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Tennessee Williams’ın Suddenly Last Summer adlı oyununda “Ekonomik
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Article in International Journal of Language Academy · January 2020
DOI: 10.29228/ijla.43383
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International Journal of Language Academy
E-ISSN: 2342-0251
DOI Number: http://dx.doi.org/10.29228/ijla.43383
Research Article
Volume 8/4 September 2020
Article History:
Received
05/05/2020
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p. 20/44
Available online
24/09/2020
“THE ECONOMIC METAPHOR” IN TENNESSEE
WILLIAM’S PLAY SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER
Dilek ÇALIŞKAN1
Abstract
Tennessee Williams’s play Suddenly Last Summer (1958) set in the Victorian Gothic mansion in New
Orleans’ Garden District depicts the madness inducing the life of the wealthy Southern Venable family
as a microcosm of the capitalist American Society. According to the anti-psychiatrist (existentialist) R.
D. Laing, the “family” functions as the “economic metaphor” and provides a “protection racket” for
covering the invisible crimes and madness induced by the society. Madness, on the other hand, is
destructiveness, greed, and vulnerability. Psychoanalysis, too, contributes to the production of
madness and its discourses. The mass psychology emphasizes sameness and shapes the individual’s
behavior as the endless consumerist “Little Man;” a concept shaped by the learning theories and the
American intellectual background after WWI. The collective unconscious prevents the individual from
being powerful and from protesting. Fear from gossip, scandal and dismemberment from society and
family make the individual keep silent; and, the madness inducing crime machine family becomes the
source of endless pain and suffering. The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between the
“family as a protection racket” and “the invisible crimes in mad society” in the light of the antipsychiatrist (existentialist) R. D. Laing and Deleuzian view of madness and Foucault’s notion of the
body and to deconstruct the concepts of “madness” by making the invisible crimes visible.
Keywords: Madness, economic metaphor, R. D. Laing, Deleuze, Foucault
Assist. Prof. Dr. Dilek Çalışkan, Anadolu University, Faculty of Education, Department of Foreign
Language Education, dcaliskan@anadolu.edu.tr, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1354-0677
1
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“The Economic Metaphor” in Tennessee William’s Play
Suddenly Last Summer 21
INTRODUCTION
Tennessee William’s play Suddenly Last Summer (1958) set in a Victorian Gothic mansion
in New Orleans’ Garden District displays the visible and invisible crimes committed in the
capitalist American society. Mrs. Venable and her son Sebastian are hypocritical, selfish
and greedy. In this play Tennessee Williams shows the pitiful condition of the individual
and the society in which they lived. Both Tennessee Williams and his sister Rose could not
adjust to the society and its demands and so became victims. Tennessee Williams, actually,
Thomas Lanier Williams III, changed his name when he was thirty and took on a new
identity leaving his home and family behind. His sister Rose, as mentioned in “Obituary:
Rose,” was diagnosed in the State Hospital in Farmington, “Dementia Precox as a
(schizophrenic) Mixed Type, Paranoid Predominating. Six years later she was given a
bilateral prefrontal lobotomy in 1943, after hopeless treatment of insulin shock and
Metrazol therapy prescribed” (Hoare, 1996: para.10). Unfortunately, Rose was not as lucky
as Tennessee and was lobotomized with the permission of “the mother;” a popular method
at the time in America where more than hundred of such operations a day were performed
on “insane” patients, for whom other methods have failed (Voss, 2002: 72). Rose, being very
pretty and interested in make-up and highlighting her feminine qualities (Hoare, 1996:
para.5), willingly took on her assigned gender role. Unfortunately, being unable to fullfill
the expectations of her family (their mother’s wish for her marriage) and her environment
(she was unsuccessful at some secretarial jobs) she became gradually maddened and finally
lobotomized. On the other hand, Rose’s lobotomy was so traumatic that Tennessee Williams
would become haunted by her memories, so that he would obsessively write (about her) to
get rid of pain and self-blaim. So, Rose would become a recurrent motif in his writing. In
The Glass Menagerie (1944) Rose appears as the physically crippled fragile Laura who is
waiting for her savior. In The Street Car named Desire (1951) Rose appears as a physically
and psychologically unstable Southern highschool teacher Blanche DeBois, who after being
raped by her sister Stella’s husband Stanley Kowalski becomes institutionalized. The play
Suddenly Last Summer (1958), on the other hand, unlike the two submissive characters
Laura and Blanche, presents Rose as the violent, nonconformist Catharine, who manages
to escape lobotomy. Through these economically, emotionally and psychologically unstable
dependent female characters Williams questions the role of the institutions of marriage,
education and psychiatry. As mentioned by Clay Morton, who aims to use a different
interpretation of the madness symptoms (schizophrenia); because the notions of mental
illness are subjective and culturally relative and the canon related to Tennessee Williams
and his relation to Rose must be put into question. She proposes the concept of
neurodiversity as a new approach, which is a new theoretical concept defining Williams’s
conflicted feelings related to Rose and her mental state and his exploration of those feelings
through his plays (2012: 1). Many of Williams’ plays analyses rely on psychoanalysis, which
tries to cure the symptoms of the patients rather than their real causes (like the persons
and factors that maddened them), which this paper tries to display. This paper argues that
psychoanalysis with its institutions and cures, too, contribute to the ‘mad’ system and adds
to the individual’s pain, like all the other capitalist institutions, with its treatments of
patients and the discourse it produces related to difference (homosexuality) and mental
illness. The American Psychiatric Association played a great role with its declarations in
the time of government-sponsored harassments and arrests that continued into 1952:
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22 Dilek ÇALIŞKAN
That year, the American Psychiatric Association categorized homosexuality as a
sociopathic personality disorder in the first edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–1), adapting the terminology and thinking
pioneered by armed forces psychiatrists during the war. In the spring, Mattachine
distributed a leaflet around Los Angeles titled, “Your Rights in Case of Arrest,” that
outlined the ways to respond to police arrests and harassment (Paller, 2005: 60).
There was a witch hunt and crimes were committed by the instititutions and government
against people who were sexually and mentally different and there was tension and
constant counter struggle in the society. Tennessee Williams, metaphorically, shows this
counter struggle in Catharine’s and her Other Sebastians’ body as a site of resistence that
reveals a huge body of knowledge related to crime and madness. By presenting Catharine’s
resistence to the rich Southern matron Mrs. Venable (institutions/power) and The Holly
family (the society) in the play Suddenly Last Summer, Tennessee Williams attempts to
change these haunting discourses related to ‘madness,’ ‘difference’ and ‘crime’ such to
enable the communication between reason and madness to break the silence that was
created in history. Whereas Catharine is labeled bad and mad, the (dead) Sebastian, who
is actually a covert homosexual, is idealized as a successful All-American by the
hypocritical Venable and Holly family. The source of madness is, actually, the American
way of life and the American culture of which Rose (Catharine), Thomas (Sebastian) are the
victims and the mother figures Violet Venable, Mrs. Holly recalling Williams’s own mother
Edwina are both victims and victimizers. Regardless of their sex and gender, Rose (Thomas)
is only one of the many individuals, who suffer the same plights in capitalist patriarchal
society and Tennessee Williams as a revolutionary wrote about the mad (criminal) society
as also mentioned by D. Savran:
Insistently, he underscored the broadly social foundation for the personal tragedies
with which so many of his plays are concerned, pointing out that the individual
subject is not an isolated monad but a component of a "society" that insistently
"rapes the individual.”6 Time and again he stated his fierce opposition to social and
political tyranny, to the Vietnam War, to racism, and to the persecution of
homosexuals. In his Memoirs, he several times describes himself as a revolutionary
in both "personal" and "artistic" terms.7 In a 1976 interview he went even further,
insisting that all of his plays and, indeed, that "all good art is essentially
revolutionary (1992: 79).
His views became harsher of the South in the late 1950s –the South which he both loved
and hated--for the racial violence (the Supreme Court decision (1954) to segregate schools)
and the dislike of homosexuals (Watson, 1997: 183). His play Suddenly Last Summer is
revolutionary and political in this respect, where he tries to decolonize language for which
nobody could openly attack him for his political views and homosexuality:
He "never tried to disguise [his] homosexuality" and that he "never found it necessary
to deal with [homosexuality] in [his] work."31 Colonizing the contradictory ground
between "never tried to disguise" and "never found it necessary to deal," Tennessee
Williams consistently writes his desire as equivocally as he writes himself in a
corpus of work in which "every word is autobiographical” 32 and no word is
autobiographical. Throughout his work for the theater of the 1940s and 1950s,
homosexuality appears—ever obliquely—as a distinctive and elusive style, in every
word and no word, as a play of signs and images, of text and subtext, of metaphorical
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“The Economic Metaphor” in Tennessee William’s Play
Suddenly Last Summer 23
elaboration and substitution, of disclosure and concealment—in short, as textuality
itself (Savran, 1992: 84).
