Transcript .ppt

Tennessee Williams
I. Introduction to Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 –
February 25, 1983), better known by the pen name
Tennessee Williams, was a major American playwright
and one of the prominent playwrights in the twentieth
century. The name "Tennessee" was a name given to him
by college friends because of his southern accent and his
father's background in Tennessee. He won the Pulitzer
Prize for Drama for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948
and for Cat On a Hot Tin Roof in 1955. In addition to
those two plays, The Glass Menagerie in 1944 and The
Night of the Iguana in 1961 received the New York
Drama Critics' Circle Awards. His 1952 play The Rose
Tattoo received the Tony Award for best play.
托马斯·拉尼尔·威廉斯三世
（ Thomas Lanier Williams III ，
1911年3月26日－1983年2月25日），
以笔名田纳西·威廉斯（Tennessee
Williams）闻名于世，是一位美国
的，同时也是二十世纪最重要的剧
作家之一。他于1948年及1955年分
别以他的《欲望街车》（A
Streetcar Named Desire）及《热铁
皮屋顶上的猫》（Cat on A Hot Tim
Roof）赢得普利策戏剧奖。除此之
外，《玻璃动物园》（The Glass
Menagerie）在1945年以及《大蜥
蜴之夜》（The Night of the Iguana ）
在 1961 年 拿 下 纽 约 戏 剧 评 论 奖
（New York Drama Critics' Circle
Award）。1952年他的《玫瑰刺青》
（The Rose Tattoo）获得东尼奖最
佳戏剧的殊荣。
Tennessee Williams's family life was a troubled one that
provided inspiration for much of his writings. He was born in
Columbus, Mississippi, and his family moved to Clarksdale,
Mississippi by the time he was 3. In 1918, the family moved again to
St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Cornelius Williams, was a travelling
shoe salesman who became increasingly abusive as his children grew
older. Edwina Williams, Tennessee's mother, was a descendant of
genteel southern life, and was somewhat smothering. Dakin Williams,
Tennessee's brother, was often favored over Tennessee by their father.
Williams wrote his first publicly performed play, "Cairo, Shanghai,
Bombay!" in 1935.
Williams lived in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana.
He first moved there in 1939 to write for the WPA and lived first at
722 Toulouse Street (now a bed and breakfast). He wrote A Streetcar
Named Desire (1947) while living at 632 St. Peter Street.
Tennessee was close to his sister, Rose Williams, who had
perhaps the greatest influence on him. She was an elegant, slim
beauty who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and spent most of
her adult life in mental hospitals. After various unsuccessful
attempts at therapy, her parents eventually allowed a prefrontal
lobotomy in an effort to treat her. The operation, performed in 1943,
in Washington, D.C., went badly, and Rose remained incapacitated
for the rest of her life.
Rose's failed lobotomy was a hard blow to Tennessee, who
never forgave his parents for allowing the operation. It may have
been one of the factors that drove him to alcoholism. The common
"mad heroine" theme that appears in many of his plays may have
been influenced by his sister.
Characters in his plays are often seen to be direct
representations of his family members. Laura Wingfield in The
Glass Menagerie is understood to be modelled on Rose. Some
biographers say that the character of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar
Named Desire is based on her as well. The motif of lobotomy also
arises in Suddenly, Last Summer. Amanda Wingfield in The Glass
Menagerie can easily be seen to represent Williams's mother. Many
of his characters are considered autobiographical, including Tom
Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and Sebastian in Suddenly, Last
Summer. Actress Anne Meacham was a close personal friend of
Tennessee Williams and played the lead in many of his plays,
including but not limited to Suddenly, Last Summer.
In his memoirs, the playwright claims he became sexually
active as a teenager. His biographer, Lyle Leverich, maintained this
actually occurred later, in his late 20s. His physical and emotional
relationship with his secretary, Frank Merlo, lasted from 1947 until
Merlo's death from cancer in 1961, and provided stability when
Williams produced his most enduring works. Merlo provided
balance to many of Williams's frequent bouts with depression,
especially the fear that like his sister, Rose, he would become
insane. The death of his lover drove Williams into a deep, decadelong episode of depression.
Tennessee Williams died at the age of 71 after he choked on a
bottle cap. However, some (among them his brother, Dakin) believe
Williams was murdered. Alternately, the police report from his
death seems to indicate that drugs were involved, as it states that
pills were found under his body.
II. The Work
The "mad heroine" theme that appeared in many of his plays seemed clearly influenced by the life
of Williams' sister Rose
Characters in his plays are often seen as representations of his family members. Laura Wingfield
in The Glass Menagerie was understood to be modeled on Rose. Some biographers believed that the
character of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire is also based on her, as well as Williams
himself. When Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire, he believed he was going to die and that this
play would be his swan song.
Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie was generally seen to represent Williams' mother.
Characters such as Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and Sebastian in Suddenly, Last Summer were
understood to represent Williams himself. In addition, he used a lobotomy operation as a motif in
Suddenly, Last Summer.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar named Desire both included references to elements of
Williams' life such as homosexuality, mental instability and alcoholism.
