Thesis: The outcasts in Tennessee Williams's major plays suffer, not because of the acts or situations which make them outcasts but because of the destructive effect of conventional morality upon them.
More than a half century has passed since critics and theater-goers
recognized Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) as an important--perhaps the most
important--American playwright. Two recent events, however, have created
renewed interest in his work. The first is the death in 1996 of Maria St. Just,
who controlled the late playwright's papers1. The second is the
publication, in that same year, of Lyle Leverich's Tom: The Unknown Tennessee
Williams. Both events represent access to information about this playwright
that has, heretofore, been unavailable to scholars‹an influx of so much new
information that a reexamination of Williams's work is not only possible,
but necessary.
My dissertation will reexamine Williams's work in light of his claim
that "plays in the tragic tradition offer us a view of certain moral values
in violent juxtaposition" (The Rose Tattoo 151). Williams's plays
outline a struggle between the moral values of non-conformists, who are outcasts
because they can not, or will not, conform to the values of the dominant
culture, and of conformists, who represent that culture. The outcast characters
in Tennessee Williams's major plays do not suffer because of the actions or
circumstances that make them outcast but because of the destructive impact of
conventional morality upon them. The outcasts are driven, in the conflict
between their values and those of conventional morality, to: 1) confess their
transgressions against conventional morality, and 2) suffer, at their own hands
or by placing themselves in dangerous situations, in atonement for their
non-conformity.
That Williams's outcasts are miserable is evidence of his opinion that
the demands of conventional morality can be destructive. Chapter One of my
dissertation will provide a foundation for discussion of this argument.
Chapters Two, Three, and Four will contain extensive examples from Williams's
plays in support of his statement that "...I have only one major theme for
my work which is the destructive impact of society on the sensitive
non-conformist individual" (Letter, 1939, to Audrey Wood)1. I will further
distinguish between three types of outcasts--religious, sexual, and fugitive‹and
will devote a chapter to examples from Williams's plays that illustrate the
juxtaposition of values within each of these three types. In my final chapter I
will argue against the notion that Williams's outcasts suffer because they
are immoral.
Chapter One: ""More a Minister's Son': An
Introduction to Tennessee Williams"
I deal with the decadence of the South. I don't ever deal with the decadence of the North. It's too disgusting. But I'm writing about a South that is fast becoming a memory. (Williams, in Haller 60)
This chapter will provide biographical and critical information about
Tennessee Williams. Using personal interviews with the playwright's
brother, Dakin Williams, and with biographer Nancy Tischler, along with
published scholarship and accounts, I will reveal that the playwright considered
himself an outcast and that his outcast characters represent an attempt to prove
that "outcast" and "immoral" are not mutually inclusive
terms. I will also show that Williams's over-arching motivation, his drive
to reveal in his plays the suffering inflicted on non-conformists by the
dominant culture, is a reflection of his personal experiences with family,
friends, and society.
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams was born to Cornelius and
Edwina Dakin Williams on March 26, 1914, in Columbus, Mississippi. At age 12,
Williams and his family (which included a brother, Dakin, and sister, Rose)
moved to St. Louis, Missouri. He attended the University of Missouri from 1931
to 1933, and finished his BA. in 1938 at the University of Iowa.
The playwright's mother, a model for Amanda in The Glass Menagerie, was an aggressive woman, devoted to the idea of genteel Southern living. His father, also known as C.C., was a salesman for a large shoe manufacturer and, consequently, traveled extensively. Leverich reports that Edwina filled the void caused by her husband's absence with stories about the South:
Over and over again, she would tell Tom [Tennessee Williams] about garden parties and cotillions and her gentlemen callers, until he could recite the stories by rote. She said that in those days she saw only "the charming, gallant, cheerful side" of the smiling bridegroom who had been a telephone man "in love with long distance." In Tom's mind, these images of his mother‹once upon a time a young and pretty southern belle whose venturesome husband had deserted her to go on the road--eventually became entangled with perpetually dark apartments, with Rose's tragic turns, and with his own desperate attempt to free himself from the web of family. (49)
Rose is the only other strong female figure in the playwright's life
(Leverich 40). Both Edwina and Rose are the foundation for two characters,
Amanda and Laura, respectively, in The Glass Menagerie.