The same thing was true for his anti-capitalistic (communistic views) despite his
commitment to a theater of resistance; he was never recognized as a political activist and
he was never associated with the American Communist party (Savran, 1992: 79). His play
Suddenly Last Summer sheds light not only into the corrupted American South but also to
the corruption of the patriarchal capitalist American society. As mentioned in the following
quote, consumption and enjoyment dominated the mood of the family and the period:
But the "wild jazz age summer" of 1925 was for Tennessee a remembrance of Rose
and her boyfriend’s dancing the Charleston, memories again to resurface in his own
work. Rose was preoccupied with pretty clothes and looking beautiful; from exile in
Vicksburg she wrote to her brother in the languorous speech of a nascent Tennessee
Williams heroine, "Here I sit in agony my face covered in green beauty clay... I don't
need to tell you how striking the effect is. I think it's lovely of you to write to me so
often even though I don't answer… .(Hoare, 1996: para. 6)
They were all dancing to the same music, metaphorically, they were acting in the same way
to the demands of the consumer society in which they lived. Williams being a visionary
reflects the madness residing in the American society in his by the critics so-called
“horrifying one-act drama“ Suddenly Last Summer (1958). Actually, he reflects the idea of
the mad society that induces crime in this disturbing play. The idea of the mad society is
two years later proposed by the British (existentialist) anti-psychiatrist R. D. Laing with his
radical view on schizophrenia as a form of personality in his book The Divided Self (1960).
Catharine, like Williams’s sister Rose, is kept in an institution after being accused for her
cousin Sebastian’s death by being labeled mad with the money paid by the wealthy Mrs.
Venable and the consent of her mother and brother against her will (Williams, 1958: 55),
as suggested by Catharine’s words, “no place for lunatics was sweet” (53). Threatened with
lobotomy, as evident in her speech to Mrs. Venable, when she says, “Do you want to bore
a hole in my skull and turn a knife in my brain? Everything else was done to me!” (55), she
struggles to overcome the cannibalist Venable, which ironically, is a pun on the word
”venerable.” Therefore, the aim of this paper; is to analyze this play in the light of the antipsychiatrist R. D. Laing’s and Gilles Deleuze’s idea of madness and Michel Foucault’s
notion of the body in order to understand the plight of the so-labeled “mad” (schizophrenic)
individual. Madness and its discourses are produced in the capitalist society by concerted
action of institutions and family resulting in visible and invisible crimes committed by socalled “respectable pillars“ of the society. As noted by Hoare (1996), “madness was a reality
in Williams’ life and there was illness in both parents’ family with its inevitable influence
on his work” (para. 5), such reflecting the madness and violence residing in the society.
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24 Dilek ÇALIŞKAN
In order to analyze the play, there is the necessity to analyze the concept of madness and
its discourses. The collective unconscious and its dynamics play a crucial role. As explained
by R. D. Laing (1960), the collective unconscious prevents the individual to be powerful and
to protest. Fear from scandal and gossip keeps the individual from acting differently from
the mass. William’s mother Edwina and Thomas, too, fearing gossip and scandal wanted
to silence the highly sexed girl Rose when she became too bothering. When Rose started
using four-letter words his mother panicked, as mentioned in Williams’s following speech
in “An Interview with Tennessee Williams:”
… 'Do anything! Don't let her talk like that,' mother cried. ... "But Rose wasn't doing
that. Oh, she said things that four- letter words say, but she put them in elegant
language"- his voice shifts into a dreamy soprano tone- "like this: 'Mother, we girls
at All Saints used to abuse ourselves with candles we stole from the chapel.' Mother
couldn't bear it!" The recollection sends him into a spasm of laughter. "Mother's 90
now, and an inspiration to us all," he added dryly (Berkvist, 1995: para. 8).
Similar to Rose’s story, Catharine, the cousin of Sebastian in Suddenly Last Summer is to
be silenced, because she, too, is telling a disturbing story about the mysterious and sudden
death of her cousin Sebastian. Catharine in a similar way is about to be victimized by the
blind society (her family) that cannot differentiate between illusion and reality. Williams’s
play with its “search for truth” reflects the view of society that is again described by the
British anti-Psychiatrist R. D. Laing’s view:
There is little conjunction of truth and social “reality.” Around us are pseudo-events,
to which we adjust with a false consciousness adapted to see these events as true
and real, and even as beautiful. In the society of men truth resides now less in what
things are than in what they are not. Our social realities are so ugly if seen in the
light of exiled truth, and beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie. We live
in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the
present only when it is already disappearing (Laing, 1967: 11).
In such a society, the individual creates their own reality (illusions). The illusionary world
of Sebastian is represented by the garden metaphor, it is the “jungle of Sebastian,” which
is crucial for his existence, but unfortunately, as it is a false and artificial garden, it is
doomed to collapse. Catharine and Dr. Sugar (Cukrowicz) will explore this “Garden,”
symbolic of prevalent religious, scientific and philosophical discourses about madness and
sexuality in order to deconstruct them. This carnivorous “jungle” of Sebastian is in the
garden of the huge Victorian mansion and represents the world and life of the Southern
Venable family. This family mansion, as a space, is the generator of madness. The “jungle”
shows the difficulty of creating a self-identity in the patriarchal capitalist society, for,
Tennessee’s (Thomas Lanier’s) passion for flowers was considered as effeminate by his
father and formed the core of the tension between them; Cornelius accused Edwina and
his nanny Ozzie for raising a “Sissy.” Therefore, it is important to understand the family
and its function in the society as one of the major institutions shaping individual’s
behavior, and life was not easy in Williams family. The suffocating atmosphere of Williams’s
family was sickening:
…Cornelius Coffin Williams and Edwina Rose Dakin, were a dreadful mismatch: she
was the neurotically puritanical daughter of an Episcopal minister; he, a harddrinking, profane veteran of the Spanish-American War… Cornelius was frustrated
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“The Economic Metaphor” in Tennessee William’s Play
Suddenly Last Summer 25
by his desk job, disdainful of the “sissy” way in which he thought Edwina was raising
their son, and furious with a wife he could dominate neither intellectually nor
sexually. Life at the Williams home was a constant round of arguing, smoldering
silences and sexual tension. In self-defense, Rose and Tom clung together all the
more fiercely (Voss, 2002: 71).
The lives of the Venable and Holly families are not very different from the life of Williams
family with the absent father and dominating mother figures in the play Suddenly last
Summer which presents “a couple” (Catharine and Sebastian) trying to cling together for
self-defense hopelessly. The family is the “protection racket” and “the role of the mother” is
crucial in functioning of the family. In this respect, it is very important to understand “the
role of the mother” in the play Suddenly Last Summer. In this family, the obsessive and
overprotecting Mrs. Venable, the mother of Sebastian with her distorted viewpoint
represents the economic metaphor. She is rich and powerful and clings on “the idea of
Sebastian” as the father is absent. But, unfortunately, her investment on her son Sebastian
will result in dissillusionment as he is doomed to die due to personal flaws. According to
R. D. Laing, the economic metaphor functions in the family as follows:
The economic metaphor is aptly employed. The mother “invests” in her child. What
is most revealing is the husband’s function, the provision of economic support,
status and protection, in that order. There is frequent reference to security, the
esteem of others. What one is supposed to want, to live for, is “gaining pleasure from
the esteem and affection of others”8 if not, one is a psychopath. Such statements
are in a sense true. They describe the frightened, cowed, abject creature that we are
admonished to be, if we are to be normal—offering each other mutual protection
from our own violence, the family as a “protection racket” (1967: 63-64).
Sebastian becomes an abject creature, whereas the nonconforming Catharine becomes
abnormal. The function of the family as an institution has the following roles and
contributes to the mad system as defined by Laing:
The family’s function is to repress Eros; to induce a false consciousness of security;
to deny death by avoiding life; to cut of transcendence; to believe in God, not to
experience the Void; to create, in short, one-dimensional man; to promote respect,
conformity, obedience; to con children out of play; to induce a fear of failure; to
promote a respect for work; to promote a respect for respectability (1967: 65).
This definition suits the role of Mrs. Venable in the play, as well as to his own mother
Edwina in his own family, as both Sebastian and Rose experienced the Void. The powerful
Venable family as a microcosm represents the mad society. The cousins Catharine and
Sebastian and the twin-like Rose and Thomas (Tennessee) are all suffering in pain. Williams
with his play Suddenly Last Summer aims to deconstruct the concepts of “madness” by
making the invisible crimes via language visible. His characters with their multiple nature
are allegorical characters representing religion and values of the society. Catharine is the
embodiment of madness and its discourses as well as healing. Sebastian, actually, is the
Other of Catharine, whose madness remains invisible. Sebastian’s mother resembles
Tennessee Williams’s mother Edwina, who gave the permission for Rose’s lobotomy. As
stereotypical overprotecting mothers they prevent growth; Williams, too, being affected by
his mother sought psychiatric help from the famous psychoanalysts of his day. Dr.
Lawrence Kubie “who, according to Williams, suggested he give up both writing and
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26 Dilek ÇALIŞKAN
homosexuality, because it would be good for him,” which ironically, led him to use violent
imagery in his writing in the fiftees (Voss, 2002: 83). Therefore, the conflict is between
psychoanalysis and its applications on people, which did not seem to offer much help for
the labeled (bad, mad, homosexual and abnormal) individuals. Dr. Cuckrowicz (Dr. Sugar)
is the long expected savior in the play. He is a “specialist” from Lion’s view, who performs
“something new” on patients when other treatments have failed (Williams, 1958: 55). In
Suddenly Last Summer Williams reflects the intellectual background of his own time.
