A Streetcar Named Desire Context Verified Guide
TENESSEE WILLIAMS (General) ️️Thomas Lanier Williams, born in 1911 Mississippi
Abusive and bullying father, who was a hard-drinking travelling salesman called Cornelius Coffin
Williams
Highly strung + snobbish mother, Edwina, daughter of...
TENESSEE WILLIAMS (General) ✔️✔️Thomas Lanier Williams, born in 1911 Mississippi
Abusive and bullying father, who was a hard-drinking travelling salesman called Cornelius Coffin
Williams
Highly strung + snobbish mother, Edwina, daughter of a clergyman
Family moved a lot during his childhood- restless and unsettled throughout his adult life
Studied journalism at the University of Missouri- his friends there nicknamed him 'Tennessee' because
of his Southern birth
Nervous breakdown after three years of working as a clerk at the shoe factory where his father worked
(forced to drop out of college for the job)
TENESSEE WILLIAMS (Rose) ✔️✔️Sister, Rose, was diagnosed with dementia praecox (schizophrenia)
when she was 18 + received a pre-frontal lobotomy before being consigned to a mental institution until
her death in 1996
Margaret Bradham Thornton says that "the shadow of what happened to Rose stayed with him; she
would be the model for more than fifteen characters, and Williams would give her name to many
others"
Williams referred to Rose's decline into madness by saying, "We have had no deaths in our family but
slowly by degrees something was happening much uglier and more terrible than death"
Traumatised with guilt at what he saw as his failure to protect Rose
TENESSEE WILLIAMS (Career) ✔️✔️Graduated from the University of Iowa in 1938 at the age of 27
Bohemian and peripatetic existence
Overnight theatrical sensation in 1944 because of 'The Glass Menagerie'
'A Streetcar Named Desire' opened three years later
Major plays included 'The Rose Tattoo' (1951), 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' (1955), and 'Sweet Bird of Youth'
(1959)
Margaret Bradham Thornton says, "this prodigious output took its toll on Williams, and while his plays
were winning awards and being made into films... Williams was losing his way"
, TENESSEE WILLIAMS (Decline) ✔️✔️Private life bordering on the chaotic and disastrous
Frequent bouts of clinical depression
Relationship with secretary Frank Merlo when homosexuality was still considered immoral and shocking
by mainstream society- Merlo died in '63 and Williams spun out of control
Critical reputation went into sharp decline- of his later work, only 'The Night of the Iguana' (1961) was
well-received
His brother Dakin had him temporarily committed to a psychiatric hospital in 1969 due to his alcoholism
and drug addiction- lonely death in a New York hotel room in 1983
"I still find it somehow easier to 'level with' crowds of strangers in the hushed twilight of orchestra and
balcony sections of theatres than with individuals across a table from me. Their being strangers
somehow makes them more familiar and more approachable, easier to talk to"- Williams, 1976
THE AMERICAN CENTURY AND THE AMERICAN DREAM ✔️✔️Ideologies fully rooted in the cultural
landscape of the post-war era
USA representing a Good Samaritan helping other countries to achieve democracy, progress and
economic security- "all of us are called, each to his own measure of capacity, and each in the widest
horizon of his vision, to create the first great American Century" (Henry Luce)
Various different groups of immigrants who came to the US in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries united to create a cohesive national ethos through the American Dream- "We hold these
Truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" (Declaration
of Independence)
THE AMERICAN CENTURY AND THE AMERICAN DREAM
(Immigrants + the American Dream) ✔️✔️"A dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a
man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations,
unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple
human being of any and every class"
'Melting pot' nation- welcoming immigrants of all races and religions to a new life of freedom and
opportunity
Immigrants often escaping from poverty, oppression and conflict- America a blank slate upon which they
could create their vision of a land of freedom and opportunity
Success becoming dependent on hard work and courage instead of birth or privilege
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