The figure of women in Tennessee Williams’ work Analysis of the Glass Managerie, A Streetcar Named Desire and Baby Doll. “If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it” stated Tennessee Williams in the preface of The Dark at the Top of the Stairs by William Motter Inge (1957). Tennessee Williams has never denied that literature was for him a kind of psychoanalysis. In particular, it seems that the evocation of women through his work reveals a lot about his personality, but also about the world he lives in.
The analysis of three of his plays: The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire and Baby Doll, shed light on the peculiar place Williams devotes to women. First, it can be pointed out that the figure of women is related to Williams’ relationship with his mother and his sister. But writing about women also works as a catharsis and allows him to disclose a part of his personality. Finally the evocation of women can be considered as a mean for Williams to describe his time and his conception of the human condition. In Tennessee Williams’ plays, women are a permanent reminiscence of the figure of his mother and of his sister.
Williams once told “My work is emotionally autobiographical. It has no relationship to the actual events of my life, but it reflects the emotional currents of my life. ” A few elements of Williams’ biography can explain his need to evocate those two emblematic elements of his youth. Tennessee was really close to his older sister Rose – they were sometimes referred as “The Couple”. Rose started showing symptoms of schizophrenia at the age of 27 after the end of a love affair. She spent the rest of her life in mental institutions and lost most of her abilities after the failure of her lobotomy.
Williams never forgave his parents for allowing the operation and the suffering of his sister may have led him to alcoholism and depression. Williams’ mother – Edwina – was a “Southern Belle” – she came from the upper-class and was the daughter of a local Episcopal priest. She was considered as a loving but smothering and hysterical mother. As his father spent most of his time outside of home, Williams grew in this women-dominated environment that explains the empathy he has for his women character. Those two unbalanced figures deeply influenced Tennessee Williams, who used his female characters as reference to his family.
In The Glass Menagerie, Laura Wingfield is modeled on Rose. Her physical infirmity – she is slightly crippled – is a transposition for the latter psychological misbalance. Both women are particularly sensitive and shy. Rose also had a glass menagerie she took care of, and Williams pointed to fact out when describing Rose’s room in St Louis. “My sister and I painted all her furniture white; she put white curtains at the window and on the large shelves around the room she collected a large assortment of little glass articles of which she was particularly fond. ” For both women, these pieces of glass are a symbol of their inside world.
On top of that, Laura – as Rose – got broken hearted when she realized the man she loved was engaged to another woman. Some critics even go further by saying that Jim O’Connor was the name of Rose’s lover. This unhappy love affair drove both women to entrenched themselves from the rest of the world. Rose started developing schizophrenia whereas Laura lost any hope to establish a future relationship with anyone. Influenced by the memories of his beloved sister, Williams manage to drive sympathy on Laura’s character. Her shyness is touching and her despair at the end of the play is moving.
Amanda Wingfield, the other female character of The Glass Menagerie, is modeled on Williams’ mother. She is depicted as a Southern Belle, which lives in the past and longed for the happiness of her youth. One of the first sentence of Amanda in the play is “One Sunday afternoon, in Blue Montain – your mother received – seventeen! – gentleman callers” (The Glass Managerie, Scene One). Amanda, just as Williams’ mother, appears as an intrusive and smothering mother. She seems to be driven by deep motherly feelings about her children, but she wants their happiness to follow her conception of life.
In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche Dubois is a mix of Rose and Edwina Williams. As Williams’ mother, she is a Southern Belle, stemming from a genteel family. Her past is essential to her as there are many references to the land she owned and to her ancestors. Blanche is obsessed with the image she gives and is therefore an ardent partisan of good manners and behavioral codes. A part of her character is also due to the influence of Tennessee Williams’ sister. As Rose, Blanche ends up in a mental institution and suffers from psychological problems.
She is very fragile and the tension she experiences between illusion and reality consumes her just as schizophrenia. In his plays, Williams also use women to disclose a part of his own personality. Early in his career, he said “I can’t expose a human weakness on stage unless I know it trough having it myself. ” Therefore the theme of loneliness, which is present in The Glass Menagerie, Baby Doll and A Streetcar named Desire, is a direct reference to a well-known feeling for Tennessee Williams. In Baby Doll, the character of Aunt Rose is living with Baby Doll and Archie Lee but no one seems to really care about her.
She knows she is rejected and cries out that she is going to disappear but no one listen to her. The woman appears to be living in a world of loneliness. In The Glass Menagerie, Laura is also living by herself. She is so shy that she dropped out school and she now spends her days taking care of a glass menagerie. In A Streetcar named Desire, Blanche is alone in her world of fantasy. At the beginning of the play, she tells to Stella: “I want to be near you, got to be with somebody, I can’t be alone! ” (A Streetcar named Desire, Scene One). Blanche craves for company is also obvious in her relationship with Mitch.