The opposing views of behaviorism and psychoanalysis shaped the American way of
thinking. Direct application of scientific methods and findings on human beings for the
betterment of human life was the only concern. The conflict between them caused a split
in modern thought. The psychoanalysts believed that insight preceded and accompanied
freedom and the behaviorists believed that freedom and liberating insights are illusions and
habit formed by conditioning is the basis of human life and happiness in society and
individual life. Both schools are therapeutic and religious; and are concerned with the cure
of human dysfunctions and the sickness of the mind and the soul. Behaviorism wanted to
modify behavior by external influence and psychoanalysis looked for the source of one’s
illness and the key to one’s cure in the individual (Hoffman, 1979: 19). (St.) Sebastian and
his cousine (St.) Catharine, as his ‘Other,’ are symbols of these ‘scientific’ debates as they
are sacred (saintly) figures, ironically, haunting the mind of intellectuals and writers of the
period. They are allusions to religion and belief. And Dr. Sugar, representing science,
reflects the view of scientific experimentation that seems to echo another scientific debate
in psychiatry that is proposed by Skinner. Dr. Sugar with the lobotomy is to create
Catharine anew, which Catharine resists in the manner of a storyteller like Rose,” who “was
telling far-fetched tales of hard-pressed family life” as mentioned in “Obituary Rose” (Hoare,
1996: para. 3), with a slight difference of Dr. Sugar, who is willing to listen to her. Unlike
Williams’s other (saviors) gentleman callers like Jimmy in The Glass Menagerie, who is
expected to marry Laura or Mitch who decides not to marry Blanche, because of her
questionable past. Dr. Sugar is a real savior, he is an activist.
Unlike Rose, Laura and Blanche, Catharine with her insistence on telling her own story
over and over again (despite the truth serum), which she calls “telling the truth,” on the
contrary, will survive. Her symbolic existence as a so-called “mad woman” in Suddenly Last
Summer, is a form of existence that was denied to Rose, because, in her time, a
schizophrenic person’s truth was nobody’s concern. For Foucault, language and discourse
are important concepts related to madness, because they are related to the healing of the
soul that became the target of punishment in the context of the search for truth in history.
The doctor’s role is to talk to the patient on the notions “good” and “real evil” to make him
renounce his error (1988: 183). Williams uses language to challenge the discourses of
madness. Catharine and Dr. Sugar’s dialogues should exorcise the evil residing in language
(treatment with discourse) related to body, mind and soul. As asserted by Michel Foucault:
Language, the formulations of truth or morality, are in direct contact with the body…
the technique is one of metaphors, at the level of a disease that is a deterioration of
nature; in the second, the technique is one of language, at the level of a madness
perceived as reason's debate with itself. The technique, in this last form, functions
in a domain where madness is "treated" —in all the senses of the word—in terms of
truth and error (1988: 183).
Therefore, survival depends on telling counter stories (presenting multiple truths) only then
the mind will be opened up for understanding and empathy. Her story is cannibalistic and
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“The Economic Metaphor” in Tennessee William’s Play
Suddenly Last Summer 27
therefore shocking and requires understanding. As stated by Churchwell (2014), for
Williams, “life is cannibalistic; and, the person who discovers the symbolic power of
consuming the enemy is a good cannibal” (Tennessee Williams’ review, para. 1). As again
mentioned by Churchwell, “with his themes of madness and sexuality, Williams not only
saved his own self but he also saved American theatre from its puritanical straightjacket”
(para.1) creating a new self with his new style of writing. Catharine and the cannibalistic
Black children like Williams will consume their “enemy.” Williams more or less in Skinner’s
manner, with a constant experimental attitude, sought a model for the creation of a new
Rose (or multiple Roses). Catharine in the play Suddenly Last Summer is only one of these
multiple Rose models. Skinner (1938) proposed the idea of “behavioral engineering” and
was the inventor of the “teaching machine.” He was concerned with “the creation of the new
kind of person.” For him, “science could not be stopped and therefore men had to be built
up to the same level.” The need for science of behavior was emphasized; and an
experimental attitude was crucial in order to find out “what a few man can make of
mankind” (Hoffman, 1979: 20). Ironically, Dr Sugar’s role, in the play, is to explore
Catharine’s case and not Sebastian’s case, which is linked to sexuality, the other important
debatable subject in Williams’ plays. On the other hand, while writing on sexuality,
Williams is not on the search for” the image of man as a function of his habits,” which was
proposed by the anti-psychoanalytic Kinsey in his Report (based on the two books Sexual
Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), who
tried to normalize sexual offensive behavior, on the contrary, Williams is after “the image
of the human being.” “The image of man as a function of his habits” against “the image of
the self-knowing and self-controlling whole man” appeared with Kinsey’s explanations.
According to Kinsey homosexuality despite the punitive conditions in post-war America was
widespread and homosexual activity would be even more prevalent in a more tolerant
society. Unfortunately, the researches conducted by the Kinsey Institute led to the labeling
and hunting of homosexuals and lesbians that mainly ended up in imprisonment.
Homosexuality was seen as a threat to “the way of life” as affirmed by J. Edgar Hoover,
who, too, ironically, had his own sexual secrets and FBI started work on the matter (Paller,
2005: 53). Williams, too, because of his connection with Erwin Piscator’s Dramatic
Workshop and his sympathy for those investigated by the House Un-American activitees
Committee (The ‘Hollywood Ten’) was a suspect, because “of his potential transgressive
politics and sexuality” and the FBI kept a file on him (Hooper, 2012: 21).
Therefore, Sebastian hides behind a veil reflecting Kinsey’s ideas related to sexuality, so
that his homosexuality was not realized by Mrs. Venable (authorities) as she learns it from
Catharine. Kinsey rejected the categories of sickness and health; and, accepted all human
behavior as “natural” and open to controlled investigation, although he later joined Freud
that the individual’s true nature of sex was hidden behind a veil, especially, in American
culture. In 1920s, there was a great freedom and tolerance towards sex and Freud’s ideas
lead to “sexual reformation.” With Kinsey’s explanations “sex” became behavior and was
not considered as feeling. Sex was rather a physical activity; “release” or “outlet” (Hoffman
1979: 20). Freud’s ideas and the psychoanalysis based upon them gave way to the growing
awareness of sex in industrial societies and America in the twentieth century and offered
more freedom for men. According to Freud, sex was an instinctual force (libido) which was
at odds with the needs and demands of society and civilization (Hoffman, 1979: 23).
Reflecting the process of societal sexual awakening, the covert homosexual Sebastian
sought outlet with the black children he abused. In the same manner the so-called
“hysterical” Catharine is abused after the big Mardi Grass ball by a married man offering
her a drive home:
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28 Dilek ÇALIŞKAN
Somebody took my arm and said, I’ll drive you home…we stopped near the Duelling
Oaks at the end of Esplanade Street …. Stopped!—I said “what for”!—He didn’t
answer… he took me home and said an awful thing to me.”We’d better forget it,” he
said, “my wife is expecting a child and…”(Williams, 1958: 64-65).
Sebastian’s relationships with black children and Catharine’s abuse are metaphors for the
crimes committed by the institutions and the police. Men were sexually free and women
were oppressed; and, additionaly, there was the threat of being labeled hysteric.
Homosexuality, on the other hand, was considered by the authorities a national threat;
and, there appeared police violence:
Quickly, the surveillance of law-abiding civilian gay men and lesbians became
institutionalized. In order to gather information on the activities of homosexuals,
the FBI established contacts with police departments across the country, justifying
its actions on the grounds that it was charged with providing the Civil Service
Commission with background material on job applicants … Local police were only
too happy to comply with the FBI’s request for information and stepped up
harassment and arrests. In Washington, D.C., arrests soon exceeded 1,000 a year,
and in Philadelphia, they averaged 100 per month. New Orleans, Miami, Memphis,
Seattle, Dallas, and Wichita were among the cities where gay men and women
became routine victims of police violence and harassment... On December 15, 1950,
the subcommittee issued an interim report ... sex perverts, like all other persons
who by their overt acts violate moral codes and laws and the accepted standards of
conduct, must be treated as transgressors ... (Paller, 2005: 5).
