She seeks Stanley’s help to go to the hospital which shows her dependence and her closeness with her husband.

Meanwhile, the excitement and dream of Blanche is continuously being broken by Stanley and she is in rapid, feverish mood gulping drinks to escape the impending disaster that is closing in on her, while the ‘Varsouviana’ (SCND. sc.-ix, 113) music agitates her and she seems to whisper the words of the song. The screen legends like the use of music, light intensifies the pangs and anguish the character is undergoing and this helps in causing a void and emptiness in the character’s mind, to which she finds no outlet to liberate herself.

Through the character of Blanche, Tennessee Williams has brought forth the significance of human transgression. She is both protagonist as well as the antagonist, because she suffers from a sense of guilt on account of her choice and her use of free will to follow the freedom of action to pursue her life in her own way which becomes more painful than any path devised by the gods or by man’s enemies. This corrosive inner disease leads her into 138

spiritual disintegration and afflicts her with the malaise, the fevered hallucinations and the attacks of rage. As the protagonist, she is victim of exploitation and it is found that she traverses the downward way in her “dark night of the soul”29.Blanche’s descent in the spiritual cycle follows in her description to Stanley:

There are thousands of papers, stretching back over hundreds of years, affecting Belle Reeve as, piece by piece, our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications – to put it plainly!.... The four letter word deprived us of our plantation, till finally all that was left – and Stella can verify that! – was the house itself and about twenty acres of ground, including a graveyard, to which now all but Stella and I have retreated. (SCND. sc.-ii, 45)

Blanche, in her downward progress toward salvation, comes to the realisation of her own responsibility of her predicament. She becomes aware that she suffers more for own transgressions than for the actions of her guilty ancestors.

Blanche records her descent into the hell of suffering. She describes her agony to Stella:

I, I, I took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! And funerals are pretty compared to 139

deaths………You didn’t dream but I saw! Saw, Saw! And now you sit there telling me with your eyes that I let the place go! How in hell do you think all that sickness and dying was paid for? Death is experience, Miss Stella………..! (SCND. sc.-i, 26-27)

Tennessee Williams exposes Blanche’s progressive fragmentation, her progress toward the last circle of hell from where there is no point of her liberation of her flesh and mind from the corrupted life in which her artistic figure has been trapped in. Although as an existentialist she has descended to a widely recognized condition: “a sickness into death i.e. she abandons her previous moralistic approach to life for a profligate sex experience she has reversed her later life for more satisfying experience.”30

Before coming to New Orleans, at Belle Reeve she is shown as 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 goes out to find her place in the world:

Since Blanche has adjusted to an abnormal family life, she is unable to follow normal standards of life, when she has the opportunity, to relate to the so-called normal world of her sister. She is in fact following a family pattern when she becomes sexually profligate after the death of her parents.31 140

She explains that the plantation is lost on account of being gradually disposed by “improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers” who exchanged the land for their “epic fornications.” (SCND. sc.-ii, 43)

The arrival of Mitch is not received well by her for he looks very shabby and unshaven and feels guilty for being uncivilised in leaving her at such a place with Stanley. But Blanche hates dirt and commonness, speaks the truth on his face that she does not forgive him and Mitch too does not like her continuous lapping up drinks and says her to keep off the liquor. He probes her why she never comes out in light, why she evades to go out during afternoon. She replies that the darkness comforts her.

The same person, who puts the lantern on the light, eventually tears it off. Mitch becomes a part of Blanche’s destruction. The dramatic power of the outburst is imperative when Mitch rips off the fragile lantern from the bulb and brutally holds her face up to the harsh white light in exactly the same manner as she was exposed in ‘Galatoires’ restaurant. When Mitch “does tear the lantern off the light” (SCND. sc.-ix, 117) (The same he had carefully installed earlier in the play), Blanche’s last reserves are shattered, her despair and anger at the unrelentingness of age explodes.

In a sense Mitch returns Blanche to the “real” world that does not understand or tolerate her mysterious avoidance of the light. The shading of light suggests Blanche’s shading of facts, which according to Stanley was a way to “pull the wool over their eyes” (SCND. sc.-vii, 99). So when he peels off her tissue of lies, she stands in the glare of his cynical gaze as well as in Mitch’s outrageous hatred for her. 141

This refers to her avoidance of being caught in reality. When Mitch switches on the light she covers her face and Mitch sarcastically narrates the truth of Blanche and refuses to marry her and says “You’re not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother.”

This takes Blanche into a state of hysteria and she screams at him to go away from there. The author symbolises her state with the music of piano that seems blue and slow. It signifies feeling of deep sadness, and depression sets around Blanche.

And instead of suffering from the desire of Mitch, when Mitch rejects her she cries out “Fire! Fire! Fire!” (SCND. sc.-ix, 121):

This imagery suggests her death-in-life, her spiritual decay, her private agony of being lost person, her sense of being in inferno, her illusion or flight to an illusory liberation which is none but her downward way of salvation of her metaphysical guilt and disgust.32

As a result she is isolated and is an outcaste and an outsider in New Orleans. Screen images are enriched by symbolic appearance of a Mexican Woman who comes at the door of Blanche with flowers “Flores para los muertos”, she calls “flores-flores” (SCND. sc-ix, 119)and she refuses to take them because her life is like the beauty of flowers which is crushed and faded and leaves her disappointed and there is always recrimination as a result and lastly the phase of death-in-life attitude overwhelms her and she takes to recourse to drinks, to callers and to cigarettes and even false love for her appearance. Her quest for an 142

alternative to live life in such critical circumstances is to seek desire which is the opposite of death but it is death-in-life. Her choice to stand such in such a condition leads her in bondage i.e. to search her visionary world. This last hope is also split into pieces by Mitch’s refusal to marry her.

Before she is able to cope up these emotional outbursts, Stanley’s accusation on Blanche retrospectively reveals her lies one by one and his diabolic and wicked intentions become clear.

In the tenth scene, both Blanche and Stanley have been shown drinking:

She is desperately looking for somebody to get her out of the trap she falls in. Her story of Shep Huntleigh is again an illusion or a brave front against Stanley who is sarcastic about her pretentious image. He forces Blanche to drop the broken bottle – top of self defense.33

In the final scene, Blanche is the victim of her own Southern-belle fantasy: “the role has become her reality as she seems not to recognize the poker playing men.”34

Without sensual menace and animal magnetism, however the shattering scene between Stanley and Blanche – The struggle between brute reality and fading civilization – is reduced to any old drunken rape. Her illusion for seeking a resting place for her world of myths, for the sensitivity of her poetic figure is threatened by interpretative authority namely Stanley Kowalski. Her illusory psychic escape is bondage of impulsive conflicts that she has borne against the traditional social order. The dominant discourse 143

of patriarchy has broken her dreams and disintegrates the complex relationship of both a women and a society when Stanley growls: “We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning.” (SCND. sc.-x, 127)

Hence, she is unable to collapse the victimization of an artist figure against the immoral forces of modern world, yet her defiant courage helps her to submit to the “kindness of strangers.” (SCND. sc.-xi, 135)

In the last scene while moving to asylum, “Blanche follows the male doctor or psychiatrist blindly as she follows Stella during the first poker game.”35

This is the breach of her illusion and she faces reality that she is no more required in the place where shadows of grotesque and menacing form live. She has hallucinations or nightmares imagining “Varsouviana” music into inhuman jungle roses that are uproaring and rising up to intrude her illusory world.

Although Stella and Eunice are mourning the callous behaviour of Stanley and Stella is feeling depressed and guilty but Eunice advises her, “Don’t ever believe it, life has got to go on. No matter what happens, you’ve got to keep on going.” (SCND. sc.-xi, 133)

Her hysterical vivacity is paradoxically her liberation or the salvation of a soul from the darkness that she has fallen into. When Blanche is taken to the asylum by the doctor, she imagines him Shep Huntleigh, who will liberate her from the social catastrophe that she has encountered in ‘Elysian Fields’, so the doctor is both her Hunter and her shepherd. Her exit line, addressed to the doctor, intensifies her pathos: 144

Whoever you are–I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. (SCND. sc.-xi, 142)

Although we know that Blanche has found no kindness among strangers, and we may recall an earlier use of the word “strangers”, in her confession to Mitch,

After the death of Allan intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with. (SCND. sc.-ix, 118) still her choice of being dependent on strangers indicates her illusory release of the wish-fulfillment:

I shall die of eating an unwashed grape one day out on the ocean. I will die with my hand in the hand of some nice looking ship’s doctor, a very young one with a small blond mustache and a big silver watch”. Poor lady they’ll say, “The quinine did her no good. The unwashed grape has transported her soul to heaven. And I’ll be buried at sea sewn up in a clean white sack and dropped overboard at noon – in the blaze of summer and into the ocean as blue as my first lover’s eyes. (Cathedral chimes are heard again) (SCND. sc.-xi, 136) 145

We find her escape again into non-earthly purity which is bodiless yet in bondage of desire and just as in earlier scenes she seeks. The still waters of her bath similarly in the moving final scene signify the purity both of water and of fire36. Thinking herself as unwashed grapes, means imagining herself as untouched virgin who longs for a beau and whose purity can only be possible by immersing in water i.e. by the communions of virgin with her lover of her choice. “This anticipation of her being relieved one day in sea during hot summer blaze signifies her agonized, ardent fervour for love which is as scorching as sun’s heat. The hot furnace of her sexual desire results in visualising the purification of body and mind by submerging in the water of the sea”37. Such chosen path of liberation is greatly illusory and even this is deluded by the sex offender Stanley Kowalski. But thinking doctor as Shep Huntleigh, who will one day come to relax her from all fears, is an illusion or psychic trance, she feels that is only her freedom from all worries. Thus she depends on the “kindness of strangers” even when she is to go to the asylum. 146

“Notes”

1Alice Glarden Brand and Peter Elbow, The Psychology of Writing: The Affective Experience (New York: Greenwood P, 1989)43.

2Tennessee Williams, the production notes, ‘The Glass Menagerie’, The Theatre of Tennessee Williams (New York: New Directions, 1991)17.

3Williams, productions notes, ix.

4Williams ix.

5Willaims , “The Glass Menagerie”, An Anthology of American Literature 1890-1965, ed. Egbert S. Oliver (New Delhi: Eurasia, 1986) all subsequent references to this will be referred as GM.

6Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions (New York: The Wisdom Library, 1957) 16.

7Tom Scanlon, “Family and Psyche in The Glass Meangerie”, Twentieth Centuries Interpretation of “The Glass Menagerie”, ed. R.B.Parker (NJ: Prentice, 1983) 96-108.

8 Stephen S. Stanton, ed., Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays, (N.J: Prentice, 1977) 3.

9 Egbert S. Oliver, ed., An Anthology of American Literature 1890-1965, 243

10Nancy M. Tischler, “The Distorted Mirror: Tennessee Williams’s Self Portraits”, Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays, 160.

11 Stanton 165. 147

12Oliver, 239-40.

13Donald P. Costello, “Tennessee Williams’s Fugitive Kind”, ed. A.C. Edwards, Modern Drama 15 (May 1972): 26-43.

14Roger B. Stein, “‘The Glass Menagerie, Revisited: Catastrophe Without Violence”, Western Humanism Review 18 (Spring 1964): 141-153.

15Tischler 160.

16Tischler 162-165.

17Williams, The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, vol.1 133. 18Gilbert Debusscher, “Tennessee Williams, Lives of the Saints: A Playwrights Obliquity”, Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays, 151-157.

19Stein 37.

20 Stein 40.

21Nancy M. Tischler, “Tennessee Williams: Rebellious Puritan” (NewYork: Citadel, 1961) 48-56.

22Elia Kazan, “Notebook for a Streetcar Named Desire”, Directors on Directing:A Source Book of the Modern Theatre, eds. Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy (Indian police: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976) 364-79.

23Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire (New York: New Directions, 1947) all subsequent references to this edition will be referred to SCND.

24Ruby Cohn, “The Garrulous Grotesques of Tennessee”, Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays, 50.

25Cohn 121-125. 148

26 Cohn 52.

27Alvin Keman, “Truth and Dramatic Mode is the Modern Theatre: Chekhov, Pirandello, Williams”, Modern Drama 1(Sept.1958): 111-114.

28Thomas, “A Streetcar Named Desire”: The Moth and the Lantern. (Boston: Twayne, 1990) 30.

29Rogir Boxill, Tennessee Williams (New York: St. Martin’s, 1987) 9.

30Easther Merle Jackson, “The Anti- Hero in the Plays of Tennessee Williams”, Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays, 94.

31Louise Blackwell, Tennessee Williams and the Predicament of Women”, Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays, 102.

32Blackwell 102.

33Jackson 95.

34Cohn 49.

35Cohn 49.

36Cohn 51.

37Donald P. Costello, Tennessee Williams’s Fugitive Kind”, Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays, 116.

