Conflicting Others and Queer Clarity

Kursten Hedgis ENGL 3040 Professor Marshall 18 April 2014 Conflicting Others and Queer Clarity Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire needs no introduction. This complex piece of drama is most readily associated with Marlon Brando’s iconic portrayal of Stanley Kowalski’s lamenting cry in the streets of New Orleans. Stanley screams “STELL-LAHHHHH!” and his “heavenly-splitting violent” cry only emphasizes the voicelessness of the female characters (Williams 2322). Despite Blanche’s ability to hold her own in verbal sparring matches or Stella’s spirited demeanor, both women are oppressively held under the thumbs of various men. Nancy Tischler picks up on these forces that appear to lend themselves to a feminist critical approach. Running through Tyson’s checklist for feminist theory, it seems like a feminist lens would clarify the actions of the play. Overbearing presence of patriarchy? Check. Societally constructed gender roles? Check. Strong seeded sexism? Check. Objectification of women? Absolutely (Tyson 141-144). However, as Tischler begins to maneuver her way through the text, the meaning becomes more confusing, less convincing, and “enormously complicated” (54). The complication comes into play when deciphering Williams’ personal view of the female characters he drew. Williams saw Blanche, the tragic hero, as a liberated woman, in the sense that her decision to live so freely was considered courageous at the time (Tischler 56). However, it seems that Tischler takes this opinion and stretches it beyond the clearly stated meaning to the point that it skews her criticism. Tischler proclaims Blanche and Stella to be “some of the finest (female characters) ever portrayed,” while other feminist critics have attacked the treatment of women in the play (56-57). This instinctual attack against scenes like Stella’s abuse and Blanche’s rape, which deal unflinching violence upon the female characters, feels valid. However, it is important to remember the historical, social, and cultural context in which Williams lived and wrote. Streetcar presents audiences with an uncensored glimpse into the world that Blanche and Stella occupy, which stands in stark contrast to the world after the modern wave of feminism (Tischler 56-57). Tischler only touches on this historical context, and instead begins to justify her reading by explaining that Williams’ status as a gay man allowed him to be more naturally sensitive to the pressures inherently placed on women (61). In many ways he identified with these powerless others. Williams himself was a victim of sexual abuse who was rumored to refer to himself as Blanche (61). However, reducing these two similar yet very distinct classifications of others to the same struggles and responses seems shortsighted, stereotypical, and insultingly ignorant on Tischler’s part. Modern critical theory makes a clear distinction between feminist and queer theories. Tischler disregarded this distinction, and admittedly ignored the coded gay messages in the text by dismissing them as “not aimed at the general audience” (57). This foundation of thought upon which Tischler choose to build her theoretical approach is faulty, and therefore spoiled the conclusions she attempted to patch together. In the play, Blanche is presented as a both a sympathetic victim and a sexually promiscuous villain, categories Tischler tried to convince readers were anti-stereotypical female roles. From there, she typified Blanche as a woman solely interested “in taking over either Stella’s husband or her life” who “invites the violence that destroys her… appearing as a masochist” (Tischler 57). This perspective led Tischler to assert that Blanche “incited the outrage” and essentially asked for it (57). She also came to the conclusion that Stanley’s actions were justified because he was an alpha male responding to the threatening “attacker of the herd” (Tischler 58). She based this last reading on another Williams’ quote taken gravely out of context. Tischler referenced Williams desire to produce “a tragedy with the classic aim of producing a catharsis of pity and terror… Blanche must finally have the understanding and compassion of the audience. This without creating a black-dyed villain of Stanley” (Griffin 62). It is almost as if she ignored the most important part of Williams’ direction, the reason Stanley is not the villain, which was in an effort to let the audience to gain a clearer picture of Blanche in order to get to the real heart of the play. Tischler ended her critical essay by defending that her feminist reading shows Williams’ sympathies align with woman. However, no matter how many times Tischler claimed that Streetcars depictions of female characters “demonstrates his sensitivity to women’s issues,” the majority of women, including feminist critics, do not believe the text supports this reading (Tischler 58). Fortunately, the critical element to be