Therefore, William’s attempt is to deconstruct the language and show the violence residing
in society; concepts like sex, gender, normal and abnormal are questioned by making
Catharine speak. Dr. Sugar representing science and medicine is to investigate the truth
that is embedded in Catharine’s counter story about the immature Sebastian. The so-called
mad Catharine is now to be listened to, recalling the tradition of anti-psychiatry and
working against the labels of society by giving voice to the so called “bad” and “mad.” In
this way the communication between the psychiatrist and the patient will be enabled. Such,
Dr. Sugar is ready to listen to the story of Catharine despite the “powerful” Mrs. Venable
offering bribery to Dr. Sugar. This counter story becomes both a threat and a source for
existence; whereas Violet Venable will lose her status and place in the society, Catharine
will be empowered and saved from death-in-life. Violet, as her name suggests, is the actual
source of madness as an overprotecting, dominating and obsessive mother figure, who
prevents growth. It can be said that Williams’s views about madness in this play are similar
to the anti-psychiatrist R. D. Laing’s views as mentioned previously. Laing rejects the
definitions of abnormality, schizophrenia and madness as they are social products and
instruments of oppression (Hoffman, 1979: 28). In a similar manner, Williams, too, is
attacking these labels with the death story of the “immature” Sebastian with his
carnivarious garden the “jungle,” where the truth is hidden. Sebastian is the source of
Catharine’s seemingly “madness” as he abuses the people around him endlessly, and
therefore, his cannibalistic nature is to be made visible. Catharine and Sebastian are,
actually, doubles; who struggle for freedom and independence. Women were confined to
domestic life and homosexuals were chased everywhere around the country and were
labeled as perpetrators of sex crimes:
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Suddenly Last Summer 29
Gay men and women were no safer in the summer communities of the Pines and
Cherry Grove on Fire Island. On crowded weekend nights, boats of Suffolk County
policemen would ferry over from the mainland. Literally beating the bushes with
billy clubs, they bashed men having sex and dragged them off to jail. Many of the
men’s names would appear in the next day’s newspapers. (Paller, 2005: 62)
Fear dominated the spirit of the age. Therefore, Sebastian had to create his own (artificial
garden) “jungle” in the Venable Garden in order just “to exist” with his fake identity.
Williams by making Catharine tell this counter story opens a space for the discussion of
the possibility of affirming ones “real identity“ and the discussion of sanity and madness
by enabling communication between Dr. Sugar and Catharine. Their dependent nature of
existence threatens the existence itself; they are all economically and emotionally
interdependent. Catharine is dependent on her family and Dr. Sugar; and, Dr. Sugar and
her family, on the other hand, are dependent on Mrs. Venable (1958: 55). They are all
economically interdependent. Williams seems to reflect similar views with R. D. Laing with
his disobeying characters; Catharine is violent, Dr. Sugar disobeys authority, and
Sebastian rejects to be the mama’s boy even at the risk of death. Williams’s aim is to make
the madness of “the mother” (as the generator of materialist authority and power) visible.
For Laing, the distinction between the sane and the insane is not clear. He also believed
that the distinction between the therapist and the patient should be overcome, so that there
will be a possibility to create a language between reason and madness. So, Dr. Sugar
representing reason will listen to the so-called “mad” Catharine’s story.
Catharine’s (William’s) cannibalistic story is schizophrenic in tone as Williams’s drama
Suddenly Last Summer opens with the words “force of evil” and the description of Catharine
being brought on the brink of madness (1958: 1). There is the inescapable trap of madness
for Catharine prepared by the institutions of the society and the members of the family, if
she is not to speak out and to be understood. It is a story of vengeance in which the
exploited children devour their mad oppressor; and, real escape from madness will only be
possible by facing and knowing madness. This will only be possible when one faces one’s
inner fears and demons. Catharine must speak up for herself and must insist that her story
is true. She must overcome the fear of madness. Madness is a reality in contemporary world
and therefore must be understood. Laing decribes madness as a liberation from restrains.
It is a renewal and an existential death. When a person goes mad his center of experience
moves from ego to self. Mundane time becomes anectodal and only the eternal matters.
And the madman becomes confused and muddles ego with self, inner and outer, natural
and supernatural and loses his sense of self and feelings and his place in the world we
know and tells us he is dead. Since his visions and voices seem senseless to us we want to
cleanse and cure him (1967: 133). For Laing, madness is not an illness to be cured; it is a
form of personality. Crime is the natural outcome in a mad society: it is committed by
respectable men, doctors, lawyers, teachers, police man and family members. Mrs. Venable,
Sebastian, Mrs. Holly, George Holly, Dr. Cuckrowicz, Sister Felicity, Edwina, Cornelius are
some of them with their hidden inner demons. In such a society everything becomes blurred
and truth is not to be found easily; as explained by Laing:
We are all murderers and prostitutes--no matter to what culture, society, class,
nation, we belong no matter how normal, moral, or mature we take ourselves to be.
Humanity is estranged from its authentic possibilities. This basic vision presents us
from taking any unequivocal view of sanity of common sense, or of the madness of
the so-called madman. . . At all events we are bemused and crazed creatures,
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strangers to our true selves, to one another, and to the spiritual and material
world—mad, even, from an ideal standpoint we can glimpse but not adopt.” We are
born into a world where alienation awaits us. We are potentially men, but are in an
alienated state, and this state is not simply a natural system. Alienation as our
present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human
beings on human beings (Laing, 1967: 11-13).
Catharine, as the symbol of the truth, alludes to several religious and historical figures, for
Williams is, also, writing about the shortsightedness of (religious) institutions; St.
Catherine of Alexandria is a virgin living in the 8th century, who announced herself being
married to Jesus and became very popular during the Middle Ages as the patron of
philosophers and scholars. She is believed to help protect against sudden death. She was
a learned young princess, who protested the persecution of Christians under the Roman
emperor Maxentius, whose wife and some soldiers she is said to have converted into
Christianity while being imprisoned. As she said, she was married to Jesus Christ, she was
sentenced to death with the Wheel. When she touched the spiked wheel with which she
would be killed, the wheel broke and they could not kill her; so, she was beheaded. She
had a strong rhetoric and was very famous for converting people into Christianity (St.
Catherine of Alexandria, 2017: para. 2); Catharine like her, with her strong rhetoric, too,
should metaphorically, change people’s believes about madness. Williams, ironically, by
alluding to St. Catharine attempts to stop the wheel of madness. St. Catherine’s case is
named “Catherine’s Wheel,” which means torturing and murdering the people who are
different. As the protector against death, she is the one who is, ironically, responsible for
the “sudden” death of Sebastian, which, actually, is a necessity. Sebastian must die in
order to stop the wheel of shaping “false identity.” Sebastian’s identity like St. Sebastian’s
and St. Catharine’s identity is open to speculation. Catharine also alludes to the problem
of higher education of women and the foundation of feministic St. Catherine’s College
in1905 in America and thriving among other traditional women’s colleges, despite its
oxymoronic nature:
—on the one hand, affiliated with a Church that limits women’s opportunities within
its own hierarchy; on the other, inspired by a feminist tradition that asserts that
women can do anything men can do (Lamm, Cavallaro & Doherty, 2011: 4).
At a time when females were considerd to be intellectually and physically incapable of
rigorous education and were defined only as wives and mothers, the colleges of women
enabled their students and faculties to develop their own intellectual and social identities
as women (Lamm, Cavallaro & Doherty, 2011: 3). Higher education of women was mainly
associated with lesbianism which was considered as a big threat to society according to
some medical writers, “education was a process by which women might become masculine,
and therefore lesbian, and ultimately degenerate.”34 (Lamm, Cavallaro & Doherty, 2011:
95). Catharine should become empowered by storytelling (like the Russian Empress
Catherine II, the healer and law maker, who fought plagues for the sake of her nation and
her (heir) grandson), so that intellectually strong women can educate emotionally and
intellectually strong children. According to Catharine’s story, Sebastian was the one
responsible for his own death, as he abused poor children in Cabeza de Lobo in Spain (far
away from his “jungle”), reflecting Williams’s own problematic relationship with a Catholic
country and audience. The acceptance of American Drama was not easy in Spain;
especially, Tennessee Williams who became a world famous playwright between 19451957, but not very much known in Spain. His plays like O’Neill’s plays were considered
inappropriate and too complex for the contemporary Spanish audience; for, the audience
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Suddenly Last Summer 31
came to know him only through the information offered by Spanish print media, which did
not present him in a favorable light (Tennessee Williams in Europe, 2014: 223). Catharine’s
rhetoric would change not only the rhetoric of Sebastians’s jungle (homosexuality), but also
the rhetoric of the garden of Eden with her new spirituality, because her voice is backed
up by the songs of the birds (are messengers to the soul) from Sebastian’s jungle.
Therefore, the setting of Suddenly Last Summer is significant; both New Orleans (blend of
African, Indian, Creole, French, German, Spanish cultures, jazz, slavery, wodoo, mardi
grass, Civil War and so on), as the American setting and Cabeza de Lobo, a Spanish setting,
which is a place named after St. Sebastian in Spain at the harbor (Williams, 1958: 78),
where according to Catharine, Sebastian is symbolically “crucified” (sacrificed) for his “own
sins.“ Therefore, Sebastian (St. Sebastian) and his mother represent colonial history and
religious wars. St. Sebastian, as explained in Catholic Online (n.d), is the patron saint of
soldiers, athletes, and those who desire a saintly death. Ironically, the abusive Sebastian
will die at the same place with this saintly figure, who became a homoerotic and
controversial figure for many artists and writers in history; as, there are many stories and
speculations about his existence as a Saint, and, as also mentioned in another article about
Williams, “Tennesse Williams like Oscar Wilde called him as a late-antique rentboy”
(“Arrows of desire.” 2008: para. 12). Therefore, he alludes to several truths related to
religion and ideology that need to be revealed; like war, victimhood, homosexuality and
cannibalism (slavery). Cannibalism and madness in this play stand for the carnivorous
American Dream and Progress myth, which is greedy and has turned into a nightmare for
the different other (the not WASP), not only in America but also in the whole world. The
intellectual background that shaped the whole world basing its ideals on “The American
Way of Life” and the so-called “The New Democratic and Free American Man” gave rise to
the United States of America as a world or super power.