According to Leverich, Williams was "more a minister's son than
the son of a traveling salesman" (37). Williams writes that he was
tormented by his father because, at age 14, he "would rather read books in
my grandfather's large and classical library than play marbles and baseball
and other normal kid games" (Williams, Where I Live 106). The playwright
credits his grandfather with instilling in him a love of books (Leverich 37),
that led to writing as escape from the torment of his heterosexist peers
(Williams, Sweet Bird of Youth x). Leverich writes that Williams "made
every effort to keep the knowledge [of his homosexuality] from his mother in
particular"; however, he shared this knowledge with his grandfather, who
not only accepted his grandson's homosexuality but also "enjoyed the
gay life peripherally and was especially fond and approving of Williams's
companion, Frank Merlo" (368-369). That Williams feared his mother's
rejection, and confided so freely in his grandfather, establishes these two
persons as extremely important influences in his life.1
Tracing the influences of individuals and circumstances on Williams's
work has been difficult because of the restrictions I mention earlier in this
prospectus. Of the existing scholarship the most thorough is that written by
Leverich: Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams. The first volume of this
two-volume set follows the fortunes of the Williams family for half a century,
from 1900 to 19452. As the official Williams biographer, Leverich has been the
only scholar to gain access to Williams's notes and papers held by St.
Just.
Williams's brother, Dakin, is a resource that, although not bound by St.
Just's restrictions, has remained largely untapped. Although biographers
and researchers have neglected Dakin Williams,3, I have met and discussed my
thesis with him. He has agreed to cooperate with me in my research. The two
brothers discussed religion on numerous occasions, and Dakin Williams's book,
Nails of Protest: A Critical Comparison of Modern Protestant and Catholic
Beliefs, was (according to the author) extremely influential in the playwright's
conversion to Catholicism4. Nails of Protest is a polemic, a criticism of
Protestantism that the author generated while studying law and Church history
(Dakin Williams, personal interviews)5.
Harry Rasky's 1986 book, Tennessee Williams: A Portrait in Laughter
and Lamentation, is another personalized account of Williams's life. This
work contains priceless and irreplaceable photographs of Williams in Key West
and in New Orleans. The infrequent occasions wherein Rasky sets aside his
authorial voice and presents block quotes from Williams are historically
valuable, as well.
Yet another anecdote-based account of the playwright's life comes from
his mother, Edwina Dakin Williams. Her Remember Me to Tom is a narrative about
the youth and career of Tennessee Williams. The book presents stories told by
the playwright's mother to Lucy Freeman, and includes some passages
indicating Tennessee Williams's attitudes toward religion. Also included is a
considerable collection of correspondence--from the playwright to his mother
and brother, from his grandfather, and to and from several agents and critics1.
A very thorough critical work is Judith Thompson's Tennessee Williams'
Plays: Memory, Myth, and Symbol. Thompson closely examines William's
experiment with the "memory play," and provides an outline of his
approach that is consistent and clear. She also examines the symbolism in these
plays, grouping them into religious, mythological, and existential symbols and
imagery. I expect Thompson's groundwork to be a foundation on which I will
build.
Published a year before Thompson's work, Roger Boxill's Tennessee
Williams is a New Critical examination of the life and major works of the
playwright. The critics in this collection provide a thorough textual analysis
of selected Williams plays.
For an overview of critical and biographical works relative to Tennessee
Williams, I turned to The Modern Language Association electronic database. The
MLA lists only 288 entries using the descriptor, "Tennessee Williams."
From 1981 to 1995, fewer than 300 dissertations touching on this playwright in
any way were written1. These figures represent a fraction of the number of
dissertations, essays, and books written about other important American writers.
For example, the MLA database lists 4,019 entries using the descriptor "William
Faulkner," and more than 1,089 entries using "Eugene O'Neill."2
Chapter Two: "Promiscuity and Penance: Sexual Outcasts as
Martyrs in Suddenly Last Summer, Orpheus Descending, A Streetcar Named Desire,
and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"
Catherine: They had devoured parts of him....Torn or cut parts of him away with their hands or knives or maybe those jagged tin cans they made music with, they had torn bits of him away and stuffed them into those gobbling fierce little empty black mouths of theirs. There wasn't a sound any more, there was nothing to see but Sebastian, what was left of him, that looked like a big white-paper-wrapped bunch of red roses had been torn, thrown, crushed!--against that blazing white wall....(Williams, Suddenly Last Summer 92)
Many of Williams's sexual outcasts are devoured, literally or
figuratively, and in this chapter I will show how these characters suffer
because of the two drives I mentioned earlier. Sebastian Venable and Catherine
Holly in Suddenly Last Summer are particularly good examples of Williams's
literal and figurative depiction, respectively, of sexual outcasts as martyrs.