 149

CHAPTER - V

(A) ORPHEUS DESCENDING (B) THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA

ORPHEUS DESCENDING

What has been said in the foregoing analyses of The Glass Menagerie and Streetcar is further illustrated in a slightly different way into Tennessee Williams’s two other plays chosen for the study ------Orpheus Descending and The Night of the Iguana. The following quote illustrates this point:

The fugitives attempt to escape corruption, are marked by the retaining of a child like free or wild nature, by recapturing a lost past of innocence, by escaping into artistic visions of sex, by countering barren death with fruitfulness and by seeking some pure natural object as a symbol of hope which has risen above earthly taint.1

Such an escape denotes the predicament of the main characters of Orpheus Descending. It is the release of their emotions into their own world of memories or fantasies which is in contrast to reality. These fugitives metaphorically convey the theme of bondage and liberation. Their idealised imagination finds an escape into disillusionment which is illusory liberation because it certainly relieves them of their repressive emotions unconsciously yet it tempts them into another desire i.e. bondage of the 150

senses, and they find relief in a different world of their own. It would be relevant to recall here that a similar situation exists in Streetcar as has already been discussed. Here it is realized as an unacceptable attribute in the puritanical society. Therefore, their liberation remains incomplete or sometimes illusory, because they seek freedom of will and freedom of action in place of freedom from desires, that is pure oneness with the Supreme soul to attain eternal bliss and salvation.

There are these kinds of fugitives in this play trying to escape earthly corruption, and have been treated as objects of desire and not as humans.

In the prologue Beulah’s colloquial conversation with Dolly satirises the contemporary wasteland of modern world:

Yais, he bought her, when she was a girl of eighteen! He bought her and bought her cheap because she’d been thrown over and her heart was broken by that - that Cutrere boy... Oh, what a -- beautiful thing he was.... And those two met like you struck two stones together and made a fire! -- Yes --- fire. (OD. Act-i, 513)2

These lines summarize the degenerated, desiccated, decayed mentality that has perverted man’s physical well being and his life is engulfed by the destructive ‘fire’. The myth of fire symbolically assumes antagonistic nature. The demystification of fire suggests sterile existence, a world of cruelty, injustice and harshness. It preponders violence, death and darkness. Even water “a symbol of peace and purity”3 and a mighty force of greening the estate, has ironically becomes the cause of death of the owner. Water-lake situated beside the Orchard is unable to put off the fire that has spread in 151

the garden of Lady Torrance’s father. The garden, once the only Oasis in the County, is destroyed because Papa Romano “made a bad mistake in selling liquor to niggers” (OD. Act-iii, sc-i, 541). The local villain Jabe burns the orchard, and Lady’s father dies, fighting the fire. As a result of the Orchard being on fire, it brings the two persons Jabe Torrance and Lady Torrance closer. Lady Torrance is the daughter of the owner of the lake- resort, who lets herself married to Jabe Torrance just for the sake of survival, although in her heart she considers this as damned event of her life: “a son of –a-bitch who bought me at a fire sale.”(OD. Act-i, sc.-ii, 526)

She is unaware till very late that Jabe who is diseased and dying of cancer, led the gang that killed her father. It is due to the diseased Jabe’s crime in the wine garden that Two Rivers is suffering plague and corruption. Lady does not escape corruption like Val, Carol or Vee but she challenges it by opening the confectionery.

This is her lyric space that stands in opposition to the dark, death like atmosphere of the store, just as the wine garden had once stood in opposition to the wasteland of Two Rivers County.4

There is admittedly nothing very noble about Lady’s plan to renew the wine garden, no thought of setting the world right, no real concern for the good of community. Her creative urge to build a confectionary leads her unaware into her make-believe world, this unbeatable desire becomes so dominant and irrational that she says: 152

Hell, I don’t even want it, it’s just necessary, it’s just something got to be done to square things away, to, to, to, be not defeated!....Just to be not defeated!(OD. Act-iii, sc.-iii, 547)

She is deprived of her father by Jabe and rejected by her lover David Cutrere who married a girl from a richer family than that of the Lady. Lady unfortunately has to undergo through jealousy, corruption, darkness, that is inflicted upon her by the enemy of her father, who is now her husband i.e. Jabe, who bought her when she was eighteen.

Beulah sarcastically presents the absurd state of husband-wife relationship. The lines given below the idea of bondage clear between both: how they confront reality through an illusion, their illusory escape stultifies their relationship and rocks their metaphysical being. This state of marital affairs in the wasteland is well expressed by Beulah:

Year after year after year, accumulating property and money, building up wealth and respect and position in the towns they live in and the counties and cities and the churches they go to, belonging to the clubs and so on and so forth and not a soul but them knowing they have to go wash their hands after touching something the other one just put down! (OD. Act-i 514)

She says how both man and woman grotesquely carry on, if anyone of them gets cancer or stroke-the other “hauls in the loot!”………..“Oh, my then you should see how him or her blossoms out. New house, new car, 153

new clothes. Some of ‘em even change to a different Church! If it’s a widow, she goes with a younger man, and if it’s a widower, he starts courtin’ some chick, ha, has...... !”(OD. Act-i, 514)

This slanderous talk by Beulah may seem to be a humorous gossip with her friend Dolly but it certainly depicts the wasteland, the depraved morality, the shamness and the degradation of the human rationality and resistance. For the sake of survival man refuses to explore his inner self his spiritually declined condition it leads him on the path of simple gratification of the earthly needs. Allegorically money and sex in the twentieth century modern, scientific, technical and materialistic world are the means to seek emancipation and liberation. But paradoxically it is the ‘bondage of the senses’ or an illusion of the mind to face reality. In other words it can be elaborated that a person has freedom of thought and freedom of will to attain desire or wish-fulfilment.

Tennessee Williams has created such symbols, myths or signs which present the psyche or the predicament of the characters that he shapes. These portraits for the sake of wish-fulfillment live in their make-believe world to release their mental stress. In this way the philosophical concept of liberation is demystified by the modern behavioural science that does psychological study of mind and body. The darkness of inferno prevails upon their deeds. Just like the mythological anti-hero Satan of the Bible, they protest like a sensitive non-conformist individual against the conventional system of society and this state of condition makes them suffer from loneliness and the society seems to be unwilling to understand them. 154

Beulah and Dolly considers Lady’s opening of confectionary an awful thought in Jabe’s absence, because he is bed-ridden due to cancer. But Lady Torrance’s eagerness does not let her wait and she says: “It can’t wait for anything that might take that much time” (OD. Prologue, 515)

Lady’s protest against Jabe is clarified in these lines, because she feels he is responsible for the darkness in her world by getting her into legal prostitution, i.e. by being married to her. The darkness of her mind is diffused by the light on the stage symbolically in order to show that the lady is in search of light to dispel her dark world. “Light - dark imagery helps to separate the unearthly fugitives from the earthly corrupted.”5

Another mythical imagery has been deconstructed by the playwright to show the modern way of purification and of cleansing. Vee tries to elaborate in her words with reference to Jabe’s dying state - the redemption of a corrupt man is possible if he keeps watching the picture of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ while he is being sick and dying. She says:

Aw. Well, I’m just in time. I brought my new picture with me; the paint isn’t dry on it yet. I thought that lady might want to hang it up in Jabe’s room while he’s convalescin’ from the operation, cause after a close shave with death, people like to be reminded to spiritual things. Huh? Yes! This is the Holy Ghost ascending.... (OD. Act-i 525) 155

Vee tells Val, “We live in, a world of a light and shadow” (OD. Act-iii, sc.-i, 539). This statement suggests ‘bondage’ and the reason not to accept reality and their wish to liberate one confuses the mind of the fugitive-kind who wants to lead an ideal and a pure life on this corrupt earth.

Val Xavier and Vee Talbot both try the road of artistic vision to escape the past. Val is the hero “about the tragic isolation of the artist in the hell of modern society”6.His insistence on complete freedom represents Williams’s belief that “submission to the physical and therefore corrupted world demands the destruction of the artistic temperament.”7 Vee, the primitive painter “Couldn’t live without visions!”(OD. Act-ii sc.- ii, 533) And, through her art, she has “made some beauty out of this dark country.”(OD. Act-ii, sc.-ii, 534) Both Vee and Val’s visionary ideas signify their world of dreams. This is the psychological escape from reality. It demonstrates the struggle between the powers of light and darkness. “In the existential world the fugitives who are perpetually the symbols of Christ are crucified, face death in the struggle but that fight is a flight for those who counter darkness.”8

Though such visionary creatures are defeated by the sadistic, diabolic, corrupt people yet they seem romantic misfits who poetically valourise their sufferings. Such escapists withdraw from the glaring light of reality into the softer world of illusion, which becomes the means of ‘liberation’ from their bondage. The predicament of the non-conformist individuals in the play Orpheus Descending signifies dramatically the theme of ‘bondage and liberation’.

The characters in the play like Lady, Val, Vee, Carol and the Conjure man (who shows sympathy to Val when he is lynched by Jabe and passed on his snakeskin jacket to Carol) symbolise, “Something wild in the country” 156

(OD. Act-iii, sc.-iii, 546). Tennessee Williams portrays these characters’ mental state in the following lines: “These are the benevolent spiritual beings that face conflicts from their inability or refusal to tolerate or understand difference.”9

These spiritual beings are the earthly symbols of the nineteenth century’s romantic concept of the freedom-seeking individuals and they all become a mass of human contradictions and they all struggle with the anarchic violence.

The garden is a symbol of subjective memories of Lady Torrance. Jabe sets fire to this illusion. She tries to build this realm of art and spirit by recapturing the past through memory. Lady turns the back of the mercantile store during his absence while he is sick into a nostalgic radiance which connotes her dreams and Williams projects it as a visual verification to objectify her fantasy. Lady associates her father’s garden physically with youth, love and life, in contrast to the store space that is symbolic of the mercantile relationship of human buying and selling and abusing one another, this was formerly a male province that she now inhabits because of the illness of her husband. Tennessee Williams exaggerates her fantasy in the following manner:

The walls have been painted pale blue and have been copiously hung with imitation dogwood blossoms to achieve a striking effect of an orchard in full bloom. The room is almost subjective of a mood or of a haunting memory beyond the drab actuality of the dry goods department. Its lighting fixtures have been 157

covered with Japanese lanterns, so that, when lighted, they give the room a soft, rosy glow.10

Thus this room at the rear of the stage becomes a house of illusions/art. In other words it is in effect another of Williams’s Theatre on the stage. Along with increasing use of colours, sounds and lighting effects, Williams foregrounds the make-believe orchard in his imaginative pictorial setting. The confectionery appears similar to Blanche’s desire for “magic”, a world of illusion/art that Lady chooses to inhabit over truthful realism.

Carol Cutrere, sister of David Cutrere, has been ostracized owing to her ‘lewd vagrancy’ and bohemian life-style i.e. she is an exhibitionist and Christ-bitten reformer and in order to fly away from the reality she goes ‘jooking’ every night, rides car all night and she is an extravagant prodigal, believes that:

dead people talk like birds on Cypress hill, but all they say is one word and that one word is “live”, they say “live, live, live, live, live!” It’s all they’ve learned, it’s the only advice they can give - Just live ... (OD. Act-i, sc.-i, 521)

Metaphorically the playwright compares this metaphysical existence of human beings to a breastbone of a chicken, used in the primitive ritual by the conjuror. Carol Cutrere refuses to touch it because:

it is tainted with corruption and there’s still some flesh clinging to it. She says if it is left on a bare rock in the rain and the sun till every sign of 158

corruption is burned and washed away from it, and then it will be a good charm. (OD. Act-i, sc.-i, 521)

It implies that the more an innocent and unearthly man burns in the pangs of worldly circumstances, the more fugitive he becomes, in the process his emotions and anguish are purged symbolically. He is surrounded by the light and dark shadow. Therefore the breastbone which is not absolutely purified is used as a black magic by the conjuror.

This also illustrates Carol’s state of affairs because she keeps cartridges and revolver without license and drinks and drives all night, she does this to drive away her repressed emotions. Moreover she finds in Val a light, a magic who can give her ‘tender protections’ - she says to Val - “Because you have the moon for me!”(OD. Act-ii, sc.-i, 531) Williams has used the black magic phrase sardonically to convey the wildness of the fugitives in Orpheus Descending. Carol had been a “wild animal”, and Val with his ‘Wild beauty’, is twice summoned into the play by the primitive ‘Choctaw cry’ of the conjuror. And Carol connects the wildness of Val with the past and with sweetness of sensuous passions. She says: “This country used to be wild, the men and women were wild and there was a wild sort of sweetness in their hearts.”(OD. Act-iii, sc.-iii, 546)

She refers to the aura of their guilty past which like a hunted albatross reminds them of their filthy past and degrades their life into more violation of the Puritanical code of conduct. Like Val who has been “on a party” in the bars of New Orleans since he was fifteen, tries vainly to free himself from his past. Before Carol gets again caught up in the messy world of 159

Puritanical norms, Val suggests to her: “Well then, fly away little bird, fly away before you - get broke.” (OD. Act-ii, sc.-i, 532)

Literally all the characters pay for their non-conformity with penalties ranging from ridicule to death. This indicates that their liberation is illusionary which they have looked for in “make- believe answer” (OD. Act- ii, sc.-i, 528) and subsequently their resistance fails them to free their will and mind from the bonds of their conflicting emotions.