By the 1920s the “mass culture” appeared in America with careful design. In this first era
of mass culture, this concept shaped the American way of thinking and culture (Hoffman,
1979: 8). The “mass culture” also converted arts into a commodity and excluded everything
which does not conform to popular norms (9), which was also a great problem for Williams
in society, as he states in an “Interview with Tennessee Williams,” “A lot of younger
playwrights are castrated by the system in which they work and the public does not have
the patience to permit failures in their creative adventures “(Berkvist, 1975: para. 17).
Media and television praised the American way of life and America was presented as a
consumer paradise after the War. It was the American century characterized by an everrising Gross National Product, an expanding highway program, and mushrooming
suburban shopping malls in which the credit card was the sign for class distinctions
(Hoffman, 1979: 5). A stream of criticism that started in 1950 was about material
conditions and the quality of media. The only concern was the welfare of homogeneous
white middleclass suburban society, who suffered from too much consumption. The plight
of blacks in the South and ghettos of northern cities remained unseen until the civil rights
movements of the late 1950s and the ghetto risings in the middle 1960s (Hoffman, 1979:
6). Colored people, who were excluded from the society, suffered in silence; like the black
children from the public beach in Cabeza de Lobo, whom Sebastian abused. This beach in
Spain, also, alludes to the defeat of Spanish Armada and the rise of England as a colonial
power and the colonization of America and the history of slavery.
In a similar way, there was also the colonization of the mind with the colonial discourses
based on “success” and “progress” stories, in which, history and philosophy had their
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particular role. As mentioned by Moira Gatens in Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and
Corporeality, “imagination and the passions are crucial in understanding the place of
women and colored or disabled people in society,” as for Spinoza, “wild generalizations are
the result of imagination. ” Joy and sadness of a class or nation will affect everyone of the
same class or nation excluding the one, who is different from the class or nation (1995:135).
Mrs. Venable’s imagination forms wild generalizations; and, symbolically, Catharine (like
Rose) becomes the embodiment of the unwanted other, representing women and the lower
classes. Women were excluded from politics with the ideas of the 17 th century rationalist
Spinoza, because they evoke sexual passion in men, which would lead to competition, and,
therefore, men must be protected from women by the law; otherwise, they would become
enemies to one another (Gatens, 1995: 134). Although, his ideas proposed “democracy as
the best governmental system securing individual freedom” his views lead to the exclusion
of women from political action (Gatens, 1995: 133). Catharine’s speech shows the truth
about this exclusion:
I can’t change the truth! I’m not God! I’m not even sure that he could, I don’t think
God can change truth. How can I change the story of what happened to her son in
Cabeza de Lobo? (Williams, 1958: 58)
Her speech, also, questions the debatable nature of truth; for Mrs. Venable, Sebastian died
because of Catharine who is in love with her son (Williams, 1958: 58) and for Catharine
Sebastian died because of his own sins. Catharine, being accused of “murder,” seeks
shelter in Saint Mary’s and hopes to be saved by the help of Sister Felicity. Actually, this
institution alludes to religion and its healing power, but ironically, she is subjected to
religious gaze and imprisonment. As suggested by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish:
The birth of the prison a body politics was also developed in the 17 th century:
… as a set of material elements and techniques that serve as weapons, relays,
communication routes and supports for the power and knowledge relations that
invest human bodies and subjugate them by turning them into objects of knowledge.
It is a question of situating the techniques of punishment whether they seize the
body in the ritual of public torture and execution or whether they are addressed to
the soul in the history of this body politic; of considering penal practices less as a
consequence of legal theories than as a chapter of political anatomy (1995: 28).
Both the human body and the body of Earth are turned into objects of knowledge and
therebye become objectified. Catharine’s body (the “garden”) becomes a plaything in the
hands of the materialistic Venable and Holly family, as a result of American way of life. All
Americans suffer from the imposed American way of life that turned not only the human
body, but also the “Body of Earth” into a “thing” in the consumer market. Mrs. Venable,
symbolic of America as superpower, can rent houses wherever and whenever she wants
(Williams, 1958: 25). Her dream is a “successful,” All-American Sebastian, who, actually,
is a failure. Sebastian is like the ‘American Way of life;’ as explained by the American critic
and writer Joyce Carol Oates, it is based on the big American Dream, which is a false dream
of conquest, control and ownership. It is an impossible dream of overcoming mutability
(Creighton, 1992: 107). Sebastian, as a narcissist, wants to control the whole world but
becomes a failure. Catharine’s mother Mrs. Holly and her brother George Holly, who
inherits Sebastian’s wardrobe, are happy to follow Sebastian’s footsteps (Williams, 1958:
46). The selfish brother of Catharine, recalling George Washington, the first president of
America with the “Idea of Progress” and “The Manifest Destiny,” is a petty capitalist and is
ready to sacrifice Catharine (the silenced law) without any feelings of guilt, the basic
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Suddenly Last Summer 33
proponent of Christianity. Catharine alludes to both the Wheel of Catherine and the
Russian Empress Catherine II, who has written a new code Of Law based on Beccaria’s
ideas, his ideas also became the basis of Tuscan Law (Foucault, 1995: 117). Catherine had
both adapted Beccaria’s (called Italian Rousseau) ideas and the ideas of the French
Rousseau related to return to nature and the education of young people. Being a
revolutionary, her radical views related to health differed from her contemporaries in child
care and education. According to her, the children should not be dressed or covered too
warmly, they should be washed in cold water and taught to swim as soon as they become
old enough etc. (Gorbatov, 2006:124). She was also iconized as a sacred national figure in
Russia as healer when smallpox was raging all across Europe at a time when many
aristocratic families were killed by it:
To put an end to this ever-present threat, Catherine II resorted to the most advanced
method against such a deadly disease and authorized vaccinations that would
inoculate patients with material taken from a person infected with smallpox. She
announced that she would be the first to prove the effectiveness of the procedure to
the courtiers who vigorously opposed such an endeavor (Proskurina, 2011: 87).
Catharine, alluding to the law maker and healer Catherine the Great, with her search for
justice and truth is to save Sebastian from his oppressive and controlling mother. Actually,
Catharine’s memory will save him. The healing power of Catherine II shows similarity to
William’s own mother and the process of his own problematic healing process. First, his
mother contracts diphteria when he was four and later on he falls ill with diphteria (with a
severe kidney infection) when he was seven and becomes tied to bed for a long time. His
mother becomes both his savior and educator, as she was reading fairy tales, singing
Scottish and Irish ballads and nursery rhymes to him (Smith, 2011: 69) by both making
him emotionally dependent and strong at the same time. Authentic mother-child
relationships based on trust and love are crucial for social healing, but, unfortunately, Rose
was not as lucky as Tom as Edwina was not willing to listen to her strange stories.
Sebastian’s hypocritical mother resembling to Edwina becomes replaced by Catharine. In
this respect, Sebastian’s death is symbolic for social healing and getting rid of the former
rotten self. Catharine as a sacred figure (standing for knowledge/ religion/justice/power
and healing) is the desired mother figure. Catharine’s memory will guide Dr. Sugar; for,
pain in memory will prevent further crimes as punishment was linked to pain in memory
as mentioned by Foucault:
… the ‘pain’ at the heart of punishment is not the actual sensation of pain, but the
idea of pain, displeasure, inconvenience—the ‘pain’ of the idea of ‘pain.’ Punishment
has to make use not of the body, but of representation (1995: 94).
Sebastian is just a representation, as he is dead. He is just an image, an idea that can no
longer exist. Catharine like Catherine II fights (an invisible) social plague, metaphorically,
the real plague is caused by the popular methods of marking of the excluded and by the
plague opportunists’ will to power as also affirmed by Foucault:
In order to make rights and laws function according to pure theory, the jurists place
themselves in imagination in the state of nature; in order to see perfect disciplines
functioning, rulers dreamt of the state of plague. Underlying projects the image of
the plague stands for all forms of disciplinary justice confusion and disorder; just
as the image of the leper, cut off from all human contact, underlies projects of
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34 Dilek ÇALIŞKAN
exclusion. … this is what was operated regularly by disciplinary power from
the'beginning of the nineteenth century in the psychiatric asylum, the penitentiary,
the reformatory, the approved school and, to some extent, the hospital. Generally
speaking, all the authorities exercising individual control function according to a
double mode; that of binary division and branding (mad/sane; dangerous/harmless;
normal/abnormal); and that of coercive assignment, of differential distribution (who
he is; where he must be; how he is to be characterized; how he is to be recognized;
how a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him in an individual way, etc. …
(1995: 198-199).