Martyrdom is a major theme in Suddenly Last Summer. Refusing to accept
the possibility that her deceased son, Sebastian, was a homosexual, Mrs. Venable
tries to silence her niece, Catherine, who insists upon telling the story of
Sebastian's sexual misconduct and murder. Catherine is haunted, having
witnessed her cousin, Sebastian Venable, being cannibalized by Mexican youth
(whom he has sexually victimized). She feels compelled to tell the story of
Sebastian's death, despite Mrs. Venable's threat to have her
lobotomized1 and even though no one believes her.
Mrs. Venable worships the memory of her son, Sebastian, relating her
experiences with him as a prophet would relate her or his contact with a
Christ-figure. In his stage directions, Williams has Mrs. Venable hold up a
bound collection of Sebastian's poetry: "She lifts a thin gilt-edged
volume from the patio table as if elevating the Host before the altar....Her
face suddenly has a different look, the look of a visionary, an exalted
religieuse" (Williams, Suddenly Last Summer 13). Her threat to have
Catherine lobotomized is meant to further her truth about Sebastian (Williams,
Suddenly Last Summer 12); she appears to see truth as relative, determined by
the privileged and powerful. She says of her forthcoming confrontation with
Catherine, "I won't collapse! She'll collapse! I mean her lies
will collapse‹not my truth‹not the truth...." (Williams, Suddenly
Last Summer 12).
According to Mrs. Venable, Sebastian spent his summers in search of the
image of God. Her identification of that image is the picture of a vengeful
God, the God of Lex Talionis (the just God, who exacts an eye for an eye): "...God
shows a savage face to people and shouts some fierce things at them, it's
all we see or hear of Him. Isn't it all we ever really see and hear of
Him, now?--Nobody seems to know why...." (Williams, Suddenly Last
Summer 20).
Over the narrow black beach of the Encantadas as the just hatched
sea-turtles scrambled out of the sand-pits and started their race to the
sea....To escape the flesh-eating birds that made the sky almost as black as the
beach! [She gazes up again: we hear the wild, ravenous, harsh cries of the
birds. The sound comes in rhythmic waves like a savage chant.] And the sand
all alive, all alive, as the hatched sea turtles stooped to attack and hovered
and‹swooped to attack! They were diving down on the hatched sea-turtles,
turning them over to expose their soft undersides, tearing the undersides open
and rending and eating their flesh. Sebastian guessed that possibly only a
hundredth of one percent of their number would escape to the sea....(Williams,
Suddenly Last Summer 16-17)
During this spectacle, she says, Sebastian found what he sought:
Yes, well, now, I can tell you without hesitation that my son was looking for God, I mean for a clear image of him. He spent that whole blazing equatorial day in the crow's-nest of the schooner watching this thing on the beach till it was too dark to see it, and when he came down the rigging he said "Well, now I've seen Him!," and he meant God.--And for several weeks after that he had a fever, he was delirious with it.‹(Williams, Suddenly Last Summer 19)
This event‹Sebastian's recognition of the nature of God‹sets
in motion the acts, committed by Sebastian, that end in his death.
Mrs. Venable is the first to discuss the notion of expiation, of becoming a sacrifice, when referring to her niece:
We put the bread in her mouth and the clothes on her back. People that like you for that or even forgive you for it are‹hen's teeth, Doctor. The role of the benefactor is worse than thankless, it's the role of a victim, Doctor, a sacrificial victim, yes, they want your blood, Doctor, they want your blood on the altar steps of their outraged, outrageous egos! (Williams, Suddenly Last Summer 27)
According to Thompson, Catherine Holly resembles St. Catherine of Bologna, "a
fifteenth-century virgin martyr" who kept a diary, had visions in which the
living flesh of Christ was consumed during the sacrament of communion, and was
shut away in a convent because of those visions (121). In Catholic theology,
St. Catherine is the patron saint of artists--as Catherine Holly was the
emotional patroness of Sebastian. And, like St. Catherine, William's
Catherine is placed in the keeping of nuns.