Lady’s suffering and anguish needless to say is on account of her choice to survive. The suppression and violation of emotions results in unrequited love, a sense of loss, regret and low self-perception and this burdens her psyche and mysteriously captivates her human soul in worldly circumstances. Her heart-felt sadness is revealed, when she meets David Cutrere (after her marriage with Jabe) who comes to Lady’s house to pick up his sister Carol. Lady speaks pathetically to him:

No, no, I didn’t write you no letter about it; I was proud then; I had pride. But I had your child in my body the summer you quit me, that summer they burned my father in his wine garden, and you, you washed your hands clean of any connection with a Dago bootlegger’s daughter and took that society girl that - restored your home place and give you such - wellborn children. (OD. Act-ii, sc.-i, 532)

Lady’s critical state of mind depicts the corrupt earthly life and her disgust with this mercantile world after being betrayed by David Cutrere is 160

expressed in these lines: “Well, now you do know, you know now, I carried your child in my body the summer you quit me but I had it cut out of my body and they cut my heart out with it!” (OD. Act-ii, sc.-i, 532)

She further expresses her disgust philosophically which indirectly shows her desire to liberate from the shock that she receives. She says:

I wanted death after that, but death don’t come when you want it, it comes when you don’t want it! I wanted death, then, but I took the next best thing. You sold yourself. I sold myself. You was bought. I was bought. You made whores of us both. (OD. Act-ii, sc.-i, 532)

Ironically her statement signifies her being trapped in the unholy circumstances that made her live life-in-death.

The arrival of Val at lady’s house portrays his sense of eroticism which is meanwhile de-eroticised by pursuing artistic vision i.e. by playing his guitar. His spirit is struggling to attempt the flight from the earthly world. Both Val and Lady are the trapped figures longing for freedom. The desires of both of them are contrasting one. Lady says to Val: “I’d feel safer at night with somebody on the place.”(OD. Act-ii, sc.-iii, 535)

She wants Val Xavier to rescue her from any danger like a watchman, as her husband has undergone an operation. Val Xavier doesn’t feel safe at the confectionary yet the true passion of Lady touches him so much that he begins to whisper the words of a song so tenderly that she feels comfort in his company. Her sexual desires have been repressed so long because of 161

her ill-grudges against her husband Jabe who has not only been crude in his attitude but also has been sick so long. On the other hand Val desperately wants to seek refuge in his visionary art in order to de- sublimate his desires and the song that he sings softly with his guitar namely “Heavenly Grass” symbolically refers to his flight from the past. He says: “I lived in corruption but I’m not corrupted. Here is why (Picks up his guitar). My life’s companion. It washes me clean like water when anything unclean has touched me.....”(OD. Act-i, sc.-ii, 524)

Val’s innocence and simplicity become paradoxical. “The wanderer is not innocent but corrupt.”11 Here art is a symbol of truth and beauty; no doubt Val too cleanses himself or his baffled spirit sanctifies with this sacred symbol, yet he is not satisfied because he is in the bondage of the gratification of the senses or desires. His thoughts and action are yet in search of wish-fulfillment. Therefore his quest for liberation is ironically a search for the release of his repressed emotions and feelings, which he evidently expresses in the following lines:

... It’s hard to remember what that feeling was like because I’ve lost it now, but I was waiting for something like if you ask a question you wait for someone to answer but you ask the wrong question or you ask the wrong persons and the answer don’t come. (OD. Act-ii, sc.-i, 527)

The answer that Lady finds to ease her stress is the same which Val thinks of, that is the make-believe answer. At the projected level it is repressed sexuality, while at the suggested level it implies that the fugitive feels relieved by a spiritual hope or light or redemption that is fulfilled by 162

compassionate touch or sexual love in order to free oneself from the conformists’ ways of the world. Val’s fantastic imagination and lady’s response to his fantasy can be seen in the following dialogue between them:

VAL: You know they’re a kind of bird that don’t have legs so it can’t light on nothing but has to stay all its life on its wings in the sky. They sleep on the wind and.... never light on this earth but one time when they die!

LADY: I’d like to be one of those birds.

VAL: So’d I like to be one of those birds; they’s lot of people would like to be one of those birds and never be corrupted!(OD. Act-i, sc.-ii, 525)

The significance of this dream is that such characters do not find this earth as their kingdom. The playwright has encapsulated the escape in the controlling symbol of the free little bird that is not corrupted by the earth. It escapes the earth by never touching it except when it dies. It is transparent like the colour of the sky, and it sleeps on the wind. Lady wants to be one of those birds and never be restrained.

His conversation with the lady during his first entry at the confectionery store shows the multiple levels of his self. As far as Val’s wildness or freedom is concerned, his snakeskin jacket symbolises the “naked unashamed quality of passion and freedom.”12 This is evidently expressed in the following conversation: 163

VAL: It’s a sort of a trademark; people call me Snakeskin.

LADY: Who calls you Snakeskin?

VAL: Oh, in the bars, the sort of places I work in - but I’ve quit that. I’m through with that stuff now. (OD. Act-i, sc.-ii, 523)

His snakeskin jacket represents sexuality. He feels that he must escape if he is to become a true artist and such an image justifies his Jesus picture that Vee Talbot had painted from her “vision.” His existential loneliness or his fugitive kind seeks to express the grim and terrible reality of life that is trapped in cruel, repressive society dominated by sadistic powers-Jabe.The artist’s inner conflict or Val’s desire regularly occurs as an obstacle to his artistic vision. It is this attitude later indulges him in relationship with the Lady. He is confined to the bondage of his inner conflicts. On the one hand he liberates himself from his past by using his phallic guitar which is an obvious symbol of his artistic vision, while on the other hand his disillusionment does not morally uplift him; it just drives him towards ‘illusory liberation’.

In explaining the play’s message Williams says that “the impulse of song….breaks out of confinement and goes on despite of all order to halt.”13 Owing to Tennessee Williams’s “elegiac sensitivity”14 his works mostly deal with the destructive impact of society on the sensitive, non- conformist individual.”15 164

Val (Orpheus) has descended in the confectionary shop (Hades) where Jabe (the God of Death i.e. Pluto) lives. He has come to rescue Lady (Eurydice, the dead wife of Orpheus). Lady’s yearning for the love of a man of her own age is aroused when Val Xavier comes to town carrying a guitar and asks for a job in the Torrance store. This demystified Orpheus attempts to escape his capacity to “burn down a woman” (OD. Act-ii, sc.-ii, 525) but is counter-balanced by the Lady’s desire to remodel the Torrance confectionery into a nightclub that resembles the wine garden on Moon- Lake. This shallow piece of romantic nostalgia reflects personal lyricism of Lady Torrance at the same time stands in contrast to Val, who sees life as a continual struggle between death and rebirth. She is the epitome of repressed sexuality just like another female character Vee Talbot, but unlike her she does not forsake it, rather she believes in the “redemptive power of sexual love”16 and that she gets it possible through Val. Even though Jabe is dying of cancer in the family apartment up over the store, Lady arranges to sleep with Val in a small room at the back of the store. She says:

Ask he how it felt to be coupled with death up there, and I can tell you. My skin crawled when he touched me. But I endured it. I guess my heart knew that somebody must be coming to take me out of this hell! You did. You came. Now look at me! I’m alive once more. (OD. Act-iii, sc.- iii, 548).

Through her sexual relationship with Val, Lady Torrance has attained meaning in life. Although Val shows some remorse when he learns that the lady is pregnant, he is unwilling to assume responsibility of a permanent 165

mate and he wishes to resume his transient life. It becomes clear that Val’s de-sublimated art that symbolises love brings Lady’s’ rebirth. For Lady sex is a point of relief and joy, feeling of being liberated from repressed sexuality. This she achieves by being able to bear a child. The adultery on the part of Lady is an illusion of a fugitive being who has surrendered her will to wild freedom for security. She wants to redeem herself through the fruit that spring has brought along with it. This allegorically refers to the Western’s belief in the ‘bondage and liberation’. With this kind of deed she is symbolically relieved from her world of living death. The news that in her Orchard a fig tree is laden with fruit conveys an imagery to show that a barren lady is able to conceive a child that is obviously not borne by the efforts of her husband, but it is a fruit of illicit relationship with Val Xavier. She expresses her victory over death and darkness in these words: “I’ve won, I’ve won Mr. Death, I’m going to bear.” (OD. Act-iii, sc.-iii, 550)

Indeed this momentary release of joyous emotions in delirium unburdens her from shame, but in the end it seems that sex is the path to salvation, to achieve gratification of primordial instincts at the projected level. “Sexuality is equated with vitality and is identified with art in its capacity for enriching, sensitizing and fertilizing human life.”17

Val is a kind of Prince Charming in snake-skin jacket who awakens the Sleeping Beauties, but does not linger to live happily even after with them. Val certainly brings life back to lady, who blossoms and prepares to bear fruit like the little fig tree she describes. Val Xavier redeems her from death- in-life existence, and after conceiving a child by him she feels “great joy!” Over being alive once more, lady says: “I have life in my body, this dead tree, my body, has burst in flowers! You’ve given one life....” (OD. Act-iii, sc.-iii, 550) 166

Here Val is Orpheus with his magic lyre, able to charm even Death for a moment. At the suggested level, the legend of Orpheus is demystified to describe that he is the archetypal artist in search of beauty and truth, hoping to bring life back to the sterile land (the dry goods store). An orchard blooms in the confectionary and life stirs in Lady’s womb but Pluto (Jabe) comes to reclaim his wife and to destroy human happiness.

Although Val has freed himself from his past by using his phallic guitar as an obvious symbol, his seeming - innocence shows his guilt because when he steals small amounts of money from Lady’s confectionary cash-box and returns it late at night into the box back, Lady catches him and that breaks her hope that he can be a scapegoat in the hell where she has no way except wishing for death. She scathingly utters about him: “This boy is a bird with no feet so he has to sleep on the wind, and that softened my fool Dago heart and I wanted to help you ... fool, me - I got what I should of expected. ....” (OD. Act-ii sc.-iv, 538)

Basically Lady designs Val’s descent in her dream world to redeem herself from the hell where she has been confined by Jabe, who is the death’s self and malignancy, the personification of sterility and impotence. When she finds Val Xavier a vagabond and an homoerotic artist, she chooses him as a surrogate sacrificial object, because he has the wildness of sexual freedom as well as the intensity to liberate the dark angles of Southern repression. But she was mistaken to understand him because Val’s main goal is to leave the corrupt earth and find peace in the realm of the legless bird. 167

Subsequently his love for the lady is challenged by a nightmarish world of hell that is Death, more specifically, by Jabe the god of sterility. Nurse Porter, who seems to have supernatural perception and who attends diseased Jabe, tells at a glance that the Lady is pregnant and Jabe is not the father of the conceived child. In sheer disgust of his failed marital relationship, he calls upon the fires of the hell of impotence to burn her and her lover (Val Xavier), just as he has earlier burnt the wine garden of Lady’s father where the fig tree used to blossom and true lovers (Lady and David Cutrere) used to meet. Thus Val is bound by his relationship with a woman who tries to use a wandering fox as a good scapegoat. Inspite of knowing that he is a man of unacceptable and irresponsible social behaviour she provides him space for living in her house, just because she says:

No, No, Don’t Go... I Need You!!! (He faces her for five beats the true passion of her outcry touches him then, and he turn about and crosses to the alcove... As he draws the certain across it he looks back at her). To live ... To Go on Living!!!” (OD. Act-ii, sc.-ii, 539)

Hence Val and Lady’s relationship culminates in communion and results in a fruitful Orchard which is simply a contrast to Lady and Jabe’s relationship with each other. Lady has a release from the world of Inferno and anger, but it is an ephemeral release, whose outcome was the murder of one and the lynching of the other. In this play Jabe controls the liberation and freedom of the people and afflicts them with loneliness and decay. Jabe is a non-fugitive being who lives in darkness, corruption and death. He usurps the heritage of Lady’s father and marries her for the sake of wealth. His 168

devilish intentions become the obstruction or the bondage for both the Lady and Val in achieving their artistic liberation.

