Abstract
Terror and violence are the by-products of a mind that is like a quagmire of complex emotions and they get transmuted into physical activities when the need to escape from an extremely uncomfortable world of reality becomes intense. Tennessee Williams garbed himself in the cloak of a writer in order to take refuge in another world where loneliness, anxiety, terror and violence could attain a higher level of “sublimation”. Williams’s usage of devices like terror and violence in his plays paint a clear picture of his time, culture, and discrepancies of gender vividly. This paper explores the Manichaean Dichotomy as the root of internal conflict and violent nature projected by many of Williams’s characters across Summer and Smoke, Sweet Bird of Youth, and A Streetcar Named Desire.
Manichaean Dichotomy and the Southern Psyche
Arising from a world of macabre reality, sprinkled with lurid experiences, Tennessee Williams’s plays have compelled the readers to think deeper about the abnormal psyche, constantly infected by an internal ‘Trojan war’. This internal ‘Trojan war’ is nothing but the offshoot of Manichaean Dichotomy. Terror and violence are embodiments of “destructive impulses” which goad the characters to thwart the harmony of existence and drive themselves into clasps of peril.
In Williams’s plays the dark or “destructive impulses” are intertwined with some “white” or elements of light. For instance, “lunacy”, “alienation”, “endless waiting”, “frustration”, “death syndrome”, “oppressor-oppressed complex”, “sadomasochistic tendency”, “neurosis”, “violence”, “terror”, “sense of defeatism” are connected closely with elements like “search for hope”, “come-back attitude to life” and “the disclosure of moral truth by unmasking a quality secret”. The union of opposites forms the basis of twentieth century American outlook.
Summer and Smoke and the Divided South
In Summer and Smoke, Williams presented a South which was neither the post-war South nor the Civil-war South and ample devices were used to universalize the past. Alma Winemiller, in relation to her mother and in relation to Nellie, is represented more as the soul of the South, a soul that is tinted with hues of a culture which has its roots in a characteristically ‘romantic’ past. Manichaean Dichotomy is visible in Williams’s grotesque unravelling of the feminine “Southern” soul. On one hand he presents a pleasant surface, i.e. Alma and on the other an ugly underneath, Mrs. Winemiller.
The character of John Buchanan has germs of violence embedded in him and the excess of his power lies unutilized. The central ‘violence’ of the play is committed by an outsider, but it ensues because the South is still ignorant of itself. The responsibility for violence in the South lies not just within the “outsider”, but everywhere else.
Sweet Bird of Youth and the Terror of Time
Terror is Chance Wayne nursing a fatal ailment since he bore the germs of an incurable venereal disease. Perhaps he had sensed that ‘Time’ was clasping him in its fatal grip and he screamed: “To change is to live, Miss Lucy, to live is to change, and not to change, is to die.” Chance Wayne’s physical ‘ailment’ symbolizes another incurable disease called ‘love’. A love that began with intimate moments of ‘sweet’ violence transforms into the savage thirst for blood when both Boss Finley and Tom Junior plan to kill Chance.
Heavenly’s purity and heavenliness faces sacrilege when she too has to undergo treatment for the venereal disease passed on to her by Chance as a token of love. The figure of the Boss represents best ‘man’s divided self’. Sombre, sophisticated and nurturing rich tastes in him, he is perhaps the most feeble-minded character who exhibits unusual or highly disturbed behaviour.
A Streetcar Named Desire and the Moth-Like Existence
In A Streetcar Named Desire we have Blanche DuBois as the absolute romantic who still believes in purity, honour and gallantry while her own life has become sordid and soiled. Her lies about her past or her surroundings are dreams of beauty. She is a character who is neurotic, melodramatic, extremely crystalline, brittle and too delicate for the new brawling of modern life. She cannot stand light; she has never had any light stronger than a dim candle.
A moth-like life is terrorizing, agonizing and can be equated with living in an inferno where the inhabitants are under the constant ‘fear of absolute stasis’ and the speculation of “Death”. Sadomasochism and bestiality are at their peak in the rape-scene where light has been used brilliantly. When Stanley approaches the bedroom, “Blanche gets blanched in fear”. Stanley pounces upon Blanche and rapes her in brilliant-hued silk pyjamas, reiterating the fact that “brilliant” hues are signifiers of extreme beastly emotions that lead to violence.
Williams had to create an escape route for his protagonist which would help her transcend a grotesque world to an ethereal Garden of Eden. Blanche turned to alcohol and sexual promiscuity in order to escape the brutalities and lonely void created by her young husband’s death. While she may be compared to the tragic figures of Antigone or Medea with a mind that has been completely destroyed, yet she rises above them for her sheer quest for hope — her final desire to be united with Shep Huntleigh in Dallas.
Conclusion
It has been established that probing into the violence and terror infested mind is a complex task since it involves the tedious understanding of a culture with its varied states of mind like psychosis, neurosis and even paranoia. But one very important root cause of this abnormal psyche is also the striking discrepancies in gender. The Femme Mystique victory is never achieved because men and women never successfully take up their respective roles in the society. Hence gender inequalities become the unabashed rulers that create a ‘void’ which demands a lot of aggression (TERROR and VIOLENCE) for the “survival of the fittest”.
Works Cited
- Edwards, Paul. The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, The Macmillan Company and the Free Press, New York, 1967, p.149.
- Gassner, John. “Tennessee Williams, 1944-1966” in his Theatre at the Crossroads: Plays and Playwrights of the Mid-century American Stage. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc., 1960, pp. 77-91.
- Benett, Beate Heine. “Williams and European Drama”, ed. Tharpe, Jac: Tennessee Williams: A Tribute. Univ. of Mississippi, 1977, p.436.
- Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Patriarchy. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 243.
- King, Catherina. “The Politics of Representation: A Democracy of the Gaze.” Imagining Women: Cultural Representations and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992, p. 136.