After Mrs. Venable has a stroke, Catherine accompanies Sebastian on his final summer journey. The trek ends in Mexico, where Sebastian begins to shun Catherine because she has fallen in love with him (even though, as she states, she has been procuring young men for him). Tormented by young beggars in a small restaurant, Sebastian escapes into the street, is pursued by the beggars and devoured. Catherine sees Sebastian's murder (and consumption by the young beggars) as the completion of Sebastian's designs. Her dialogue on this topic is particularly revealing:
Catherine. [Sebastian was] Competing--a sort of!--image! --he had of himself as a sort of!--sacrifice to a!--Terrible sort of a--
Doctor. --God?
Catherine. Yes, a--cruel one, Doctor! (Williams, Suddenly Last Summer 64)
According to Mrs. Venable, Sebastian fell into a fever after witnessing the episode in the Encantadas. He then tried to enter a Buddhist monastery, attempting to give up his wealth and live in poverty with a mendicant Himalayan order. His mother stayed with him, however, and after a month he gave up the monastery and returned with her to social life (Williams, Suddenly Last Summer 21).
Williams presents a direct series of events leading to Sebastian's
death. First, he recognizes God in the Encantadas. This recognition affects
him profoundly, temporarily incapacitating him with brain fever. Second, he
tries to atone for something by entering a monastery; however, his mother
persuades him to leave. Third, journeying without his mother, he sacrifices
himself in a small Mexican town. Catherine reports that Sebastian carries out
his plan by attempting "to correct a human situation--I think perhaps
that that was his fatal error...." (Williams, Suddenly Last Summer 89).
Most critics seem to agree that Sebastian pays with his life for a sin
against humanity. Foster Hirsch calls him "the consumer who is finally
consumed, the cannibal who is eaten alive" (55). Arthur Gantz writes that "Sebastian's
sin lay not in perceiving the world as, in Williams' darkest vision, it is,
but in his believing, with a pride bordering on hubris, that he could exalt
himself above his kind, could feed upon people like one of the devouring birds
of the Encantadas" (106). The critics focus upon Sebastian as sinner or as
pervert; they agree that he is punished for his transgressions but appear to
have neglected the idea that it is Sebastian who chooses the role of expiator,
sacrificing himself. As Sister Felicity tells Catherine, "Disobedience has
to be paid for later" (Williams, Suddenly Last Summer 35). To bring about
his own death, Sebastian places himself in a vulnerable position; he changes his
habits, deliberately choosing the less genteel public beach instead of the
fashionable private establishments that Mrs. Venable states were his accustomed
haunts (Williams, Suddenly Last Summer 78-79).
Catherine tells Sister Felicity that "Somebody said once or wrote,
once: 'We're all of us children in a vast kindergarten trying to
spell God's name with the wrong alphabet blocks!'" (Williams,
Suddenly Last Summer 40). God and truth are separate, and truth remains a
constant--as Catherine announces to her assembled relatives: "I can't
change truth, I'm not God! I'm not even sure that He could, I don't
think God can change truth!" (Williams, Suddenly Last Summer 58). Mrs.
Venable believes her son suffered because he was too generous--that is her "truth";
Catherine believes he was cruelly murdered by the boys he victimized--her
experience of a truth separate from, though perhaps superior to, Mrs. Venable's.
Both Catherine and Mrs. Venable reject the idea that Sebastian sacrificed
himself for wrongs he knew he had committed.
Sebastian's is a savage God, who allows human beings to abuse one
another and who drives the abusers to martyr themselves. Recognizing the nature
of God, and feeling guilty because he has used his mother and cousin to procure
young men for his sexual pleasure, Sebastian first attempts to atone for his sin
by entering a monastery. This sacrifice is not enough; he discovers that he can
not bring himself to his proper sacrificial status in the presence of his
mother. Driven to expiate his sin, but aware that atonement also requires
confession (and a witness to that confession), he uses his mother's stroke
as an excuse to abandon her and to have his cousin, a stronger woman, serve as
witness to his martyrdom. He ends, as the sea-turtles in the Encantadas, a
sacrifice to the God of Lex Talionis.
As with Suddenly Last Summer, I will locate sexual outcasts in Orpheus
Descending, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In these plays
the sexual outcasts are depicted as martyrs; I will address these characters as
I have Sebastian and Catherine in the example here.