The fictitious story of Sisyphus in Greek mythology goes with the character Jabe who at the edge of death somehow recuperates from his illness and debunks his Lady’s dreams which she constructs in the face of metaphysical emptiness and her defaulting debauchery is unable to defend her liberation ideals and her expulsion from paradise is complete. She points to the ghostly radiance of her make-believe orchard and looks about it as people look for the last time at a loved place they are deserting. The destroyed orchard is as much as an image of herself as is the dead child. As Death comes to fetch Sisyphus (the son of Aeolus and the father of Glaucus), in the same way he chains him up so that no one dies until Ares (Greek God of war, disliked by other gods) comes to free Death. Before being taken to the underworld, Sisyphus asks his wife to leave his body unburied. When he reaches Hades, he is permitted to go back to earth to punish his wife, and he lives to a ripe old age before dying a second time. His trickery results in his punishment in Hades. Here Jabe similarly punishes his Lady by killing her and he continues to lead a dehumanized kind of life by constricting her freedom, by victimizing and 169

ostracizing the other. Thus, his fanaticism and neuroticism wins over redemptive power of sexual love. But Jabe does not get punishment like Sisyphus, yet retrospectively it can be presumed he lives life no other than living death on the wasteland that he forms for himself.18

In comparison to venomous Jabe, Val is the symbol of human compassion, in love with life and with all things human. His name relates him to the Christ symbol but his actions equate him more with Lucifer, the rebellious angel, who is hideously punished, yet he achieves a place of anti-hero. Carol Cutrere’s last words indicate the resurrection of the spirit of Orpheus Christ who is burnt alive in order to subdue the rise of fugitive kind. This event of the play is in sequence to the violence that happens in the prologue. The significance of Val being lynched is, thus, described: “It dramatizes the immolation of a Lawrentian fox set loose in a south dying of its own narcissism.”19

Val or Orpheus is scarified as a scapegoat, cleaning the town of its anger and guilt, but the death seems to be the result more directly of his sexuality than of his artistry:

Certainly his occasional renditions of “Heavenly Grass” on the guitar are not adequate motivation for lynching. His life is hardly an idealized quest, an engraved guitar is at best an inadequate symbol for art that justifies all aberrations and all irresponsibility, and foxes do not make good scapegoats.20 170

Val achieves martyrdom, but it does not emancipate his soul spiritually. After his death, the Conjuror brings to Carol Val’s snakeskin jacket, which she takes as a token “so that the fugitive kind can always follow their kind.”(OD. Act-iii, sc.-iii, 551)

This imagery implies that fugitives relieve themselves from the bonds of earthly life into a world of illusion. “Tennessee Williams identifies all artists as exhibitionists.”37 Carol explains the artists’ mental state in the given lines: “The exhibitionist’s initial aim may be self-expression and self- therapy, but this confusion to be noticed, seen, heard, felt! (OD. Act-i, sc.-i, 520)

Hence, the disillusionment or the pleasures of the fugitives or outsiders are symbols of their nostalgia for the lost harmony of their wilderness.

But their existential quest does not reach its liberated self because they are guilty of transgression, their search of salvation or liberation ends in fragmentation, disorientation, despair and the sickness unto death.21

The inner impurity suggests the original sin. It reveals the inner condition of man. It is the distillation of fatal weakness in man and that descends him/her into the hell of suffering and he suffers from the malaise and spiritual disintegration and his predicament is synonymous with the state of ‘bondage’. The search for liberation becomes ambivalent as it cannot face the reality and the harshness, cruelty and injustice, which are the common 171

ways of the corrupt world. The diminution of the artist happens due to his inability to adapt to the conventional social conditions:

Thus all the characters in the play are suffering in agony of conscience to confront hidden truth and to accept the heavy burden of metaphysical guilt, that binds them to their society and their family and they destroy something in themselves to find an escape from that bondage. Therefore they are called fugitives in this earthly world.22 172

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA

The characters of this play dramatise the theme of spiritual versus physical conflict. Tennessee Williams is sure to be influenced by morality plays which have dealt with the themes of ‘good and evil’ and the virtues of Christian belief. The protagonist of this play T. Lawrence Shannon is just like Dr. Faustus. His portrait reminds us of Faustus’s deliberate denial of the choice of salvation by deciding to seek the devils help to achieve his ambitions. He renounces God and surrenders his soul to Lucifer in exchange for twenty four years of voluptuousness and services to Mephistopheles. Later when he is full of despair over his actions, his helplessness and the inner conflict is brought out in the lines:

My heart is harden’d, I cannot repent scarce can I name Salvation, faith or heaven, But fearful echoes thunder in, mine ears. Faustus, thon art damn’d! (Faustus. sc.-vi, 18)23.

To end his agony, he says: “I am resolved Faustus shall not repent.” (Faustus. sc.-vi, 32)

Later, he realizes his mistake of staking his ‘Will’ in the hands of evil just for the sake of mere materialistic gains. He is overwhelmed with despair, as there is no way of retribution because his ‘Will’ is in bondage i.e. it has been surrendered to evil perpetually. Even if he defies devil’s command to give up devilry, his decision cannot give him the bliss of being one with supreme soul i.e. salvation from desires. His own ambition becomes a medium of punishment and agony and a cause of his success catastrophically. 173

Similarly in the play The Night of the Iguana, we find T. Lawrence Shannon struggling “between the physical and spiritual in modern man”24. Here the protagonist faces “the crippling power of repressed sexual desire” 25 which unconsciously affects his minds. His sexual perversion and evilness invades his soul’s possibility of salvation and he describes his suffering to Hannah, a portrait of “spiritual pantheon”26:

Regression to infantilism, ha, ha, regression to infantilism…. The infantile protest, ha, ha, ha, the infantile expression of rage at Mama and rage at God and rage at the goddam crib, and rage at the goddam crib, and rage at the everything, rage at the ………….. everything ………….. Regression to infantilism …..…. (NI. Act-iii, 92)27

Being tormented by the perennial attacks of “blue devils”, he follows his usual solution to such distress, i.e. his sado-masochism in his self-imposed ‘voluptuous crucifixion’ (NI. Act-iii, 92) that indicates his “quest for God.”28 It does not ascend him to a higher world of enlightenment of his soul, rather it leads him to endure human condition that he is surrounded with. The notion of his ‘spook’ (NI. Act-i, 60) suggests that the demon preventss him from attaining any happiness. Consequently, his sexual indulgence is deprived of intimate relationship, whether he is involved with a young prodigal parishioner or with a younger girl tourist, named, Charlotte.

When Shannon brings his busload of screaming Texans to an old safe- haven, a run-down hotel at the top of a hill in a rain forest near a saltwater 174

beach of Costa-Verde near Acapulco, he meets Maxine Faulk, the bawdy hotelkeeper of this dilapidated paradise. She is accustomed to Shannon’s breakdown because of being his old friend. She wants him to settle in for the duration, because she understands his anguish and says to him:

You harboured a secret resentment against Mama and God for making you give it up. And so you got back at God by preaching atheistical sermons and you got back at Mama by starting to lay young girls. (NI. act-iii, 86)

When his mother stops his infantile masturbation with the admonition that both she and God disapprove it, it seems that his instinctual urge of sexual gratification becomes the prominent desire. Shannon feels guilty about it and harbours a grudge against Mama and Jehovah. This dynamics of love and hate for central figures in his life drives him to become a minister and then to betray his ministry. He refuses to let even God capture him and imprison him. At the projected level it is similar to the the Iguana struggling to release itself from the Mexican natives, who have caught the ugly creature and are planning to use it for a meal.

Shannon’s body and soul are separated consciously from God due to his unconscious repressed emotions and he isolates himself from his fellow human beings and his conscience plunges him headlong towards hell. When he is locked out of the church-duties on account of fornication and preceded by heresy he calls God: “as a senile delinquent and, by God, I will not and cannot continue to conduct services in praise and worship of this, this……. this……….” (NI. Act-i, 76) 175

Shannon is completely torn mentally and physically, for he is trapped in his own desires i.e. gratification of his sexual instincts. Even after being gratified he suffers from a sense of guilt that does not let him remain in peace, because his psychic energy is constantly indulged in his wish- fulfillment that is based on his primordial urge. The psychologist Freud considers this kind of attitude as the pleasure principle which makes an individual disregard social conventions, legal ethics or moral restraint. His unconscious destruction and conscious self-destruction become the mode to satisfy his impulsive pleasures. His conversation with a girl – an emotionally precocious, musical prodigy brings forth his excessive self- indulgence and his disgust at the pleasure that he obtains:

CHARLOTTE: I don’t believe you don’t love me.

SHANNON: Honey, it’s almost impossible for anybody to believe they’re not loved by someone they believe they love, but, honey, I love nobody. I’m like that, it isn’t my fault. When I brought you home that night told you goodnight in the hall, just kissed you on the cheek like a little girl that you are, but the instant I opened my door, you rushed into my room and I couldn’t get you out of it, not even when I, oh God, tried to scare you out of it by, oh God, don’t you remember?

CHARLOTTE: Yes, I remember that after making love to me, you hit me, Larry, you struck me in the face, and you twisted my arm to 176

make me kneel on the floor and pray with you for forgiveness.

SHANNON: I do that, I do that always when I, when……… I don’t have a dime left in my nervous emotional bank account – I can’t write a check on it, now. (NI. Act-ii, 74)

His repressive impulsive sexual drives show his regression to infantalism. His puritanical conscience that he has inherited from his mother and from the Biblical scriptures disapproves such overt aggression and sexual passion. Consequently, despair and terror for his sins which are unpardonable, exorcise the phobia that drives him “into madness.”29

He is too preoccupied with his own evil and guilt and too obsessed with a sense of failure in life. His predicament gives meaning to the depth of bondage, that his mind and body both “are in trap like the animal iguana” (NI. act-iii, 9), which Mexicans have captured to eat. His quest for God indicates his belief in the truth about God. Shannon denounces furiously at God in order to overcome that suggests his inner conflict as well as his fear of God. He says:

God is an angry, petulant old man…. A cruel, senile delinquent, blaming the world and brutally punishing all he created for his own faults in construction……” (NI. Act-i, 76)

His conception of God springs from his state of conflict and God seems vengeful who denies man his pleasure. Shannon has always felt a 177

compulsion to sin – especially to sins of the flesh – followed immediately by guilt and remorse and the need to be self-punished.

On such disgusting and dangerous moments felt Shannon alienated, world lost, fugitive kind and an aging idealist who despises himself as well as those he uses. His over sexuality is the release of his guilt. Like Old Adam, he strikes at the woman, rather than confessing his own violation of God’s law. This becomes an obsessive compulsive pattern for his life. Sexual indulgence is for him not a rich pleasure but a nervous tick. “The subsequent episodes of self-flagellation are equally ritualistic and bereft of gratification.”30

Maxine, a widow satisfies her appetite with nubile young Mexican boys and sees Shannon as a prospective lover for the long term .He is a sexual subject for her. This situation causes conflict between the ideal and the physical in his mind. He is already at the end of the rope, due to the identification of his predicament which is a combination of “terrible guilt, fear of God and an overpowering sex drive.”31 His critical condition depicts his state of mind in these words:

self-crucified Christ figure that changes from a fatigued tour guide to a priest, then to a saint dancing on broken glass to a twisted ironic Christ figure in the hammock.32

The portrayal of Shannon’s character suggests a struggle of “the real versus the fantastic”. The playwright Tennessee Williams in this play portrays that Shannon’s anguish is the result of his chosen self-humiliation, in the form of masochism. He uses this as a tool to attain anxiety-aspiring 178

freedom and to gain satisfaction for his metaphysical being. This state of his being-in-nothingness leads him to the path of fantasy to overcome his conflicting urge to live. Indeed he wins a victory of existence over being, but his resistance subjects him to destructive forces and brings the death of his soul. This absurdity of his mind makes him escape into a world of illusory liberation, which is ironically the bondage of his senses or desires.

There is another character in the play Nonno, the grandfather of Hannah, who is shown fighting his death or his helpless stage of being very old. He is occupied in composing a poem in order to face the gross and vulgar reality of life. The dramatist symbolically uses the poem composed by Nonno to convey the message of ‘real liberation’ from the anguish or the bondage, i.e. to seek refuge in reality. Acceptance of the reality is the core essence to understand the divine law and the nature’s teaching. The poem by Nonno is given here:

How calmly does the Orange branch Observe the sky begin to blanch Without a cry, without a prayer, With no betrayal of despair. Sometime while night obscures the tree The Zenith of its life will be Goal past forever, and from thence A second history will commence. A Chronicle no longer Gold, A bargaining with mist and mold And finally the broken stem The plummeting to earth; and then An intercourse not well designed 179

For beings of a golden kind Whose native green must arch above The earth’s obscene, corrupting love And still the ripe fruit and the branch Observe the sky begin to blanch Without a cry, without a prayer With no betrayal of despair. O Courage, could you not as well Select a second play, to dwell, Not only in that golden tree But is the frightened heart of me? (NI. Act-iii, 103).

In this poem, the lovely Oriental image ‘tree’ symbolizes life/nature. It withers or fades without rational thought but beautifully. The dramatist Tennessee Williams tries to pacify psychic illusion through theatrical illusion. “He relates art to reality.”36 He uses the tree that lovely oriental image of beautiful nature which accepts the blanched sky (i.e. God’s Providence) and approaches the darkness of the pale sky through its way while growing up.

