From Repression to Self-Recovery: A Study of the Feamle Characters of Tennessee Williams

• Main Authors: Wang Cindy Sin-Yu, 王幸瑜
• Other Authors: Jacob Geroge
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1998
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/76140064150288119089

碩士 === 靜宜大學 === 英語學系 === 86 === Tennessee Williams has been known for his sympathetic portrayal of female characters who are battered and hurried by the insensitive and harsh world in which they find themselves trapped. The images of women areseen as those of frustration, a view that is in agreement with thegeneral critical appraisal of Williams as a dramatist of frustration. However, the present study is based on the premise that women inTennessee Williams move from a state of repression and negation to thatof acceptance and self-recovery. Their roles are studied in relation to their psychological orientation, sexual attitudes and socio-familial roles. Four plays, The Glass Menagerie, Summer and Smoke, A Streetcar Named This thesis is divided into six chapters, and Chapter I is the Desire, and The Rose Tattoo, are chosen for the study. introduction. It considers the background of Tennessee Williams, and themyth of the Old South in the shaping of Willimas's view of women.Chapter II discusses the characterization of the repressive, restrictedand negative Laura. She is the most passive of the female characters In these four plays. Intention between the past and the present, andillusion and reality will be discussed in this chapter.Chapter III considers the body-soul dialectic as seen in Summer and Smoke.Unlike Laura, Alma, the principal character has religious and socialobligations which keep her withdrawn an diffident. The play ends with the awareness of her predicament. This chapter will discuss this process of change seen in her.chapter IV deals with Williams's most complex character, Blanch, tornbetween desire and death. I will explain her complexity. Her deepsense of guilt, her destructive sexual drives, her sensitivity and deepcommitment to values of the Old South.Chapter V discusses Williams's treatment of sex as an instrument ofrevival reconciliation in the characterization of Rose in The Rose Tattoo. Chapter VI sums up the argument of the thesis that Williams'sfemale characters move form a repressive state to an awareness ofthemselves through a deeper understanding of the role of sex