Chapter Three: "'For the Sins of the World': Religious
Outcasts as Searcher-Saints in The Glass Menagerie, The Night of the Iguana, and
Orpheus Descending"
For the sins of the world are really only its partialities, and these are what sufferings must atone for. A wall that has been omitted from a house because the stones were exhausted, a room in a house left unfinished because the householder's funds were not sufficient--these sorts of incompletions are usually covered up or glossed over by some kind of make-shift arrangement. The nature of man is full of such makeshift arrangements, devised by himself to cover his incompletion. He feels a part of himself to be like a missing wall or a room left unfurnished and he tries as well as he can to make up for it. The use of imagination, resorting to dreams or the loftier purpose of art, is a mask he devises to cover his incompletion. Or violence such as a war, between two men or among a number of nations, is also a blind and senseless compensation for that which is not yet formed in human nature. Then there is still another compensation. This one is found in the principle of atonement, the surrender of self to violent treatment by others with the idea of thereby cleansing one's self of his guilt. (Williams, Desire and the Black Masseur 85)
In this chapter I will continue my exploration of Williams's outcasts,
focusing on what I term "religious outcasts." These individuals may
also engage, or have engaged, in sexual practices condemned by conventional
morality; however, unlike the primarily sexual outcasts I discuss in the
previous chapter, these characters were designed as overt religious symbols.
The Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon in The Night of the Iguana, for example, has used
his intelligence and authority to sexually abuse parishioners and minors, yet
Williams keeps the focus of this play on the relationship between Shannon's
clerical duties (outlined by dogma) and his theology (a non-conformist, deist
point of view). He is both searcher and saint, suffering in his quest for god.
Critic Foster Hirsch discusses this focus in A Portrait of the Artist: The
Plans of Tennessee Williams. The most important issue for Shannon, Hirsch
writes, is "the nature of God," adding that the play "dramatizes
Williams's belief in the transforming and healing powers of art and of
confession" (69-70). Thompson argues that the play expresses Williams's
"desire for absolution from a transcient authority" (158). In this
respect Shannon is similar to Sebastian Venable; both attempt to articulate an
individualized concept of God. However, unlike Sebastian's victimization
of young boys, Shannon's sexual escapades are secondary to what he calls
the "senile delinquent" god of Western theology (Williams, The Night
of the Iguana 61).
Shannon reports that, after discussing his god-image from his pulpit, he
was locked out of his church and committed by church officials to a "nice
little private asylum to recuperate from a complete nervous breakdown"
(Williams, The Night of the Iguana 60). His expulsion from his church
identifies him as one of Williams's outcasts; his nervous breakdown
illustrates the destructive impact of conventional morality.
Leaving the asylum, Shannon begins "collecting evidence" of the truth of his God-image (Williams, The Night of the Iguana 60). Shannon's God is found in the tempest:
Shannon. It's going to storm tonight--a terrific electric storm. Then you will see the Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon's conception of God Almighty paying a visit to the world he created. I want to go back to the Church and preach the gospel of God as Lightning and Thunder...and also stray dogs vivisected and...and...and....[He points out suddenly toward the sea.] That's him! There he is now! [He is pointing out at a blaze, a majestic apocalypse of gold light, shafting the sky as the sun drops into the Pacific.] His oblivious majesty--and here I am on this...dilapidated verandah of a cheap hotel, out of season, in a country caught and destroyed in its flesh and corrupted in its spirit by its gold-hungry Conquistadors that bore the flag of the Inquisition along with the Cross of Christ. (Williams, The Night of the Iguana 61)
In the moment of his greatest mental anguish (a re-enactment of his earlier
nervous breakdown), Shannon acknowledges the motivation for his behavior; he
calls it "the infantile expression of rage at Mama and rage at God and rage
at the goddamn crib, and rage at the everything, rage at
the...everything....Regression to infantilism...." (Williams, The Night of
the Iguana 98). This is his darkest moment and, fortunately for him, Hannah
Jelkes is there to help him make sense of his anguish.