gained from a feminist reading is not lost. It simply must be delicately extracted as not to twist and contort the meanings and characters into unrecognizable beings. Instead of viewing Williams’ female characters as consciously created ideals depicting liberated women, one would gain a deeper perceptive when viewing the depictions of women as Tischler initially introduced them: historical preservations. In the opening page of her essay, Tischler addresses and then abandons the perceptive insight to be gained from the historical context that produced the play, which presents clearly internalized gender roles and sexism in the form of colloquial analogies. In an effort not to make bold claims without proper support, as Tyson strongly and repeatedly advises, one element pointing to this reading will be briefly discussed. Throughout the play each character is in some way referenced to a type of animal. Men, especially Stanley, are likened to swine, apes, and even a lamb at multiple points in the play (Williams, 2344, 2346, 2333, and 2324). However in contrast, when women, especially Blanche, are being described, they are labeled sharks, tarantulas, or tigers (Williams 2342, 2349, and 2355). The connotation associated with each of these animals seems to fall into one of two categories: brutish prey and cunning predator. This grouping is undoubtedly intentional on Williams’ part, but not to suggest or reflect the predatory nature of women and the forgivable, animalistic responses by men; instead it acts as a means of portraying the ways in which patriarchal sexism represents itself in colloquial, understood analogies at this particular time and place in history. The depictions of gender point to the ways this sexism is internalized within a society’s consciousness through language and symbolism. This interpretation is much more in line with Williams’ style and sentiment as opposed to Tischler’s limited view of the drama. It is important to remember why Tischler’s view failed to capture the big picture and present a more logical critical analysis. Historical context was not the only element of this drama that Tischler confessed to ignoring. The other element was a queer reading of the text. Williams is equal in dealing tragic life fates to all others in the story, but only one receives a kind of poetic justice in the end. Tischler chose to examine only one type of other, and as a result failed to gain the larger perspective. Francisco Costa acknowledges the instinct to dismiss the more subtle homosexual performance by explaining that Streetcar presents two “performances” to critics and audiences (77). The first performance is viewed through a straightforward heterosexual lens, and the other from a queer-inflected approach that Costa claimed provides “the richer of the two in terms of possible readings and interpretations” (77). Streetcar supports a queer reading despite the fact that the only gay character exists as a memory and never makes a physical appearance on the stage. Blanche’s memories of her young husband, Allan Grey, are enough to provide traces of queer philosophy that Costa viewed as the true foundation and motivating factor of the play (77). Due to censorship and decency codes attempting to uphold societally defined morality during the time Williams’ plays were running, he was not allowed to have openly gay characters in his productions. This resulted in closeted dramas in which homosexual relations were “inferred through stereotype and encoded structures of signs to decipher homosexuality” (Costa, 78). These stereotypes and encoded structures make up a “combination of selections” in characters that point to homosexual behavior. Allan Grey possessed five of the seven proposed selections, including sensitivity and artistic sensibility. This combination of selections allowed playwrights to clearly depict homosexual characters, tensions, and themes without having to risk outright censorship in the form of not being able to share plays with audiences. In this sense, Streetcar seems to uphold the ruling heterosexual ideology, but secretly presents complex ideological subversions upon closer examination (Costa 78). This can be seen as the point that Tischler, and other critics, stumbled in their critical application and were derailed from finding meaning. As they panned in closer and closer, the meaning they found between the lines did not match the narrow theoretical paths they chose to take. Instead of using a wider lens, they simply squint at the text and pull meaning from clips and phrases that completely ignore Williams’ subverted complex meanings. This is the major change in perspective that a queer lens gives readers. It allows audiences to understand the lack of sympathy they feel towards Blanche. Through Costa’s approach, homosexuals are seen as the ultimate other. Even Blanche rejected her sensitive young husband when she lashed out at him on the dance floor in a moment of clarity when she took