Women in the plays of Tennessee Williams: studies in personal isolation and outraged sensibilities

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Authors De Rose, Maria Eliane Moraes, 1941-

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WOMEN IN THE PLAYS OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS:

STUDIES IN PERSONAL ISOLATION AND

OUTRAGED SENSIBILITIES

by

Maria Eliane Moraes »De Rose

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Of

MASTER OF ARTS

In the Graduate College

5 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

19 6 6 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR

This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfill­ ment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library.

Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowl­ edgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his judgment the proposed use of the material is in the inter­ ests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author.

SIGNED;

APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR

This thesis has been approved on the date shown below:

An. Date Associate Professor of English ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

X wish to express my appreciation and gratitude to my adviser, and friend, Dr * Cecil Robinson for his support, understanding and encouragement.

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT ...... v

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER

I. THEMES OF LONELINESS AND FAILURE OF COMMUNICATION AS DEVELOPED IN EARLY WORKS . 5

II . GENTILITY AT BAY ‘ ...... 20

III. THE STONE ANGEL AND THE ANATOMY CHART .... 32

IV. BLANCHE DU BOIS . . . 43

V. OTHER GUISES ...... 62

VI. CREATURES OF THE EARTH ...... 75

CONCLUSION ...... 85

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ..... 87

XV ABSTRACT

The contention of this thesis is that Tennessee

Williams has most successfully realized his principal themes through the portrayal of women who can be recognized as variations upon a basic character type* The underlying concept is that of a woman reared in the puritanical, genteel, graceful, and cultured tradition of the Southern

aristocracy whose world has fallen away from her, leaving her a misfit in a materialistic and brutalized society*

She suffers from loneliness and the inability to com­ municate « Her ultimate defeat results not only from her inability to cope with the neo-barbarism of modern industrial

society but also from her inability to cope with the erotic

aspect of her own nature. The enemy is without and within*

V An element in the playwrightfs success in presenting

this character type resides in his having developed foils in the persons of sex-centered women who appear in the same plays as do their spiritualized opposite numbers * However,

in later plays Williams becomes increasingly interested in

personalities for whom sex is a central principle of life*

In this shift of interest, he reveals a significant

ambiguity in his own philosophical outlook as he presents

the drama of the battle of body and spirit, while wavering

in his own allegiances * Although Tennessee Williams has

v not resolved the conflict philosophically^ he has vivified it dramatically through the portrayal of some of the most memorable women in modern drama. INTRODUCTION

The Southern aristocracy made a cult of the woman«

She was not only the center of the household, but also the conscious or unconscious receiver of the benefits of a guilt complex on the part of the master of the house who frequently made her children the half brothers or sisters of the slave girl who attended her or worked in her kitchen *

The hostile Northerner was aware of this situation and made use of it in his propagandistic attacks against the South,

It was necessary, therefore, for the Southerner to show that the woman was respected, valued and honored in the South more than in any other place or culture by praising her in every way, by placing her on a pedestal above all things so that she could remain untouched, but also deaf and blind to the fact of his relations with the slave girl, Another important reason for the glorification of the Southern woman was the fact that she was the perpetnator of the white race,

Wo I, Cash speaks of the cult of the woman in the following terms:

She was the South’s Palladium, this Southern woman--the shield-bearing Athena gleaming whitely in the clouds, the standard for its rallying, the mystic symbol of its nationality in face oft the foe. She was the lily-pure maid of Astolat and the hunting goddess of the Boeotian hill. And— she was the pitiful Mother of God® Merely to

1 mention her was to send strong men into tears — or shouts o -There was hardly-a sermon that did not begin .and end with tributes in her honor 9 hardly a brave speech that did not open and close with th&" dTakhihg of shields and the flourishing of swords for her glory. At » the last 9 I verily believe, the ranks of the Confederacy went rolling into battle in the misty conviction that it was wholly for her that they fought,^

There is one type of feminine character in Tennessee

Williams!s plays taken directly from this Southern tradi­

tion o It is the Southern gentlewoman. She is generally

the last representative of a Southern aristocratic family,

and like the aristocracy from which she has sprung she

belongs to the past, has no place in the present and is

only a shadow of something refined and cultivated. This

type of woman has generally a neurosis of some kind,

resulting from the conflict between the traditions she

inherited and the actual world in which she has to live*

This world ignores those traditions and when it is aware

of their existence, it either despises or is indifferent

to them * Thrown into a hostile wor ld which she can neither

understand nor accept she only lives in it physically* Her

mind recreates the Southern plantation where she lived as a

child or where her ancestors lived* She thinks that she

solves the conflict where she simply decries the world of

reality and takes refuge in the world of imagination* But

1* W* J * Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc * , 1954) , p ® 97 ° , 3 reality keeps touching her and she must support this re­

created world of dreams by trying escapes. They come in

the form of alcohol, drugs, sex, visions, perversions,

physical illness, distorted views' and use of religion or

imaginary lovers. She uses the escapes until the world, which she does not accept, decides not to accept her any­ more and destroys her in different ways.

This recurrent type of woman is contrasted with

another type of feminine character: the woman who never

even entered a Southern plantation, who inherited no tradi­

tion, who had no contact with aristocracy or refinement.

She may come from a poor, barren, sometimes filthy and

promiscuous background. Her previous or present conditions

of living are not necessarily a problem or cause for a

conflict® She is uninhibited and thinks of life in terms

of sexual satisfaction. Once she gets it she forgets her

surroundings and material needs and finds the meaning for

existence.

Very often we find both types in the same play.

The clash resulting from their different social back­

grounds, their way of facing life or running away from it,

offer strong contrasts and are interesting stud'ies:' of

personalitieso This essay will undertake to examine the

more important woman characters in the plays of Tennessee

Williams, not only because some of them are among his most

striking creations but because women in Williams 5 plays often are the conduits through which the playwright

expresses most movingly and most profoundly the central themes of his work®. CHAPTER I

THEMES OF LONELINESS AND FAILURE OF COMMUNICATION AS DEVELOPED IN EARLY WORKS

The main problem that many of the feminine charac­

ters of Tennessee Williams have to face, the problem that

is responsible for their emotional unbalance and conse­

quent and eventual destruction is the impossibility of

communicationo The difference between their social back­

ground and that of the other characters is only one of the

causes for it® There are many others, such as different values, extreme sensitivity on their part, hiding of

feelings and emotions, physical isolation, and non­

adaptation to their environment® The main consequences of

this impossibility of communication are loneliness and

frustration®

The character that best illustrates this problem is

also one of Williams’ best creations, Blanche Du Bois, the

heroine of A Streetcar Named Desire® However, in a way

Blanche did not appear for the first time in this play.

Tennessee Williams1 first heroines of her type are either a

preparation for the final portrait of Blanche or they are

Blanche herself at different stages of her life®

5 6

Since Blanche Du Bois is one of the key characters for Williams f whole work, a study of the characters in his early attempts to portray Blanche is necessary»

The earlier attempts are found in two plays in

27 Wagons Full of Cotton, a collection of one-act plays *

They are The Lady of Larkspur Lotion and Portrait of a

Madonnao The former portrays Mrs » Hardwieke-Moore and the latter Lucretia Collins, both having very definitely

Blanche1s personality traits and background.

Mrs. Hardwieke-Moore is a Southern ex-belle in a battered rooming-house, run by a Mrs. Wire, in New Orleans.

The landlady has a hard time trying to collect her rent from Mrs. Hardwieke-Moore, who, whenever the landlady appears, starts complaining about the bad conditions of the room, the filth, and the roaches that have invaded it.

When Mrs® Wire finally has a chance to talk and deliver her business Mrs® Hardwicke-Moore gives her usual excuse for not paying: she is waiting for the check that is coming from her Brazilian rubber plantation® The excuse has been used too often and is ineffectual now® In the middle of the argument, Mrs® Hardwicke-Moore1s only friend, the

Writer, comes in and tries to defend her^ till the anger of the landlady turns against him too, for he does not pay his rent either® But his “Brazilian rubber plantation^ is a

780-page masterpiece that he is supposed to be writing, and that will make him rich and solve all his problemsThis is 9 however 9 another ineffectual excuse. The landlady claims to be one of the type who hears nothing, sees nothing and says nothing, provided that her boarders pay the rent. Since this is not the case of either Mrs.

Hardwicke-Moore, or the Writer, Mrs. Wire forgets her three virtues and mercilessly denounces the two dreamers: Mrs.

Hardwicke-Moore1s Brazilian rubber plantation exists only in her imagination and the same can be said of the Writer1s

780-page masterpiece; the bottles of Larkspur Lotion are not filled with medicine as their label suggests but with alcohol; Mrs. Hardwicke-Moore!s concern with roaches is out of.place in a person who does not have a cent and any other place to stay. The landlady becomes cruel in her disclosure of the truth» The Writer, probably speaking the play­ wright 1s mind, in his defense of Mrs. Hardwicke-Moore and himself, defends imagination against reality, the Brazilian rubber plantation against his friend's present environment, his invented 7 80-page masterpiece against the actual impossibility of his achieving success. He confesses his desire to become a great writer and his lack of power for it. The existence in the rooming-house is only tolerable because he can dream of great successes on Broadway and volumes of poetry. He says that his lies are real and a defense against stark necessity.

Suppose that I, to make this nightmare bearable for as long as I must continue to be the help­ less protagonist of it— suppose that I ornament, 8

illuminate— glorify it! With, dreams and fictions and fancies! Such, as the existence of a ^SO-page masterpiece— impending Broadway productions — marvelous volumes of verse in the hands of publishers only waiting for signatures to release them! Suppose that I live in this world of pitiful fiction! What satisfaction can it give you^ good woman, to tear it to pieces, to crush, it— call it a lie? I tell you this— now listen! There are no lies but the lies that are stuffed in the mouth by the hard-knuckled hand of need, the cold iron fist of necessity, Mrs ® Wire! So I am a liar, y e s ! But your world is built on a lie, your world is a hideous fabrication of lies! Lies! Lies! ® • o Now I 8m tired and 1 1ve said my say and I have no money to give you so get away and leave this woman in peace! Leave her alone® Go on, get out, get away!1

The Writer1s plea for understanding and compassion for himself and his friend might be Tennessee Williamse plea for those who cannot bear the ugliness of reality and therefore have to rely on dreams® This encouragement to the woman to go on dreaming might be the playwright1s advice for defense against the total destruction brought about by frustration and loneliness <=, Although the Lady of

Larkspur Lotion, as Mrs o Wire calls her, and the Whiter can achieve some communication with each other, because they use the same self-deception and value imagination above reality, they remain isolated from the rest of the people who surround them and who cannot accept their view of life®

The presence of people like the landlady prevent their

attempt to escape reality from being entirely successful»

1® Norfolk, Connecticut, New Directions, 19^5? PP® 70-71o Those people are always near these fugitives 9 showing concern with the material aspects of life, reminding them of it, throwing their lies at their faces and seeing things in their naked truth« The situation in which we find this opposition--on one side people who defend reality, on the other people who represent escape from it— repeats itself again and again® Most of the time it is possible to feel that the author sides with the latter group* It is in A

Streetcar Named Desire that this opposition, represented by

Blanche and Stanley, is more marked than in any other play.

There is a definite suggestion of refinement in Mrs

Hardwicke-Moore ? s past. Her disgust with the dirt of her surroundings and the roaches is not ufakedn or just ex­ pressed in an attempt to keep the landlady from collecting her rent. She has not forgotten that she has lived in a different place. In fact the contrast between her previous and present environment is one of the reasons for the creations of her imagination, a creation that she helps with alcohol, under the disguise of medicine. Blanche, too was shocked when she saw the place where her sister lived and where she thought she was going to live. She, too, used lies to a point in which she herself could not dis­ tinguish between what was real and what had been invented \ by her, and she also preserved her lies in alcohol. The brutal disclosure of the truth shocked both Blanche and

Mrs. Eardwicke-Moore and hurt them deeply. But it did not 10 discourage them from going on viewing life as an escape from the hard world of reality and from protecting this view till the end« At the end when Blanche is being taken to a state asylum she thinks that her millionaire friend is coming to take her on some trip® Mrs * Hardwicke-Moore goes on imagining that her Brazilian rubber plantation is located a mile from the Mediterranean and near enough to the white chalk Cliffs of Dover for her to distinguish them on a clear morning®

Sigmi Le Falk mentions that escape into self- deception from little white lies to imaginative exaggera­ tions to the delusions of the mind is a theme on which 2 Williams played many variations® This progression can be followed from The Lady of Larkspur Lotion to A Streetcar

Named Desire®

Portrait of a Madonna is the second one-act play in which we can see the preparation for Blanche's creation®

Lucretia Cpllins is a Southern spinster and a recluse since her mother's death fifteen years before. She lives in a hotel and is supported by her church, but she ignores this fact and thinks that the money comes from her plantation®

Like the other feminine characters of her type Lucretia was brought up in a tradition no longer in existence® Her attempts to conciliate the rigid standards of education

2 ® Tennessee Williams (New Haven, Connecticut: College and University Press, 1 9 6 1 ), p® 50® given to her by her mother and the Church and her sexual needs were unsuccessful and resulted in a neurosis®

Lucretia became highly repressed sexually and is haunted by an abnormal sense of guilt® When the play opens she is about to be taken to the State Asylum% for she has been suffering from delusions® The most recent creation of her mind is an imaginary lover who comes to her room and

**indulges his senses^ with her ® The rapist is Richard, a man whom she loved in the past but to whom she could never communicate her feelings® Richard married another girl who is now expecting her sixth child® Lucretia avoids going out because she is very aware that people make fun of her, and Richard and his wife are among them® Lucretia1s frustrated love for Richard makes her create the imaginary situation in which, he comes to her room to rape her® Her unfulfilled wish to become a mother makes her firmly believe that she is going to have a baby as a result of her rape® The study of this over-refined and mentally ill

Southern lady may have inspired the last scene of A Street­ car Named Desire® Lucretia ends exactly like Blanche® A doctor and a nurse who perform their duty with efficiency but without warmth, take her to an asylum® When they come for her she thinks that she is being arrested on moral charges made by the Church® Not only Blanche but also

Alma Winemiller, the heroine of Summer & Smoke, are later developments of this figure® Alma had the same kind of upbringing and developed the same conflictneurosis and attitude toward sex * Had she not changed so suddenly and entirely she might have finished like Lucretia, who preferred a kind of spiritual rape« Lucretia1s horribly dated clothing and mannerisms also reveal her kinship to

Amandathe heroine of The Glass Menagerie.