The idea of the cannibalistic Sebastian with his insatiable sexual appetite on men is
sickening; short before his death he has turned out his eyes on blonde men after having
consumed countless colored men. This alludes to state violence and hypocricy against
homosexuals in America. Ironically, the “idea (Sebastian)” is to devour the corrupted blonde
man; in the same manner as the black children devoured Sebastian. He sought help in art
and poetry, but unfortunately, he is not able to produce anything as he lacks talent,
authenticity and originality. Williams’s idea of Sebastian “as the poet” (despite Williams’s
own wish of becoming a poet himself) seems to reflect another popular idea proposed by
Kinsey that shaped the intellectual background of America. Kinsey (1948) built his theories
on the discovery upon unhappy effects (neurosis and psychosis) of civilization’s repression
of sexual instinct. In doing this, his aim was to help patients free themselves from the
ignorance of sex fostered by burgeois morality. The repression of the sexual desire, on the
other hand, was essential for civilization and the achievements of culture so far that sexual
energy could be rechanneled into art, religion and thought (Hoffman, 1979: 23). Kinsey did
not describe homosexuality as sickness; it was just a hidden fact experienced by one-third
of the male population in society (Hoffman, 1979: 24). Sebastian is the embodiment of the
debatable “idea of homosexuality” itself that needs to be challenged in order to be redefined.
Sebastian as “an idea” must be challenged. Freud’s teachings gave way to Kinsey’s ideas
at a time of sexual censorship; so that, Kinsey described sexual pleasure as a natural “good”
and considered any form of pleasure that does not harm another as self-justifying. Sex was
considered a natural activity and love and feelings of guilt had no place in it (Hoffman,
1979: 23) at a time when homosexuality was considered a criminal deviance. This
controversy is shown in the attitudes of the selfish Mrs. Venable and Sebastian, who did
not feel any “guilt.” Mrs. Venable and Sebastian also represent America’s wish for control.
Cold War, for example, served for control and it was the reason of all tension between
America and Russia:
… the East represented a monolithic and aggressive totalitarianism, and required
“containment” in the form of armed bases at the borders of East and West,
surveillance in the form of espionage, and military in the form of “collective security”
… (Hoffman, 1979: 4).
Catharine’s surveillance by sister “Felicity,” which means “pleasing manner” or “the quality
or the state of being happy,” as explained in Meriam Webster Dictionary, ironically, is
symbolic of the institutions monitoring and controlling the individuals in conformist
capitalist society; and Catharine with her counter imagination is a nonconformist. The
image of “the conformist,” on the other hand, was systematically created and spread to the
world via media and Hollywood movies. Riesman’s alternative model of the “autonomous”
individual with his “Protest Ethic” also failed against consumption (Hoffman, 1979: 13). So,
the “New Little Man,” gradually, gained strength. There was the systematical creation of the
little “cheerful robot” with no firm roots and no set of beliefs to make sense of life; and,
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Suddenly Last Summer 35
power and prestige became the key concepts (Hoffman, 1979: 16). Catharine’s mother Mrs.
Holly and her brother George Holly as cheerful robots are ready to sacrifice Catharine for
power and prestige.
Williams, rejecting such roles, left his family and past behind; and, by writing about Rose
and his family he could save his “Self” from destruction. Sebastian, on the other hand,
could not, as he was unable to distance himself from the dominating religious and capitalist
discourses of William’s time; Sebastian was in desperate search of an image of God (may
very well be Divine Justice). Therefore, Dr. Sugar will redefine the problematic concepts of
normal and abnormal. The typical normal Americans were the white urban and suburban
middle class (Hoffman, 1979: 11). Ironically, Mrs. Venable’s family name and distorted
viewpoint reflects the idea of what is normal; the corrupted Venable and the Holly families
are, actually, the two sides of the same coin. In this respect, the intellectual background
shaping America was shortsighted in explaining and designing America’s dynamics and
defining the American character. Furthermore, there was a lack of communication between
scientists and humanists as affirmed by the British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow (1979)
and because of this there had opened a great gap between scientists and humanists in
Western societies (Hoffman, 1979: 11). So, the young and blonde Dr. Cuckrowicz will be
tested on his science ethics. He is to investigate the strange case of Sebastian by resisting
the money offered by the devilish Mrs. Venable for his Project at the psychiatric institution
Lion’s view. On the other hand, ironically, the psychiatric institutions are the one to replace
the family with surveillance. Dr. Cuckrowicz (Dr. Sugar) left in-between illusion and reality
is to distinguish between them. Sebastian, on the other hand, is a dependent character. He
is neither visible as an individual nor as an artist and cannot assert his “real identity”
(homosexual). His first independency attempt results in death.
Although, Catharine is threatened with lobotomy, she insists on telling this strange story
that will make her visible. Her “insistence” on telling her unreliable story makes her story
reliable and “true” and conveys a huge body of knowledge related to the objectification and
“normalization process” of the body and soul by the concerted action of the institutions in
history. Michel Foucault in his book Discipline and Punish: The birth of the prison explains
the history of the penal system in France, basically, and decribes how the body is made
into an object of study; in his book, he also provides a historical background to study “the
power of normalization” and “the formation of knowledge” in modern society (1995: 308).
Dr. Cuckrowicz (Dr. Sugar) is to distinguish between illusion and reality, as he functions
as a doctor-judge. As explained by Foucault:
The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacherjudge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the 'social worker’-judge; it is on them
that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he
may find himself, subiects to it his body, his gestures, his behaviour, his aptitudes,
his achievements. The carceral network, in its compact or disseminated forms, with
its systems of insertion distribution, surveillance, observation, has been the greatest
support, in modern society, of the normalizing Power (1995: 304).
Dr. Sugar will examine Catharine’s body and soul to report it to Mrs. Venable, which
ironically, will convey a huge body of knowledge of crime and injustice. As again asserted
by Foucault, the multiplicity of scientific discourses make the penal justice uncontrollable,
“because the master of justice is no longer the master of its truth” (1995: 98). Therefore,
Catharine’s keyword becomes “truth” and the silence of the law must be broken. As again
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36 Dilek ÇALIŞKAN
mentioned by Foucault, to prevent and eliminate crime or offensive acts, a semiotics had
to be produced, all offences had to be defined, classified, collected into species and coded
so that nothing would escape (1995: 98). But unfortunately, the same law does not apply
to everyone, the rich may not fear fines or they may committ crimes which will harm the
society but escape punishment (Foucault, 1995: 98). For this reason, laws are not reliable;
Mrs Venable’s punishment is up to Dr. Sugar’s sense of justice and care. Catharine’s
struggle is for real justice. Catharine’s counter story will break the silence of the law and
the silence between reason (man) and its other madness (woman) and will challenge
disciplinary techniques. For Foucault:
'Discipline' may be identified neither with an institution nor with an apparatus; it is
a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments,
techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets; it is a 'physics or 'anatomy' of
power, a 'specialized' institutions (the penitentiaries or ‘houses of correction' of the
nineteenth century), or by institutions that use it as an essential instrument for a
particular end (schools, hospitals), or by pre-existing authorities that find in it a
means of reinforcing or reorganizing their internal mechanisms of power (one day
we should show how intra-familial relations, essentially in the parents-children cell,
have become 'disciplined', absorbing since the classical age external schemata, first
educational and military, then medical, psychiatric, psychological, which have made
the family the privileged locus of emergence for the disciplinary question of the
normal and the abnormal) … or finally by state appantuses whose major, if not
exclusive function is to assure that discipline reigns over society as a whole (the
police). (1995: 216)
Discourses of crime and madness are produced in order to discipline and control the
human body. As emphasized by Deleuze, madness is associated first with sloth, later with
animality and is finally silenced to non-meaning. It becomes an empty space for the
production of meaning (McNay, 1993: 38). Catharine’s story is the story of the silenced
Other (the mad, women and different Other) that needs to be listened to for the production
of meaning. The beast like children and the silenced Catharine in Suddenly Last Summer
are symbolic of these discourses:
… for that purpose the ones on the free beach began to climb over the fence or swim
around it, bands of homeless young people that lived on the free like scavenger dogs,
hungry children. . . . So now he let me wear a decent dark suit. I go to a faraway
empty end of the beach, write postcards… . (Williams, 1958: 81)
Sebastian seemed to control both Catharine and the Black Children; Catharine was
procuring for Sebastian until he did not need her anymore, which ironically, resulted in his
loss of control. There is a shift of power, the controller becomes the controlled by the
seemingly “powerless” black children. Unfortunately, Sebastian’s end is tragic, he is eaten
by black children and his body is cut into bits and pieces. His body is, symbolically, the
body of the dominant and distorted discourses on homosexuality-crime and madness cycle-and has to be dissected to open up a new body for new discourses related to it. The
government and even the activists of the rights of homosexuals like Harry Hay, who was
trying to build the Mattachine society (the first nation wide society of gay man) called
homosexuality as “a handicap to be overcome“ are hypocritical. He also asserted that it was
quite normal for the heterosexuals not to understand homosexuals, because homosexuals
themselves did not have a clear vision of it. Among these contradictory views and turmoil
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“The Economic Metaphor” in Tennessee William’s Play
Suddenly Last Summer 37
Tenessee Williams, too, presented his first openly gay character in his commercial play
Camino Real put on Broadway only in 1953 (Paller, 2005: 52). For, as stated by Savran:
Williams's homosexuality is endlessly refracted in his work: translated, reflected,
and transposed. Williams insisted, with some justification, that he could not stage
his homosexuality directly or candidly during the 1940s and 1950s, believing that
"there would be no producer for it" given the homophobic program of the Broadway
theater of that period (1992: 82).