Nonno’s grand-daughter’s principles of accepting life as it is, is an example that suggests the meaning of Nonno’s poem:

Hannah portrays the natural patterns or the beauty of nature. She stands in contrast with human fear of being falling down from the zenith of life.34 180

Her character reveals Tennessee Williams’s authorial voice, that the beauty of nature is coupled with the need to “compromise” with the earth in order to continue the survival. When mist and mold mingles, it produces the ripe fruit in its time and creates no tension in nature. Moreover it makes no distinction between the ideal and the physical. In case of Shannon, his idealism (the blanched sky)-to search God has been pulled down by the corruption of the earth steadily towards decadence; as a result of this he undergoes suffering and he is unable to overcome this decay while Hannah too goes through phases of being attacked by ‘Blue Devils’, yet she retains her composure even during darkness and saves herself from transgression.

Shannon, the defrocked Episcopalian minister, is like the captured iguana tied beneath the verandah. He is at the end of his rope, haunted by his ‘spook’ (NI. act-ii, 81) and his soul is led into a dark night of his hopeless and trivial sexual adventures. He tries to escape the earth by seeking the refuge into sex and it is the only make-believe answer for a fugitive man like Shannon. He realises that ‘people need human contact’, yet he sees that the human condition often keeps man apart from his fellowmen, in isolated “Cubicle bedrooms” like those in the stage setting. “They use sex as a substitute for a deeper human need”35, which is bondage or illusion but not liberation. It is unmistakably an illusory release of their repressive desires and traps them into another desire or temptation; Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost too deal with the similar kind of the theme of human predicament - Satan lives in the hell and he thinks out of his negative situation that he is the master of this dark world, just as God is the supreme authority of ‘Paradise’. In the ‘Hell’ there is all around darkness, death and doom of Satan’s ‘Will’ due to his defiance of God’s ‘Will’, this happens because he resorts to rebel against God’s supremacy in the 181

‘Paradise’. Satan falls into the temptation- first to revolt against the God and when overthrown into the ‘Hell’, he still retains his ego and thinks himself to be the ‘Lord of the Hell’. It is a bondage of his senses, that provokes him to fight for liberation, but ironically his struggle for liberation is the desire, and that takes him to the path of transgression of his soul and he descends into decay and ‘abyss’.

Hannah Jelkes, who meets Shannon at the hotel of Maxine Faulk, is ‘the golden tree’, who courageously accepts the life’s truth, the change in the sky ‘without a cry, without a prayer’ (NI. Act-iii, 103) when her grandfather Nonno dies. Nonno when alive is indeed a support, for her metaphysical existence and she gracefully accepts the bondage and lives life like a “Thin-Standing-up-female-Buddha” and “an emancipated Puritan” (NI. Act- iii, 93). She believes that like her grandfather Nonno t human beings have the power to create meaning in life through art and to bring salvation to others by means of the healing power of art. Hence mortality to Nonno is liberation from the vulgarity of meaningless life while Hannah’s stoicism and beauty, her courage and hope stand for liberation in the times of inevitable descent into decay. She questions Shannon’s way of ‘voluptuous crucifixion’, which implies her suggestion:

“ Who wouldn’t like to suffer and atone for the sins of himself and the world if it could be done in a hammock with ropes instead of nails, on a hill that so much lovelier than Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, Mr. Shannon? There’s something almost voluptuous in the way that you twist and groan in that hammock – no nails, no blood, no death. Isn’t that a comparatively 182

comfortable, almost voluptuous and kind of crucifixion to suffer for the guilt of the world, Mr. Shannon? (NI. Act-iii, 92)

Shannon’s suffering and painless penance indeed transforms him and paves a way to solve the psychological conflict of his desires and the guilt. His passion for Christ, without significant cost, is visible in his actions, when he tears the ornate cross hanging on a golden chain around his neck, mutilates his clerical collar, and taunts God by calling Him names. These gestures convey his painless moment of contrived agony.

Shannon’s solution to survive through his moments of agony is grotesquely twisted into a kind of damnation and produces a note of horror. His precarious and degrading dependence on others for salvation presents an apathetic endurance of Shannon. His vision of evil is exhibited in his conversation with Hannah:

I thought you were sexless but you’ve suddenly turned into a woman, know how I know that? Because you, not me – not me – are taking pleasure in my tied-up condition. They work at it all their lives, to get a man in a tied-up situation. Their lives are fulfilled; they’re satisfied at last, when they get a man in a tied-up situation. Their lives are fulfilled, they’re satisfied at last, when they get a man, or as many men as they can, in the tied up situation….. (NI. Act-iii, 92) 183

His internal feeling of damnation is similar to Dr. Faustus’ critical situation, whose realisation of the enormity of his sin sends him into paroxysm of despair and terror. He cannot repent at the last hour to save his soul from falling into malignant fate. Dr. Faustus says:

The devil will come, and Faustus must be damne’d. O, I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down? (Dr. Faustus. Act-xix, 145)

Shannon in the Night of the Iguana similarly identifies his critical condition with the hopelessness of the human condition, which is affected by the natural law without any concession. Golgotha, the bleak hill on which Christ was crucified, seems very different from the hammock on the patio of a hotel in a rainforest where Shannon suffers luxuriously. Shannon says to Hannah (twisting and lunging about in the hammock): “It’s under me, under me burning, Untie me, for God’s sake, will you – its’ burning me through my pants!” (NI. Act-iii, 94)

He utters all this to Hannah because she appears to Shannon a Christian priest hearing confession, giving absolution and administering the sacraments. When he does not find a satisfactory release of his desires even in immoral sexual relationship, he seeks support of Hannah who herself is struggling and working out her liberation through her own existential ways.

The difference in their existential ways lies in their interpreting the search for God. To Shannon God is like the storm, with its white convulsions of light. God is like a giant white bird attacking the hilltop of the Costa Verde. 184

He says to Hannah (quietly): “Yes, I see him, I hear him, I know him. And if he doesn’t know that I know him, let him strike me dead with a bolt of his lightning.” (NI. Act-ii, 85)

“ For Shannon the God is a supreme being or soul, who grants his providence to the sinner.”37 Shannon is guilty, he is in anguish for all that he has committed, yet he wants to serve God either as a sinner who wants to repent or who is afraid of God’s power. His disgust is revealed in these lines:

Because I’ve been accused of being defrocked and of lying about it, that’s why. I want to the ladies that I’m still a clocked-frocked! – minister of the …….” “And preach the gospel of God as lightening and Thunder. (NI. Act-ii, 75-76)

Thus like Iguana he is arrested in his state of affairs and “this suggests that just Iguana requires help to free itself and survive, similarly he sees God in his meaningful relationship with Hannah.”38 While she is preparing poppy seed tea to serve Shannon, his grandfather and for herself in order to get through the difficult night, he says: “Hell, if you’ll get me out of this hammock I’ll serve it to him myself, I’ll be your accomplice in this act of mercy.” (NI. Act-iii, 93)

Shannon feels some change in his feelings when Hannah says:

I’d like to unite you right now, but let me wait till you’ve passed through your present disturbance. You’re still indulging yourself in your…… you 185

passion play performance. I can’t help observing this self-indulgence in you. (NI. Act-iii, 92)

Hannah further explains that the extreme oppressed circumstances of human condition in their extremity can be resolved through one’s own inner strength i.e. by having unqualified the faith in God. In order to be in the world, it is:

Just by, just by ………..enduring. Endurance is something that spooks and blue devils respect. And they respect all the tricks that panicky people use to outlast and outwit their panic. (NI. Act-iii, 95)

According to her, endurance and acceptance come by the acceptance of the situation and by communication as well as by believing “in something or in someone – almost anyone – almost anything……… something.” (NI. Act-iii, 95)

Hannah represents a different brand of Calvinism of the perverse Southern type unlike that of Shannon. Hers has been tempered by life and travels, particularly her travels in the Orient, where she has adopted some Buddhist practices. Her existential faith in God or in Nonno illustrates her ideal identification with reality, her way of engaging his soul in a totality which is the ideal and the value. Her instinctual urge unlike Shannon does not manifest destructive behaviour, rather her belief in God and her dependence on Nonno enhance her creative urge. She tries to find liberation in the following deeds - she is a virgin by choice, a companion to her old grandfather, a willing nurse for the dying. 186

She suggests an alternative, an idea of God that she has learnt in the House for Dying in Shanghai, about “the little comforts beside the death – pallets” (NI. Act-iii, 96). Instead of forcing one’s God of “Lightening and Thunder” (NI. Act-ii,76) on others, even if He exists, she tells him to look into the longing faces and “Lead them beside still waters because you know how badly they need the still waters”(NI. act-iii,94). She suggests if there is no comfort to be gained in heaven, there are “broken gates between people so they can reach each other, even if it’s just for one night only.” (NI. Aact-iii, 95)

Hannah from the very beginning of the play becomes the voice of the playwright: “……………Williams conceives of God as anthropomorphic, made in man’s own image and likeness……. The way we conceive of God is also the way we will see our neighbour and ourself.”39

Hannah, who has thrown herself on Maxine’s mercy in Act I, says, in effect, that if one cannot have God, then he must act like God. She sees the help in the form of God in Shannon when she is refused to be provided any shelter along with her ninety year old grandfather Nonno, the poet, in the hotel Costa Verde by the manager Maxine Faulk.Hannah pleads to Shannon:

Nobody would take us in town, and if we don’t get in here, I would have to wheel him back down through the rain forest, and then what, then where? There would just be the road, and no direction to move in, except out to sea-and I 187

doubt that we could make it divide before us. (NI. Act-i, 68)

Both Hannah and Shannon are at the end of the rope. Both are struggling in their own way to lead life in despair. Hannah has sacrificed her life for her dying grandfather and she has managed to survive with fleeting and insignificant relationships. She appears as a classic fugitive wheeling her grandfather from country to country. Hannah says to Maxine:

Please don’t do that. We tried every hotel in town and they wouldn’t take us in. I’m afraid I have to place myself at your….mercy. (NI. Act-i, 69)

Even though she herself is in troubled circumstances, her tolerance remains intact. She suggests to Shannon that humans need to cultivate endurance, just to be able “to keep on going” (NI. Act-ii, 103). Hannah helps Shannon to gain a renewed belief in his own goodness and kindness by prompting him to perform the “little act of grace” of setting the iguana free. Her saintly disposition persuades Shannon to perform an act of grace and he says, “God won’t do it and we are going to play God here.”(NI. Act- iii, 103)

Shannon rips his own albatross – the gold cross which symbolises a perverted system of religion by which he feels condemned rather than – redeemed – from around his neck, just as Ancient Mariner in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by S.T.Coleridge, “blesses [The Water Snakes] unaware” and then sees the albatross 188

falling down from his neck, and finally he feels renewal of his life.40

It is only after Shannon has freed the iguana “One of God’s creatures”, Nonno is able to finish his last and loveliest poem, whose subject is that man cannot live in a perfect, uncorrupted world, but must have the courage to endure crisis in the face of evil and suffering, without ignoring the good or despairing over the human condition. Since such courage can come only by recognising the possibility of “a little understanding exchanged between them, a wanting to help each other through nights like this.” (NI. Act-ii, 95)

When Nonno holds Shannon, later feels that the old man has touched something in him, which he finds as a sort of compassionate touch that perhaps he has never experienced before. Shannon too becomes concern for the strange empathetic touch and he feels a kind of affinity and concern for Nonno whose ethics seem to profess the oriental meaning liberation, in which the oneness of human soul completely transcends with the soul of others by the help given and received.

When Shannon releases iguana, the old poet dies with the final ecstasy of his finest composed poem but he shows the way for the rest and so that all settles down for the sake of survival.

In the end, Maxine even tries to reform Shannon rather than corrupting him absolutely. Maxine tells Shannon that she is ready to give up the fugitive’s life:

We’ve both reached a point where we’ve got to settle for something that works for us in our lives 189

– even if it isn’t on the highest kind of level.(NI. Act-iii, 86)

Shannon gives in; he compromises. Mrs. Faulk tries to re-establish a satisfying sexual relationship with Shannon by providing the strength to a weak man. “She wants to settle with him for a lasting relationship with him. Mrs. Faulk is a widow who has lost her husband Fred when the play opens. The lusty and sexual prowess Mrs. Faulk agrees to be domesticated and obedient and she wants Shannon to stay with her.”41

In reference to Shannon and Maxine’s permanent relationship, Williams suggests the idea that sex is the path to salvation or liberation for the man of twentieth century to rise above the predicament or the bondage in which the human beings tolerate the awful solitude of the solitary imprisonment in their life.

