Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Summer and Smoke:
A Study in Sexual Difference
Article Details
Pub. Date
:
Jun, 2014
Product Name
:
The IUP Journal of English Studies
Product Type
:
Article
Product Code
:
IJES61406
Author Name
:
Ram Narayan Panda
Availability
:
YES
Subject/Domain
:
English Studies
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:
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No. of Pages
:
7
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Abstract
The treatment of sexuality and gender at the hands of American playwrights in general, and Tennessee Williams in particular has intrigued critics over the last 50 years. This paper seeks to address this issue in terms of a feminist reading of two important plays of Tennessee Williams, namely Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Summer and Smoke. The two plays under consideration, in fact, provide various interesting dimensions for gender-related explication even though Williams’ creativity strives to implement the ideal of objectivity or ‘negative capability’.
Description
In the plays of Tennessee Williams, certain traditional oppositions have been used, constituting, in an essentialist manner, the differences between man and woman. A proper analysis of those oppositions as having been motivated by the spirit of essentialism can help expose a phallocentric propensity that helps sustain sexual difference. Tennessee Williams’ famous plays Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Summer and Smoke which use a variety of binary oppositions, warrant an analysis along this line.
Tischler records Williams’ attitude to Lawrence’s emphasis on the purity of sexual life as well as his phallocentrism in the following observation:
While realizing that much of D H Lawrence’s work is “chaotic and distorted by tangent obsessions, such as his insistence upon the woman’s subservience to the male, Williams believes that “all in all his work is probably the greatest modern monument to the dark roots of creation.” And he especially appeals to the playwright as the “lifelong adversary of those who wanted to keep the subject (of the mystery and power of sex, and the primal life urge) locked away in the cellars of prudery” (1961, pp. 120-121).
Keywords
English Studies Journal, Tennessee, Williams, Margaret, monster, fertility, Cat on a Hot, Tin Roof, mighty remarkable, Big Daddy, Summer and Smoke, Sexual Difference .