Signi Lo Faulk compares Lucretia with the maiden lady of the short story The Night of the Iguana saying that not only the two of them but a number of Tennessee Williams heroines who have flourished before World War X are sex- 3 obsessed as a result of a nfractioustt Southern Puritanism,

Edith Jelkes 9 who appears in the short story nThe

Night of the Iguana,1* is another sexually repressed

Southern spinster who comes from

an historical Southern family of great but now moribund vitality whose latter generations had tended to split into two antithetical types, one in which the libido was pathologically dis­ tended and another in which it would seem to be all but dried up , , * Edith J elkes was not strictly one or the other of the two basic types . 0 6. o ^

She was rather, a combination of the two basically, having sublimated the over-sexed aspect of her temperament into painting. The effort, however, makes it necessary for her to take sleeping tablets, like Alma, She describes the

3« Ibid,, po 53®

4o One Arm and Other Stories (Norfolk, Connecticut New Directions^, 1948) , p. 170 • 13 effect of the sleeping tablets on her in the same words that

Alma uses to describe the same effect on her» It makes her

feel ttflike a water lily on a Chinese lagoon®1* 5 We find

Miss Jelkes in a hotel in Acapulco, where the only guests

are herself and two writers® She tries to approach them

and is at first avoided, then rudely rejected and then

insulted® Her need for communication undermines her

ordinary good sense and self-respect® She cannot leave the men, cannot stop trying to approach them® The situation reaches a point in which she is--though at the same time

attracted to and repelled by them— obsessed with curiosity

about them® The arrest of an iguana that is tied below her window gives her the chance not only to talk to the men

finally, but also to move closer to them, to the room next

to theirs® During the night she discovers their homosexual

relationship and overhears their conversation about her®

They show no mercy® She discards all dignity and goes to

their room where she is left alone with the older writer who tries to make love to her® For a moment she consents until her ndemon of virginity11 speaks louder than her

intense desire and wins the argument® She runs to her

previous room while the writer weeps his sense of guilt and

frustration® Miss Jelkes finds out that the iguana has

been released, and so has her sexual instinct® She touches

5® Ibid®, p . 192 o 14 the trace that the man left in her body and9 without taking sleeping tablets? she goes to sleep happily? because she is not lonely anymore«

Since Miss Jelkes cannot accept reality and has to live in it? she has to rely on the sleeping tablets in order to remain untouched by it and to forget the isolation in which her non-acceptance puts her. Her necessity to break this isolation and come out in order to establish some kind of communication is great? but her attempts are frustrated by the resistance put up by other people and she is inevitably hurt. She suffers when the pjatfona of the hotel makes fun of her and when the writers insult her? but she does not leave the place because among other things she would be in the same situation everywhere» Her terrible loneliness makes her ignore common sense and try to reach out for the men who despise her? even if only for physical presence and company. This situation reminds us of

Blanche8 s. Her brother-in-law wants her to leave and even presents her with a one-way ticket; her sister would prefer it too ? but Blanche has nowhere else to go and besides she needs people around her. So she ignores the hints and then the insults and remains until she is practically thrown out.

Miss Jelkes cannot find companionship with the writers? who are too much involved with themselves to notice her for anything she is inside. They are cruel in their analysis of her and judge her for what she seems to be: an old spinster trying to spy on them merely out of

curiosity<, Although at first she does not know what is

different about them that makes her want to approach them,

she instinctively apprehends that they are outcasts as she is and that this fact might bring them all together, and so

she insists*- But the writers cannot accept a third person

in their private world and they disregard her inner self.

For a moment the older writer understands only one of her needs, and his attempt to fulfill it is not without

success e Although it was a frustrating experience for the writer, who needed to prove himself but failed, there is a

suggestion that it was a profitable experience for Miss

Jelkes® At the same time that she keeps her virginity

inviolate she is released from nthe strangling rope of her

loneliness *n

Benjamin Nelson compares the plight of Edith

Jelkes to that of Alma Winemiller and calls our attention

to the different solutions that each woman finds *

Alma turns to promiscuity while Edith retains her virginity, pleased with her new experience, but content, too, with her victory over her emotions and those of the writer * ^

The short story The Night of the Iguana was later made into a full-length play of the same name * The play,

however, is only loosely based on the short story* The

6. Benjamin Nelson, Tennessee Williams: The Man and His Work (New York: Ivan Obolensky, Inc., 1961), p • 187 * l6 set Is the same but the characters and the situations are differente

Another character in a one-act play is confronted with:cruel and insensitive people whom she tries to approach and make herself loved and accepted by them* It is Aunt Rose who appears in The Long Stay Cut Short or

The Unsatisfactory Supper« Aunt Rose reappears in the film-play Baby Doll, which Tennessee Williams wrote by putting two one-act plays together: the one just mentioned and 27 Wagons Full of Cottono However it is in The Long

Stay Cut Short or The Unsatisfactory Supper that the character of Aunt Rose is fully developed* Here she is the central character and it is her suffering that is being depicted9 whereas in Baby Doll she is only a minor charac­ ter and remains in the shade while Baby Doll's and her husband's troubles are being dealt with*

Baby Doll's Aunt Rose is a sweet and delicate old spinster who lives with the vulgar and mean woman that is

Baby Doll and with her hateful husband/ Archie Lee% after having run through all the other relatives who eventually manage to get rid of her, fearing the responsibility and expense of a long illness or a funeral* Aunt Rose tries to please "her children9 lt as she calls Baby Doll and Archie

Lee ^ in every way she can, by cooking their food, doing service in the house, or picking her roses, her "poems of nature," to put in the house * Baby Doll and her husband 17

have barely tolerated the old woman1 s presence, and now he

is determined to send her away, regardless of the fact that

she has no place to go* Archie Lee is one of Tennessee

Williams1 brutes and he acts characteristically„ When Aunt

Rose comes in with her roses Baby Doll asks her about her

future planso Realizing that she is in danger of losing

her last refuge, Aunt Rose pretends to ignore the implicit

meaning of Archie Lee's question by talking about Jesus and

hopes of heaven® But Archie Lee bluntly tells her to

leave the next morning o

Well, talk it over and get off the subject of Jesus! There's Susie, there's Jim, there's Tom and Jane and there's Bunny! And if none of them suits her, there's homes in the county will take her! e « » First thing in the morning I'll pile her things in the car and drive her out to whichever one's she's decided!7

Again we see Stanley's attitude toward Blanche,

So as not to be more deeply hurt by realizing her

true and hopeless position--that of the unwanted old family

servant— Aunt Rose assumes an attitude of defense by

pretending to herself that their angry and irritated faces

express only their dissatisfaction at her supper, After

Archie Lee tells her that she is leaving, she says:

thought you children were satisfied with my cooking,

7, Tennessee Williams, "The Long Stay Cut Short or The Unsatisfactory Supper,n in Baby Doll (New York: New Directions, 1956), pp» 206-207®

8 * Ibid*, p . 207• 18

Suddenly there is a tornado and paby Doll and Archie Lee

enter the house and

Aunt Rose remains in the yard, her face still somberly, but quietly thoughtful» The loose gray calico of her dress begins to whip and tug at the skeleton lines of her figure . . * she looks wonderingly at the sky, then back at the house beginning to shrink into darkness, then back at the sky from which the darkness is coming, at each with the same unflinching but troubled expression * „ • . Nieces and nephews and cousins, like pages of an album, are rapidly turned through her mind, some of them loved as children, but none of them really her children and all of them curiously unneedful of the devotion that she had offered so freely as if she had always carried an armful of roses that no one had offered a vase to receive.9

She is then blown by the wind toward the rose bush.

Aunt Rose is one of the characteristic broken moth- women of the world of Tennessee Williams• She is a

pitiful character, who has always tried so hard to approach

people, find acceptance, communication, understanding ^and

companionship for her old age and isolation. But they have

considered her only as a burden to be quickly passed to the next relative.

It is natural that Aunt Rose in her frightened

humility should try to turn the subject to roses and o religion when Archie Lee questions her about her future

plans* It is natural that she should try to avoid or post­

pone the conversation, for if she acknowledges the fact

that she is a burden to them and is being discarded she

9« Ibid o , p. 208. 19 will have to take some kind of action which hen old age and condition prevent 6 When this realization becomes finally conscious she faces the fact and accepts it®

Signi Lo Falk may have missed the point when she says that ltThe final scene is a facile conclusion which is not in keeping with the rest of the play: a sudden high wind blows her away — symbolically without a doubt«, If the critic means that the rest of the play is realistic and that therefore it should not have a symbolic ending the objection is not valid* The combination of realistic and symbolic elements is permissible * Besides throughout the play the realism of incidents, dialogue, and characteriza­ tion, as in the cases of Archie Lee and Baby Boll is balanced with the symbolism of the characterization of Aunt - Rose* The rose symbol is present all the time and even

Aunt Rose * s name is suggestive of it®

10 * Op * cit*, p * * CHAPTER XI

GENTILITY AT BAY

Tennessee Williams has the habit of rewriting his plays and stories 9 sometimes creating an almost entirely new play as in the case of The Night of the Iguana? some­ times keeping only some of the elements, characters or situations of the original work o

The short story ^Portrait of a Girl in Glassf% somewhat autobiographical, was reworked successfully into a full-length play called The Glass Menagerie* In this case the short story contains all the characters and situa­ tions of the later play, although the characters are not fully developed in the story * Amanda, who is the central character of the play, is not so important in the story.

Her children, Tom and Laura, are also further developed in the playe Despite this fact they already have in the short story their basic characteristics of personalitye Laura is shy, abnormally sensitive, lacking in self confidence and so fearful of the world that she makes no movement to find out what it might offer h e r » Tom i;s the same frustrated young man, torn between his desire to go places, see new things and people, have better chances than a job in a warehouse and his duty toward his mother and sister. He

20 21 must support them9 because the father left long ago.

Amanda is at the same time the sentimental dreamer, tied to the past traditions of her youth and the practical and realistic woman who would like to be sure about the material future of herself and her children. Jim, the gentleman caller, is the same clumsy, practical minded, materially drawn man who thinks too much of himself and his potentialities of achieving a comfortable future.

The plot of ^Portrait of a Girl in Glassn is kept in The Glass Menagerie, except for the fact that Jim and

Laura in the play had known each other in high school.

The Glass Menagerie is a memory play. Tom, who is the narrator and a character in it, insists on the fact that this is not a realistic play, that the most realistic character is the gentleman caller. Despite this statement the whole play is strongly realistic. This realism, how­ ever, does not depend on the violence and brutality that appear in some of Tennessee Williams1 late plays. In fact, the excellence of The Glass Menagerie is in its great sensitivity and poetry. The realism is in the characters themselves, in the situations presented and in the dialogue.

Amanda is the central figure in The Glass Menagerie.