in the full implications of Allan’s actions and behaviors. In this way, Blanche was reacting with reflexive homophobia (Costa 82-83). To be rejected by his wife whom he saw as his only savior from the conflicted feelings he was battling hurt Allan immeasurably. Blanche realized that he needed her help, not her hate, only after he took a revolver and blew his brains out at the Moon Lake Casino (Williams 2338). This reading places some of the guilt on Blanche’s shoulders and allows audiences to make sense of the unsympathetic guilt that destroys her. Allan was the cause of her destruction, and despite the fact that she eventually came to sympathize and understand him, her guilt and fate seem, at the very least, understandable, and, at the very most, fitting. Blanche’s actions toward the sensitive boy do not go unpunished, but the equally evil actions by the likes of Stanley and Mitch do not end in any form of poetic justice or punishment for the female characters. This seems to be the soundest method to unearthing the heart of Williams’ complex meaning: tracing the two narrative currents past obvious signs to more subtle ripples. Here he presents readers with an evasive yet profound sub-context. Identifying this subtext, which is a stylistic marking, lets audiences know they are on to Williams’ true meaning. He leaves clues to be deciphered in each play, often in the form of a character that seems unimportant or a casual association in phrase, such as the father in The Glass Menagerie or Allan Grey in Streetcar. In contrast to the cloudy feminist view supplied by Tischler’s approach, Costa was able to dissect the two currents that flow through Streetcar and choose the one that leads to a deeper pool of meaning. Williams’ play emits a clear queer voice despite the fact that the channel of its expression is ultimately a combination of stereotypes. The female characters do not translate in the same way, and the voice they supply is a raspy and contorted one. It is clear the socially constructed forces that shaped the ideas of sexuality and gender in the 30s’ and 40s’ also influenced Williams. In fact, it was because he obviously internalized such ideology that he was able to provide just an elusive, almost undetectable shade of criticism for certain attitudes. The complex ambiguous nature of the queer reading that transforms the drama makes critical analysis for Streetcar tricky. This difficulty leads to some labeling Williams a misogynist or a self-hating homosexual (Costa 83). However, after noticing Williams’ stylistic habit, it becomes easier to navigate his twist and turns. Williams was not half the illusionist he presented himself to be, but isn’t that always the way with magicians? He was straightforward with his audience in the sense that he stuck to a pattern. If he is giving realistic, unjust depictions of characters that combine to bring forth twisted, monstrous meanings, the audience has simply come across a critical analysis of society, not Williams. In these characters, he provided portraits and nothing more. The resulting combination of their accurately drawn forces is not Williams’ fault, but society’s. However the more subtle and often absent characters are where audiences will find Williams heart, half hidden in a Varsourviana polka tune or burned into an old military photograph hanging on a bare wall in St. Louis. When viewing Williams with this sentiment, it becomes clear that the playwright was not a self-hating gay or unsympathetic towards women. He was human presenting human truths. No reader wants to accept Blanche’s rape or Stella’s abuse, but at the same time, they exert an inevitability that causes the reader to never be shocked by the events of a Williams’ play, but always be disgusted by them. That is unflinching truth. The result is one that should make any reader long to run away into a world of illusions. Then, somehow audiences make sense of Blanche’s nonsense dream world. Maybe audiences don’t want realism or the truth. Ultimately, maybe everyone seeks some kind of magic or truth as it ought to be in order to keep themselves distracted enough not to notice the sad rattle-tap streetcar named reality. And then, Sometimes––––there’s meaning–––so quickly! (Williams 2339). Works Cited Page Costa, Francisco. “There was something different about the boy: Queer Subversion in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.” Ege Journal of British and American Studies 23.1-2 (2014) : 76-85. Web. 4 April 2014. Griffin, Alice. Understanding Tennessee Williams. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. Print. Tischler, Nancy M. Student Companion to Tennessee Williams. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. Print. Tyson, Lois. Using Critical Theory. New York: Routledge, 2011. Print Williams, Tennessee. “A Streetcar Named Desire.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Gen ed. Nina Baym. Shorter 8th ed. New York: Norton, 2013. 2297-2361. Print.