Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh Quiz

Take our free Tennessee Williams quiz below, with 25 multiple choice questions that help you test your knowledge. Determine which chapters, themes and styles you already know and what you need to study for your upcoming essay, midterm, or final exam. Take the free quiz now!

How did Williams countermand the directions of Dr. Kubie? (from Beanstalk Country)

He continued to drink, use drugs and write.

Williams had contact with his family within a few weeks.

Williams refused to renounce his homosexuality.

Williams said he could not afford to be hospitalized for three months.

What effects did the tightening of social mores during the 50s have on the filming of "A Streetcar Named Desire? (from Fugitive Mind)

The rape scene involving Stanley Kowalski and Blanche duBois could not be depicted graphically, but merely implied with such cues as body angles, music and dialogue.

The bare breast displayed and described in the script had to be covered.

In the fight scene, Blanche could not call Stanley "faggot."

Stanley Kowalski could not have a cigar in his mouth during the filming of the scene.

What condition did Dr. Lawrence Kubie insist upon before he would psychoanalyze Tennessee Williams? (from Beanstalk Country)

That Williams would renounce his gay lifestyle.

Kubie wanted Williams to stop using drugs and alcohol before treatment.

That Williams be hospitalized for three months at the start of his treatment.

That Williams have no contact with his family for six months.

What was the darker side of Tennessee's success following "The Glass Menagerie?" (from The Erotics of Absence)

Williams' descent into alcoholism and drug addiction.

The playwright's inability to sustain an intimate relationship.

Williams' loss of confidence in himself as an honest artist.

His resentment at feeling "bullied" by fans and sycophants, and a growing sense of paranoia that he had written himself out in the face of success by other playwrights such as Arthur Miller.

What did Tennessee Williams find most discouraging about his engagement with Hollywood over production of "The Glass Menagerie?" (from The Erotics of Absence)

The fact that "script doctors," or "the cornball department," as Williams called them, wanted to rewrite the ending into something more palatable to them.

The refusal of the movie studio to cast Laurette Taylor as Amanda WIngfield.

The fact the studio wanted to sensationalize presentation of the drama, instead of respecting it as a work of art.

That the studio insisted on shooting it in black and white, instead of color.