Williams wrote The Parade, or Approaching the End of a Summer when he was 29 and worked on
it through his life. It seemed an autobiographical depiction of an early romance in Provincetown,
Massachusetts. This play was produced for the first time on October 1, 2006 in Provincetown by the
production company, as part of the First Annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival.
The Parade, or Approaching the End of a Summer was among several works published by New
Directions in the spring of 2008, edited and introduced by Williams scholar Annette J. Saddik. This
collection of experimental plays was titled The Traveling Companion and Other Plays.
Williams' last play A House Not Meant to Stand is a gothic comedy published in 2008 by New
Directions with a foreword by Gregory Mosher and an introduction by Thomas Keith. Williams called his
last play a "Southern gothic spook sonata."
Other works by Williams include Camino Real and Sweet Bird of Youth.
II. Introduction to A Streetcar Named Desire
The play, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams is a study in contract
between two of the main characters, Blanche Dubois and her brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski.
Blanche is an aging southern belle, she is slightly melodramatic and has built this allusion
about her self, in which she is still a wealthy, lovely socialite. In reality, Blanche is a closet
alcoholic who has little money or real dignity left. She paints a picture of herself as a frail,
tragic figure and requires her pregnant sister, Stella to dote on her. Stella’s husband is a nononsense, Polish blue-collar worker. Stanley sees through Blanche’s charade, has no respect
for her and does not trust her. Blanche believes Stanley is crass and beneath both her and her
sister.
As the play progresses, Blanche and Stanley engage in more confrontations. Stanley
suspects there is more to Blanche’s story of how she lost the family’s ancestral home and is
determined to find the truth. The contrast between the two characters becomes more apparent
through the symbolism of light and color. Blanche prefers candlelight and pastel colors, while
Stanley is seen is garish colors and bathed in harsh light. In one scene, Blanche purchases a
paper lantern with which to cover a bare bulb. This is symbolic of her desire to temper
Stanley and have the softer gentler world she needs.
As Stanley learns of Blanche’s less than honorable reputation, he becomes increasingly
angered at her act of innocence one moment and flirting the next. The climax of the play
comes when Stanley rapes Blanche while Stella is in the hospital after having the baby. This
drives Blanche, who may have already been mentally unbalanced, over the edge especially
when Stella refuses to believe her accusations.
Significance of the Play
Streetcar hit theaters in 1946. The play cemented
William's reputation as one of the greatest American
playwrights, winning him a New York's Critics Circle
Award and a Pulitzer Prize. Among the play's greatest
achievements is the depiction of the psychology of
working class characters. In the plays of the period,
depictions of working-class life tended to be didactic,
with a focus on social commentary or a kind of
documentary drama. Williams' play sought to depict
working-class characters as psychologically-evolved
entities; to some extent, Williams tries to portray these
blue-collar characters on their own terms, without
romanticizing them.
Like Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams wanted to
challenge some of the conventions of naturalistic theatre. Summer
and Smoke (1948), Camino Real (1953), and The Glass
Menagerie (1944), among others, provided some of the early
testing ground for Williams' innovations. The Glass Menagerie
uses music, screen projections, and lighting effects to create the
haunting and dream-like atmosphere appropriate for a "memory
play." Like Eugene O'Neill's Emperor Jones and Arthur Miller's
Death of a Salesman, Williams' plays explores ways of using the
stage to depict the interior life and memories of a character.
In Streetcar, stage effects are used to represent Blanche's
decent into madness. The maddening polka music, jungle sound
effects, and strange shadows help to represent the world as
Blanche experiences it. These effects are a departure from the
conventions of naturalistic drama, although in this respect
Streetcar is not as innovative as The Glass Menagerie.
Nevertheless, A Streetcar Named Desire uses these effects to
create a highly subjective portrait of the play's central action. On
stage, these effects powerfully evoke the terror and isolation of
madness.
A Streetcar Named Desire: Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando),
Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh)
Character List
 Blanche Dubois
Not quite a heroine, Blanche is the complicated protagonist of the play. She is a faded
Southern belle without a dime left to her name, after generations of mismanagement led
to the loss of the family fortune. Blanche spent the end of her youth watching the older
generation of her family die out before losing the DuBois seat at Belle Reve. This
experience, along with the suicide of her young homosexual husband, deadened
Blanche's emotions and her sense of reality. Desire and death became intricately linked
in her life as she led a loose and increasingly careless life, and indeed, after losing her
position as a schoolteacher she is forced to depend on the kindness of her one living
relation, her sister Stella. Blanche tries to continue being the Southern belle of her
youth, but she is too old and has seen too much, and soon her grip on reality begins to
slip. She has difficulty understanding the passion in her sister's marriage and is coolly
calculating in her relationship with Mitch - yet barely manages to suppress a latent
nymphomania.
 Stella Kowalski
Stella Kowalski, Blanche's younger sister, is about twenty-five years old and pregnant
with her first child. Stella has made a new life for herself in New Orleans and is madly
in love with her husband Stanley - their idyllic relationship is steeped in physical
passion. Stella is forthright and unapologetic about the nature of her relationship with
her husband, and although she loves her sister, she is pragmatic and refuses to let
anything come between her and Stanley.