But, in the play Suddenly Last Summer (1958), Sebastian’s immature body becomes a huge
space for the (mature body) production of meaning as it leaves a white page on the street.
In this respect, it is again important to look at Foucault’s notion of body, as bodies open
up a space of freedom and experimentation producing transformation (Hoffman & Taylor,
2011: 97). Therefore, sexuality should be transferred from the realm of biological necessity
to the realm of practices of freedom (97). Sexuality, on the other hand, has no normalizing
power that the body has (Hoffman & Taylor, 2011: 93). The body is the place of resistance
and freedom and is discursive as the body is objectified by scientific discourses and
disciplinary techniques, like Catharine’s (or Rose’s) body. The body experiences pleasure
and makes experience possible; and, not language, because experience cannot be reduced
to language as discourse and experience are different concepts. “Experiences exceed
language, but bodies are capable of multiplying, distorting, overflowing their discursive
determinants and of opening up new surprising possibilities” (Hoffman & Taylor, 2011: 94).
Bodies enable freedom, they are docile and anarchic; and, they cannot be reduced to a
collection of biological facts. They provide possibilities of experimentation and pleasure.
Sebastian decides what Catharine is to wear; a white transparent or a black bathing suit.
It is the modelling of and disciplining of the body for supervision to make the individual
submissive, as Foucault states, “This disciplinary technique exercised upon the body had
a double effect: a 'soul' to be known and a subjection to be maintained (1995: 295).”
Sebastian’s application of disciplinary technique on Catharine’s body produces a (true)
knowledge about homosexuality, as Catharine is the double of Sebastian (both as
suppressor and suppressed, entrapped “in the image of feminine qualities” or “in the image
of the homosexual individual in disguise”). Her transparent bathing suit shows an insight
into the inner realms of human psyche showing the true self transpassing gender
constructs and social norms.
Ironically, while Catharine’s body becomes a plaything in the hands of Sebastian (the
patriarch), Sebastian’s body becomes a plaything for the black children. It is dissected, and
cut into bits and pieces portraying public display like in the ancient forms of punishment,
conveying the distorted discourses related to human body, mind and soul. There is also a
problematic distribution of gender roles: images of femininity, masculinity and
homosexuality as again emphasized by Foucault, there is the development of (diffuse,
discontinuous, unsystematic discourses often made up of bits and pieces) the political
technology of the body (Foucault, 1995: 26). Tennessee Williams by playing with the
discursive bodies (by distorting them into bits and pieces) challenges this political
technology of the body and opens them up for different discussions. Catharine’s
cannibalistic story, also, challenges the biblical garden story of Adam and Eve. Although,
Eve (Catharine) is blaimed for the Original Sin, Adam (Sebastian) is also guilty, because of
his garden of carnivorous plants; in which he was overvaluing the Venus Flytrap most
(Williams, 1958: 10). It is the central symbol of his crimes; it is a plant, which is kept under
glass and is fed with fruit flies (used for genetic experiments) from a Florida laboratory (10).
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38 Dilek ÇALIŞKAN
This fact hints at scientific categorizations of species (Sebastian continues to contribute)
starting with Columbus. His categorization of the Native Americans as idiots and as the
“Other,” in his 1493 letter is significant in the creation of (American) identity discourses:
After describing the physical beauty of the landscape, he describes the people,
mentioning their physical stature, their clothing (or lack of it), their intelligence,
their observed customs and religion (or absence of it), and their apparent naiveté:
according to his report, they “give objects of great value for trifles, and content
themselves with very little or nothing in return … Thus they bartered like idiots,
cotton and gold for fragments of bows, glasses, bottles, and jars (Schweninger, 2008:
20-21).
Likewise, categories like black, beast, homosexual, heterosexual, valuable, invaluable are
created in history with scientific, philosophical and religious discourses. Whereas
Catharine’s search is for truth, Sebastian’s desperate search is for the absent and
indifferent (already dead) God. As the great categories of thought: the Self, the World, God,
Causality, Finality and so on are all based on the genesis story and were shaped by Judaic
religion, Christianity and the degenerated Greek philosophy according to Nietzsche, this
death of God is inevitable. For him, the idea of the death of God is the moment of healing
and liberation. Therefore, “God” is one of the most controversial and human made concepts
and Sebastian’s desperate search was for God. Moreover, there is a great problem between
the “Jewish God” and the “Christian God,” because one is no longer sure whether it is the
Son who dies out of animosity against the Father or the Father who dies so that the son
can become independent (Deleuze, 2005: 79-80). In this respect, St. Paul’s basic premise
that Jesus died for the sins of the human beings is questioned. With Sebastian’s death,
metaphorically, “the truth about God” is revealed and the human made Venable Garden
collapses. Sebastian’s search is symbolic of the injustice induced by patriarchal religious
institutions and their discourses voiced by the family members, especially, “the mother.”
Although, Sebastian is freed from his family by death. Williams’s monsterlike father will
haunt his memories for forever, as he presents recurring absent father figures in his plays;
the feelings of guilt, pain and hatred will predominate his life as mentioned in the following
quote from “Obituary: Rose Williams”:
... Her head cut open.
A knife thrust in her brain.
Me. Here. Smoking.
My father, mean as a
devil, snoring - 1000 miles
away. (Hoare, 1996: para. 11)
The absent and indifferent father figure is the source of all suffering and pain. Rose once
accused him of rape when she was lying in the state hospital at Farmington (Voss, 2002:
80). Cornelius Coffin is brutal and he also interfered in his relationships with his girl friends
when he was a university student. Coffin appears in Williams’ plays as either absent figures
with a photograph (or as a coffin) as in The Glass Menagerie or as a violent man like Stanley
Kowalski in A Street Car Named Desire, who rapes his wife’s sister Blanche, who, finally,
becomes institutionalized. His father was also the cause of his loss of sisterly love. Rose,
on the other hand, when she grew up, feeling unloved by the father began to be interested
in other boys that caused a great problem for the family in turn, for which Edwina’s only
solution for her eighteen year old daughter was marriage (Hoare,1996: para. 4). Becoming
more and more paranoid and fighting with her father, Rose mistook her severe stomach
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“The Economic Metaphor” in Tennessee William’s Play
Suddenly Last Summer 39
pains for someone’s trying to poison her. Finally, being a failure at secretarial jobs (the
most suitable job for women) and lacking self-confidence, she was diagnosed by her
psychiatrist as having fear of sex, which was, actually, linked to Edwina’s upraising. For
Edwina, on the other hand, the issue was simple; the right gentleman caller had to be
found by Thomas (Tennessee), who, ironically, was also still a virgin at twenty-five. He was
disturbed by the desire of his mother and hated Rose’s attempts at promiscuity; and, he,
too, became cruel against her, which left him in pain for the rest of his life (Hoare, 1996:
para. 9).
His father and mother committed the most serious crime against Rose, the lobotomy; being
unable to cope with her and avoiding high expenses of private institutions, Cornelius’s
preference, for her, was a state asylum and the mother‘s, a religious institution, as evident
in her words, "A pity the Church hasn't a place for girls like Rose ( Hoare,1996: para. 10).
Rose’s help plea, on the other hand, would remain unheard both by the institutions and
her family. Therefore, Catharine Holly is to be saved to liberate his (Tennessee’s) own self.
Otherwise, it would be a crime against the “Self,” as he, too, was obsessed with the idea of
mental illness. So, the 1960s, as also mentioned in “Tennessee Williams Biography,” were
a difficult time for Williams, when he turned to alcohol and drugs as coping mechanisms
for the negative criticism for his plays; and, in 1969, he was hospitalized by his brother
(2014: Later Years section, para. 1).
Williams, himself a homosexual, hints at the fact that the fear from being labeled prevents
people to assert their real identities and the capitalist money oriented system prevents
authentic relationships based on love and tolerance. The fear inducing Mrs. Venable can
buy people and institutions; and, therefore, she dominated all fields of economic life, and,
Catharine’s family was both economically and emotionally dependent on her. Rose, too, like
Catharine could have been saved; as mentioned by Williams,” Rose could have become
quite well by now if they hadn't performed that goddamn operation on her; she would have
come back up to the surface" (Berkvist, 1975: para.7). Unfortunately, Williams’s family,
too, was money oriented and sacrificed Rose for material gain. Whereas Rose is
dehumanized by the lobotomy Williams is left with traumatic experiences, feelings of guilt,
pain and threat of madness. The play is a warning for all, as insanity is a great threat in
the capitalist system. Therefore, Rose recurrently appears in his plays sometimes as
Catharine and in other times as Blanche or Laura etc.:
Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her
eyes... Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than
I intended to be! (Viagas, 1996: para. 6)
There are also recurring mother figures resembling to his own mother Edwina; as such
mothers are the real threats to sanity. She appears almost in all of his plays as mystifying
and frightening mothers as she contributed to his writing with her forms of expression and
the underlying hysteria in them (Berkvist, 1975: para. 9). Mrs Venable as a controlling and
manipulating mother figure cannot set Sebastian free even after his death. On the other
hand, Sebastian’s end is catastrophic, because of his tragic vision related to his “real”
identity (homosexuality), which for Williams was never the case:
I think as long as a person observes certain rules, there's nothing disreputable about
it. I have never concealed anything. Sexuality is a part of my work, of course,
because sexuality is a part of my life and everyone's life. I see no essential difference
International Journal of Language Academy
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40 Dilek ÇALIŞKAN
between the love of two men for each other and the love of a man and a woman; no
essential difference, and I've examined them both (Berkvist, 1975: para.11).