Hirsch claims that Shannon has made more of his pain than actually exists: "Shannon is not equal to his ideal of a rapacious and vengeful God because he is merely an overaged delinquent who rebels against a conservative family background and a tame middle-class concept of God" (66). Hannah points out the self-indulgence Hirsch discusses; she claims that Shannon enjoys his breakdowns too much for them to serve as proper expiation:
Hannah. 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 groan in that hammock--no nails, no blood, no death. Isn't that a comparatively comfortable, almost voluptuous kind of crucifixion to suffer for the guilt of the world, Mr. Shannon....I'd like to untie you right now, but let me wait until you've passed through your present disturbance. You're still indulging yourself in your...your Passion Play performance. I can't help observing this self-indulgence in you." (Williams, The Night of the Iguana 99-100)
Hannah identifies Shannon's problem as "the need to believe in
something or in someone" (Williams, The Night of the Iguana 106). She
recommends that Shannon accept his need to confess his sins (his rebellion,
caused by feelings of impotence upon confronting an all-powerful God).
Hannah encourages Shannon to descend from his Golgotha (the hammock on
which he is restrained, on the porch of a mountainside hotel) to release an
iguana that has been captured and is to be killed and eaten. She suggests he
accept his image of God without robbing his needy parishioners of theirs: "I
know people torture each other many times like devils," she says, "but
sometimes they do see and know each other, you know, and then, if they're
decent, they do want to help each other all they can" (Williams, The Night
of the Iguana 81).
Is Shannon, despite his rejection of the Church and his unconventional sexual mores, an example of the nobility of outcasts? Referring to Shannon and Hannah, Williams writes:
The alternative title [to The Night of the Iguana], Two Acts of Grace ...referred to a pair of desperate people who had the humble nobility of each putting the other's desperation, during the course of a night, above his own. Being an unregenerate romanticist, even now I can still think of nothing that gives more meaning to life. (In Hirsch 69)
Williams's religious outcasts appear also in The Glass Menagerie and
Orpheus Descending. In this chapter I will survey these plays for examples of
outcasts as searcher-saints, treating these characters in the same manner as
Shannon in The Night of the Iguana.
Chapter Four: "Following their Kind: Outcasts as Fugitives in
Orpheus Descending, The Glass Menagerie, Period of Adjustment, and The
Eccentricities of a Nightingale"
[Carol:] Wild things leave skins behind them, they leave clean skins and teeth and white bones behind them, and these are tokens passed from one to another, so that the fugitive kind can always follow their kind. (Williams, Orpheus Descending 144)
In this chapter I will reveal that a third type of outcast exists in
Williams's plays--what the playwright terms the "fugitive kind."
I will complete my diagram of outcasts which, like concentric circles, build
upon one another; while Williams's fugitive characters may be sexually
dysfunctional, as with Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, and may agonize
over religious issues, as with Vee Talbott in Orpheus Descending, they need do
neither but may, like Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, simply flee from
situations that torture them.
Tom's soliloquies determine the extent to which the other characters in The Glass Menagerie exist; Williams presents the other characters as memories of Tom's escape from "the quasi-incestuous and doomed love between Tom Wingfield and his crippled, 'exquisitely fragile,' ultimately schizophrenic sister Laura" (Bloom 3). According to Harold Bloom, Tom flees a situation in which he is tormented:
What pursues Tom is what pursues the Shelleyan Poet of Alastor, an avenging daimon or shadow of rejected, sisterly eros that manifests itself in a further Shelleyan metaphor, the shattered, colored transparencies of Shelley's dome of many-colored glass....The key sentence, dramatically, is: "Oh Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!" In his descriptive list of the characters, Williams says of his surrogate, Wingfield: "His nature is not remorseless, but to escape from a trap he has to act without pity." What would pity have been? And in what sense is Wingfield more faithful, after all, than he attempted to be? (4-5)
Thompson uses Jungian psychoanalytic theory to argue that the photograph
of Mr. Wingfield is the objective correlative to Tom's wander-lust. Eric
Levy agrees, writing that the photograph of Mr. Wingfield is "Tom's
mirror" of self-image and self esteem (530). This echoes Thompson's
argument that Williams makes use of archetypes. In a Jungian sense, Mr.
Wingfield is the objective correlative to Tom's inner turmoil.
According to Thompson, "Williams's belief in 'a great vocabulary
of images' that derive from the unconscious closely resembles the
fundamental assumption of Jungian psychology of a 'collective unconscious'"
(8). Williams demonstrates, through Tom's recollections, how powerful
memories revolve around characters whose actions reflect the inner turmoil of
the person doing the remembering. These individuals form the constituency of
Tom's consciousness; the suffering in each of them is a reflection of Tom's
pain. Although Tom imitates his God-like father, absenting himself from his
family, images of his suffering sister haunt him because, not being God, his
abandonment of Laura and Amanda is a sin against them.