The two of them find in each other the companionship they were looking for. Another feeling Tennessee Williams likes to explore is the idea of fragility. The author itself was affected by depression and knew how it felt to be socially traumatized. In The Glass Menagerie, all the characters had to deal with a loss of self-confidence. Laura and Amanda seem to rely on each other, especially at the end of the play, because it is their only way to survive the world they are confronted with. In A Streetcar named Desire, Blanche has never gotten over the death of her homosexual lover.
She seems emotionally traumatized by this death, as she keeps on referring to the story and as she didn’t have another healthy relationship after. In Baby Doll, Aunt Rose is the real symbol of fragility. At first sight the character of Baby Doll could be considered as the icon of a pure and fragile young woman. She is very childish – she sleeps in a crib and sucks her thumb – and has to deal with her husband lust. But she appears later as a hard-hearted and empty-headed woman that only cares about her own pleasure and entertainment. Aunt Rose, on the contrary, is devoted to her young niece and sacrifices herself for the benefit of her family.
Williams also considered himself as an obsessive writer, who found it hard to set apart illusion and reality. This tension is depicted in The Glass Menagerie and in A Streetcar named Desire. The character of Amanda in the first play is a good example of the dichotomy between illusion and reality. She seems really down to earth as she is working as a telephone saleswoman. She is driven by worthy principles because she wants her daughter to get married and her son to be responsible for himself. Yet it seems that she is unable to accept the truth about her children’s deep needs.
Rose and Tom are alienated because Amanda doesn’t notice their own specificities. She also seems to life in a fairytale when it comes to her past in the South and to her husband. Another symbol of this dichotomy is Blanche Dubois. During the whole play Blanche is consumed by the tension between the appearances she would like to give, and who she really is. She points out the virginal aspect of her name “It’s a French name. It means woods and Blanche means white”(Scene 3) , she acts like a shy woman with Mitch, but it is later revealed that she used to live in a hotel room where she shared to company of many men.
Blanche even admits that she lies a lot and states that it is a part of womanhood. Even if he is revealing a dark part of his personality through the women he depicts, Tennessee Williams doesn’t want his character to appear as tragic losers. Instead he focuses on the heroism of these women, who manage to stoically endure their fate. In his plays, Tennessee Williams depicts women as a symbol of the world he lives in and of the human nature. He describes the dichotomy in each and everyone. He used to say “If you write a character that isn’t ambiguous you are writing a false character, not a true one”.
Blanche Dubois, Baby Doll and Amanda Wingfield all share a common ambivalence of personality. Baby Doll appears at first as pure and fragile young women, nearly sold to her husband, whereas she can be extremely sensual and rather insensitive. Blanche and Amanda are terribly irritating but eventually arouse empathy in view of their tragic ending. Blanche winds up in a mental institution after having been raped by her brother-in-law, whereas Amanda is abandoned by her son, years after her husband left her. These women are also representative of the United States in the 40’s and 50’s.
Baby Doll, Amanda Wingfield and Blanche Dubois all come from the Old South of the US. This part of the country had a great influence on Williams, who managed to consider the South he came from with an objective but tender way. The life in the South hasn’t been prolific for women in Williams’ play. All of them experience financial struggles. Baby Doll’s husband is a cotton-gin owner that has to face the decline of his business. Amanda is forced to accept a position as a telephone saleswoman to be able to feed her family. Blanche asks her sister for refuge, after her ancestors left her with no money and no land.
The behavioral codes of the Old South weigh heavily on those three women. Baby Doll’s marriage was an object of contract between her father and her husband. The last one has sworn not to touch her until she is twenty years old. Amanda in The Glass Menagerie wants to perpetuate the tradition of gentleman callers, even if it eventually leads to the crush of Laura’s dream and the tragic split of her family. Blanche in A Streetcar named Desire is only focused on the respect of the traditions of her upper-class education. All those women are in fact facing the decline of the Old South.
Amanda sums up her disarray with the repetition of the words “What are we going to do, what is going to become of us, what is the future? ” “There is no actress on earth who will not testify that Williams created the best women characters in the modern theatre” wrote Gore Vidal after Tennessee Williams’ death in 1983. Williams’ females have indeed a psychological depth and a very human depiction that create sympathy and arouse interest. Critics have said that Williams’ homosexuality was a way to understand his relationship with women.
But it would be a short cut to explain the complexity and depth Williams gave to his female character. The author once said “It’s true my heroines often speak for me. That doesn’t make them transvestites. Playwrights always have somebody speak for them. I think that more often I have used a woman rather than a man to articulate my feelings. ” In fact the importance of women in Williams’ plays and his sensitivity to their situation may granted him with the status of one of the early American feminist.