Williams never relied on gender roles as they are human constructions forced on man and
woman by men and women confining the individual into fake identities leaving them
paralyzed and crippled for the rest of their lives like the crippled Laura, Tom and Amanda
Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, who, ironically, have wings but cannot fly like caged
birds; as by the 1946 women started to lose their freedom they had found during the war
and were being put in their place (the kitchen, bedroom and nursery, and the invisible
world of non-being), the same was true for the homosexuals (Paller, 2005: 66).
And the newspapers and magazines worked for it; reminding women of their domestic
responsibilities. In Suddenly Last Summer, Williams opens a new plane (a field) for new
‘imaginings,’ setting his play in an artificial jungle and a public beach in Cabeza de Lobo
and centering it on St. Sebastian, who is a homoerotic icon, constructed in history by
religious discourses. Williams with his symbolic male and female characters representing
all (sexes) and gender roles and self and other duality, mirroring and embodying each other
reflects the negative effects of “a sex-gender system.” The term coined by Gayle Rubin
(1975), “is a set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into
pruducts of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied”
(159). Williams investigates these pitiful human situations that need revision and
betterment. His writing becomes an exercise in freedom for both himself and his audience.
Sebastian’s source of tragedy was his dishonesty and hipocrisy in asserting his real
identity. His attempt of concealing his homosexuality failed, because of his dishonesty. His
false self prevented him from taking responsibility for his own existence and the
responsibility of others. He was using and abusing the weak and helpless. His greed and
indifference to the whole world and human problems created his own catastrophe, he by
constantly giving money and tips for the children, actually, has fed poverty:
He!–accepted!—all!—as—how!—things!—are!—And thought nobody had any right
to complain or interfere in any way whatsoever, and even thought he knew what
was awful was awful and what was wrong was wrong, and my Cousin Sebastian
was certainly never sure that anything was wrong!—He thought it unfitting to ever
take any action about anything whatsoever (Williams, 1958: 88-89).
His blindness for his own pitiful condition and inability to take initiative and action is
criticised severely in the play, like his tormenting self-blaim for Rose’s lobotomy. Sebastian
was happy being the mother’s boy until the last sudden summer, which ironically, was not
sudden at all and was the result of arrested development; as his first attempt of taking the
initiative resulted in fatal error. Sebastian is a monster created by the values and norms of
the materialistic society. Sebastian is corrupted like all the other people, who do not admit
their monstrosity, for all people learn to operate within a system of enormous hypocrisy
(Berkvist, 1975: para.13) and evil resides in the capitalist American society. Therefore,
there is the need for true and authentic relationships based on real love and honesty.
Sebastian, not Catharine, has to be sacrificed like St. Sebastian in order to deconstruct
these homoerotic discourses around homosexuality to write history anew; so, that new
stories can emerge. Catharine and Sebastian are allusions and sacred figures, because
human life itself, regardless of belief and gender, is sacred and therefore must be protected
with love, passion and great care.
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“The Economic Metaphor” in Tennessee William’s Play
Suddenly Last Summer 41
CONCLUSION
With Catharine and Dr. Sugar, in Suddenly Last Summer, a new language is created
between madness and reason; and, the term homosexual, which was used for the first time
in 19th century, is put into question for new definitions of “identity” which might be further
discussed in another study. As Foucault affirms, with Enlightenment madness became the
other of reason (McNay, 1993: 39), it was a time period reigned by a tendency for
classification of species and exploitation of children, women and other nations. This time
not Rose, but Sebastian is the loser, he is a real failure; he failed as an All-American figure
and mythologized homosexual icon, symbolic of the corruption in society and madness
producing historical constructions. He is crucified on an empty space, in order to provide
an empty canvas on which a new history can be written; which, on the other hand, can
only be possible by telling the stories of the so-called “invalids,” mad, bad and abnormal.
With the aid of multiple Rose characters, among which Catharine is only one, and the
bunch of roses (Tudor emblem as well as symbol for Jesus Christ and his sister Rose)
referring to religious colonial history based on exploitation and suffering of both Europe
and America:
There was nothing to see but Sebastian, what was left of him, that looked like a big
white-paper-wrapped bunch of red roses had been torn, thrown, crushed—against
that blazing white wall… (Williams, 1958: 92)
His death is symbolic of the idea of the long expected savior (the long awaited gentleman
caller to come and marry Laura, or Blanche or finding the right gentleman caller for Rose).
Catharine Holly is to be saved by the psychiatrist, Dr. Sugar, who is willing to listen to her
story (and to communicate with her) so that the one sided monologue of the language of
psychiatry will be broken. As Foucault affirms, there is no common language between
society and madness and the exchange between madness and reason was made with
imperfect words without fixed syntax since the 18th Century (1989: p. X). Catharine
empowered by storytelling (language) does not become excluded like Williams’s sister Rose,
who was accused of telling strange stories. With the changed outlook related to difference
and madness, metaphorically, Catharine Holly’s story makes sense to Dr. Sugar, such a
language is created between madness and reason. The long prevailing silence is broken as
the patient is given a voice. Madness becomes a Deleuzian empty space and will open the
way for production of new meanings other than sloth and animality as also mentioned by
McNay (1993: 38). The body of Sebastian is like a wrapped paper that awaits new definitions
of “sexuality,” “gender roles,” “sanity” and “justice”to look for new ways to cope with history.
As explained by Foucault (1997):
History becomes "effective" to the degree that it introduces discontinuity into our
very being - as it divides our emotions, dramatizes our instincts, multiplies our body
and sets it against itself. "Effective" history deprives the self of the reassuring
stability of life and nature... It will uproot its traditional foundation and relentlessly
disrupt its pretended continuity. (154)
Therefore, Williams’ play as a memory play reveals Catharine’s story, which is the story of
the silent other, the captive self and the necessary freedom that will come with the
distortion of fixed labels, bodies (ideas) with the symbolic (cannibalistic) distortion of the
body of Sebastian. As stated by Morton (2012), whereas The Glass Menagarie represents
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42 Dilek ÇALIŞKAN
earliest years of the diagnosis of Rose, in which institutionalization seems to be the only
option for the “different,” the invalid, the disabled individual (for example, autism was
confused with schizophrenia in her time, but today her diagnosis might be diagnosed as
autism spectrum disorder (ASD) Asperger’s syndrome (2012: 1)). Suddenly Last Summer
presents “the refridgerator mother hyphotesis” associated with Bruno Bettelheim, reflecting
a period in which family members were blaimed for the difficulties when encountered with
problems related to autistic persons in the family. The Night of the Iguana seems to reflect
the realization of the concept of neurodiversity and so on. Only in 1960s, Williams came
into terms with his guilt and anger and could renew his relationship with Rose accepting
that “cognitively different” does not mean “cognitively invalid” and neurodiversity is
valuable (Morton, 2012: 9-10) and it can be considered as a tendency for diagnosis rather
than trying to find out the real reasons that has its root in capitalism. Williams’s own
struggle against the prevalent discourses related to madness, gender and sex residing in
the patriarchal society with the “protection racket” family and the “economic metaphor” the
mother shows that it is very difficult to change the viewpoint of society and the ruling
discourses related to fixed identity. Sebastian’s death might be a self-liberation and may
serve for William’s transcending his former “self” with a call for the need of care-of the self
and self-protection such opening the way for the true self. As Williams was living in a
homophobic violent mad society as stated by Savran, most of his critics call Williams as a
self-hating homosexual to explain the contradictions in his writing. Gore Vidal, for example,
states that Williams believes the “homosexualist is wrong and the heterosexualist is right”
(1992: 83).
Facing the frightful “Other” (Rose/Catharine) is the pre-requisite for change in viewpoint,
that will pave the path to authentic self-hood and self-assertation, which is to be achieved
only by storytelling as Tennessee learned when he was a little child. He is telling stories of
the “de debil” in the manner of his nanny Ozzie, who called the siblings Tommy and Rose
“a couple” and sang African spiritual songs with a background of Black and Indian folklore.
He is “digging to de debbil” playing in the clay, as he used to do in his childhood (Smith,
2011: 69) shaping new forms for new identities. Williams’s aim is to heal both his own “Self”
and the “Society;” shocking his audience (readers) by presenting the American Dream
having turned into a nightmare. As stated in the article, “Tennessee Williams lacked
confidence, letters to friends reveal,” Williams contributed to the world of theatre by
portraying “resilience, grace and endurance in the face of human suffering. He gave voices
to, and told the stories of, the lost, defeated, sensitive, peculiar, defiant, and often invisible
people, who make up the bulk of humanity” (Alberge, 2018: 13). Sebastian, as a distorted
dead idea, is the ‘dead other’ of the surviving cannibalistic Catharine. He like Rose, Thomas
and Catharine is only one of the many suffering individuals who hopelessly struggle to
survive in the canibalistic patriarchal capitalist consumer society, which is the only “real
threat” to sanity and well-being that prevents authentic relationships based on honesty
and love.
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