Williams's fugitive outcasts appear in many of his other major plays,
including Orpheus Descending and Period of Adjustment. In this chapter I will
choose fugitive outcasts from Williams's major plays and, as with Tom
Wingfield in the above example, show how these individuals differ from the
playwright's sexual and religious outcasts. I will also, as with the other
two types of outcasts, examine the conflict between their values and those of
conventional morality.
Chapter Five: "'Certain Moral Values': Toward
Identification of Williams's Attitudes Toward Conventional Morality"
The great and only possible dignity of man lies in his power deliberately to choose certain moral values by which to live as steadfastly as if he, too, like a character in a play, were immured against the corrupting rush of time. Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeing is the great magic trick of human existence. (Williams, "Foreword" to The Rose Tattoo 131)
In this, the final chapter of my dissertation, I will dispel the notion
that Williams's outcast characters suffer because of the acts or situations
that make them outcasts--in short, because they are immoral. Having
illustrated what Williams calls "certain moral values in violent
juxtaposition" (151), I will argue that the violent and ultimately futile
struggle by non-conformists to live among people of conventional morality is
unavoidable. This is, I believe, what Williams means when he writes that "there
is something much bigger in life and death that we have become aware of (or
adequately recorded) in our living and dying" (Williams, Sweet Bird of
Youth xii). In claiming that a juxtaposition of moral values can exist, and is
revealed in the conflict between non-conformists and representatives of
conventional morality, Williams implies that both groups have values that must
be weighed on the stage of human existence1.
From a body of examples I will analyze Williams's statements about the
conflict between the values of his outcasts and those of his conformists. I am
not arguing that Williams comes to any conclusions2, or that the evidence points
to some sort of hidden moral agenda on his part. I will argue that the evidence
reveals questions for which Williams sought answers. The most important of
these is the reason outcasts feel compelled, or are forced, to confess the
situations that make them exiles from conventional morality and to atone for
transgressions against that system of values.
"Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeing" is the
end-product of the conflict between the values systems I will examine. Williams's
non-conformist characters are the desperately fleeing, who struggle against the
oppression of conformists; what is eternal is the concept of that struggle, and
the "certain moral values" which it reveals. This is reminiscent of
Tom Wingfield's remarks: "But I am the opposite of a stage magician.
He gives you illusion that has appearance of truth. I give you truth in the
pleasant disguise of illusion" (Williams, The Glass Menagerie 1521).
Works Cited and Consulted
Primary Sources, Texts:
Day, Christine, and Bob Woods, ed. Where I Live: Selected Essays by
Tennessee Williams. New York: New Directions, 1978.
Williams, Edwina Dakin. Remember Me to Tom. ed. Lucy Freeman.
St. Louis: Sunrise, 1963.
Williams, Tennessee. "Desire and the Black Masseur." In One
Arm and Other Stories. New York: New Directions, 1954. pp. 83-96.
- - - . The Eccentricities of a Nightingale. New York:
Dramatists Play Service.
- - - . The Glass Menagerie. In Literature: An Introduction
to Reading and Writing, 4th ed. ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995. 1519-1568.
- - - . Letter to Audrey Wood. 1939. Tennessee Williams Archives, Harry
Ransom Humanities Resource Center. University of Texas, Austin.
- - - . Letter to Audrey Wood. February 27, 1941. Tennessee Williams
Archives, Harry Ransom Humanities Resource Center. University of Texas, Austin.
- - - . The Night of the Iguana. In Three by Tennessee.
New York: Penguin Books, 1976.
- - - . Suddenly Last Summer. In Tennessee Williams: Four
Plays. New York: Penguin Books, 1976.
- - - . Sweet Bird of Youth. In Three by Tennessee. New
York: Penguin Books, 1976.
- - - . The Rose Tattoo. In Three by Tennessee. New
York: Penguin Books, 1976.
Secondary Sources, Criticism and Biography:
Bloom, Harold. Introduction. Tennessee Williams. Ed. Harold
Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. 1-8.
Boxill, Roger. Tennessee Williams. New York: MacMillan, 1987.
Bray, Robert. Review of Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams. In South
Atlantic Review, 61.3 (Summer 1996). Atlanta: SAMLA. 121-123.