She is the relic of a decadent tradition of gentility and tries to combine her world of dreams— the Cavalier Old

South--with the world of reality. She gains n'dignity and beauty" at the end of the play when her chatter cannot be

/ heard, Laura9 her daughter 9 Is slightly crippled due to a childhood disease and this is one of the reasons why she is extremely shy, sensitive, insecure and willess, and substi­ tutes the world of glass pieces representing animals for the actual world, Tom is the supporter of the family, holding a mediocre warehouse job, trapped by the situation of his family and the affections and demands of his mother @

He writes poems inz his work hours and goes to the movies every day. In the movies he can escape into adventure in faraway lands like his father, tla telephone man who fell in love with long distance11 and left for good, leaving Tom with the responsibility he finds hard to accept. When he comes home he is irritated by Amanda’s constant dictation on how he should manage every detail, and by her constant scolding of him for not eating properly, going to the movies too often, smoking too much, reading B» H, Lawrence, not trying hard enough in his job. The argument only ends when he leaves abruptly to go to the movies, after telling her how disgusted he is with tier criticism of him, and calling her a few names, If Amanda is>concerned with her son, whom she does not understand, she is even more con­ cerned with Laura who is helpless and lost, Laura’s extreme shyness and lack of self-confidence prevented her from finishing high school. She could not bear the noise that her brace made when she came into a classroom® In an attempt to keep her daughter from being one of those nbarely tolerated spinsters 9 n- Amanda sends Laura to a

Business College and later on finds out that her daughter quit going to classes after the first week ® The first time that a test was given Laura had become sick to her stomach and had never shown up again« When she left supposedly to go to classes, she went to zoos, museums or simply sat in the park® Amanda8 s last hope is to find a husband for

Laura® After much insistence on her part Tom brings -home his only friend at the warehouse, Jim 0 1Connor, who turns out to be a former high school hero who had been Laura1s idol® Laura is terrified when she recognizes him and refuses to come to the table® Amanda forces her, but

Laura feels sick and has to be excused® Amanda is charmed by the gentleman caller and decides to give him and Laura a chance to get acquainted and maybe eventually get married®

She calls Tom to help her in the kitchen and sends Jim to keep Laura company in the living room® Lauras reserve is broken little by little before Jim1s enthusiasm and naturalness® She lives the romance of her life in the few minutes she emerges from her glass menagerie only to be sickened by his pity soon afterwards® Jim is clumsy with her favorite glass piece— the unicorn— and breaks it® He is also clumsy with her feelings and breaks her heart when he says that he is engaged and will not come back® Jim leaves and Tom has to face Amanda1s accusations, for she blames him for letting them make fools of themselves, 24 though she is the one to be blamed® After a short time Tom leaves too and the two women are left alone to face a hopeless future ®

Like Blanche Du Bois <5 Amanda and Laura find them­ selves thrown into a world they refuse to accept® For

Blanche and Amanda this world bears no resemblance to the one of their dreams® It does not have lta great big place with white columnsn where they used to live 9 or "gentlemen callers" who owned big plantations and courted them® For

Laura it does not offer the security that she finds in her glass menagerie® Laura1s refusal of the world comes from her incapacity to cope with itr her unwillingness to even try it 3 her dread of being crushed in the attempt® Although their refusal has different causes, their pseudo-solution is the same® Blanche and Laura simply deny the world of reality and try to retire into an imaginary one® They fail in their attempt because their physical presence in the actual world gives it a chance to intrude upon the imaginary one® Amanda recognizes the impossibility of escaping entirely and what she tries is a combination of both worlds, which keeps her in a state of tension all the time, because she feels that both of them are crumbling ® Amanda is haunted both by the past and by the future, and she makes her children share in this uneasiness® What is gone and cannot return distresses her, what is to come and cannot be avoided torments her® The present is the time in between when she thinks of the past and at once glorifies and regrets it; and when she waits for the future, tries to prepare for it, hut sees all her attempts come to nothing*

This preoccupation makes Amanda ignore the inner needs -of her children* The fact that Tom wants to be a poet and is frustrated in his warehouse job seems to her irrelevant beside the fact that he must work to support herself and his sister* Laura's introvert temperament, entirely dif­ ferent from her own cannot be understood by Amanda * This fact contributes to Laura's isolation too. Tom has some insight into his sister's problem; he is aware of her loneliness, but he does not attempt any communication with her, though he loves her very much and would like to help.

But he is too afraid of being trapped, too much concerned with himself and his desire to leave * He is trying to solve his own conflict* Although he does not take any positive action to help Laura he cannot avoid getting involved, without being aware of it* When he finally leaves he is incapable of escaping his memories * Laura's image especially hounds him, no matter how far he goes, how often he changes places, how many different people he meets *

T- She is always present* Laura does not try to overcome her physical disability, she simply retires quietly from the world,.by hiding under her glass, shell with her old phonographic records * When the play starts she is already a piece of that collection, as fragile as one of her glass 26 animals * The only glimpse of reality that Laura ever has comes through at her encounter with the gentleman caller»

Meeting Laura again is only an incident in Jim1s life 9 for

Laura it is the most important event of her life® Tom introduces Jim to the audience as ltthe long delayed, but always expected something that we live for*** Jim soon realizes Lauraf s attitude or lack of attitude toward life *

He tries to persuade her that her limp is hardly noticeable and soon starts talking about his favorite subject: him­ self * He boasts about what he has done, will do, and the great career he will have * This great self-confidence involves Laura * For the first time she talks about her­ self * She shows him her glass menagerie and lets him hold her favorite piece, the glass unicorn— a symbol for Laura herself, they are both out of place in the modern world *

Laura: Hold him over the light, he loves the light! You see how the light shows through him? Jim: It sure does shine! Laura: I shouldn11 be partial, but he * s my favorite one. * Jim: What kind of thing is this one supposed to be? Laura: Haven? t you noticed the single horn on his forehead? Jim: A unicorn $ huh? Laura: Mm— hummnm * Jim: Unicorns, aren!t they extinct in the modern world? Laura: I know! Jim: Poor little fellow, he must feel sort of lonesome® Laura: (Smiling) Well, if he does he doesn’t complain about it® He stays on a shelf with some 27

horses that don! t have horns and all of them seem to get along nicely together.!

The sound of music comes from the street and Jim asks Laura to dance9 an offer which she surprisingly acceptso It is the great moment of h e r . life p'.-He hits the table and breaks the unicorn* At this moment Laura is further away from her glass refuge than she will ever be again* She accepts the loss and comments^

Now it1s just like all the other horses* * * * Glass breaks so easily* No matter how careful you are* * * * I ’ll just imagine he had an operation* The horn was removed to make him feel less— freakish! Now he will feel more at home with the other horses^ the ones that don’t have horns*2

When Jim kisses her she comes even closer to his world*

But the "fragile unearthly prettiness" that had come out of

Laura and had made her like "a piece of translucid glass touched by light" during the dance and the kiss is gone when Jim stammers that he is already engaged and awkwardly departs«, soon afterwards* Laura’s contact with reality is brief and painful* Her joy is gone, her loneliness is only intensified and her retreat into her glass world is final*

As Benjamin Nelson points out the story of Laura-- simple and poignant as it is— is neither the sole nor the central conflict in the play*

1* New York: New Directions9 1945? pp * 105-106*

/ 2. Ibid., p. 110. 28

Laura1s personal dilemma Is part of a greater dilemma: the destruction slow and remorseless of a family« It is not a melodramatic destruc­ tion: there is no battle of angels above them* It is gradual, oblique and laced with pathos and humor, but it is the erosion of a family--none­ theless ; and the central protagonist of the drama is not Laura but Amanda, her mother.3

Amanda Wingfield is

a little woman of great but confused vitality clinging frantically to another time and place. Her characterization must be carefully created, not copied from type. She is not paranoiac, but her life is paranoia. There is much to admire in Amanda, and as much to love and pity as there is to laugh at. Certainly she has endurance and a kind of heroism, and though her foolishness makes her unwittingly cruel at times, there is tender­ ness in her slight person.^

Although Amanda clings frantically to the past she does not escape the reality of the present and its demands on people. In her incapacity to combine two worlds— present and past— lies her conflict. She tries to bring the world of her youth back by wearing dresses that she wore then, to revive it by telling stories that either happened then or that she thinks happened., such as some afternoon when she received seventeen gentlemen callers.

They were all rich, n'the most prominent young planters of the Mississippi Belta--planters and sons of planters 1n On

such occasions she wants Laura to get properly dressed and prepared to receive a gentleman caller at any moment, when

3 o1 Nelson, op . cit., p. 103« l . ; 4« Williams, The Glass Menagerie, unnumbered front page. 29 she knows that there is nobody coming e She then does not allow the word crippled to be used for Laura® Amandaf s attempts to re-create the past and construct an unreal life are not successful® Like Blanche 9 the world she sees around her9 the reality of the grimy apartment in which she lives contrasts brutally with her dreams® But Amanda finds strength to fight against her adverse conditions® When she tries to cope with reality she becomes irritating, obsti­ nate and narrow-minded and berates her son whom she considers a dreamer when action is needed® In one of her violent quarrels with Tom she says:

You are the only youngnirian that I know who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don11 plan for it®5

Amanda is only too aware of this fact, and for this reason her escape into the past is not complete* There is a practical side in her that senses that Tom will leave soon, that Laura has no job or husband and that if their exist­ ence is already a desperate struggle, it will be more so after he goes® When Tom.makes his final departure Amanda tells h i m :

Go to the movies, go! D o n 81 think about us, a mother deserted, an unmarried sister who 1s crippled and has no job! Don11 let anything

5 o Ibid®, p o 55 ® interfere with your selfish pleasure! Just go, go, go — t t O' the movies! 6

On such occasions she does not refuse to see things as they

are, she does not try to adorn their unpleasant aspects.

She does not misapprehend reality all the time or com­

pletely.

Although the stage directions that describe Amanda

present some favorable traits of character these do not

always appear in Amanda as we see her in action. Yet we

are left with a feeling of sympathy for her. It comes from

our recognition of her heroism and valor in her acceptance

of the desperate struggle. It is her capacity to fight and

endure that makes her valiant and noble and gives her

dignity and tragic beauty.

Thomas Cahalan supports Benjamin Nelson8 s point of

view about Amanda:

It should be observed that Laura1s is not the only tragedy of the play. Equally doomed is Amanda. Having lost her husband and her Southern world, she is now fated to lose Tom, her dreams of some resolution to Laura$ s difficulties, and any further aim to her own life. In some ways her tragedy is even more overwhelming than Laura * s, if somewhat less spectacular.7

Like the majority of critics Benjamin Nelson gives

a favorable view of the play, saying however that Laura1s

portrait is the least successful.

6. Ibid., p. 122.

7 o A Comprehensive Outline of Three Plays by, . T enn.es see ¥ illiams (Massachus etts : Harvard Outline Comp any, 1963), p. 16. 31 Too far removed from the world of her, brother and mother, she never quite attains a lucid charac­ terization e The girl in glass is a shadow girl whose dilemma motivates much of the thought and action of those around her, but who never emerges as a human being in her own righto®

This statement might be true if it were possible to over­ look the scene between Laura and Jim, one of the most important scenes of the play as far as the revelation of

Laura * s personality is concerned. As Thomas Cahalan points out:

She (Laura) is odd; yet not so odd that she does not hanker for the natural pleasures of love and see in Jim 0 fConnor the symbol of such love * 9

Through her capacity for love Laura definitely emerges as a human being in this scene * Besides her removal from the world of her brother and mother is the essential part of her characterization and entirely consistent with her personality o

8 . O p . cit*, p e 99«

9 a Op o cit a , P o 15* CHAPTER TIT

THE STONE, ANGEL- AND THE ANATOMY CHART

Tennessee Williams portrays his character * s attempts to establish communication with one another and with the world and he knows that they are destined to fail *

He shows sympathy for them, but treats them objectively*

They possess the values that should be preserved as the only ones that give any meaning to life, but the world is hostile to those values and destroys them by destroying the people who cultivate them*

A case in point is the heroine of Summer and Smoke*

This play is only loosely based on a short story called The

Yellow Bird * The heroine’s name in the short story is also

Alma and she is the daughter of a minister» She was brought up in the same Puritanical manner that Alma

Winemiller in Summer and Smoke was and she developed the same shyness and repression* Later on she revolts, with no external motivation, suffers a complete metamorphosis and becomes a prostitute* The short story ends in humor and fantasy*

The themes of impossibility of communication and loneliness in Summer and Smoke are played against a symbolic background outwardly represented by a stone angel

32 and an anatomy chant» The stone angel is in the public square; it is a public drinking fountain, the water flows from its hands held together to form a cup» Its name is

Eternity, but one can only find it out by reading it with one1s fingers, like a blind person. This angel symbolizes

Alma Winemiller, who, in her turn, symbolizes ltsoul, 11 the meaning of her name in Spanish. The anatomy chart is in

John Buchanan1 s office. In a parallel way the chart symbolizes John, who is the symbol of flesh.

