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‘The room must evoke some ghosts’: Tennessee Williams

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The Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic

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Abstract

Matterson aligns Williams with Southern Gothic, focusing particularly on his dramatic treatment of personal dislocation, wounded characters, sexual desire, the relation between past and present, and on his deeply ambivalent attitudes towards the South. While much attention is given to his most important and influential plays, The Glass Menagerie (1945), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), there is a refreshing consideration of his less familiar later work, notably Orpheus Descending (1957) and Suddenly Last Summer (1958), providing key insights into these plays. Williams’s relation to Romanticism is also explored, especially with regard to his recurring representation of the poet figure, and how Romanticism is in danger of turning into Gothic.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Williams prefaced several of his plays with quotations from Hart Crane, a poet he both deeply admired and identified with; he apparently always carried a copy of Crane’s poems, and hoped to be buried at sea at the location of Crane’s suicide. It is also worth noting that he took the epigraphs to his plays very seriously, considering them to be an indispensable part of the script and insisting that they be printed on the playbill for each production (see Debusscher 172–8).

Bibliography

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Further Reading

  • As is to be expected, Williams features prominently in critical surveys and histories of US drama since 1945. Christopher Bigsby’s A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) and Modern American Drama 1945–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) are especially recommended, along with Thomas Adler’s American Drama 1940–1960: A Critical History (New York: Twayne, 1994). Excellent book-length critical studies include Understanding Tennessee Williams by Alice Griffin (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), Tennessee Williams: Rebellious Puritan by Nancy M. Tischler (New York: Citadel, 1961) and The Broken World of Tennessee Williams (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965).

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  • These are explored with regard to sexuality in Sexual Politics in the Work of Tennessee Williams by Michael S. D. Hooper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) and in Gentlemen Callers: Tennessee Williams, Homosexuality, and Mid-Twentieth-Century Drama by Michael Paller (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams, edited by Matthew C. Roudané (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) has some excellent essays, particularly on the lesser-known plays and short stories, and it includes a helpful survey of critical material, by Jacqueline O’Connor.

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  • Williams’s Memoirs (London: W. H. Allen, 1976) provide important insights into his personal life, and can be read alongside critical biographies by Lyle Leverich, Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995) and Ronald Hayman’s Tennessee Williams: Everyone Else is an Audience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). Together they show how Williams’s dramas are deeply rooted in his experiences and anxieties.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Trinity College, University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Stephen Matterson

Authors
  1. Stephen Matterson
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Harriet Beecher Stowe Professor Emerita Department of English Language and Literature, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom

    Susan Castillo Street

  2. Professor Emeritus of English, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA

    Charles L. Crow

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© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)

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Matterson, S. (2016). ‘The room must evoke some ghosts’: Tennessee Williams. In: Castillo Street, S., Crow, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47774-3_29

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