Tennessee Williams Essay, Research Paper
Everything in his life is in his plays, and everything in his plays is in his life,
Elia Kazan said of Tennessee Williams. Williams, who is considered to be the
greatest Southern playwright, inserted many of his own personal experiences
into his writing, because he found no other means of expressing things that
seemed to demand expression (Magill 1087). He stated that his primary
sources of inspiration for his works were his family, the South, and the multiple
writers he encountered in his life. Therefore, he presented American
theatergoers with unforgettable characters, an incredible vision of life in the
South, and a deeper meaning of the concept he called poetic realism (Classic
Notes 1). Poetic Realism exists as the repeated use of everyday objects, so
that they would produce a symbolic meaning. Often, Tennessee Williams
writing was considered to be melodramatic and hysterical; however, it is the
haunting and powerful life experiences included in Williams writing that makes
him one of the greatest playwrights in the history of the American drama.
Thomas Lanier Williams began his life March 26, 1911 as the second
child of Cornelius and Edwina Williams. His father, Cornelius, managed a shoe
warehouse and was a stern businessman. Cornelius bouts with drinking and
gambling (habits that Tennessee later inherited) made him increasingly abusive
as Tennessee grew older. Tennessee, his mother, his older sister, Rose, and
his younger brother, Walter, lived with Tennessee s maternal grandparents until
1918, when his father was transferred to his firm s main office in St. Louis.
Although, he began living with his father at age seven, his father remained
emotionally absent throughout his life. His mother, however, smothered
Tennessee with her aggressive showings of affection. The move to St. Louis
was shattering to Tennessee, Rose, and Edwina. The change from a small,
provincial town to a big city was very difficult for the lower class family. Because
of the ridicule from other children, her father s abuse, and her mother s
unhappiness, Rose was destined to spend most of her life in mental institutions
and she quickly became emotionally and mentally unstable. Edwina allowed
Rose s doctor to perform a frontal lobotomy on Rose; this event greatly disturbed
Williams who cared for Rose throughout most of her adult life. Tennessee
remained aloof from his younger brother, because his father repeatedly favored
Walter over both of the older children. His parents often engaged in violent
arguments and Tennessee, Rose, and Walter repeatedly encouraged their
mother to leave their abusive father. Williams family life was full of tension and
despair; however, he said he found therapy in writing.
Unable to bear his life at home, Tennessee began his lifelong
wanderings. In 1931, he enrolled in the University of Missouri where he saw a
production of Ibsen s Ghosts and he decided to become a playwright. His
journalism program was interrupted; however, when his father forced him to
withdraw from college to work with him at the International Shoe Company. His
family no longer could afford to send him to college and his help was needed to
pay bills. He was an employee for his father for two years; he despised the job
and considered it to be indescribable torment. However, he considered the job
very valuable, because it gave him first-knowledge of what it means to be a
small wage-earner in a hopelessly routine job (Magill 1087). Since he was
working by day and writing by night, Williams health gradually decreased and
he had a nervous breakdown. He recovered at the home of his grandparents
and continued to write. Once recovered, he went back to school and graduated
from the University of Iowa in 1938. At the University of Iowa, Williams earned
his bachelor s degree and his nickname, Tennessee. A college roommate
jokingly compared Williams heritage to a Tennessee pioneer and Williams
found his own significant meaning behind it. He said the Williamses had fought
the Indians for Tennessee and I had already discovered the life of a younger
writer was going to be something similar to the defense of a stockade against a
band of savages (Magill 1088). During this time, Tennessee produced a few of
his own plays locally. His work attracted the interest of important literary agent,
Audrey Wood, and helped him to receive grants. Therefore, In 1940, Tennessee
produced his first full-length, professional play, Battle of Angels, and failed
miserably. After his defeat in Chicago, Tennessee moved to New Orleans where
he launched his career as a writer.
His move to New Orleans presented a tremendous turning point in his life;
he had a new name, a new home, and a promising talent. By 1944, he was a
smash hit on Broadway with The Glass Menagerie and he had won that year s
New York Critics Circle, Donaldson, and Sidney Howard Memorial Awards. In
1947, he was the first playwright to receive the Pulitzer Prize, the New York
Critics Circle Award, and the Donaldson Award in the same year for A Streetcar
Named Desire. In the course of his career, Williams accumulated four New York
Drama Critics Awards; three Donaldson Awards; a Tony Award for his 1951
screenplay, The Rose Tattoo; the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award
(1965); a Medal of Honor from the National Arts Club (1975); the $11,000
Commonwealth Award (1981); and an honorary doctorate from Harvard
University (1982). He was honored by President Carter at Kennedy Center in
1979, and named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of British
Columbia, Vancouver, in 1981. He also wrote over 30 full-length plays,
numerous short plays, two volumes of poetry, and five volumes of poetry and
short stories.
Success enabled Tennessee to travel and buy a home in Key West, a
new place to which Williams could escape for both relaxation and writing.