The symbolism is evident from the very beginning and throughout the play. It is not only in the background, but also in the characterization of Alma and John. She is the delicate, refined and sensitive daughter of a Southern minister and has been wasting her youth helping her father and taking care of her ^perversely childish11 mother. In this loveless house she received a too austere education and soon developed an inner conflict because she could not conciliate remaining a lady and satisfying her sexual needs. She becomes excessively repressed and as a result i of it she has crises of hysteria which she mistakes for heart trouble. But Alma remains a refined lady, and she is out of place in the twentieth century. Her mannerisms of gentility, such as her accent and her habit of indulging in verbal affectations immediately transfer her to a past century and ahother place. In the stage directions she is described as seeming to belong to a more elegant age, such 34 as the Eighteenth Century in France *n Alma both gives expression to and symbolizes traditional values»

The gulf between Alma and John appears in a pro­ logue in which they are presented as children before the stone angel which remains on the stage during the course of the play. As children they are already different and

Almafs sensitivity is mocked by John and is shown in contrast with his roughness.

A l m a , as a child of ten, comes into the scene, o • o She already has the dignity of an adult; there is a quality of extraordinary delicacy ahd tenderness or spirituality in her, which must set her distinctly apart from other children

Her inner qualities set her apart from John ds a child and later on as an adult. When the characters are reintroduced in scene one we see that their differences have been intensified, and they keep the same characteristics that they had as children.

Alma had an adult quality as a child and now, in her middle twenties, there is something prematurely spinsterish about her. An exces­ sive propriety and self-consciousness is apparent in her nervous laughter; her voice and gestures belong to years of church enter­ tainment, to the position of hostess in a rectory. People her own age regard her as rather quaintly and humorously affected. She has grown up mostly in the company of her elders. Her true nature is still hidden even from herself*2

1 . New York: The New American Library, 19^8, p. 15®

2 . Ibid., p o 24. 35 John Buchanan comes along. He is now a Promethean figure, brilliantly and restlessly alive in a stagnant society. The excess of his power has not yet found a channel» If it remains without one, it will burn him up. At present he is unmarked by the dissipations in which he relieves his demoniac unrest; he has the fresh and the shining look of an epic h ero.3

Throughout the play Alma and John vainly try to communicate, but only succeed in exposing their ideas.

Neither understands or accepts the other1s real feelings and needs. Alma1s ideals and John's cult of materialistic values, based primarily on sensual gratification, cannot be brought together. He describes what life is for him in an anatomy lecture he gives Alma:

Now listen here to the anatomy lecture! This upper story's the brain which is hungry for something called truth and doesn't get much but keeps on feeling hungry! This middle's the belly which is hungry for food. This part down here is the sex which is hungry for love because it is sometimes lonesome. i've fed all three, as much of all three as I could or as much as I wanted— you've fed none— nothing. Well— maybe your belly a little--watery substance--But love or truth, nothing but— nothing but hand-me-down notions I— attitudes!— poses. Now you can go. The anatomy lecture is over.^

For Alma life is the straining to reach for the unattainable:

Have you ever seen, or looked at a picture, of a Gothic cathedral? . . « How everything reaches up, how everything seems to be straining for something out of the reach of stone— or human--

3® Ibid., p . 21o

4. Ibid., p. 98. 36

fingers? « =, * The immense stained windows ^ the great arched doors that are five or six times the height of the tallest man--the vaulted ceiling and all the delicate spires-.-all reaching up to something beyond attainment ! To me— well, that is the secret, the principle back of existence— the everlasting struggle and aspiration for more than our human limits have placed in our reach* « @ ® Who was that said that— oh, so beautiful thing !— 11 All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars!u5

Alma is the one who actually suffers with the impossibility

of reaching the other*s soul and communicating with him.

Her suffering is greater because she is the more sensitive,

her feelings are deeper and of a higher nature, her values

are loftier, her isolation is also physical, her need is

greater and she loves John. John8 s world does not demand

.communication of souls; it is satisfied with contact of

bodies only. To his anatomy lecture Alma replies

So that is your high conception of human desires. What you have here is not the anatomy of a beast, but a man. And 1^-1 reject your opinion of where love is, and the kind of truth you believe the brain to be seeking! There is some­ thing not shown on the chart. John: You mean the part that Alma is Spanish for, do you? Alma: 'Yes* that1s not shown on the anatomy chart! But it!s there, just the same, yes, there! Somewhere, not seen, but there. And it *s that that I loved you with— that! Not what you mention!--Yes, did love you with, John, did nearly die of when you hurt m e !^

5- Ibid. , p . 7 7 o

6 . Ibid., pp. 98-99 » - 37

John listens to what Alma has to say in her defense of the

soul9 but he goes on living his own point of view® The

concept of the soul is too abstract for him and has no

reality in his world* He pays more attention to the

struggle that is going on inside Alma, the conflict between her physical and spiritual nature that manifests

itself in repeated states of hysteria* The manifestations

of this struggle combined with her self-consciousness give

Alma a general manner of behavior that places her beside

Lucretia Collins, though in Lucretia those symptoms are

• - ; carried to an extreme. Also each woman acts similarly in

spending her life in devotion to a man® However each

finishes differently» ''

After exposing their ideas in a series of conversa­

tions in which there is no communication, Alma and John

suddenly exchange their points of view* He acknowledges

the existence of the soul and she finally accepts the

existence of her body. Critics in general consider the

motivations for this shift of positions weak and reject

them* John gets involved with Rosa Gonzales, a disrepu­

table girl who is the opposite of Alma in every way. Papa

Gonzales is determined to have John marry his daughter.

There is a violent fight between Gonzales and John1s

father, Dr® Buchanan, in which John’s father is killed*

As John inadvertently causes the fight, he considers himself

to be responsible for his father’s death* So he leaves, 38 finishes his medical studies and his father6 s work by- striking out an epidemic in a neighboring town® He returns to his town covered with glory^ entirely changed and even ready to start a family, not with Alma though, but with Nellie Ewell, a girl to whom Alma used to give voice lessons* Meanwhile Alma has had a long illness during which she apparently brooded over John? s anatomy lesson and came to the conclusion that he was right® She offers herself to him, saying that the girl she was ndied last summer---suffocated in smoke from something on fire inside her®1* John refuses her offer, because he has come around to her way of thinking® Alma recognizes the poignant irony of the situation and before crying, she laughs bitterly at it®

You talk as if my body had ceased to exist for you, John, in spite of the fact that you've just counted my pulse® Yes, that's it I You tried to avoid it, but you've told me plainly® The tables have turned, yes, the tables have turned / with a vengeance! You've come around to my old way of thinking and I to yours like two people exchanging a call on each other at the same time, and each one finding the other one gone out, the door locked against him and no one to answer the bell! She laughs® I came here to tell you that being a gentleman, doesn't seem so important to me anymore, but you're telling me I've got to remain a lady* (She laughs rather violently®) The tables have turned with a vengeance I 7

They part» John to a respectable life that will be crowned with marriage; Alma to a career of prostitution* She

7 o Ibid®, pp. 119-120® 39 starts it with a traveling salesman whom she meets in the park of the stone angel.

Critics in general have an unfavorable view of

Summer and Smoke. They say that the symbolism of the play is too obvious, the characters are not living people, but more like allegorical figures, the sudden reversal of positions at the end, a shift involving the whole structure of the play is neither properly motivated nor explained in terms of action.

Harold Clurman notes that ttin Summer and Smoke so much time is given to a conscious exposition of theme that 8 Williams loses the specific sense of his people. 11

Benjamin Nelson criticizes the falsity of situation and character:

They (John and Alma) have been chosen by Williams to be the representatives of attitudes and through most of the play he does not allow them to veer for an instant from their assigned courses. As such they are severely limited as human beings and everything they say emanates from the single point of view that each repre­ sents* They are pawns used in a contrived situation which echoes itself from scene to scene.9

The critic also calls our attention to the marked resem­ blance between Alma and Laura. Both are lonely, cry out

for love and are denied and broken.

8. Harold Clurman, The New Republic, quoted by Nelson in o p . cit., p. 125«

9 e Nelson, op. cit . , p. 126. )

4o

Both possess the beauty of the ideal which is a pitiful anachronism in a 1world hit by lightning? and both suffer intensely from the inability to communicate their inmost feelings with another human being * 10

The comparison might have been extended to Blanche Du Bois, for the same characteristics of Alma and Laura are found in her«, Blanche is actually the extreme result of the frustration of love? the inability to establish communica­ tion and the shock between the beauty of the ideal and the ugliness of reality.

Although the three women resemble one another in their needs and capacity for love? the circumstances of their lives are different. Laura1s and Alma1s are more similar and Alma would more likely finish like Laura than like Blanche. Blanche did not exactly choose to give

‘iy herself to men as Alma seems to have done. The circum­ stances of Blanche’s life brought her' in contact with them.

Moreover she had a guilt complex about her husband’s death? and she tried to atone for her guilt by giving herself to men. Although Alma’s attitude at the end of the play? may be explained in terms of her sexual needs ? it is certainly not consistent with her values ? temperament ? character ? upbringing and former behavior in the play? unless her final attitude is explained by a desire to punish herself for not having given herself to John when he wanted her.

1 0 . Ibid.? p. 120. 41

John Is the man she loves and for whom she has kept her - selfe Did she accuse herself of having failed herself and

John when she refused to give in to him? When she decided to do so it was already too late and he was irremediably lost for her• This refusal brought her suffering and endless loneliness o Alma may blame herself for what is reserved for her in the future and she may have decided to punish herself by profaning her body, by giving it to someone with whom she has no ties whatsoever that might justify the giving* Maybe such a reaction, conscious or unconscious, motivated her final attitude*

Esther M« Jackson sees in Alma1s end the expression of the moral contradiction of the modern world:

The moral contradiction within modern life is revealed in the fact that Alma is destroyed despite the supposed mobility of her ideals, and the irresponsible Buchanan is, indeed, rewarded*11

Alma1s destruction may reveal the moral contradic­ tion of modern life, but it does not explain this contra­ diction, since her choice is so incoherent with her previous behavior and expressed ideals *

Nancy M. Tischler redeems the play on the basis of the universality of its theme:

But even with its romanticism and ambiguity, Summer and Smoke has beauty and truth* The

11 * The Broken World of Tennessee Williams (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press,

1965)9 140 * 42

theme has universality» The struggle between the mind and the flesh? between order and anarchy? although not so clear-cut as the artist pictures it? is a universal human conflict. There is a haunting truth in its portrayal of the vain human search for complete communication.12

The universality of the themes of the play loses some of its significance when the solution is so particu­ larized . Though Summer and Smoke might be considered effective as a kind of morality play whose characters are essentially allegorical? in the last analysis? despite its eloquence and beauty of language? it fails to convince because it is not based upon psychological reality.

12. Tennessee Williams: Rebellious Puritan (New York: The C i tad el Pr ess ? 1965)V P « 1 5 6 • CHAPTER IV

BLANCHE DU BOIS

After the creation of Mrs» Hardwicke-Moore,

Lucretia Collins, Edith Jelkes, Aunt Rose, Laura, Amanda and Alma, Tennessee Williams produced one of his best and most well-finished characters in Blanche Du Bois. Although

Blanche has many things in common with each one of these characters, although they are a preparation for her creation or even herself at different stages of her life,

Blanche is not the result of a patchwork* Her characteriza­ tion was not formed out of pieces of previous characters brought together. She ^emerges as a complete character, with a story of her own. If some of her attitudes,ideas and modes of behavior resemble those of Lucretia, Amanda,

Alma or any of the other women it is because all of them come from the same social background, had the same up­ bringing, all found the same difficulties of adaptation to a different environment and hostile people and consequently all developed defenses and attempted escapes.

A Streetcar Named Desire presents a struggle between two ways of life, one represented by Blanche Du

Bois, the other byrjaer brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski. It should be added early in this discussion that neither is

43 kk the ideal way and neither is intended to represent the ideal way. Tennessee Williams is showing both and implying that one is destroying the other in modern society. At the same time that he sympathizes with Blanche as representa­ tive of the gifted? the cultured? the artistic? against the ape-like Stanley ? he admires Stanley8 s sexuality and

Stella1s acceptance of it.

s Williams, presents both ways of life in a violent contrast ? in a plot that develops through the gradual unfolding of Blanche1s secret and presents her destruction.

What Stanley is and represents is stated by his creator in the stage directions:

Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes. 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 o 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 humor ? 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. Hbesizes women up at a glance ? with sexual * classifications ? crude images flashing into his mind and determin­ ing the way he smiles at them.l

Blanche completes the picture of Stanley in a speech to her sister? Stella ? about him:

There 8 s something downright— bestial— about him I . . » He acts like an animal? has an animal's --- 1 . Tennessee Williams? A Streetcar Named Desire (New York: The New American Library ? 1947) ? 29 * ~~ 45

habits ! Eats like one 9 talks like one! There fs even something--snb-hnman--something not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something— ape-like about him, like 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! • . . Night falls and the other apes gather! There in front of the cave, all grunting like him, and swilling and gnawing and hulking! This poker night!— You call it — this party of apes! • , .^

At the same time that Blanche’s speech describes what

Stanley is, it also shows, in her reaction toward him, what she is *

Stanley is the crude, uncultured, vulgar and animal-like man who thinks of physical strength and sexual potency in terms of qualities that place him in a superior position. Stanley’s way of life is represented not only by what he does but also by what he is. His actions may be taken as the true expression of his ideas, they are coherent with■ i his ideas and there is no conflict. All of his values are material and physical and he is unable to understand spiritual or intellectual values and unwilling to either respect them when he sees them in another person or accept them.

