Tennessee Williams Summary

Biography EssayTennessee Williams's playwriting career spanned more than four decades and was marked by the highest acclaim, as well as the kind of critical controversy that is generated only by one w... Read more

The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Suddenly Last Summer: these plays are considered among the classics of twentieth-century American theatre. Their author, Tenne... Read more

In the following essay, Armato studies Williams's portrayal of human perceptions of death in his dramas, concluding that "underneath the guise of southern decadence, Tennessee Williams p... Read more

In the following review, Peden offers a mixed assessment of One Arm and Other Stories. Tennessee Williams's One Arm and Other Stories contains some stories which have greatness in them; of some... Read more

In the following essay, Peden elucidates the defining characteristics of Williams's short fiction. The short stories in Tennessee Williams (1914-), collected in One Arm (1948) and Hard Candy (1... Read more

In the following essay, Beaurline traces the adaptation of the short story “Portrait of a Girl in Glass” into the play The Glass Menagerie. “Not even daring to stretch her small h... Read more

In the following essay, May investigates the cause of Brick's malaise and alienation in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, arguing that Williams's story “Three Players of a Summer Game”... Read more

In the following essay, Vidal considers Williams's stories as the “true memoir” of the author and underscores the role of physical desire in his short fiction. I Thirty-seven year... Read more

In the following essay, Hitchcock demonstrates the significance of “The Vengeance of Nitocris” to Williams's later work. Throughout his literary career, when asked about “l... Read more

In the following essay, Saddik explores the connection between homosexuality and cannibalism in “Desire and the Black Masseur” and Suddenly Last Summer. If psychoanalysis were to have an... Read more

In the following review, Hale analyzes the symbolism of the clock in “A System of Wheels.” “A System of Wheels,” written around 1936 when Williams was twenty-five, recreate... Read more

In the following essay, Kolin asserts that the story “Interval” “bears scrutiny as a disclosure of Williams's view of art, sex, and the imagination, all fused in America&#x... Read more

Critical Essay by Kenneth Tynan [The article from which this excerpt was taken was originally published as "American Blues: The Plays of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams," in Encount... Read more

Critical Essay by Harry Taylor [Taylor's article, from which the following excerpt was taken, originally appeared in Masses and Mainstream, April, 1948.] [If], as in Williams' case, ther... Read more

In the following essay, Presley identifies three philosophical dilemmas confronted by Williams's central characters—"isolation, the absence of God, and the reality of death.... Read more

In the following essay, Timpane examines Williams's creation of female characters whose dynamic ambiguity resists the tendency toward idealization or oversimplification. Timpane contends that W... Read more

Critical Essay by M. A. Corrigan Tennessee Williams' writing reveals a striking preoccupation with the problem of time. Like other modern dramatists, he has juxtaposed past and present, created... Read more

Critical Essay by John Whitty Williams has written some of the most moving dramas of the modern theatre. He is such a grand old man that I suppose no one will tell him when a play simply stinks. And t... Read more

Critical Essay by Charles Marowitz What has always fascinated me about Tennessee Williams, particularly in his early work, is the sense that the plays are never about what they appear to be about. The... Read more

Critical Essay by Richard Gray [Tennessee Williams takes] familiar characters, situations, and themes and then weaves them into a baroque conceit possessing neither original substance nor extrinsic va... Read more

Critical Essay by Ren Draya Tennessee Williams is a good storyteller, as theater audiences have long known…. Unlike most playwrights who try their hands at different forms, Williams is a remark... Read more

Critical Essay by Robert Brustein If revenge is a dish that tastes best cold, then Donald Windham has certainly fixed himself a satisfying frozen dinner. He has published all the letters sent to him b... Read more

Critical Essay by Foster Hirsch Although they often contain sensational elements, Williams's plays are as moralistic as they are literary…. The plays are a series of moral allegories in ... Read more