Maxine, a lusty figure in the play does not believe in the beauty of natural patterns. Her pleasure principle builds out of shared needs. Both Maxine and Shannon accept each other for physical relationship rather on intimacy. Their path of salvation is illusory as it is a temporary reprieve from bondage i.e. the darkness of their souls. Even Germans, the image of lavish display of flesh, loud songs and spastic behaviour – crashing of bottles as they fight over a drink cart – stands in contrast to the gentle, serious Kabuki-costumed Hannah whose poppy-seed tea ceremony for Shannon works out as “a saving sorceress, expert at healing.”42

The separation of the people into cubicles becomes for Shannon a symbol of the human condition, with moments of communication on the verandah. Thus, when Hannah expresses the hope to stay for the night with her old 190

grandfather Nonno, it suggests the need for a sense of comfort from life’s storms. ‘Home’ is an imagery to show the love and compassion that Nonno and Hannah have in one another’s heart. She explains her idea of salvation in the imagery of ‘home’:

We make a home for each other, my grandfather and I. Do you know what I mean by a home? I don’t mean a regular home. I mean I don’t mean other people mean when they speak of a home, because I don’t regard a home as a …..well, as a place, a building, and a house ….of wood, bricks, stone. I think of a home as being a thing that two people have between them in which each can…..well, nest-rest-live in, emotionally speaking. (NI. Act-iii, 96)

In the other words, Hannah has brought forward the essence of the existence i.e. intimate relationship. The grandfather and the daughter make a home in one another’s heart. She says: “The moral is oriental. Accept whatever situation you cannot improve” (NI. Act-iii,99). Therefore,

when the poet, grandfather dies, it is release of the poetic spirit of Nonno from the burdensome corrupted life of the earth and for Hannah, it is release from bondage”43.

The existence of her grandfather by her side suggests her freedom from the corrupt earth. The dramatic significance of the relationship between Hannah and her old grandfather exhibits their faith and eternal happiness; 191

their feeling of security in each other and their artistic sensibility helps them to continue their life with hope in despair. This relationship between Hannah and Nonno symbolizes the oriental meaning of the theme of the bondage and liberation, whereas the adjustment and acceptance between Shannon and Maxine Faulk for sharing physical needs is in no way eternal relationship, except it is the gratification of desires. Their feeling of ‘otherness’ and ‘object of desire’ leads them into bondage which is paradoxically a disillusionment or illusory liberation. The same situation happens between Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski in the Streetcar, in which Blanche although a fugitive or an artist, yet her delusion and fancy is built out of her own past dream-world, and as she has been dependent on ‘the kindness of strangers’, she does not find bliss rather becomes hysteric because she is involved into prolifigate sex or sees Stanley or Mitch as objects of desire. This signifies her overwrought disillusion. In The Night of the Iguana, Hannah’s artistic sensibility overrides sensuous pleasures, which she too had once experienced in her life but only at the fantastic level. The sensuous pleasures appear to her delusive impractical and pitiable.

Tennessee Williams voices through Hannah the dungeon psyche of man which analyses the male as sexual subject and the female as sexual ‘other’ or the ‘object of desire’44. This is an important and striking aspect in the theme of bondage and liberation in the author’s selected plays, because Tennessee Williams has explored his perception of moral crisis and the growing threat of human annihilation from this point of view also. He has exposed man’s hidden nature to search out his motives, to discover his limits and ultimately to help him find a mode of salvation. He has been able to evolve only a limited resolution for his cycle of suffering. He 192

concludes that the only hope is compassion in intimate relationship and it can only redeem the sinner who is guilty of his human condition.

Hannah is the voice of the author, she clarifies that to pursue bleakness and despair in the “Unlighted sides of the spooked and bedeviled people” (NI. Act-iii, 95), one has to accept an undesirable situation by putting aside one’s needs or expectations and it also implies seeing beyond the negative aspects to find something positive that one can embrace. The playwright ends the play with optimistic resolutions that occur simultaneously. The lizard is set free by Shannon, at the same time Nonno is set free from his poem and his life, also Hannah is unburdened of her dying grandfather, and similarly Shannon escapes from his God, his mother and his loneliness by accepting permanent relationship with the widow Mrs. Faulk. 193

“Notes”

1Donald P. Costello, “Tennessee Williams’s Fugitive Kind”, Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Stephen S. Stanton (New Jersey: Prentice, 1977)105.

2Tennessee Williams, “Orpheus Descending”, The Best American Plays 1957-1963, ed. John Gassner (New York: Crown,1970) all subsequent references to this edition will be referred to as OD.

3Costello 105.

4George W. Crandell, ed. “Orpheus Descending (19570)”, The Critical Response to Tennessee Williams (CT: Greenwood P, 1996)150-151.

5Costello 106.

6John Gassner, The Theatre in our Times (New York: Crown, 1954).

7Williams, production notes, Orpheus Descending, Tennessee Williams: Four Plays, by Williams (New York: Signet, 1976) n.pag.

8Costello 114.

9Honaker Ima Herron, The Small Town in American Drama (Dallas: Southern Methodist UP, 1969) 352.

10Phillip C. Kolin, ed. Tennessee Williams: A Guide to Research and performance (CT: Greenwood P, 1998) 22-27.

11Arthur Ganz, “Tennessee Williams: A Desperate Morality”’ The American Scholar 31(Spring 1962): 278-94.

12Williams, production notes, n.pag. 194

13Williams, foreword, The Theatre of Tennessee Williams vol. 3, by Williams (New York: Signet, 1976) 134.

14Roger Boxill, Tennessee Williams (New York: St.Martin’s, 1987) 168.

15Leverich Lyle, Tennessee: The Timeless World of Tennessee Williams 2, (N.p.: n.p., n.d.) 333.

16Thomas P. Adler, Mirror on the Stage: The Pulitzer Plays as an Approach to American Drama (West Lafayeette: Purdue UP, 1987) 132.

17Nancy M. Tischler, “ The Distorted Mirror: Tennessee Williams’s Self- Portraits”, ed. Stephen S. Stanton, Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays (New Jersey: Englewood Cliffs, 1977)160-162.

18Tischler, Tennessee Williams: Rebellious Puritan (New York: Citadel, 1961) n.pag.

19C.W.E. Bigsby, A Critical Introduction to Twentieth Century American Drama 2- Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee (Cambridge; Cambridge UP, 1984) 45.

20Stephen S. Stanton, ed., Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays, 161.

21Easther Merle Jackson, “The Anti-Her in the plays of Tennessee Williams”, Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays, 93.

22Jackson 93.

23Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus (London: Penguin, 2000) all subsequent references to this edition will be referred to as Dr. Faustus. 195

24Jacob H. Adler, “Night of the Iguana” : A New Tennessee Williams?” Ramparts 1:3 (1962): 61.

25David A. Carpenter, “The Night of the Iguana”, Masterplots II Drama Series, ed. Frank N. Magill, Pasadena, CA: Salem (1990):1145.

26Norman J. Fedder, The Influence of D. H. Lawrence on Tennessee Williams (The Hague: Mouton, 1966) 113.

27Tennessee Williams, “The Night of the Iguana’, The Best American Plays 1957-1963, ed. John Gassner (New York: Crown, 1970) all subsequent references to this edition will be referred to as NI.

28Maurice Yacowar, Tennessee Williams and Film (New York: Ungar, 1977) 105.

29Williams, “Person to Person”, The Theatre of Tennessee Williams 3(New York: New Directions, 1971) 4.

30Tischler, ed. ‘The Night of the Iguana 1963”, Student Companion to Tennessee Williams (Westport: Greenwood P, 2000)126.

31Donald Newlove, ‘A Dream of Tennessee Williams”, Esquire (Nov. 1969): 172.

32Thomas P. Adler, ed. “Tennessee Williams’s ‘Personal Lyricism’: Toward an Androgynous Form”, Realism and the American Dramatic Tradition. (Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1996) 172-88.

33Leon Ferdinand, “Time, Fantasy and Reality in Night of the Iguana”, Modern Drama vol.2 (1968): 87-96.

34Tischler 128. 196

35Costello 119.

36Anne Fleche, Mimetic Disillusion: Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams and U.S. Dramatic Realism (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama,1997)1.

37Roger B. Stein, “‘The Glass Menagerie’ Revisited: Catastrophe without Violence”, Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays, 39.

38Gerald Weales, “Tennessee Williams’s Achievement in the Sixties”, Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays, 65.

39Stanton 3.

40Thomas P. Adler, “The Search for God in the Plays of Tennessee Williams”, Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays, 147.

41Costello 113.

42Frederick Neitzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967) 60.

43Weales 65.

44John Simon, “The Night of the Iguana”, Theatre Arts 46 (1962): 57.

 197

CHAPTER - VI

CONCLUSION

The four preceding chapters on the selected plays of Tennessee Williams have been detailed consideration on the study of the proposed theme of ‘bondage and liberation’. Tennessee Williams, an American dramatist of the twentieth century, post II World War period, shocked audiences by the display of violence, sexuality, alcoholism, rape, homosexuality and fetishism in terms that had never been seen before on the American stage. His plays were popularized as ‘wild black comedy’ for they represented the decayed and dissected environment of the American nation. The social catastrophe shown in the plays sensitised ‘the thinking men of America’ and compel them to envisage the critical condition of the alienated, fugitive kinds. Henceforth many characters such as- Amanda, Laura, Tom Wingfield, Jim O’ Connor, Blanche Dubois, Stanley Kowalski, Val Xavier etc. have become memorable.

The playwright presents before us the dark world of one-dimensional society of the modern civilization that survives in the midst of exploitation, violation of moral code of conduct, corruption and dehumanized passions of power and intimate relationships. He makes us realize that such worldly circumstances of the tainted world drives the misfits, the rebels, the artist figures or the fugitive kinds to lead lives of depression, alienation and unhappy madness (a sort of severe schizophrenia). It happens due to their failure of adjustment with the worldly norms and they construct make- 198

believe world around them through fabricated illusions in order to feel a sense of untrammeled freedom.

The playwright through his impulsive creative activity provides us with basic premise to understand with tenderness and fortitude such individuals trapped in their own predicament. The scrutiny of the selected plays hopefully suggests some of the criteria upon which future study on such visionary or solitary beings can be made. The aim here has been to objectively present and investigate the human situation and its predicament in the context of ‘bondage and liberation’.

Undoubtedly it is always a complex theme and Williams has treated it as such- for example ‘bondage’ might not necessarily lead to liberation bringing about a moral or spiritual upliftment of its characters. To look for this paradigm in the context of ‘bondage and liberation’ would be according to it a too simplistic meaning to the whole issue. This could not have been the intention of the playwright. Thus, the selected plays enable us to study the fragile and mental condition of the characters in the post-world war-II period of American literature in a critical perspective.

Blanche Dubois in Streetcar Named Desire and Val Xavier and Lady Torrance in Orpheus Descending and Shannon in the Night of the Iguana for the sake of metaphysical existence go beyond the religious norms and violate social values. Like an artist they valorise their romantic imagination or like a rebel they challenge extreme situation. They want to reshape their make-believe world of art and vision even if hell bars the way. They struggle in between the shadow of dark and light. 199

“This means just as there is the difference that exists between darkness and light, similarly a worldly man due to ignorance or error does not realize the true nature of reality and he is caught in the notion of ‘thou’ (the non-ego) and the ‘ego’ i.e. there is a fundamental error in the identification between the subject and the object. Hence the man suffers not only psychologically but also becomes the victimizer or sometimes becomes the victim”1.

The nature of their wish fulfillment draws a peripheral boundary between ‘bondage and liberation’. It is a state of paradox. The constant pressures of the material world forces them to surrender their senses to the duality of the worldly circumstances. Although they are highly intelligent and creative beings, their normal life seems to be afflicted by a delusion of alternative reality. “It is bondage when the mind desires or grieves at anything, rejects or accepts anything, feels happy or angry at anything” 2. The characters of his plays find relief into disillusionment like Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar named Desire tries to forget her past nostalgia by seeking relief in her illusory world either through cleansing herself or bathing at intervals just like unwashed grapes are cleaned or she hides her old age in the shade of paper lantern hung around the lighted bulb. But these whimsical fancies simply suggest her fear and decay in the dark world. In the end as a result of the shock, she suffers from hysteria, nymphomania and hallucinations because she has always tried to escape the reality. Thus her means of liberation brutally becomes a hell for her. Similarly in Orpheus Descending Val Xavier tries to de-eroticise and de-sublimate his instinctual urges through art i.e. by pursuing artistic vision of playing guitar. Yet his thoughts and actions still remain involved in searching another desire in lieu of the 200

past desire. His memory and desire complicates his longing for freedom and he becomes a scapegoat for the wish-fulfillment of the lady Torrance’s dream of opening confectionary, a symbol of art/illusion and she resorts to illicit intimacy with him to get rid of her sterility both in her life and in her world of imagination. Later her husband Jabe Torrance ends this relationship between Val and the lady by lynching the former and by murdering the later. Thus Val’s fantastic imagination and Lady’s response to his fantasy suggests wild freedom and non-conformity, but no redemption, no peace, no spiritual consciousness for self-improvement. On the same pattern in The Night of the Iguana Shannon’s self-imposed ‘voluptuous crucifixion’ or self-flagellation suggests his guilt and his fear, which he unleashes through his over- indulgence with his own self by way of sexual advances. It does not ascend him to a higher world of enlightenment of his soul, rather he transcends his self in order to survive in the world through the desire of self-conscious destruction and that later transforms into unconscious destruction of his relationships with the others in the society. Hence his condition at the projected level is just similar to the Iguana struggling to release itself from the Mexican natives, who have caught the ugly creature to use it fro a meal.