Rather than expressing dissatisfaction with the grubby conditions in which he lives, he exults in them, and he does not indicate any desire to better himself. More important, Stanley, as brute force incarnate, has no poetry or sensitivity or nobility in him. . » • This intelligence is

2. Ibid., pp. 71-72. mostly animal cunning and his power of speech limited to expressing basic d e s i r e s e 3

He lives in the present 9 fulfills his immediate needs 9 gets rid of anything that may disturb his way of

living 3 tries to mould those who approach him according to his own views, and despises those who refuse to conform to

them« And he lives happily in his animalistic existence,

Blanche Du Bois, however, is a much more complex

character* Her actions do not always correspond to her basic ideas and values » Although we can find in what she

is motivation for what she does, many times her essence and

external attitudes can be opposed* It is impossible to

reach Blanche’s inner self if we judge her by her actions

only, as some critics have done. What happens there is

that they simply put a label on her and dismiss her as a

prostitute, a nymphomaniac, an alcoholic and a neurotic,

and they never go any further * But Blanche is much more

complex than that* She is above all a lady and remains one

to the end» She is a cultured, sensitive, refined woman,

born within an aristocratic but now-decayed tradition. In

her background we find many of the answers for what she is,

Stanley's and Blanche's are two different worlds* She

comes from a tradition in which people cultivate values of

which Stanley has never even heard. However when he is

3 , Robert Brustein, ^America's New Culture Hero: Feelings Without Words,lt Commentary, 2 (February, 1958), p. 124. brought Into contact with Blanche he becomes aware of their existence» At the same time that he knows that he does not and will never possess such values5 he feels that they threaten his way of life @ The discovery of the existence of values that disturb him makes him oppose them violently by opposing Blanche«, and destroy them by destroying

Blanche? the person who brought this realization to him*

In his opposition and success in destroying her we find the added implication that the vulgar is destroying the old, dignified way.

Stella is in the middle, between her sister and her husband. A small part of her is still in Blanche?s world, but not for a long time now; the greater part is in

Stanley*s world. She has adapted almost completely to

Stanley's ^normal and adjusted** life. Although Stella1 s adaptation has meant surrender to ttbarbarism,lt she is satisfied with her choice, mainly because the kind of satisfaction for which she asks is sexual and Stanley can give her that. Stella has not forgotten completely the traditions that she inherited, but she does not let this memory interfere with her way of life. Both Blanche and

Stella come from the same background. They both come from the same t$big place with white columns.n Circumstances of life brought Blanche down from them, but she fought to remain there. Stella was pulled down by Stanley, as he tells her: 48

When we first met 5 me and you, you thought I was commone How right you was, baby. I was common as dirt. You showed me the snapshot of the place with the columns * 1 pulled you down off them columns and how you loved it, having them colored lights going!^

Stella accepts what Stanley has to give in return, and she

thinks that the sexual satisfaction he gives her compensates

for his ignorant brutality, explosive temper and their violent quarrels. The ^colored lights** blur the squalor

of their surroundings and she lives happily too.

Blanche's tragedy comes primarily from her impos­

sibility of finding a tradition and a civilization to which

she can belong. As Joseph Wood Krutch points out:

Ours is a society which has lost its shape = • . . The culture of the Old South is dead and she (Blanche) has good reason to know that it is. It is however the only culture about which she knows anything. The world of Stella and her husband is a barbarism— perhaps as its admirers would say, a vigorous barbarism— but a barbarism nonetheless. . « » Blanche chooses the dead past and becomes a victim of that impossible choice.5

Blanche cannot accept the world accepted by Stella,

because it is too brutal and horrifying for her. Therefore

she hides behind the world created by her imagination after

the pattern of the Southern tradition of gentility. The

escape into this imaginary world does not save her, instead

it creates a conflict with her physical life in the world

4. Williams, Streetcar, p. 1 1 2 .

5 ® Joseph Wood Krutch, Modernism in Modern Drama, quoted by Tischler in op. cit . , pp . 144-145. 49

of reality that keeps making demands on her * She helps her

attempt to escape by drugging her mind with alcohol9

fantasies and sex® Blanche's situation is made more tragic

because she is aware of the non-existence of her imaginary world and of the resources she is using to support her make-

believe creation. She is not unconsciously trying to

escape reality. She is doing it consciously, because for her there is no way to live in this world,

I don't want realism, I want magic ! Yes, yes., magic! I try to give that to people® X mis­ represent things to them. I don't tell truth, X teXl what ought to be truth® And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it! Don't turn the light on !6

Blanche's inability to accept the world of reality isolates

her ® When the play opens, her physical isolation, which is

also the external representation of her loneliness, has

already started driving her to panic® She appeals to

Stella:

I guess you're hoping I'll say I'll put up at a hotel, but I'm not going to put up at a hotel® I want to be near you, got to be with somebody, I can11 be alone! Because — as you must have noticed--!!m--not very wello ® • ® 7

At this point she has already had more blows than she could ) take. Like Alma Winemiller, Blanche does not possess

tragic strength but softness® Blanche recognizes it when

she says:

6 ® Williams, Streetcar, p® 117®

7® Ibid ®, p ® 23® 50

X never was hard or self-sufficient enough» When people are soft--soft people have got to shimmer and glow--they1ve got to put on soft colors 5 the colors of butterfly wings, and put a— paper lantern over the light * * * It isn’ t enough to be soft o « • .^

Stella recognizes it too when in an argument with Stanley she says to him:

Stanley: Delicate piece 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.

Blanche possesses the beauty of the ideal and once she possessed the means to preserve it. But she was too soft to resist the fight and escape the force of circum­ stances which gradually annulled her means and left her defenseless and unable to avoid destruction® Blanche’s life presents a combination of circumstances that never cease being adverse and against which she has little or no control.

She sees her relatives die one by one after Stella leaves.

I, I, I took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, mother! • • • You just came home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths®-^

8 . Ibid., p . 79 »

9® Ibid®, p. 111.

10 o Ibid. , p . 26. 51 The estate of the family. Belle Reve, is left to her care and she sees it disappear through her lady-like and inexperienced hands:

o • o you left! ^1 stayed and struggled! You came to New Orleans and looked out for your­ self! X stayed at Belle Reve,and tried to hold it together! 1 1m not meaning this in any reproachful wafy, but all the burden descended on my shoulders s « « <, You are the one that abandoned Belle Reve, not I! I stayed and fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it .^1

Love might have saved her:

When I was sixteen, I made the discovery— love* All at once arid much, much too completely* It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that1s how it struck the world for me * But I was unlucky. Deluded* ^

The arrival of love is accompanied by disillusion­ ment. Her early marriage finishes when she discovers that

Allan, her husband, is a homosexual. This disappointment is followed by disaster when she reveals her discovery to him. She was young, naive and inexperienced and could not imagine his reaction. Allan was weak and unbalanced and was riot prepared to face the consequences that the revela­ tion of her discovery would bring» Hhecommitted suicide leaving Blanche with a guilt complex that she will never overcome. With his death her chance to achieve happiness dies too:

11. Ibid*, pp* 25-26.

1 2 . Ibid*, p . 95• 52

And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that1 s stronger than this— kitchen — candle« • *

The catastrophic results of her marriage mark the beginning of her downfall:

Yes 9 X had many intimacies with strangers * After the death of Allan— intimacies with strangers was all X seemed able to fill my empty heart with * * * ® X think it was panic, just panic, that drove me from one to another, hunting for some protection— here and there, in the most— unlikely places--®

Blanche turns to sex for several reasons. Reaching for sex is an attempt to keep alive: nDeath . ® « the opposite is desire.n 15 It is an attempt to establish communication with someone and so escape loneliness, to find protection against her helplessness. Sex also represents atonement for her guilt. Like the attempt to conciliate the world of reality with the world of her imagination, the attempt to find any kind of„ fulfillment in sex fails, because she cannot solve the conflict that arises from the difference between her actions and her culture and moral code® Sex does not fulfill her needs,

f . . . and neither does it offer any protection. It only helps to destroy her reputation and so add to her sorrows. She is dismissed from her job as a teacher and is left

1 3 * Xbid ®, p . 9 6 .

14. Xbid®, p. Il8 .

15 o Ibid., p. 120 o 53 penniless« But it is not only financial difficulties and need of physical company that make Blanche appeal to her sister e It is mainly her attempt to start again? it is her old attachment to gentility that reawakens ? and it is the need of moral support to accomplish her new ends* Blanche gains nobility in this attempt to make a new start at this stage of her life* But she is doomed to fail when in her way she finds Stanley whom she regards from the beginning as her nexecutioner$t' and who eventually proves to be so*

The first time I laid eyes on him I thought to myself ? that man is my executioner! That man will destroy me* * * *1 ^

Blanche1s sensitivity? refinement and culture put her in a superior position* Stanley? though he does not admit this superiority? feels it and resents this fact. He also senses the threat that Blanche represents to his marriage*

Blanche8 s mere presence reminds Stella of her previous values and way of life* Moreover? Blanche is not a silent presence * She talks? she admonishes? she tries to re­ establish Stella 8 s lost values:

Maybe we are a long way from being made in God1s image ? but Stella— my sister— there has been some progress since then! Such things as art-- as poetry and music— such kinds of new light have come into the world since then! In some kinds of people some tenderer feelings have had some little beginning 1 That we have got to make grow! And cling to? and hold as our flag! In

16 * Ibid, ? p * 93 * 54

this dairk march toward whatever it is we * re approaching» * • « Don ? t — don ? t hang back with the brutes 117

At the same time that Blanche struggles to escape Stanley's malice and to keep alive, she fights for what she imagines

Stella wants or should have» Stella's salvation would he her own salvation. But besides refusing to be saved,

Stella does not think that she is in a situation from which she should be saved. When she tells Blanche nTou take it for granted that I am in something that I want to get out oftt1^ and proves afterwards that she is adapted to and satisfied with the life she has, Blanche recognizes that

Stella will not leave her coarse husband, With this recognition there comes the feeling that salvation through her sister is impossible,

Blanche, then, turns to Harold Mitchell, Stanley's only sensitive friend* He is lonely too, he needs love and somebody to need him and he has been showing some interest in Blanche, For a moment it seems that she will be saved after all:

Mitch: You need somebody, And I need some­ body, too. Could it be— you and me, Blanche? Blanche: Sometimes--there 8 s God--so quickly!19 -

17- Ibid., p. 72.

18 . I b i d e , P.. 69 «

19 ? Ibid. , p. 9 6 . 55 Like Laura1 Blanchef s sudden joy is brief ^ her salvation lasts but a moment and this ^glimpse into what she might have had only intensifies her final isolation and makes her loneliness more devastating. Mitch rejects Blanche when

Stanley finds out about her past and tells him. Stanley will not allow Blanche any kind of fulfillment* He must finish the process of destroying her.

The ultimate causes of Blanche’s destruction come through several blows she receives on her birthday. Up to this point Blanche is still fighting. Even though her situation seems to be at its worst she does not surrender the dream she has of herself, and still hopes that her inner treasures may be recognized, valued and accepted.

A cultivated woman, a woman of intelligence and breed can enrich a man’s life--immeasurably I I have those things to offer, and this doesn’t take them away * Physical beauty is passing» A transitory possession* 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! Increase with the years! How strange that I should be called a destitute woman! When I have all of these treasures locked in my heart, I think of myself as a very very rich woman! But I have been foolish--casting my pearls before swine!20 /

On her birthday she feels very definitely that the ntraptt: that she sensed that Stella’s apartment represented has started to close around her. Mitch does not come to her birthday party; Stanley’s birthday present is a one-way

20. Ibid*, p. 126* 56 bus ticket back to Laurel 9 the place from which she came ^

V, and the disclosure of her past to Mitch« Mitch comes later to torment her with accusations about her past. After thrusting a light bulb into her face and calling her liar, he attempts to seduce her, and finally tells hevr that she is not nclean enough to bring in the house with his mother** and therefore he will not marry her. When she recognizes that she has lost Mitch she gives up fighting.

As if those shocks were not enough when Stella is taken to the hospital to have her baby Stanley rapes Blanche. Such a combination of blows would be more than enough to annihilate a woman better prepared and stronger than

Blanche. Yet the greatest blo% comes when Stella is faced with a choice: either believe Blanchefs story about the rape and leave Stanley, or not to believe Blanche and stay.

If Blanche1s story is not true, it means that her lies have become too dangerous and she has completely lost contact with reality. Therefore she must be sent to an asylum. Stella knows what her choice will signify for

Blanche. But she chooses to sacrifice Blanche:

I couldn1t believe her story and go on living with Stanley.21

By sacrificing her sister Stella finally sacrifices her integrity and dignity to StanleySs bestiality.