Debusscher, Gilbert. "'Minting Their Separate Wills':
Tennessee Williams and Hart Crane." In Tennessee Williams. Ed.
Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. 113-130.
Durham, Frank. "Tennessee Williams, Theatre Poet in Prose." In
Harold Bloom, ed., Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie: Modern
Critical Interpretations. New York: Chelsea, 1988.
Falk, Signi Lenea. Tennessee Williams. New York: Twayne, 1961.
Gantz, Arthur. "A Desperate Morality." In Harold Bloom, ed.,
Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie: Modern Critical Views. New
York: Chelsea Publishers, 1987. pp. 99-112.
Heller, Scot. "The Twilight of Tennessee Williams: A Portrait of the
Playwright in the Last States of a Great Career." People Weekly,
19 (14 March 1983). 60.
Hirsch, Foster. A Portrait of the Artist: The Plays of Tennessee
Williams. Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1979.
Howell, Elmo. "The Function of Gentlemen Callers: A Note on
Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie." In Harold Bloom, ed., Tennessee
Williams's The Glass Menagerie: Modern Critical Interpretations. New York:
Chelsea, 1988.
Jackson, Esther M. "The Synthetic Myth." In Harold Bloom, ed.,
Tennessee Williams. New York: Chelsea, 1987. 23-42.
Kaufmann, Walter, ed. Hegel: Texts and Commentary. Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame, 1977.
King, Thomas L. "Irony and Distance in The Glass Menagerie." In
Harold Bloom, ed., Tennessee Williams. New York: Chelsea, 1987.
85-94.
Koprince, Susan. "Tennessee Williams's Unseen Characters."
The Southern Quarterly, 33.1 (Fall 1994). 87-95.
Leverich, Lyle. Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams. New York:
Crown, 1995.
Levy, Eric P. "ŒThrough Soundproof Glass': The Prison of
Self Consciousness in The Glass Menagerie." Modern Drama, 36.
(December 1993). 529-537.
Londré, Felicia Hardison. "Tennessee Williams." In
Philip C. Kolin, ed., American Playwrights Since 1945: A Guide to
Scholarship, Criticism and Performance.. New York: Greenwood, 1989.
488-517.
Nelson, Benjamin. Tennessee Williams: The Man and His Work. New York:
Ivan Obolensky, 1961.
Rasky, Harry. Tennessee Williams: A Portrait in Laughter and
Lamentation. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986.
Stein, Roger B. "The Glass Menagerie Revisited: Catastrophe Without
Violence." In Harold Bloom, ed. Tennessee Williams's The Glass
Menagerie: Modern Critical Interpretations. New York: Chelsea Publishers,
1988.
Thierfelder, William R., III. "Williams's The Glass Menagerie."
The Explicator, 48(4): Summer 1990. 284-5.
Thompson, Judith J. Tennessee Williams's Plays: Memory, Myth, and
Symbol. New York: Peter Lang, 1989.
Tischler, Nancy M. "The Glass Menagerie: From Story to Play."
in Harold Bloom, ed. Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie: Modern
Critical Interpretations. New York: Chelsea Publishers, 1988.
Watson, Charles S. "The Revision of The Glass Menagerie: The Passing
of Good Manners." In Harold Bloom, ed., Tennessee Williams's The Glass
Menagerie: Modern Critical Interpretations. New York: Chelsea, 1988.
Williams, Dakin. Personal interviews. 19 October 1996 through 1 December
1997.
Williams, Dakin, and W.R. Stewart. Nails of Protest: A Critical
Comparison of Modern Protestant and Catholic Beliefs. (Festival Edition)
St. Louis: Exposition, 1996.
Secondary Sources, Rhetoric and Approaches:
Aristotle. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Translated
by George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford UP, 1991.
Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. 2nd ed. Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1983.
Crane, R.S., ed. Critics and Criticism:. Essays in method by a group of
the Chicago Critics: R.S. Crane, W.R. Keast, Norman MacLean, Richard McKeon,
Elder Olson, Bernard Weinberg. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1957.
Corbett, Edward P.J. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student.
3rd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1990.
Goodnight, Thomas. "Rhetorical Criticism: The Mechanist World View."
Internet document: 1996.
(http://charlotte.acns.nwu.edu/charles/library/wwwmechr. html). Accessed
7/29/96.
COPYRIGHT 1997, Darryl Erwin Haley. All rights reserved.