Around this time, Williams met Frank Merlo. They fell in love and Merlo existed
as Williams romantic partner until Merlo s untimely death.
lung cancer in 1961, Tennessee went into a deep depression that lasted ten
years. Merlo had served as a steadying influence on Williams, who already
suffered mildly from depression, because he lived in fear that he, like his sister,
would go insane. The sixties brought hard times for Tennessee Williams. He
had become dependent on drugs, and the problem only grew worse after the
death of his partner. Williams was also insecure about his work, which was
sometimes of inconsistent quality, and he was violently jealous of younger
playwrights. Williams later plays were not considered his best, because
overwork and drug use had taken his toll on him. On February 23, 1983
Tennessee died tragically; he choked to death on the plastic top to his eye
medication which he possibly mistook for a sleeping pill. It is a curious
coincidence that his life ended in a place that shared the name of the apartment
building in which one of his best known characters, Blanche Dubois in A
Streetcar Named Desire, met her figurative end (Classic Notes 1). He died in
the Elysee Hotel in New York; the name of her apartment was Elysian Fields. It
is appropriate that Tennessee died in a hotel, as this serves as the traditional
haven of wanderers, outcasts, and loners, rather than in his home at Key West
or in New Orleans. He was buried in St. Louis, in a Catholic Ceremony at the
request of his brother.
Although Tennessee Williams denied that his writing was
autobiographical, elements from his life appear frequently in his work. Because
Tennessee had experienced many conflicts with sexuality, society, and
Christianity, he also displayed these conflicts in his work. For example, The
Glass Menagerie is an autobiographical representation of two days in St. Louis.
The play tells the story of Tom, his disabled sister, and his controlling mother.
This family situation is very similar to his own; however, he omits his father and
younger brother from the story. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams shows
the reality of people s lives. He wrote this play believing that he was about to
die; therefore, he wrote what he felt needed to be said. When this play was first
presented, it was considered shocking because of its presentation of sexual
issues. Moreover, several of Tennessee s plays contained homosexual
characters. Since the themes of desperation, loneliness, violence, irrational
actions are found in his pieces and the majority of his pieces are set in the
South, Tennessee s works are often considered to be part of the Southern
Gothic Genre.
Williams had a unique style of writing and an innovative technique of
presenting his plays. Williams best plays are notable for their use of
impressionistic sound and lighting effects. The earlier playwright who was the
principal influence on Williams is Anton Chekhov, who is also noted for his
impressionism. Tennessee claims the work that had the most influence on him
was that by Fredrico Garcia Lorca, Arthur Rimbaud, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hart
Crane, and D.H. Lawrence. Williams is also noted for his extreme use of
violence and he is often compared to William Faulkner. Williams plays
frequently center on three character types: the gentleman caller, usually a
young man, whether gentleman or not, who calls upon a young woman; an
innocent and vulnerable young woman; and a usually tougher and more
experienced older woman. This pattern is obvious in both The Glass Menagerie
and A Streetcar Named Desire (Kunitz 2165). Tennessee Williams claimed that
all of his major plays fit into the memory play format he described in his
production notes for The Glass Menagerie. The memory play has a three part
structure: (1) a character experiences something profound; (2) that experience
causes what Williams terms an “arrest of time,” a situation in which time literally
loops upon itself; and (3) the character must re-live that profound experience
(while caught in the arrest of time) until she or he makes sense of it. The main
theme for his plays, he claimed, is the negative impact that conventional society
has upon the “sensitive nonconformist individual” (Classic Notes 1).
Playwright, poet, and fiction writer, Tennessee Williams left a powerful
mark on American Theatre. Not only did he receive multiple awards and
impressive reviews, Williams kept the attention of audiences in American and
abroad for many years after his death. On the day of his death, the New York
evening papers issued an impressive list of famous actors who have performed
in his plays; these include Jessica Tandy, Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor,
Katherine Hephurn, Morlon Brando, and Bette Davis (2). Whether one argues
that these actors were made famous by Williams work, or that the quality of his
work attracted the most popular film and stage performers, the connection
between Williams and these stage legends established Williams as one of the
most important playwrights in twentieth-century drama. The majority of his
success is due to the fact that he gave audiences a slice of his own life and a
piece of Southern Culture. Williams stated, Every artist has a basic premise
pervading his whole life, and that premise can provide the impulse in everything
he creates. For me the dominating premise has been the need for
understanding, tenderness, and fortitude among individuals trapped by
circumstance (Magill 1089).
Works Cited
Clarksdale, Edward. Tennessee Williams.
[http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/williams_tennessee].
February 1, 2001.
Kunitz. Tennessee Williams. Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical
Dictionary. 1955.
Magill, Frank. Tennessee Williams. Encyclopedia of World Authors.
1997.
Nelson, Benjamin. Tennessee Williams: The Man and His Work. New
York: Obolensky, 1961.
Spoto, Donald. The Kindness Of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee
Williams. New York: Ballantine Books, 1985.
Tennessee Williams. [http:// www. classicnotes/tenn_will/bio]. February
15, 2001.