Ironically enough the rape story is one of the few true

21. Ibid., p. 133* 57 facts that Blanche relates and yet it is taken as the

final proof of her insanity. Many critics have seen in the rape of Blanche a mere sensationalistic touch of Tennessee

Williams:

When St an ^ a drunken primitive with a single idea about women9 takes the deranged Blanche Du Bois, a sentimental prostituteoff to the bedroom and speaks the line, ltWe 1 ve had this date from the beginning! 11 Williams has arrived theatrically® It is reported that waves of titillated laughter swept over the audience® It was the effect, no doubt, that Williams sought. But it bears no resemblance to the Greek tragedy with which he identifies himself,22

Leaving aside the subject of Greek tragedy and the

fact that Streetcar is not intended by Williams to be a

tlGreek tragedy,n the rape is an important element in the

structure of the play, Stanley’s self-assertion can only be achieved through sex and physical strength* Blanche is

defenseless before his animal force and ^brutal desire *n

At the same time that he proves to himself and to Blanche

that he is the lt'superior,n he completes the process of

destruction.

The rape is the culmination and symbol of his victory. It was not premeditated but it fits perfectly into the scheme * It is the final act of destruction, Stanley destroys Blanche with sex* It has been her Achilles heel * It has always been his sword and shield,^3

2 2 , Signi L * Falk , uThe Profitable World of Tennessee Williams,11 in Two Modern American Tragedies (New York: Charles Scribner 1s Sons,1961), p « 119 *

23• Nelson, op, cit,, p , 146, 58

When Blanche is about to be taken to the asylum she

clings to the illusion that her millionaire friend is

coming from Florida to take her away* When the doctor and

the nurse come for her she feels danger in their impersonal manner toward her and she retreats in panic pretending to have forgotten something„ Stanley then seizes the colored paper lantern and throws it at her, an action that symbol­

izes her final destruction* Blanche t!cries as if the lantern was herselfJf And it is* The colors of illusion make reality less unbearable; the lantern dims the actual world

and helps her to keep the beautiful images that she creates*

Blanche reacts violently to the brutal treatment of the nurse and is knocked to the floor * The doctor recognizes

that she is a high-born lady, and when he gives her the

treatment due to one, she reacts accordingly * When the

doctor takes off his hat, speaks to her in a courteous

language and a gentle voice, Blanche1s terror subsides *

She. ^stares at him with desperate pleading,n' but as he

smiles she extends her hands to him, and her last words as

she lets herself be led off stage are addressed to him:

Whoever you are— I have always depended on the kindness of strangers*^4

Although A Streetcar Named Desire has been generally

praised by most of the critics, some of them have made the

usual accusations against Williams, saying that he falsified

2k * Williams, Streetcar, p * 142* 59 reality for the sake of sensationalism or saying that

Streetcar is ^highly successful theater and highly success­

ful showmanship, but considerably less than that as 25 critically secure drama®n Warren Coffey criticizes the

end of the play saying that

In Streetcar there is this grave improbability that Stella would refuse to believe Blanche?s story of the rape and would have her committed® Williams hurries over this because he needs it to produce the melodramatic scene in which Blanche is taken a w a y ® 26

Stella1s attitude at the end of the play is coherent with her previous behavior, and it is very probable that

she would refuse to believe Blanche1s story. Stella shows

sympathy for her sister1 s situation => but she made her

choice long before Blanche came to her and she is determined

to keep it and not to let anybody or anything interfere with her marriage ® Stella might have taken Blanche!s side

on several different occasions® She sees Stanley*s cruelty

toward Blanche, she protests against it but she takes no

definite attitude to stop it® Stanley*s sexual power

numbs her reason. He knows it and uses it whenever he

feels that he is in danger, that Stella is tending to

Blanche 1s side. Stella accepted life with Stanley

25 * George Jean Nathan, ^Review of A Streetcar Named Desire,n in Two Modern American Tragedies (New York: Charles Scribner 1s Sons, 1961)? p. 90®

2 6 . ^Tennessee Williams: The Playwright as Analysand,n Ramparts, No * 3 (November, 1 9 6 2 ), p. 5 8 . 6o

according to his terms and at this point she would not

leave him because of her sister ®

Arthur Gantz explains Blanche’s punishment as a

result of her act of rejection^ which is 5 according to him %

the greatest crime in Williams? moral system®

Since Williams begins the action of the play at a late point in his story, the act itself is not played out on stage but only referred to. Not realizing that she is describing the crime that condemns her, Blanche tells Mitch of her discovery that her adored young husband was a homosexual and of the consequences of her disgust and revulsion, , * , While she delivers this speech and the ones surrounding it the polka to which she and her husband had danced, the Varsowiana, sounds in the background. At the end of the play when Blanche sees the doctor who is to lead her off to her asylum, her punishment is complete and the Varsowiana sounds again, linking her crime to its retribution,^7

The explanation may be valid. After all if we are to

attribute to Blanche an error of judgement which marks the

beginning of her fall, that error should be her revelation—

and her way of doing it--to her husband as to her discovery

about his homosexuality* Although we can hardly blame her

for it or can hardly think of anything else she could do,

she still remains responsible for the ultimate cause of his

suicide, Blanche’s position in face of this situation is

only another example of her limited field of choices and

limited free will * It is just another example of a

27 o nThe Desperate Morality of The Plays of Tennessee Williams,tl? The American Scholar, No, 31 (Spring, 1 9 6 2 ), p. 2 8 4 . 6l

situation in which whatever attitude one chooses to take

one will be wrong ^ and therefore punishment will follow*

Thus we witness the disintegration of a woman, a woman of courage who fights against forces that she

cannot overcome: an environment of brutality, indifference, unkindness and cruelty in people around her, and the burden

of a past given to her by these circumstances and which she

cannot change* Blanche is good, dignified and noble potentially, and she strives to rise above circumstances, but she fights without possibility of victory* We pity

Blanche * Her punishment is out of proportion, her suffering

is too great, and there is no justice in her destruction*

/ CHAPTER V

OTHER GUISES

With the characterization of Blanche Du Bois,

Williams certainly achieved a tour de force, yet he was unwilling to give up experimenting with further variations

on the basic character type which she represented.

Two secondary characters in Orpheus Descending present some affinity with Blanche Du Bois. Vee Talbott

and Carol Cutrere are prisoners of a small Southern

community that allows malice, intolerance and moral

decadence. Once Carol tried to protest against the social injustice of her bigoted town by attempting to fight for

the cause of the poor, distributing her inheritance among

them and participating in a march to the capitol. Her idealism simply put her in the position of an outcast.

She was considered a ^Tewd vagrant11 and arrested for it.

She then discarded her ideas of reform and started leading

a dissolute life

I am just a "lewd vagrant." And I 1m showing the nS o0 «B . 1sn how lewd a "lewd vagrantn can be if she puts her whole heart in it like I do m i n e !1

Vee Talbott, who is the half-crazy wife of Sheriff

Talbott, cannot conform to the brutality and violence she

1 . New York: The New American Library, 1958, p. 40.

62 63 sees around her and cannot bear her loneliness® So she escapes into a combination of religious fanaticism and painting® She paints fantastic visions that she has and ignores or pretends to ignore her husband1s participation in beatings9 lynchings and corruption and her own omission as to taking a position against these 11 awful things11 that she witnesses® Her visions help her to forget everything:

I can? t paint without— visions ® I couldn’t live without visions!^

Carol Cutrere has been called na sort of spiritual sister of Blanche Du Bois.®n She is not given Blanche’s degree of motivation, but like Blanche she tries to forget the loss of her ideals in sexual looseness® She describes her way of seeing life saying:

What on earth can you do on this earth but catch at whatever comes near you, with both your hands, until your fingers are broken?3

The thing that comes nearest to her is sex, so she uses it also as a form of rebellion against her community® People call her corrupt and exhibitionist, which is what she wants to be called®

K® M® Sagar analzes the implication of Carol’s behavior saying that since society is hell and its values evil ’’any form of anti-social or unconventional behavior,

2® Ibid ®, p ® 8 3 o

3. Ibid o, p . 31® 64 however ineffectual, however corrupt, however self- 4 destructive, is to be applauded®n

But sex, or the sexual act, also represents for

Carol, as it does for Blanche, an attempt to escape loneliness or fulfill it *

The act of- love-making is almost unbearably painful, and yet, of course, I do bear it, because to be not alone, even for a few E- moments, is worth the pain and the danger.

Another character, Alexandra Del Lagd, in Sweet

Bird of Youth turns to sex as an escape, displaying an attitude similar to Carol1s.

I have only one way to forget these things I don't want to remember and that's through the act of love-making. That's the only dependable distraction so when I say now, because I need g that distraction, it has to be now, not later.

But, unlike Carol, Alexandra does not have a social conscience, neither does she have a wish for self-destruc­ tion. The things that she does not want to remember can all be related to time. Although sex is again an attempt to fulfill her loneliness, it is above all a way to make time stand still. Alexandra Del Lago wants to forget a heart disease wthat places an early terminal date on her life.**' She wants to forget that her beauty is gone and

4. nWhat Mr. Williams Has Made of D . H. Lawrence,n The Twentieth Century, No. 1002 (August, i9 6 0 ) , p. 147«

5® Williams, Orpheus Descending, p. 75*

6 . New York: The New American Library, 1 9 5 9 P® 47 ® 65

with it is the legend that she was. Much of her success in

her career as an actress depended on her beauty <> She is

aging now and her beauty is fading and she tortures her­

self because of a sense of failure as an artist. She failed

as a human being when she discarded all her human qualities

to achieve her goal. But she did not exactly fail as an

artisto Time failed her when it did not stand still. She

is now decadent and cynical and uses everything that may

help her to forget nthe goddam end of her life.**

When Alexandra and Chance Wayne are brought

together through the wreckage of their lives they are able

to understand each other and communicate for a brief

moment. Together they recognize and admit their defeat and

'in this recognition Alexandra's human qualities return.

Chance, when I saw you driving under the window with your head held high, with that terrible stiffnecked pride of the defeated which I know so well; I knew that your come-back had been a failure like mine. And I felt something in my heart for you. ,That's a miracle, Chance. That's the wonderful thing that happened to me. I felt something for someone besides myself. , That means my heart's still alive, at least some part of it is, not all of my heart is dead yet. Part's alive still . . . I wasn't always this monster . . . Chance you've got to help me stop being the monster that I was this morning, and you can do it, can help me.7

But Chance cannot help her or save her. He is too

much involved with himself and he cannot even save himself.

7. Ibid., p. 98. 66

So they pass each other? and each follows his way to

destruction separately.

In Something Unspoken Williams returns to the

Southern woman as he portrays Cornelia Scott and Grace

Lancaster and their relationship. Something Unspoken is

plotless; it is a study of contrasting personalities»

Cornelia is a proud and wealthy spinster who has brought

Grace to her house? as her secretary9 fifteen years ago when Grace's husband died and Cornelia herself was alone

after the death of her mother. In those fifteen years a

1 ove-hate relationship has developed between them.

Although a bond of real love exists ? neither woman has z been able to break the wall that separates them and achieve

communication and fill the void of their loneliness.