The aforementioned characters are unable to discriminate their ‘will’ from their mind or intellect that leads them towards the recognition of delusions. The matter of choice, autonomy and freedom occur due to their solitude, their nostalgia towards their past and their suppression and repression of their emotional dignity. Their quest for vision and romantic fascination reveal their new form of anguish i.e. ‘bondage’ and a new form of happiness i.e. ‘illusory liberation’. Their magic world of illusion/art in contrast to truthful realism consists of their salvation in illicit intimate relationships or in symbolic fantasies which become a means to gratify the 201

primordial urges of flesh and mind. Their mortal existence finds release of their suppressed feelings in illusory ways to exist in this world. Their transcendence into illusions is the beatific insanity of bliss. Their higher form of consciousness does not help them to achieve inspired, ecstatic madness of spiritual awakening. Thus their liberation is illusory and makes them vulnerable and they remain under a state of shock to face the realities of ‘normal’ lives. Liberation remains the trap or bondage unless “the liberation involves the destruction of ignorance and the action- i.e. to follow ‘Niskama Karma Yoga’ without the desire of fruit, which in itself is the ultimate realisation of God”3.

In the Glass Menagerie play, Laura and Tom appear to be poetic spirits whose dream-world is fragile and their escape into the collection of tiny glass menagerie and leisurely pastimes respectively, suggest their suffocation in the environment of bourgeoisie struggling American dream and their rebel against societal pressures of puritanical principles. This symbolizes ‘bondage of self-fulfillment’. Their withdrawal from the reality is parallel to their realization of the unreality of the objective world. Their ignorance to the actions both of misery and happiness suggests their bondage into false notions. They obtain from such kind of delusions symbolic liberation because it shows them the path of hope but it is conditioned. “It does not relieve them from the realisation of their self- freedom; rather their existential being is subjected to injunction or prohibition and is unable to transcend their ‘will’ into the realisation of pure consciousness”4. Thus, their escape into illusions is not the path of achieving bliss and eternity of their soul. It attaches them with the external hallucination of body and mind. Amanda and Jim in this play fall in the category of existentialists because their thoughts and actions represent the materialistic growth and materialistic happiness of America during the 202

twentieth century. Their dreams and desires trap their metaphysical being into the pursuit of material progress. Amanda and Jim’s belief in self- improvement lead to partial liberation because their belief in duty for the sake of duty determine their desire or bondage and it takes them to the path of advancement, yet it is not the ultimate spiritual achievement or liberation. Except Jim, rest of the characters in this play either get shocked, broken, disheartened, desolated in their ‘abyss’ or even become paranoiac (in case of Amanda). This condition of their being trapped into illusory liberation suggests agony and pain when they fail to understand the ultimate reality.

In Orpheus Descending and in Streetcar, Jabe Torrance and Stanley Kowalski respectively seem to be the most awesome earthly figures, who illustrate with their actions and thoughts perversity and immorality. Their transgression, sin, violence, deceit and devilish designs project illusory ways to exhibit their masochism and virility. But it symbolises the darkness, death and sterility of their world. In both the plays, we find them struggling to overcome their vulnerability of being savage and inferior. Their evilness stands for ‘bondage of their senses’ that is the reason, they are unable to discriminate between good and evil. They have been called non-fugitive beings by critics, because such beings’ self indulges in absolute destructive forces. Hence, there is no liberation, no redemption because they do not have fear of divine retribution.

In the play The Night of the Iguana, the dramatist through the imagery of tree metaphorically explicates the nature’s truth – that the attachment to the fear of falling down or to the happiness of reaching the zenith is ‘Maya’ or ‘Braham’ or it is a state of being in the web of instinctual urges generated by desires of the senses. The characters Hannah and Nonno 203

both are far away from this delusion and convey the message to endure and accept reality in order to continue their survival. For Nonno and Hannah suffering, desires, guilt, self-flagellation, internal feeling of damnation, despair and terror, inevitable descent into decay are mere disillusionments on account of the wrong knowledge, ignorance and bondage. To them real liberation lies not in the realisation of God but in the realisation of the reality of the objective world, that is, to do the deeds of courage with stoicism so that one can live a life of hope, compassion and understanding even in times of despair and at the same time always wanting to communicate and help each other during the hard times. Therefore Nonno’s intimate touch and Hannah’s emancipated communication prompts Shannon to ‘perform little act of grace’. He does it by setting the iguana free and shows him the path of leading life of liberation through the representation of problems by the “relation of art to reality”5. They demonstrate, ‘how to live with dignity after di8gnity, it affirms life over death”6, i.e. acceptance of the human condition and courage in the face of despair.

In what direction will such a study lead? The study explicates that creative literature should proceed in a direction where there is an opportunity to understand the characters through holistic and humanitarian approach – where there is recognition of their emotional and psychological growth vis- à-vis their spiritual needs. This would demand a re-evaluating of all mental attitude of the society that tries to evade the hidden truth of human predicament.

The study shows that the characters like Hannah, Shannon, Laura, Tom, Blanche, Val, Lady, are fragile, artistic and compassionate, yet there is an absence of recognition of their deeper emotions in the social circle where 204

they are moving. This would be achieved if the forced norms and pressures do not obstruct their mental and spiritual needs or if the power structure of the society gives them space and times to reconcile their visionary abilities with the worldly-wise principles of life or the power structure helps them to become a part of the societal development. We find here and there hints by the playwright that they are outsiders, artistic figures, fugitive kinds or misfits. This would require a total re-organizing of all kinds of relationships of these characters with the society. In such a scheme of things, things like defiance, depravity and dissemblance would have no place and quest for identity and independence of all these characters would be a natural by- product. But all creative literature should move along these lines as its philosophic base.

Since the study seeks to emphasize the alienated beings’ experience in the society, it may turn out to be a critique of psychotic persons with the final aim being to set right the lop-sided value-system of culture which serves the interests of the privileged and corrupt class of society. “It follows that future literature on such neurasthenic portraits must augment consciousness raising by providing realistic insights into the personality development and self-perception. The true magnitude of the studies on the solitary beings ‘imprisoned in their own solitary skin’ would be measured in the years to come by the realisation that such characters need not become just existential beings, who fail to realise spiritual enlightenment as their ultimate achievement. Instead, such artistic-visionary beings have to march with equal confidence in order to acquire an equitable share of worldly and spiritual needs, and sharing experiences and aspirations”7. 205

“Notes”

1Swami Vivekanand, Vedanta Kesari: A Cultural and Spiritual Monthly of the Ramakrishna Order, 91.8 (Chennai: Shri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore, 2004):11-15,

2Ashtavakara Samhita, “Sacred Space”, The Times of India 8 Mar. 2007, late ed.: D7.

3Patrick Olivelle, trans. Saomnyasa Upnishads: Hindu Scriptures on Asceticism and Renunciation (New York: OUP, 1992) 81.

4Radhakamal Mukherje, The Way of Humanism: New Horizons of Humanism-Part1, (New Delhi: Academic Books, 1968) 192.

5Fleche Anne, Mimetic Disillusion: Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams and U.S. Dramatic Realism (Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama, 1997)1.

6Tennessee Williams, “Williams and ‘the Iguana’ ” ed. Peck Seymour, New York Times 24 Dec. 1961, sec.2:5.

7Sharad Srivastava, The ‘New Woman’ in the Novels of Indo-Anglian Women Writers- Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai, Namita Gokhale and Shobha De, diss., Mohan Lal Sukhadia U, Udaipur , 1995,272-273.

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Mukherjee, Radhakamal. The Way of Humanism: New Horizons of Humanism (Part 1). New Delhi: Academic Books, 1968.

Munn, L. Norman and L. Dodge Fernald Jr. Introduction to Psychology. New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Press, 1967.

Nelson, Benjamin. Tennessee Williams: The Man and His Work. New York: n.p., 1961.

Nietzche, Frederick. The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wgner. Trans. Walter Kaufman. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.

...... Will of Power. New York: Vintage books,1967.

Olivelle, Patrick. Trans. Saomnyasa Upnisoads: Hindu Scriptures on Asceticism and Renunciation. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.14 July 2004. http://www.questia.com

Oliver, S. Egbert. Ed. An Anthology American Literature 1890-1965. New Delhi: Eurasia, 1967.

Patnaik, Priyadarshi. Rasa in Aesthetics: An Application of Rasa Theory to Modern Western Literature. New Delhi: D.K. Printword, 2004. 213

Payne, Reid Darwin. Scenographic Imagination. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP. 1993.

Pitchon, Patricia. Share International Archives.18 Oct. 2003.

Plunka, A. Gene. Freud and the Psychology of Neurosis: John Guare’s Bosoms and Neglects. New York: Plume, 1987. N.pag.

Reynold, C.R. Stage Left: The Development of the American Social Drama in the Thirties. New York: Whitson, 1986.

Roger, Asselineau. The Transcendentalist Constant in American Literature. New York: UP, 1980.

Sartre, Jean Paul. His Philosophy and Existential Psychoanalysis. Ed. Alfred Stern. San Juna, Puerto Rico: n.p., 1964.

Scanlon, Tom. Twentieth Centuries Interpretation of “The Glass Menagerie”. Ed. R.B. Parker. N.p.: n.p., n.d.

Schumach Murray. The Story of Movie and Television Censorship. New York: Morrow, 1964.

Shipley, T. Joseph. Psychanalysis. Dictionary of World Literature: Criticism, Forms, Technique. Ed. Shipley. New York: The Philosophical Library, 1943. 2 July 2004 http://www.questia.com

Sievers, David W. Freud on Broadway: A History of Psychoanalysis and the American Drama. New York: Cooper, 1970.

Spoto, Donald. The Life of Tennessee Williams. Boston: Little, 1985. 214

Sri Baba, Shri Sathya. Discourse of Sathya Sai Baba. Shri Sathya Sai Books Publ. Trust. 17 Mar. 2002. 16 Oct. 2003. http://www. beaskund.helloyou.ws/askbaba/discourses/dl1971/dl 19710324-1.htm

Srivastava, Sharad. ‘The New Woman’ in Indian English Fiction. New Delhi: Creative Books, 1996.

Stanton, S. Stephen. Tennessee Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays. New Jersey: Prentice, 1977.

Stowe, Beecher Harriet. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 1st ed. Boston: Jewett & Co., 1852.http://Jefferson. Village. Virginia, edu: 1852/utc/stowe/utctext/@ebt- link?...... 200.

...... Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 1st ed. Boston: Jewett & Co., 1852.

The Oxford Companion to American Literature. Ed. James D. Hart and Philip Leininger. 6th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1995

Thompson, Judith. Tennessee Williams’s Plays: Memory, Myth and Symbol. New York: Peter Lang. 1987.

Times of India. 8 Mar.2007. 9 Mar. 2007. < http://www spirituality.indiatimes.com>

Tischler, M. Nancy. Student Companion to Tennessee Williams. Westport: Greenwood P, 2000.

Valgemae, Mardi. Ed. Accelerated Grimace: Expressionism in the American Drama of the 1920s. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1972.

Vatsayan. Philosophy and Psychology of Religion. Meerut: Kedar Nath Ram Nath, 1980. 215

Vivekanand, Swami. Vedanta Kesari: A Cultural and Spiritual Monthly of the Ramakrishna Order. Chennai: Shri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore. 91.8 (Aug.2004):10-15.

Weiten, Wayne. Psychology: Themes and Variations. California: Brooks/Cole Publ. Co., 1992.

White, David. Philosophy East and West. 34.3 (1984): 295-302. 21 Oct. 2003.http://www.questia.com

Whitney, T.G. and P.H. Fogel. Eds. An Introduction to Kant’s Critical Philosophy, 1914.

Williams, Dakin and Shepherd Mead. Tennessee Williams (An Intimate Biography). New York: Arbor House, 1983.

Williams,Tennessee. Tennessee Williams: Collected Stories. Ed. Gore Vidal. New York: Ballantine, 1985.

...... The Night of the Iguana. and The Orpheus Descending. Ed. John Gassner. The Best American Plays 1957-1963. New York: Crown, 1970.

...... Orpheus Descending in Tennessee Williams: Four Plays. New York: New American Library, 1976.

Wolter, C. Jurgen. The Dawning of the American Drama: American Dramatic Criticism, 1746-1915. Westport: Greenwood P, 1993.

Yacowar, Maurice. Tennessee Williams and Film. New York: Ungar, 1977. 216

(B) ARTICLES:

Adler, H. Jacob. “Night of the Iguana: A New Tennessee Williams?” Ramparts 1: 3 (1962): 59-68.

Adler, P. Thomas. “The Search for God in the Plays of Tennessee Williams”. Renascence 26 (1973): 48-56.

...... “Culture, Power and The (En) gendering of Community: Tennessee Williams and Politics”. Mississippi Quarterly 48 (Fall 1965): 649-65.

...... “The Dialogue of Incompletion: Language in Tennessee Williams’s Later Plays”. The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 61 (Feb. 1975): 48-58.

Barner, Clive. “God, Man and the Lizard”. New York Post 27 (June 1988): 29.

