Tennessee Williams’s Female Characters: Problems of Gender and Sexuality
Tennessee Williams’s Female Characters: Problems of Gender and Sexuality

Author: Bünyamin Yuvarlak

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2021-03-23

Total Pages: 41

ISBN-13: 3346371840

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Bachelor Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, RWTH Aachen University (Institut für Anglistik, Amerikanistik und Romanistik der RWTH Aachen), language: English, abstract: The goal of the paper is to identify features relating to homosexual identity, based on a characterization of Williams’s female characters. Among other studies, Tennessee Williams’s work has commonly been researched from a gay study perspective by literary scholars and queer theorists. The motive for that was mostly Williams’s own homosexuality and the stigma that surrounded the issue around the time he published his most famous pieces. He has written plays which explicitly involve the topic of homosexuality, as the eminent Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but most of his work does not embrace homosexuality precisely. Nevertheless, on the grounds that literary studies is fairly limitless, for literature provides many different fields for analyses, it is possible to involve literary pieces into the field of gay studies, even though it initially does not specify the matter. The arguably most interesting element in Tennessee Williams’s drama are his characters, many of whom seem to share similar characteristics as struggling individuals. Analyzing the fictional characters with regard to gay writing could help find a possible pattern, draw conclusions about the influence of Williams’s personality, and thus, support the assumption that homosexuality is integrated in his plays. Gender is also fundamental for an approach based on sexuality. Taking that into consideration, below, the focus will be on Williams’s female characters, especially on the protagonists Laura Wingfield from The Glass Menagerie and Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire. These women are not necessarily gay themselves; in the plays, there is no clear evidence about them being sexually or romantically attracted to the same sex. Instead, sexuality is a broad concept with more meanings attached to it, which will further be discussed in the third chapter.

Gender Conflicts in the Dramas of Tennessee Williams
Gender Conflicts in the Dramas of Tennessee Williams

Author: Kerstin Müller

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2004-10-09

Total Pages: 43

ISBN-13: 3638313603

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Bachelor Thesis from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7 (A-), University of Bayreuth (Faculty for Language and Literature Sciences), language: English, abstract: Tennessee Williams has often been called the American national poet of the perverse and a dirty writer because a recurrent theme in his work is sexual deviation, such as nymphomania, promiscuity, rape, impotence, homosexuality, profligacy, frigidity, cannibalism, and castration (Bauer-Briski 11). This statement clearly suggests the controversy with which Tennessee Williams’ dramas were perceived by the public and the critics. It is well known that conflicts on these issues can be found in many of his plays. This raises the question as to what extent these conflicts are related to specific gender roles and their subordinate themes. Williams once said that he has never written about anything he has not experienced first hand, thus most of the conflict issues can be considered to be autobiographical to a certain extent. As Williams’ childhood was restricted to a rather reclusive life due to diphtheria, which forced him to spend almost his entire childhood at home with his family, the experiences with his mother, father and sister shaped not only his character, but also the themes in his plays. His upbringing was characterised by Puritanism which was of vital importance in his family. His mother later became the model for his antiquated Southern Belles and overprotective mothers in the plays. His boisterous father was perceived as a frightening and alien male presence by him, his sister and his mother. He later became the model for the same type of harsh, brutal characters in his plays, such as Big Daddy and Stanley Kowalski (Falk 155 f). Yet, not only his Puritan upbringing shaped his life, but also the fact that he grew up in the South of the United States, in the Mississippi Delta, and the region’s heat, its storms, floods, the division into social classes, the colourful imagery and rhythms of the language were to shape his setting and dialogue (Tischler 2).The uniqueness of the South along with its cultural and social characteristics is embodied in many of his plays, and the social roles appointed to the people living there offers an extensive basis of analysis for not only gender roles, but also the related conflicts. In addition to this, Williams was known as being homosexual and leading a very promiscuous life, especially with men much younger than him (Bauer-Briski 11).

Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire

Author: Harold Bloom

Publisher: Infobase Publishing

Published: 2014-05-14

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 143812628X

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Presents a collection of ten critical essays on Williams's play "A Streetcar Named Desire" arranged in chronological order of publication.

The Male and the Female in Tennessee Williams's Plays
The Male and the Female in Tennessee Williams's Plays