Cornelia is strong and domineering ^ and Grace, though more

feminine and fragile, has some strength under her quiet

tone and manner. At the same time that she lets herself

be dominated by Cornelia and in a way likes it, she also

resents it. On the other hand, despite Cornelia's arrogance

and cold manner, she has been devoted to Grace and resents

Grace's inability to acknowledge and reciprocate her out­

spoken affection. It was on this particular day, fifteen

years ago, that Grace came to stay with Cornelia. For that

reason, Cornelia gives her fifteen roses one for each year,

and as she recollects the occasion she attempts to finally

break the wall and reveal the ^something unspoken# that has existed between them« Strangely enough she becomes

sentimental in this conversation9 revealing the other side

of her personalityo Grace cuts in upon her sentences,

fearing what an intimate conversation may uncover ® She is,

as Cornelia says nfrightened of anything that betrays

feelingon There is a suggestion of Lesbianism in their

feelings* It is suggested in Cornelia’s manner toward

Grace and in the latter!s way of avoiding the conversation,

a mode of behavior that may indicate that she is aware of what Cornelia may reveal * She does not want it to be said

out loud, probably because such a revelation would require

some kind of attitude from her, and she prefers not to take

any and so avoid the responsibility of the choice *

On this same day the local Confederate Daughters

Chapter is going to elect its president and Cornelia is

instructing a friend on how to carry on her campaign* The

instruction is given in a series of telephone conversa­

tions which allows us to see Cornelia's snobbery, arrogance

and prejudice * She will only accept election by acclama­

tion and refuses to enter in any kind of competition* The

proceedings of the election are communicated to her by

telephone calls which interrupt her conversation with

Grace, an opportunity that Grace welcomes, being so

frightened of Cornelia's sentimentality and possible

revelation» Cornelia loses the election and when Grace

hears this result n'a slight, equivocal smile appears 68 momentarily on her face; not quite malicious, but not really sympathetic e n It seems that Cornelia's defeat establishes some balance in their relationship, Grace, then, sees the roses, and admires them and as she exclaims nWhat lovely roses! One for every year!n the curtain falls*

There are no external circumstances interfering in this relationship and preventing communication * It is the women themselves who are unable to establish it * Evidently the resentment they have against each other and their inability to come out in the open, lay their cards on the table, and finally confide in each other are the main reasons for this incommunicability0 The roses may continue to come every year, but something will remain unspoken between them and they will go on together in their loneli­ ness u a deux» n

With Violet Venable in Suddenly Last Summer

Tennessee Williams creates another character who is avoiding the truth, But Mrs« Venable is evil. She not only wants to avoid the truth, but also wants to put falsity in its place and commit a crime in the name of her ntruth.n She is vain and possessive and will go to the extreme of cruelty trying to keep the image that she created of her son, Sebastian. In sharp contrast with her is Catharine

Holly who says that truth is one thing she never resisted and who proves that statement when she tells the terrible story concerning Sebastian and his death, even at the 69 possible cost of being 1obotomized* In her stern compulsion to say the whole truth Catharine resembles the young woman

Blackie in The Milk Train Doesn?t Stop Here Anymore who exclaims9 under similar circumstances, UT will always dare 8 to say what I know to be true en Mrs« Venable wants

Catharine to be operated on and this wish of hers is motivated by two factors« The girl threatens to destroy the image of Sebastian^ an image that Mrs» Venable holds sacred* But Mrs * Venable is also taking her revenge against Catharine for having taken her place as her son1s companion, If Catharine is operated on she will stop her n’babblingn against Sebastian and even if she does not stop uafter the operation, who would believe her ?11 In order to have her wish obeyed Mrs ® Venable, like the ferocious Mrs,

Goforth in Milk Train, is trying to corrupt everyone around her with money, because they all want it or need it for one reason or another* Catharine1s mother and brother and her­ self were left some money by Sebastian, Mrs» Venable has his will in probate, hoping that Catharine1s mother and brother will either persuade the girl not to repeat the story about Sebastian, or consent to the girl’s operation.

She promises Dr * Cukrowicz to establish a foundation to support his work in brain surgery, if he does not believe

Catharine’s story and therefore determines that she needs

8, New York: New Directions, 1964, p » 98 * 70 a lobotomy and performs it® So Mrs® Venable builds up pressures on all sides against Catharine and the truth®

She is attempting to devour all of them in much the same V , . . way in which the street urchins devoured Sebastian® She is intelligent enough to find an elaborate rationalization for her crime:

There's just two things to remember ® She's a destroyer ® My son was a creator 19

Both Mrs® Venable and Catharine are women of courage and strength® Mrs ® Venable however turns these qualities to evil® Catharine uses them to discover the whole nature of evil and has the strength to survive after the horror of her traumatic experiences® It is Mrs® Venable who is the destroyer, she is attempting to destroy truth and at the end when she does not succeed her strength fails her and she withdraws into voluntary insanity and loneliness®

In The Night of the Iguana Tennessee Williams presents again two contrasting personalities in the charac­ ters of the tt?insatiable widow^ Maxine Faulk and the saintly Hannah Jelkes® Maxine is described as ^a stout, swarthy woman in her middle forties--affable and rapa- 10 ciously lusty®n Hannah is nremarkab1e-1ooking--ethereal, almost ghostly® She suggests a Gothic cathedral image of a

9® Tennessee WilliamsSuddenly Last Summer (New York : New Directions, 1958), p ® 32®

10® Tennessee Williams, The Night of the Iguana (New York: The New American Library, 1961)., p « 9~» ' 71 medieval saint, but animated.The primary purpose of the playwright is not to contrast the two women, as it seems to be in Something Unspoken. It is the conflict and struggle of the defrocked Episcopalian minister, Rev.

Shannon, and his relationship with the two women that are being presented. As he tends to one or the other the conflicting sides of his nature are revealed to us.

Maxine is partly unpleasant and partly likable.

She has a passionate and uninhibited nature and strong sexual needs which she fulfills with whoever is around.

She keeps two Mexican young men as her employees less to help her run the hotel than for that purpose. When Shannon comes, her designs on him are obvious. But Hannah comes almost at the same time and as she feels Hannah1s superiority and becomes afraid of losing Shannon she behaves in an un­ pleasant way toward the other woman. But Maxine is not bad basically. She simply equates life with sex and in that she is in the same group as Serafina Delle Rose in The Rose

Tatoo, except for the fact that Serafina, a widow too, was inconsolable about the,death of her husband and Maxine may be anything but inconsolable, She has no reason to be so since there was no communication between herself and her husband and they had even stopped talking. We see Maxine1s kindness when ..she keeps Hannah in the hotel even if Hannah

11. Ibid., p. 21. 72 has no money and represents a threat to her plans con­

cerning Shannon» It is true that at first she wants

Hannah to leave, but she explains her reason:

I got the vibrations between you— I ?m very good at catching vibrations between people— and there sure was a vibration between you and Shannon the moment you got here« That, just that, believe me, nothing but that has made this e • o misunderstanding between us * So if you just don't mess with Shannon, you and your Grampa can stay on here as long as you want to, h o n e y .

Hannah, however, does not represent the danger that

Maxine fears. She only wants to help Shannon--but not

through sex--to solve his problems. He has already tried

sex and it offered him no solution. Although Hannah

realizes the physical appeal that she has for him she will

not allow him to corrupt her with sexuality and destroy

their friendship. , Hannah has the sensitivity of Blanche

and Alma, but she has moral strength. She has the courage

and capacity of endurance of Amanda, but she lives solely

in the world of reality and accepts it as it is and her

place in it. She wants to help Shannon with sympathy and

understanding. , And she believes that she can because she

knows what is happening to him having felt the same way

herself. He is tormented by what he calls a uspook11 inside

him, she had the same thing, only she named it "blue

devil."

12. Ibid., p. ?8. 73 Hannah: X called him the blue devil ^ and o o oh o o . we had quite a battle ^ quite a contest between us* Shannon: Which you obviously won* Hannah: I couldn’t afford to lose® ( Shannon: How1d you beat your blue devil? Hannah: I showed him that I could endure him and I made him respect my endurance. Shannon: How? Hannah: 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 ®13

Hannah succeeds in her attempt to help Shannon.

She does not solve his problem, she is not trying to; only he can do that * But she helps him to face himself and realize the nature of his obsessive sense of guilt. When

Shannon has his ncrack up n and is roped into a hammock and pretends to struggle and suffer, Hannah tells him:

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’s so much lovelier than Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, Mr * Shannon? There’s something almost voluptuous in the way that you twist and gioun in that hammock— no nails, no blood, no death® Isn’t that a comparatively comfortable, almost voluptuous kind of cruci­ fixion to suffer for the guilt of the world, Mr * Shannon?!^7

She pities him and tries to relieve him of his suffering, by offering him what he has been looking for all his .life— human understanding® She recognizes his need 11 to believe in something or in someone, almost anyone, almost

13 » Ibido , p. 107 ®

14 ® Ibid®, p® 99 o 74

anythingn and explains how she found the answer for that need^ how she has found something to believe in:

Broken gates between people so they can reach each other, even if it’s just for one night only» vo o e One night . * -• communication between them on a verandah outside their * ® , separate cubicles, Mr® Shannon®15

She mends the nbroken gates11 betwezen herself and

Shannon when she reaches out for him in compassion„ They

do not remain together, but their meeting (and separation)

is not like the meetings of Laura and Jim and Blanche and > ' Mitch, that only precipitated the destruction of the weakest® Neither is it like the meeting of Alexandra and

Chance in which bothAare already beyond salvation when they meet and find each other, nor is it like the meeting of

Alma and John in which Alma loses herself when she tries to

save him» Hannah helps Shannon up the way, but she does not go down in her attempt ® She refuses his suggestion of

traveling together as impractical® She is not attempting

communication throughout a lifetime between herself and

Shannon® That would be unrealistic^ She attempts a one- night communication and may have saved him with it* She will remain alone but she unemotionally accepted her fate

long ago. She has won the battle against her ltblue devil’1

and it was then that she learned to live with herself®

15 » Ibid®, pp. 106^107 ® CHAPTER VI

CREATURES OF THE EARTH

The success that Tennessee Williams achieved with the type of which Blanche Du Bois is the most memorable representative was attained to a considerable degree by his creation of another group of characters who act effec­ tively as foils e We have seen them together in pairs in the same play. Such is the case of Mrs. Hardwieke-Moore and the landlady9 in The Lady of Larkspur Lotion? Alma and

Rosa Gonzales in Summer and Smoke9 Blanche and Stella in A

Streetcar Named Desire, Hannah and Maxine in The Night of the Iguana. In these pairs, except for Hannah, one woman is the decadent Southern aristocrat and the other, except for Stella is a Representative of the people,n one is tied to the restrictions of Puritanism while the other is totally uninhibited, one uses sex as an escape from loneli­ ness and the other makes sex the center of her existence.

Cornelia and Grace never come to the point of acknowledging the existence of sex. Mrs. Venable avoids this recognition too, and is proud of this attitude. She does not realize that by taking this position toward sex she developed an unnatural love for her son and turned him into a homosexual.

75 76

Although apparently Williams first conceived of his s sex-centered characters as foils for their spiritualized opposite numbers^ he became increasingly interested in personalities who found in sexuality a central life principle^ In this shift of interest 9 Williams reveals a significant dichotomy in his own philosophical outlook„

Serafina Delle Rose in The Rose Tattoo ^ and Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof belong to the group of women who seem to believe that sex is the main reason for existence»

Serafina is supposed to be the Latin answer to life* She is presented with all the characteristics that supposedly form the Latin temperament as opposed to the

Anglo Saxon ® She is passionate 9 ardent and temperamental9 tends to dramatize everything, hates and loves with the same intensity and with the same violence® She is highly emotional, has outbursts of love and anger and passes from one state to the other without much preparation but only according to the way things strike her emotionally® She never stops to ask or to try to understand the meaning of a gesture or a word, she only reacts to them in proportion to the extent to which they affect her senses® She is sincere to the point of being rude and never hesitates to tell people her opinion about them, be it good or bad®

Serafina adored Rosario, her husband and had a rich physical union with him® He is dead now and she never ceases to describe him and praise his virtues especially the sexual 77 ones e He .was to her the paragon of the male, probably the most potent man since Stanley Kowalski®

When I think of men I think about my husband® My husband was a Sicilian® We had love together every night of the week, we never skipped one, from the night we was married till the night he was killed in his fruit truck on that road there!^

Serafina was married for twelve years® Her attitude after her husband1s death is very much in accordance with her temperament® She does not want to see anybody, never gets dressed or combs her hair, in short, she openly rejects life and lives a solitary and sterile existence®

She is very religious but in her own way® She adapts religion to her own necessities and temperament® She respects the Church * s laws when they do not interfere with her own beliefs« She wanted Rosario1s body to be cremated so that she could keep the ashes in an urn® The Church prohibited it, but she had him cremated all the same® She adores his ashes as much as she adores the image of the

Madonna, with whom she has long conversations about every­ thing, including the strega, whose evil eye she dreads®

She mixes religion and superstitions® Serafina rejects life until the day when she finds out that her husband was not so faithful as she had thought® At first she refuses to believe the story that he had had a mistress®

1® The Rose Tattoo in Five Plays (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1962j , p ® 155 ® 78

It is necessary for her, vitally necessary for her, to believe that the woman8 s story is a malicious invention ® ^

She must maintain her faith in him because the image that she has of her husband is idealized. She was just a

^barefoot peasant1* but he was a nbarontl and this fact contributes to the ideal picture around which she has built her life since he died*

My folks was peasants, contadini, but he— he come from 1 and-owners! Signorile, my husbandI--At night I sit here and I 1m satisfied to remember, because I had the best *— Not the third best and not the second best, but the first best, the only best!--3

To acknowledge the truth about her husband is to destroy her reason for existence* But Serafina is not the type of woman who builds elaborate defenses to avoid reality, or who lives with a doubt * When the priest who heard Rosario in confession refuses to reveal the nature of those confessions, she asks the woman who was supposed to be her husband1s mistress to tell her the truth. When Rosario?s infidelity is proved, Serafina reacts characteristically again* She breaks the urn with the ashes, swears against the dead man, and even turns against the Madonna for having failed her by withholding the truth from her * She no longer feels obliged to go on being faithful to an unfaith­ ful memory* When Alvaro Mangiacavailo comes her way and ______\