Bently, Eric. In Search of Theater. Review of Streetcar. New York: Vintage Books (1954): 84-86.

Berkman, Leonard. “The Tragic Downfall of Blanche Du Bois”. Modern Drama 10 (Dec. 1967): 249-57.

Berkowitz, Gerald. “The ‘Other World’ of the Glass Menagerie”. Players 8 (1973): 150-53.

Blackwell, Louise. “Tennessee Williams and the Predicament of Women”. South Atlantic Bulletin, 35 (Mar.1970): 9-14.

Brustein, Robert. “A Little Night Music”. The New Republic (22 Jan.1962): 20-23. 217

Carpenter, A. David. “The Night of the Iguana”. Masterplots II Drama Series. Ed. Frank N. Magill. Pasasdena, CA: Salem (1990): 1143 – 1147.

Cassidy, Claudia. “Fragile Drama Holds Theatre in Tight Spell”. Chicago Tribune (27 Dec. 1944): 11.

Chapman, John. “Williams Is at His Poetic, Moving Best with Night of the Iguana”. New York Daily News (29 Dec. 1961): 44.

Chesler, S. Alan. “A Streetcar Named Desire. Twenty Five years of Criticism”. Notes Ion Mississippi Writers 7 (1974): 44-53.

Clinton, Gaig D. “Tennessee Williams’s Kingdom of Earth: The Orpheus Myth Revisited”. Theatre Annual 33(1977):25-37.

Cohn, Ruby. “The Garrulous Grotesques of Tennessee”. Dialogue in American Drama. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana UP (1971): Ch. IV.

Corrigan, Mary Ann. “Realism and Theatricalism in A Streetcar Named Desire”. Modern Drama 19 (Dec.1976): 385-96.

Costello, P. Donald. “Tennessee Williams’s Fugitive Kind”. Modern Drama 15 (May 1972): 26-43.

Crandell, George W. “The Cinematic Eye in Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie”. The Tennessee Williams Annual Review 1 (1998): 1-11.

Dash, Gananath. “Existential Choice as a Point of View in Major Plays of Tennessee Williams”. Diss. Utkal U, 1997. Indian Journal of American Studies Vol.29.1-2 (Winter &Summer 1999):153-154.

Datta, Ketaki. “In Quest of a New Self: A Comparative Study of the “Black” and “Non-Black” Plays of Tennessee Williams. North Bengal U, 1998. 218

Indian Journal of American Studies Vol.29.1-2 (Winter & Summer 1999):153-154.

David, L. Joseph. “Landscapes of the Dislocated Mind in Williams’s The Glass Menagerie”. Tennessee Williams: A Tribute. Ed. Jac Tharpe Jackson. Mississippi (1977): N.pag.

Davis, K. Joseph. “Landscapes of the Dislocated Mind in Williams’s The Glass menagerie’. In Tharpe (1997): 192-206.

Debusscher, Crilbert. “Tennessee Williams’s Unicorn Broken Again” Revue belge de Philologie et d’ Historie (Brussels), 49 (1971) : 875-85.

Dickenson, Hugh. "Tennessee Williams: Orpheus as Savior". In Myth on the Modern Stage, Urbana: U of Illinois P (1969): 278-309.

Durham, Frank. “Tennessee Williams: Theatre Poet in Prose”. South Atlantic Bulletin, 36 (Mar.1971): 3-16.

Falk, Signi Lnea. “The Southern Gentlewoman”. Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea (1988): 79-87.

Ferdinaud, Leon. “Time, Fantasy and Reality in Night of the Iguana”. Modern Drama Vol. 2 (1968): 87-96.

Fordyce, William. Tennessee Williams’s Tom Wingfield and Georg Kaiser’s Cashier: A Contextual Comparison.4 July 2004. http://www.questia.com

Ganz, Arthur. “Tennessee Williams: A Desperate Morality”. The American Scholar. 31 (Spring, 1962): 278-94.

Glenn, Embrey. “The Subterranean World of the Night of Iguana”. Tennessee Williams: A Tribute. Ed. Jackson: UP of Mississippi (1971): 325-40. 219

Hale, Allean. “How a Tiger Became a Cat”. Tennessee Williams’s Literary Journal? 1(Winter 1990-91): 33.

Hale, Allean. “Tennessee Williams St. Louis Blues”. The Mississippi Quarterly. Vol. 48. Mississippi State U (1995): 609.

Heilman, B. Robert. “Tennessee Williams: Approaches to Tragedy”. Southern Review 1 (1950):770-790.

...... “Tennessee Williams’s Approach to Tragedy”. The Iceman, the Arsonist, and the Troubled Agent: Tragedy and Melodrama on the Modern Stage. Settle: U of Washington P (1973): 115-26 and 138-141.

Hill, Francis A. “The Function of Gentleman Callers: A Note on Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie”. Notes on Mississippi Writers 2 (1970): 83-90.

Holditch, W. Kenneth. “The Broken World: Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism in a Streetcar Named Desire”. N.p.: n.p. n.d.

...... “The Last Frontier of Bohemia: Tennessee Williams in New Orleans 1938-83”. Southern Quarterly 23 (Winter 1985): 1-37.

Jackson, Easther Merle. “Tennessee Williams”. In the American Theatre Today. Ed. Alan S. Downer. New York: Basic Books (1967): 73-84.

...... “The Anti-Hero in the Plays of Tennessee Williams”. The Broken World of Tennessee Williams. Wisconsin: U of Wisconsin P (1965).

Jackson, Jac Tharpe, ed. “Exotic Unreality of Tennessee Williams”. Tennessee Williams: A Tribute. UP of Mississippi (1977): 631-46.

John, Simon. “The Night of the Iguana”. Theatre Arts 46 (1962): 57. 220

Jones, Emmet Robert. “Tennessee Williams’s Early Heroines”. Modern Drama 2 & 3 (Dec. 1959).

Kamball, King. “Tennessee Williams: A Southern Writer”. Mississippi Quarterly 48. 4 (Fall 1995): 625-47.

...... “The Rebirth of Orpheus Descending”. Tennessee Williams Literary Journal 1.2 (1989-90): 19-53.

Kataria, R. Gulshan. “Animal Images in Tennessee Williams”. Indian Journal of American Studies. 21.2 (Summer1991): 79-86.

Keman, Alvin. “Truth and Dramatic Mode is the Modern Theatre: Chekhov, Pirandello, Williams”. Modern Drama I (Sept. 1958): 111-114.

King, Thomas L. “Irony and Distance in the Glass Menagerie”. Educational Theatre Journal, 25 (May 1973): 207-14.

Kolin, Philip, “No Masterpiece has been overlooked: The Early Reception and Significant of Tennessee Williams’s Big Black: A Mississippi Idyll”. A N &Q. (n.d.): N.pag.

Lewis, Funke and John E. Booth. “Williams on Williams”. Theatre Arts 46. 1 (1962): 72-73.

Liberation Psychology Home Page. “Michele Toomey and the Evolution of liberation Psychology”.16 Oct. 2003.

Liberation Psychology Home Page. Liberation……….: A Modern View of Classical Thought. 16 Oct. 2003. http://www. mtoomey.com/classical_thought.htm 221

Living Thoughts: Ashtavakra-Gita/Bondage abd Liberation. Introduction. 17 Oct. 2003.

McCarten, John. “Lonely, Loquacious, and Doomed”. New Yorker (13 Jan. 1962): 61-62.

McGlinn, Jeanne M. “Tennessee Williams’s Women: Illusion and Reality, Sexuality and Love”. Tennessee Williams: A Tribute. Ed. Jac Tharpe Jackson. Mississippi (1977); N.pag.

Mead, Shepherd. “The Secret year of Tennessee Williams”. Washington : U Magazine (Spring, 1977) : 9.

Miller, Arthur. “The Shadows of the Gods: A Critical View of the American Theatre”. Harper’s, 217 (Aug.1958): 35-43.

Newlove, Donald. “A Dream of Tennessee Williams”. Esquire (Nov. 1969): 172+

Peck, Seymour. “Williams and The Iguana”. New York Times New York (24 Dec.1961): Sec. 2: 5.

Presley, Delma E. “The Search for Hope in the Plays of Tennessee Williams”. Mississippi Quarterly, 25 (Winter 1971-72): 31-43.

Ramaswamy, S. “Geriatrics: The Treatment of Old Age in Tennessee Williams’s Plays”. Indian Journal of American Studies. 28.1-2 (Winter& Summer 1998): 1-6.

Rice, Robert. “A Man Named Tennessee”. New York Post (April 30, 1958): N.pag.

Riddell, Joseph N. “A Streetcar Named Desire: Nietzsche Descending”. Modern Drama 5 (Feb. 1963): 421-30. 222

Robinson, Edwin Arlington. Tristram in the Williams Family Library, Special Collections. St. Louis: Washington U. (n.d.): N.pag.

Rogoff, Gordon. “The Restless Intelligence of Tennessee Williams”. Tulane Drama Review 10 (Summer 1966): 78-92.

Sandra, Gilber and Susan Gubar. No Man’s Land: The Place of the Women Writer in the Twentieth Century Vol.1. New Haven: Yale LHP (1988): N.pag.

Schechner, Richard. “An Intercultural Primer.” American Theatre (Oct. 1991): 135-136.

Stein, B. Roger. “The Glass Menagerie Revisited: Catastrophe without Violence”. Western Huamnism Review 18 (Spring, 1964): 141-53.

“St. Louis Outnumbers New York City as Movie House Center”. Greater St. Louis. Columbia: Library, State Historical Society of Missouri (Aug. 1924): 28.

Timnick, Lois. “A Visit with Tennessee Williams”. St. Louis Globe Democrat (Sept.10, 1974): 84.

Timpane, John. “Gaze and Resistance in the Plays of Tennessee Williams”, The Mississippi Quarterly Vol. 48. 4. Mississippi State U (1995, 2000): 1.

Tischler, M. Nancy. “The Distorted Mirror: Tennessee Williams’s Self- Portraits”. Mississippi Quarterly, 25 (Fall 1972): 389-403.

...... “Sanitizing the Streetcar”. Louisianna Literature 14 (Fall 1997): 48-56. 223

Toomey, Micheles. Breaking Free of Emotional Bondage. 16 Oct. 2003. http://www.mtoomey.com/breaking free.html

Traubitz, Nancy B. “Myth as a Basis of Dramatic Structure”. Modern Drama, 19 (Mar.1976): 57-66.

Von, Szeliski. “Tennessee Williams and The Tragedy of Sensity”. Western Humanities Review 20 (1966): 203-11.

Vowels, Richerd B. “Tennessee Williams: The World of His Imagery”. Tulane Drama Review 3 (Dec. 1958): 51-56.

Wallace, Jack E. “The Image of Theatre in Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending”. Modern Drama 27 (1984): 324-25.

Weales, Gerald. “Tennessee Williams’s Achievement in the Sixties”. The Jumping off Place: American Drama in 1960s. New York: Macmillan (1969): 3-14.

Weissman, Philip. “A Trio of Tennessee Williams’s Heroines: The Psychology of Prostitution”. In Creativity in the Theatre. New York: Basic Books (1965).

Williams, Tennessee. “Facts about Me”. Where I live. New York: New Directions (1978): 60.

...... “On Streetcar Named Success”. Where I live (1978) : 15-22.

...... “The Production Notes to Glass Menagerie”. The Theatre of Tennessee Williams Vol.1. New York: New Directions, 1971.

...... “Person to Person”. The Theatre of Tennessee Williams Vol. 3. New York: New Directions. 1971. 224

...... “Tennessee Williams, Lives of the Saints: A Playwrights Obliquity”. Revue des Langues Vivantes, 40, (1974): 449-56.

...... “The Catastrophe of Success”, The Production Notes on The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Direction (1970): 16.

...... Foreword. Orpheus Descending. The Theatre of Tennessee Williams Vol.3.By Willaims. New York: Signet, 1976. 225

(C) INTERVIEWS & FILM

A Streetcar Named Desire. Screenplay by Tennessee Williams. Dir. Elia Kazan . Perf. Vivien Leigh and marlon Brando. Warner Home Video, 2003.

Bray, Robert. “An Interview with Dakin Williams”. Mississippi Quarterly 48 (Fall 1995): 777-88.

Devlin, Albert J. Ed. Conversations with Tennessee Williams. Jackson: UP of Mississippi 1986.

Jennings, C. Robert. “Interview with Tennessee Williams”. Playboy (April 1973): 69-84.

Personal Interview, October 1995, with Douglas Wixson, Author of Worker Writer in America: Jack Conroy and the Tradition of Midwestern Literary Radicalism 1889-1900. Urbana: U of Illinois P (1994).

Tischler, Nancy. Telephone Interview with Robert Bray. 20 Sept. 1997.

Treen, Mayes Esmeralda. Personal Interview with Allean Hale. July 2.

Williams, Tennessee. “Interview”. Vogue 15 Mar.1951: 96.

...... “Interview”. Harper’s Bazaar (Feb. 1955): 124.

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