Author: Frederik Kugler

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2006-09-26

Total Pages: 74

ISBN-13: 3638549178

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Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Cologne (Amerikanisches Institut), language: English, abstract: In this paper, I will attempt a psychoanalytic reading of the male and the female in a selection of Tennessee Williams’s plays. In my opinion, a psychoanalytic approach is the best way to do justice to Williams’s disturbed characters and to explain the concepts of sex, gender, and culture that are inherent in each of his plays. The interrelation of these concepts will be of the utmost importance in the analysis ofThe Glass Menagerie(1945),A Streetcar Named Desire(1947),Cat on a Hot Tin Roof(1955),Orpheus Descending(1957),Suddenly Last Summer(1957), andSweet Bird of Youth(1959). However, before turning to the analysis of Tennessee Williams’s plays, I will first delineate the concept of psychoanalysis as such. Since Sigmund Freud, who is conceived of as the father of psychoanalysis, psychoanalysis has come a long way, and even though it is today regarded as a somewhat conservative discipline, it still retains a disruptive attitude towards the conventional discourse of gender and sexuality. It furthermore has the capacity to undermine notions of fixed identity, including sexual identity, and although psychoanalysis may not be used as a method of treatment in clinical psychiatry anymore, it still proves successful when it comes to analysing the notion of sex, gender, and culture in literary texts, for instance. I will begin the paper with an outline of Sigmund Freud’s essays on the three stages of psychosexual development of the child and give a brief account on the general workings of human sexuality. Via Freud’s essays, I will show that sexuality is inextricably linked with modern Western society, and that sexual drives are repressed in order to guarantee the individual’s entrance into society and culture. “Seit Freud wird die [...] Entstehung und Funktion moralischer Motive im Individuum und in der Gesellschaft unter Berücksichtigung psychosexueller Entwicklungsphasen aus der Dialektik zwischen der Triebnatur des Menschen und seiner Gebundenheit an kulturelle und soziale Wert und Normsetzungen abgeleitet.”1Human sexuality then turns out to be a cultural product that is based on heterosexual behavior and procreation. Via these aspects, I will forge a link to Williams’s disturbed characters, who fail to associate with normative sexuality. In order to further explore the connection of sex, gender, and culture, I will also take Jacques Lacan’s contribution to psychoanalysis into consideration.

Sexual Politics in the Work of Tennessee Williams
Sexual Politics in the Work of Tennessee Williams

Author: Michael S. D. Hooper

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-04-12

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1107379121

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Michael S. D. Hooper reverses the recent trend of regarding Tennessee Williams as fundamentally a social writer following the discovery, publication and/or performance of plays from both ends of his career - the 'proletarian' apprentice years of Candles to the Sun and Not About Nightingales and the once overlooked final period of, amongst many other plays, The Red Devil Battery Sign. Hooper contends that recent criticism has exaggerated the political engagement and egalitarian credentials of a writer whose characters and situations revert to a reactionary politics of the individual dominated by the negotiation of sexual power. Directly, or more often indirectly, Williams' writing expresses social disaffection before glamorising the outcast and shelving thoughts of political change. Through detailed analysis of canonical texts the book sheds new light on Williams' work, as well as on the cultural and social life of mid-twentieth-century America.

The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams
The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams

Author: Matthew C. Roudané

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1997-12-11

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9780521498838

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This is a collection of thirteen original essays from a team of leading scholars in the field. In this wide-ranging volume, the contributors cover a healthy sampling of Williams's works, from the early apprenticeship years in the 1930s through to his last play before his death in 1983, Something Cloudy, Something Clear. In addition to essays on such major plays as The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, among others, the contributors also consider selected minor plays, short stories, poems, and biographical concerns. The Companion also features a chapter on selected key productions as well as a bibliographic essay surveying the major critical statements on Williams.

Tennessee Williams's Female Characters: Problems of Gender and Sexuality
Tennessee Williams's Female Characters: Problems of Gender and Sexuality

Author: Bünyamin Yuvarlak

Publisher:

Published: 2021-02-18

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13: 9783346371850

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Bachelor Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, RWTH Aachen University (Institut für Anglistik, Amerikanistik und Romanistik der RWTH Aachen), language: English, abstract: The goal of the paper is to identify features relating to homosexual identity, based on a characterization of Williams's female characters. Among other studies, Tennessee Williams's work has commonly been researched from a gay study perspective by literary scholars and queer theorists. The motive for that was mostly Williams's own homosexuality and the stigma that surrounded the issue around the time he published his most famous pieces. He has written plays which explicitly involve the topic of homosexuality, as the eminent Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but most of his work does not embrace homosexuality precisely. Nevertheless, on the grounds that literary studies is fairly limitless, for literature provides many different fields for analyses, it is possible to involve literary pieces into the field of gay studies, even though it initially does not specify the matter. The arguably most interesting element in Tennessee Williams's drama are his characters, many of whom seem to share similar characteristics as struggling individuals. Analyzing the fictional characters with regard to gay writing could help find a possible pattern, draw conclusions about the influence of Williams's personality, and thus, support the assumption that homosexuality is integrated in his plays. Gender is also fundamental for an approach based on sexuality. Taking that into consideration, below, the focus will be on Williams's female characters, especially on the protagonists Laura Wingfield from The Glass Menagerie and Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire. These women are not necessarily gay themselves; in the plays, there is no clear evidence about them being sexually or romantically attracted to the same sex. Instead, sexuality is a broad concept

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Author: Tennessee Williams

Publisher: Signet

Published: 1968-04-01

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780451028556

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Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning play has captured both stage and film audiences since its debut in 1954. One of his best-loved and most famous plays, it exposes the lies plaguing the family of a wealthy Southern planter of humble origins.

Summer and Smoke
Summer and Smoke

Author: Tennessee Williams

Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Inc

Published: 1950

Total Pages: 92

ISBN-13: 9780822210979

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THE STORY: A play that is profoundly affecting, SUMMER AND SMOKE is a simple love story of a somewhat puritanical Southern girl and an unpuritanical young doctor. Each is basically attracted to the other but because of their divergent attitudes toward lif