Women - Wives, Mothers, and Dreamers

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Women: Wives, Mothers, and Dreamers

25 April 2000

The United States emerged from World War II as the lone power amidst the rubble of Europe. The optimism of Americans was strong; hope for the future was high. The American Dream was there to be lived. The economy, bolstered by the war and increasing technology, allowed for upward mobility. Democratic values had been reinforced. Americans innocently believed that they were the greatest force in the history of mankind, that they could accomplish anything. For the characters in Tennessee Williams' plays, the American Dream is treated in different ways, yet still along gender lines that reflect the times they were written. For Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, it means settling her dispute with Brick and having a child, ensuring their share of Big Daddy's fortune. The Glass Menagerie's Amanda Wingfield's perception of accomplishment is remarkably similar; though she has made mistakes of her own, she is determined to make her daughter marketable for young gentleman callers in the hopes that she will marry well. For Stella Kawolski in A Streetcar Named Desire, happiness is making a family with the turbulent Stanley. For these women in Williams' plays, they must constantly contrive schemes, take responsibility for their families, or provide near-saintly forgiveness to accomplish their desires, which almost always center on marriage and childbirth.

Brick is Maggie's life. She has her entire future stored up in him. Like so many other housewives of the 1940's and 50's, she is completely dependent on her husband for her well-being. She mentions going to college but never mentions being employed.[1] Instead, she has pinned all of her dreams on the hope that Big Daddy will choose to leave the bulk of his fortune and land to Brick instead of his money-grubbing son Gooper and "that monster of fertility" Mae.[2] Yet even more poignantly than being taken care of financially, Maggie has come to rely on Brick for emotional fulfillment. She takes care of him, to the point where she says she does not care if she makes a fool of herself in front of everyone for him. She refuses to take a lover to satisfy her physical desires, saying that when she closes her eyes, "I just see you!"[3]

At the end of the play, after Brick has ignored her, assaulted her, and blamed Skipper's death on her, she still saves his chances at inheriting Big Daddy's fortunes by claiming to be pregnant with Brick's child. She takes the scorn and ridicule heaped on her by Gooper's wife, with a terrible risk for her reputation if she does not conceive soon. "Pregnancy would signify a return of vitality in the detached and alcoholic Brick, who has stopped sexual relations to brood on his dead friend Skipper....Maggie identifies her empty emotional life with her physical emptiness; a baby would end the crushing loneliness."[4] To make this lie come true, she has to lock up Brick's liquor so that she will at least have a chance at winning his affection for one night. Despite Maggie's best efforts, she cannot win Big Daddy's grace on her own. She comes into the equation as Brick's better half, but still only half. Because of Brick's irresponsibility, she is forced to find a way for them to survive after Big Daddy's death, though Brick has the situation completely in his control if only he would act. Maggie is in effect reduced to an impotent player in this high stakes game; to get ahead even marginally, she has to lie, and hope that she can make the lie come true. Rather than present this lie as vicious, Williams "presents it as an affirmation of life in the face of death."[5] Maggie's dream, completely reliant on Brick, who has invariably acted irresponsibly, is in reality as illusory as Amanda Wingfield's.

Like Maggie, Amanda has had her options limited by her gender. Brought up in a tradition-rich South, she is better at social graces than keeping her family together. She had also made the mistake of casting all her plans on one man, a man who turned out to be most inept at maintaining a credible existence as a family man. After Mr. Wingfield left town to seek his fortunes elsewhere, Amanda was forced to take on work to support her children, especially Laura, whom she paid for to go to business school. She took on even more responsibilities "to properly feather the nest and plume the bird,"[6] i.e. prepare her daughter Laura for marriage, by selling magazine subscriptions to The Homemaker's Companion. All this toil was so that Laura could be marketable in the Great Quest for a Man. Amanda is a mother first and foremost; "it is [her] `mothering' function that comes to the fore."[7] She never once minimizes the pressure that Laura must feel; instead, she constantly reminds her children that in one day back in Blue Mountain she received "'seventeen' " gentleman callers!"[8] She even uses what little leverage she has with Tom to get him to bring a friend home, practically bribing him with his freedom if he would just do his part to get Laura married. "I mean that as soon as Laura has got somebody to take care of her, married, a home of her own, independent - why, then you'll be free to go wherever you please."[9]