 Stanley Kowalski
Stanley Kowalski, Stella's husband, is a man of solid, blue-collar stock - direct,
passionate, and often violent. He has no patience for Blanche and the illusions
she cherishes. Moreover, he is a controlling and domineering man, demanding
subservience from his wife in the belief that his authority is threatened by
Blanche's arrival. Blanche, however, sees him as a primitive ape driven only
by instinct. In the end, though, Stanley proves he can be as cold and
calculating as she is.
Harold "Mitch" Mitchell
One of Stanley's friends. Mitch is as tough and "unrefined" as Stanley. He is an
imposing physical specimen, massively built and powerful, but he is also a
deeply sensitive and compassionate man. His mother is dying, and this
impending loss affects him profoundly. He is attracted to Blanche from the
start, and Blanche hopes that he will ask her to marry him. Indeed, Mitch is a
fundamentally decent man and seeks only to settle down. But when the truth
about Blanche's history comes to light, he feels swindled by her.
Major Themes
Fantasy/Illusion
Blanche dwells in illusion; fantasy is her primary means of self-defense, both against
outside threats and against her own demons. But her deceits carry no trace of malice,
but rather they come from her weakness and inability to confront the truth head-on. She
is a quixotic figure, seeing the world not as it is but as it ought to be. Fantasy has a
liberating magic that protects her from the tragedies she has had to endure. Throughout
the play, Blanche's dependence on illusion is contrasted with Stanley's steadfast realism,
and in the end it is Stanley and his worldview that win. To survive, Stella must also
resort to a kind of illusion, forcing herself to believe that Blanche's accusations against
Stanley are false so that she can continue living with her husband.
The Old South and the New South
Stella and Blanche come from a world that is rapidly dying. Belle Reve, their family's
ancestral plantation, has been lost, and the two sisters are the last living members of
their family and, symbolically, of their old world of cavaliers and cotton fields. Their
strain of Old South was not conquered by the march of General Sherman's army, but by
the steady march of time, and as Blanche's beauty fades with age so too do these
vestiges of that civilization gone with the wind. Blanche attempts to stay back in the
past but it is impossible, and Stella only survives by mixing her DuBois blood with the
common stock of the Kowalskis; the old South can only live on in a diluted,
bastardized form.
Cruelty
The only unforgivable crime, according to
Blanche, is deliberate cruelty. This sin is
Stanley's specialty. His final assault
against Blanche is a merciless attack
against an already-beaten foe. Blanche, on
the other hand, is dishonest but she never
lies out of malice. Her cruelty is
unintentional; often, she lies in a vain or
misguided effort to please. Throughout the
play, we see the full range of cruelty, from
Blanche's well-intentioned deceits to
Stella self-deceiving treachery to Stanley's
deliberate and unchecked malice. In
Williams' plays, there are many ways to
hurt someone. And some are worse than
others.
 The Primitive and the Primal
Blanche often speaks of Stanley as ape-like and primitive. Stanley represents a
very unrefined manhood, a Romantic idea of man untouched by civilization and
its effeminizing influences. His appeal is clear: Stella cannot resist him, and even
Blanche, though repulsed, is on some level drawn to him. Stanley's unrefined
nature also includes a terrifying amorality. The service of his desire is central to
who he is; he has no qualms about driving his sister-in-law to madness, or raping
her. In Freudian terms, Stanley is pure id, while Blanche represents the super-ego
and Stella the ego – but the balancing between the id and super-ego is not found
only in Stella's mediation, but in the tension between these forces within Blanche
herself. She finds Stanley's primitivism so threatening precisely because it is
something she sees, and hides, within her.
 Desire
Closely related to the theme above, desire is the central theme of the play.
Blanche seeks to deny it, although we learn later in the play that desire is one of
her driving motivations; her desires have caused her to be driven out of town.
Physical desire, and not intellectual or spiritual intimacy, is the heart of Stella's
and Stanley's relationship, but Williams makes it clear that this does not make
their bond any weaker. Desire is also Blanche's undoing, because she cannot find
a healthy way of dealing with her natural urges - she is always either trying to
suppress them or pursuing them with abandon.
Loneliness
The companion theme to desire is
loneliness, and between these two
extremes, Blanche is lost. She
desperately seeks companionship and
protection in the arms of strangers. And
she has never recovered from her tragic
and consuming love for her first husband.
Blanche is in need of a defender. But in
New Orleans, she will find instead the
predatory and merciless Stanley.
Desire vs Cemeteries / Romance
vs Realism
The fundamental tension of the play
is this play between the romantic
and the realistic, played out in
parallel in the pairing of lust and
death. Blanche takes the streetcars
named Desire and Cemeteries, and
like the French's "la petite mort,"
those cars and the themes they
symbolize run together to Blanche's
final destination. This dichotomy is
present in nearly every element of
the play, from the paired
characterizations of Blanche the
romantic and Stanley the realist, to
how all of Blanche's previous sexual
encounters are tangled up with
death, to the actual names of the
streetcars.
A little Quiz