2 * Ibid * , p. 158®

3® Ibid , , p * 156,® she sees in him the face of a clown9 but the body of her husband 9 her sensuality is reawakened e She returns to sexuality and therefore to life« In contrast to her husband1s ascendence Alvaro is the grandson of a village idiot 9 but Serafina does not care as much for a title as she does for sexual satisfaction and Alvaro equals her husband in giving it * Serafina does not allow herself to be destroyed by the death of her dream, she rediscovers happiness through her own vital passion and triumphs through her sexual instinct* She is #a rich and lyrical portrait of an Italian peasant, but she is also an embodiment of a credo, the affirmation of sex as the root feeling of a 4 - complete existence * n'

Orpheus Descending, though a different play from

The Rose Tattoo, presents a parallel situation and the character of Lady Torrance has some affinities with that of Serafina, not only because they are both of Italian descent*

Lady Torrance also rejected life after the succes­ sion of losses that she suffered, when she was abandoned by her lover, had an abortion of her child and saw her father being burned by some townspeople for having sold liquor to Negroes. When David Cutrere left her and sold himself, marrying for money, she prostituted herself too

4. Harold Churman, ^Theatre: Tennessee Williams 1 Rose,** quoted by Signi L, Falk, op. cit.,, p. 97® when she allowed herself to be bought by Jake Torrance^ one of the men who killed her father. Although Lady ignores

Jake's participation in the crime, she hates him, Jake, who symbolizes death itself, is now dying of cancer, a symbol of the corruption of the community,

Lady is lonely and lost® Unlike the two other women in the play, Carol and Vee, who find escapes from their loneliness, Carol in sexual looseness, Vee in religious fanaticism, Lady just gives herself to it® After the death of her dreams she behaves much like Serafina, after the death of her husband, Both women withdraw from life and live only in the memory of a great love ® Serafina at least could find some satisfaction in such a withdrawal because she had had 11 the first best, the only best.# Lady has given the best of her, and now she only has the bitter memory of this useless gift® But like Serafina she is reawakened to life by the arrival of a man, Val Xavier, who understands her needs, and here the two women part company ®

Val and Alvaro are as unlike as Serafina and Blanche® Val is as sensitive and lonely as Lady and he knows that she does not want violent passion, but warmth, understanding and protection® It is their deep personal loneliness that draws them to each other, not sexual instinct® But Val and

Lady are doomed merely because they are too tender to survive in an environment of cruelty, malice and brutality®

Their situation is - related to that of Blanche and Mitch, 8l External forces, in this case hate, destroy their chance of happinesso Val and Lady are destroyed but not defeated; they dared defy the forces of evil and died in challenging them, but the protest was made nevertheless o Once again we watch the destruction of the sensitive by the insensitive®

The heroine of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Margaret

Pollitt, or Maggie, the Cat, is in many respects different from the majority of feminine characters created by Tennessee

Williams» When asked about similarities between this play and Streetcar Williams said to Arthur B® Waters:

Aside from the locales which are somewhat similar,. there is a surface likeness between the leading feminine characters, but only a . surface one* Blanche Du Bois and Margaret share certain attributes, notably strongly passionate natures, but they are really as unlike as a moth and an eagle * Both find themselves brought into turbulent, headlong collision with the rock of life, but * * * Margaret is sturdy, strong and resilient * 5

Almost all feminine characters in Williams* plays have strongly passionate natures, though not all of them show it *, There are not two characters who could be more dif­ ferent than Margaret and Blanche * Of all the characters analysed so far the one who is closest to Margaret is

Catharine in Suddenly Last Summer® They both find them­ selves in a situation the easiest way out of which would be through a lie* Catharine is threatened with lobotomy,

5 e ^Tennessee Williams : Ten Years Later, ** Theater Arts, 7 (July, 1955)? PP« 73? 96. Margaret has her married life at stake. Brick, her husband, blames her for the death of his best friend. He is disgusted with her for thinking that their friendship was unnatural, that his friend, Skipper, was not normal.

His disgust separates him from her physically too; he will not touch Margaret. At this point he wants to avoid the subject, but Margaret insists on telling the truth as

Catharine does even at the risk of having Brick leave her completely. She makes him hear what she has to say, forces him to see the truth and by doing that prepares him to realize later on that he blames himself too for Skipper1s death and is projecting much of his sense of guilt onto her e

Maggie is very realistic and extraordinarily vital.

She knows that she has a problem but she is convinced that she will solve it, not by running away from it, but simply by facing it and using her whole determination and will.

When Brick tells her

— But how in hell on earth do you imagine— that y o u 1 re going to have a child by a man that can't stand you?

She answers:

That's a problem that I will have to work out.^

She firmly believes that she will win her husband back. Aside from the fact that she loves him very much,

6. New York: The New American Library, 1955 9 p ° 4? there is a practical side to the situation• Maggie is childless. Big Daddy, Brick's father, is about to make his w i l l , and although Brick is his favorite son, he is not willing to give him the greater part of the inheritance if

Brick remains without an heir» Although Maggie's primary concern is to solve her problem with her husband, make him accept her again, she also has the inheritance in mind and is determined to fight for it too. She is basically honest, has a compulsive desire to speak the truth, and yet to win her husband back is more important for her and she will use anything to succeed in that, even a lie. But Maggie's lie is an objective one and may generate a truth. Her motives are not altogether selfish. By saying that she is expecting a child, she makes Big Daddy happy and at the same time she forces Brick to come out of his stupor and take some attitude. Any attitude will help Brick, because it is his inertia that is destroying him. Brick may decide to turn her lie into truth. Although the play in both versions leaves the question open, it may be assumed that Brick will make Maggie's lie become a truth. We do not make this assumption because of anything in Brick's attitude, but the whole characterization of Maggie shows that she.is strong enough and determined enough to get anything she wants. So far she has succeeded in everything she has tried to accomplish. Supporting her strength and determination is her love for Brick that is so violent that it is a motivation in itself. She has a passionate temperament but does not let herself be carried away by emotions; her realistic and practical side balances it« Maggie is an admirable character. If anybody is going to save Brick she is the one^ and she will have saved him mainly because she used truth. By facing the truth Brick will be able to live and love again, and Margaret will have won her greatest battle.

In his portrayal of Margaret, Williams gives us at least momentary relief by presenting a character who has considerable equilibrium, who is neither a nymph nor a latter-day puritan. However, she may simply represent a mid-point in the swing of the pendulum as Williams broods upon the troubled relationship of body and spirit. CONCLUSION

Tennessee Williams does not neally resolve the problems that he brings up in his plays, because in a way his own sympathies are divided o If he definitely shows admiration for characters that represent tradition and idealism, he also admires his creatures of the earth« They are simple, realistic, practical, enjoy life as it is, recognize their place in it and accept this place» Through them Tennessee Williams shows sexuality as the ultimate answer for the resolution of man1s problems ® Serafina Delle

Rose is the character who best illustrates this point of view. This view of sexuality however differs from the view illustrated by a character like Stanley Kowalski.

It would seem that when Williams focuses upon the individual person he is tempted to offer solutions in terms of Rousseauistic simplicities. However, when he sees sexuality as a factor in social relationships he comprehends its complexity. He sees that it is not always simply physical delight, that it may be a weapon— that it may be a gift tremulously offered by a tormented being. And perhaps beyond these considerations there may remain in

Williams more than a vestige of the Calvinistic heritage with its soul-body split, which W . J . Cash insists is a powerful ingredient in "the mind of the South."

85 Although. Tennessee Williams has not resolved his philosophical problem he has given his characters a great deal of vitality and has dramatized their situation effectively® He vivified the problems that he introduced9 and this dramatic vitality realized in art is his great achievement. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Plays and Short Stories and Articles by Tennessee Williams

Williams, Tennessee* The Glass Menagerie* New York: New Directions, 1949« ~ ”

* Twenty-Seven Wagons Full of Cotton and Other One-Act Plays* Norfolk, Connecticut: New D i r e cti o h s , 19 % «

______.o A Streetcar Named Desire* (nA Signet Booktf) New York : The New American Library, 19^7 «

______* Summer and Smoke * ( nA Signet Bookn) New York: The New American Library, 1948*

______.o One Arm and Other Stories* Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1948 *

______The Rose Tattoo in Five Plays* London: Seeker and Warburg, 1962

Hard Candy: A Book of Stories* New York: N ew Dir e c t i ons , 1954 * '

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. (n A Signet Bookn) New York: The New American Library, 1955«

Baby Doll. New York: New Directions, 1956

______The Long Stay Cut Short or The Unsatis­ factory Supper in Baby Doll , New York: New Directions, 1956.

. Orpheus Descending. (nA Signet Book11’) New York: The New American Library, 1958.

______Suddenly Last Summer. New York: New Directions” 1958 * *

______» Something Unspoken, in Five Plays. London: Seeker and Warburg, 1 9 6 2 .

8? 88

Sweet Bird of Youth.* (t!A Signet Book#) New Y o r k : The New American Library 9 1959 »

The Night of the Xguana* (#A Signet Book#) New York: The New American Library«, 1961 <,

______* The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore « Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1 9 6 ^ ®

______e #0n A Streetcar Named Success,# in A Streetcar Named Desire. New York: The New American Library, 19^7•

' nThe Timeless World of a Play,# in The Rose Tattoo, in Five Plays « London: Seeker and Warburg, 1 9 6 2 .

______* #Person-to-Person,# in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof o New York: The New American Library, 1955®

_____ o nThe Past, The Present and The Perhaps, # in Orpheus Descending # New York: The New American Library, 19581

'______nF ore word,# in Sweet Bird of Youth. New York: The New American Library, 1959«

Works on Tennessee Williams

Books

Cahalan, Thomas» A Comprehensive Outline of Three Plays by Tennessee Williams * Massachusetts: Harvard Outline Company, I 96 3 ®

Donahue, Francis. The Dramatic World of Tennessee Williams < New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1964. ""

Dusenbury, Winifred L. The Theme of Loneliness in Modern American Drama* Gainesville: University of Florida Press, I960®

Falk, Sign! Lenea. Tennessee Williams. New Haven, Connecticut: College and University Press, 1 9 6 1 .

Hurrell, John D*, ed. Two Modern American Tragedies. New York: Charles Scribnerf s Sons, 1961. 89 Jackson9 Ester Merle« The Broken World of Tennessee Williams o Madison9 Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press 9 1 9 6 5 ®

Nelson, Benjamin» Tennessee Williams: The Man and His W o r k * New York: Ivan Obolensky, Inc•, 1961,

Tischler, Nancy M , Tennessee Williams: Rebellious Puritan, New York: The Citadel Press, 1965•

Articles

Adler, Jacob H » ^Night of the Iguana: A New Tennessee Williams?n Ramparts, Vol* I, No, J, November, 1 9 6 2 , P P . 59-68,

Boyle, Robert, ^Williams and Myopia,n America, Vol. 104, No, 8, November 19? i9 6 0 , p p . 263-2 6 5 *

Brunstein, Robert. ^America’s New Culture Hero: Feelings Without Words,n Comrnentary, Vol. 25? No, 2, February, 1 9 5 8 , pp * 123-129»

Callahan, Edward F, ^Tennessee Williams' Two Worlds,n Notre Dame Quarterly , XXV, Summer, 1957 ? pp » 61-6 7 °

Coffey, Warren. ^Tennessee Williams: The Playwright as Analysand,tT> Ramparts, Vol. I, No. 3? November, 196 2, pp. 51-58 o

Gantz, Arthur. nThe Desperate Morality of the Plays of Tennessee Williams,11 The American Scholar, 31? Spring, 1962, pp. 278-294 *

Gardiner, Harold C, nTs Williams 1 Vision Myopia?lt America, Vol. 103, No. 18, July 30, I960, pp. 4 9 5 -496I

Johnson, Mary Lynn. ^Williams* Suddenly Last Summer, Scene O n e , 11' The Explicator, Vol. XXI, No. 8, April, 1 9 6 3 ? p . 6 7 .

Magid, Marion, uThe Innocence of Tennessee Williams ,tt: Commentary, Vol. 35? No. 1, January, 1 9 6 3 ? P P « 34- 43.

Sagar, K. M. nWhat Mr. Williams Has Made of D« H. Lawrence,n The Twentieth Century, Vol. 168, No. 1002, August, i960 , pp . 143-153 a 90

Stavron9 Constantine No wTh-e Neurotic Heroine in Tennessee Williams ^n Literature and Psychology, N o . 5 ? May, 1955 ? pp o 26 -34« ”*

Waters, Arthur B » ^Tennessee Williams: Ten Years Later,n Theater Arts, Vol. XXXIX, No. 7? July, 1955, pp. 7 2 -73+.

Watts, Richard, Jr. ^Orpheus Ascending,n Theater Arts, 42, September, 1958, pp. 25-2 6 .

Weissman, Philip, M. D . uPsychopathological Characters in Current Drama: A Study of a Trio of Heroines,11 The American Imago, Vol. 17, No. 3, Fall, i9 6 0 , pp. 271-288^