Amanda does not realize the monumental mistake that she is making by forcing Laura into marriage. She herself ruined her bright future by placing all her hopes in a man that was not responsible enough to take care of his family; now she is encouraging Laura to take the same risk. For Amanda, marriage is the only progression a woman can make in life. If she fails to find Laura a nice husband, then she has failed in her role as caretaker and guide. The dream, then, for her has come to manifest itself in her daughter. Rather than appreciate her daughter as an individual with her own qualities to give to the world, Amanda can only see Laura as a potential wife and mother. She never sees her for the person that she truly is. Amanda never questions whether she is doing the right thing by pushing Laura into marriage, though this pressure is obviously having a deleterious effect on Laura.

Stella Kawolski has also sought to define herself according to her gender role within her family. Joan Wylie Hall offers Stella as Williams' most stereotypical "postwar image of housewife-mother."[10]� She is Stanley's staunchest defender; after Stanley hit her during one of his poker games, she brushes it off to Blanche. "Oh, well, it's his pleasure, like mine is movies and bridge. People have got to tolerate each other's habits, I guess."[11] She even cleans up the mess after Stanley's rampage.[12] To Blanche, Stella is a godsend, though in her condition, it should be the other way around. Stella takes care of Blanche, offering her the compliments Blanche so desperately seeks and providing her with almost every amenity she can. She makes excuses to Stanley for Blanche's liberties with their belongings and bath and even soothes over Blanche's loss of Belle Reve. In particular, she makes sure that Blanche is provided for even after Stella learns why Blanche had to leave Laurel. She takes over this role of caretaker almost effortlessly.

Her physical appearance, however, is what makes her a truly memorable sight. By the last act of the play, Stella is very pregnant. The baby has been born by the last scene; her neighbor Eunice reports that the baby is "sleeping like a little angel."[13] Thus through this imagery, Williams imposes the idea of Eunice as mother. "Stella is herself gradually reconstructed from the sexually responsive wife of the earlier scenes (before Stanley rapes Blanche) to a Madonna with child."[14] Once again, Stella is distanced from being a person in her own right to merely being the mother of her and Stanley's child. This is aggravated by Stanley's own actions in raping Blanche; because Stella remains blindly devoted to him, she appears to be a weak and docile creature under his control, much like Amanda Wingfield was to her husband.

"Over and over again," writes seminal feminist Betty Friedan, "stories...insist that women can know fulfillment only at the moment of giving birth to a child....There is no way she can even dream about herself, except as her children's mother, her husband's wife."[15] This holds true for the main female characters of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie, and A Streetcar Named Desire. The hope and optimism that coursed through the veins of American did not affect these women except in the most conventional ways; they could only look forward to being a good wife and a good mother. In this respect, Williams adhered to the traditional stereotypes for female characters.

[1] Williams, Tennessee. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. New York: New Directions Books, 1975: 59.

[2] Ibid: 22.

[3] Ibid: 40-1.

[4] Hall, Joan Wylie. "The Stork and the Reaper, the Madonna and the Stud: Procreation and Mothering in Tennessee Williams' Plays," The Mississippi Quarterly 48 (1995): paragraph 30.

[5] Winchell, Mark Royden. "Come Back to the Locker Room Ag'in, Brick Honey!" The Mississippi Quarterly Special Issue: Tennessee Williams (1995): paragraph 21.

[6] Williams, Tennesee. "The Glass Menagerie," The Theatre of Tennessee Williams: Volume 1. New York: New Directions Books, 1971: 159.

[7] Kataria, Gulshan Rai. The Faces of Eve: A Study of Tennessee Williams' Heroines. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1992: 34.

[8] Williams, "The Glass Menagerie." 148.

[9] Ibid: 175.

[10] Hall, paragraph 20.

[11] Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. New York: Penguin Books, 1974: 65.

[12] Ibid: 66.

[13] Ibid: 132.

[14] Hall, paragraph 22.

[15] Ibid: paragraph 9.

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