Critical aspects of the work of Tennessee Williams

Playwright, poet and fiction writer, Tennessee Williams left a powerful mark on American theatre. His twenty-five full-length plays combined lyrical, intensity, haunting loneliness, and hypnotic violence. He is widely considered the greatest Southern playwright and one of the greatest playwrights in the history of the American drama.

Tennessee Williams born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, 1911, he suffered through a difficult and troubling childhood. His father Cornelius Williams was a shoe salesman and an emotionally absent parent. He became increasingly abusive as the Williams children grew older. His mother Edvina was daughter of Southern Episcopal minister. Williams was sickly as a child, and his mother was a loving but smothering woman.

In 1918 the family moved from Mississippi to St. Louis, and the change from a small provincial town to a big city was very difficult for William s mother. Williams had an older sister named Rose and younger brother named Walter. Rose was emotionally and mentally unstable, and her illnesses had a great influence on Thomas s life and work.

In 1929, Williams enrolled in the University of Missouri. After two years he dropped out of school, compelled to do so by his father, and took a job in the warehouse of the same shoe company for which his father worked. He was an employee there for ten months, despising the job but working at the warehouse throughout the day and writing late into the night. The strain was too much, and Williams had a nervous breakdown.

He recovered at the home of his grandparents, and during these years he continued to write. Amateur productions of his early plays were put on in Memphis and St. Louis. During this time Rose s mental health continued to deteriorate. During a fight between Cornelius and Edvina, Cornelius made a move towards Rose that he claimed was meant to calm her. Rose thought his overtures were sexual and suffered a terrible breakdown.

Williams went back to school and graduated from the University of Iowa in 1938. He than moved to New Orleans, were he changed his name to Tennessee. Having struggled with his sexuality all through his youth, he now fully entered gay life, with a new name, a new home, and promising talent. That same year, he won a prize for American Blues, a collection of one-act plays.

In 1940, Battle of Angels (later rewritten as Orpheus Descending), his first full-length and professionally produced play, failed miserably. Tennessee Williams continued to struggle. 1944-1945 brought a great turning point in his life and carrier. The Glass Menagerie was produced in Chicago to great success, and shortly afterward was a smash hit on Broadway. While success freed Williams financially it also made it difficult for him to write. He went to Mexico to work on a play originally titled The Poker Night. This play eventually became one of his masterpieces, A Streetcar Named Desire. It won Williams a Pulitzer Prize in 1947, which enabled him to travel and buy a ...

ADLER THOMAS P. - "AMERICAN DRAMA 1940 - 1960, A CRITICAL HISTORY" - NEW YORK, TWAYNE, 1994

ADLER THOMAS P. - "A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, THE MOTH AND THE LANTERN" - BOSTON, HALL, 1990

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BLOOM HAROLD - "A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. MODERN CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS" - NEW YORK, CHELSEA, 1988

BLOOM HAROLD - "TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, MODEM CRITICAL VIEWS" - NEW YORK, CHELSEA, 1987

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COHN RUBY - "DIALOGUE IN AMERICAN DRAMA" - BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA UP, 1971

DONAHUE FRANCIS - "THE DRAMATIC WORLD OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS" - NEW YORK, UNGAR, 1964

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HOWELL ELIZABETH, MARJORIE BAYES - "WOMEN AND MENTAL HEALTH" - NEW YORK. BASIC, 1981

LEVERICH LYLE. TOM - "THE UNKNOWN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS" - NEW YORK, CROWN, 1995

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REDMOND JAMES - "MADNESS IN DRAMA" - CAMBRIDGE, CAMBRIDGE UP, 1993