Pulitzer Prize

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A lot of talented artists have graced this world, and Tennessee Williams is undoubtedly one of them. Like so many artistically great minds, his triumph is based on the uneven emotional ride that his life had been. He was born in March 1911, in his grandfather’s house in Columbus, Mississippi and went on to become one of the most important modern American playwrights. He first started to write at the age of five when he was diagnosed with diphtheria which left him paralyzed, managing to recover two years later. This early initiation into the discipline indicates how the whole of his writing career would always relate back to the malfunction of his life, making his work autobiographical.

 

Williams’ claims to have written in ‘memory play’ format (meaning that the play’s form and content are inspired by a character’s memory) show a developing structure consisting in three steps: firstly, a character experiences something; secondly, that experience causes ‘an arrest of time’ which is the situation looping upon itself; and lastly, the character must re-live the profound experiences until they make sense of it. The last stage may be Williams finally coming to terms with and being able to write about his own story, after having been stuck in the second stage reliving an experience over and over again. This idea can be supported by an answer Williams gave in his interview “The World I live In”, stating: “I guess my work has always been a kind of psychotherapy for me” (p109).

 

Observing his childhood, he lived in Mississippi with his parents, grandparents and siblings. They lived a somewhat content life until Williams recovered from his illness and they moved to St. Louis, where unfortunately, neither he nor his sister were able to adapt to city life. This monumental change was referenced in A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), with Blanche’s character. When she arrives at her sisters new home, she neither desires the scenery nor the house itself, provoking her to constantly reminisce about her former life and never settle in. These factors arise due to Blanche’s hypersensitivity and her having created a fictional world to live in. The hypersensitivity of her character most likely came from Williams’ sister Rose as this was a known part of her illness, and believed to become more exaggerated when treatment failed. And again, the need to invent a world of their own was also most likely inspired by his sister, a factor which can be seen more clearly in The Glass Menagerie (1945). Both the character Laura and Williams’ sister Rose have tremendous insecurities about the outside world. They fear it due to their deficiencies, Rose being mentally ill and Laura having a crippled foot, therefore boarding themselves in and making themselves different. An example of this might be when Laura takes the typewriting course, becoming “sick at the stomach” due to nerves, not lasting more than a few days before she left never to return (p12/13).

 

On a particular occasion Williams allegedly brought home a gentleman caller, and although no details were given as to what happened, in the play Jim (the gentleman caller) brought truth to their lives. He pointed out to Laura that her physical differences, making her inferior to others, are something which she has fabricated herself. This idea can be observed when Jim expresses the following:

 

That clumping you thought was so awful in high school. You say that you even dreaded to walk into class. You see what you did? You dropped out of school, you gave up an education because of a clump, which as far as I know was practically non-existent! (p73)

 

Analysing Tom’s character in The Glass Menagerie, the reader can presume that he is based on Williams himself. There are two similarities which can be witnessed to prove this comparison: the first is Tom’s place of work at a warehouse, which mirrors Williams’ clerical job; the second is their mutual desire to leave home as both aspire to be writers but interestingly neither could due to their fathers. Williams was forced by his father to quit his schooling, and take the clerical job due to the Depression. Tom could not become a writer owing to his father’s abandonment so many years before, obligating him to care for his mother and sister which eventually became a burden. This strain was most likely also true of Williams, because a year after he finally graduated in 1938 he left home, as did Tom. Relating to this, the ending of The Glass Menagerie could confirm claims that the play was written to overcome the illness of his sister. Also, Williams may have written it to exorcise any guilt that he felt about not trying harder to prevent his sister’s lobotomy. This can be seen by his haunted feelings of having abandoned her, professed in the closing lines of The Glass Menagerie:

 

Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger – anything that can blow your candles out! (p87)

 

When Williams was working in his clerical job, he met a man named Stanley Kowalski, who later appeared as a character in A Streetcar Named Desire. Stanley was very much like Williams’ father, he was violent and abusive, especially when he had been drinking. In the play he was married to Blanche’s sister Stella, and their relationship was based on an animalistic sexual chemistry, which Blanche found impossible to understand. Given that Williams initially found it hard to openly write about his homosexuality, he may be referring to his own inter-male relationships, where possibly Blanche is the uncomprehending public. This idea is perhaps supported by the fact that we see Blanche is a homophobic character; we learn so when she tells the story of her late husband. On discovering his tendencies she expresses her revulsion, leading to his instant suicide, as observed in the passage:

 

We danced the ‘Varsouviana’! Suddenly in the middle of the dance the boy I had married broke away from me and ran out of the casino. A few moments later - a shot! […] He’d stuck the revolver into his mouth, and fired – so that the back of his head had been – blown away! It was because – on the dance-floor – unable to stop myself – I’d suddenly said – ‘I know! I know! You disgust me…’ (p67)

 

The thing audiences can understand about Tennessee Williams’ characters from examples like this is that they do not suffer because of the actual actions or circumstances that make them outcasts, but because of the destructive impact of conventional morality and/or society upon them.

 

If a closer look at the title The Glass Menagerie is taken, observing the Oxford Dictionary definition of ‘menagerie’, the following can be understood: “A collection of wild animals kept in captivity for exhibition” and in figurative speech: “A strange or diverse collection of people or things.” If his works are truly autobiographical, then this title suits the play very well given that: his sister ended her days in a mental institution; his mother had a mood disorder; his father was abusive and emotionally unavailable; and Tennessee’s brother institutionalised him, whilst all the time actually being afraid of going mad. In conclusion, this is certainly a “diverse collection of people”, although admittedly they do all circle around the same ideas of destruction and madness, but coupled together with the sensation of Williams exhibiting his family in his plays, the title seems perfectly befitting.

 

Arthur Miller described A Streetcar Named Desire as “a cry of pain” (pxi), and although The Glass Menagerie is considered the most autobiographical, a clear cry transcends from Williams’ life into Streetcar. To succeed in demonstrating that level of suffering, it has to come from somewhere truthful and deep within. This is most likely the strongest evidence one can have, to demonstrate Williams’ plays as an autobiographical journey of his life.

 

“Menagerie.” The New Oxford Dictionary of English. 1^st ed. 1998.

Miller, Arthur. Introduction. A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, Penguin Modern Classics, 2004, pp. vii – xi.

Williams, Tennessee. “The Catastrophe of Success.” The Glass Menagerie, Penguin Modern Classics, 2009, pp. 88-93.

Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. Penguin Modern Classics, 2009.

Williams, Tennessee. “The World I Live In.” A Streetcar Named Desire, Penguin Modern Classics, 2009, pp. 108-112.

Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. Penguin Modern Classics, 2009.