Suddenly Last Summer as "Morality Play"

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER AS «MORALITY PLAY" A NUMBER OF CRITICS have already pointed out that the material employed in the dramas of Tennessee Williams is offensive to many otherwise broad-minded people. After all, rape, sexual perversion, and cannibalism are not the most attractive of topics even in our post-Freudian age. Comments on Williams' work have thus confined themselves, generally, to heated discussions about his right as an artist to employ such "offensive" material; and sober analyses of his plays are therefore hard to come by. Williams' most shocking drama is surely Suddenly Last Summer; considering the material with which the play concerns itself, the fact that it has become a favorite target of Williams' attackers is hardly surprising. What is surprising (or, at least, interesting) is that Suddenly Last Summer has been misread and misviewed even by those who defend Williams' right as an artist to deal with any subject he chooses. Many critics decided that the play revealed its author's view of the contemporary world: we are all trapped in a sordid, decadent world, a world in which we are either corrupted or victimized by brutality and ugliness. Taking that to be the play's message, Benjamin Nelson, one of Williams' most sympathetic interpreters, wrote, I do not think that outright condemnation of the tale because it outrages sensibilities is any sort of valid criticism. Williams wrote Suddenly Last Summer out of a point of view. We may not accept this outlook, but this in no way negates his drama, if, and the if is an important one, the drama adheres faithfully to this point of view. Suddenly Last Summer adheres faithfully and almost flawlessly.1 But I wonder if Williams' point of view is what Mr. Nelson takes it to be. I wonder, too, if we should equate Williams' opinions with those of Sebastian Venable, the play's unseen protagonist, as Henry Hewes would have us do. Mr. Hewes knowingly decided that Williams himself was clearly Sebastian and so the character reveals Williams' personal beliefs.2 That conclusion seems particularly sus1 Tennessee Williams: The Man and His Work (New York, 1961), p. 247. 2 "Broadway Postcript: Sanity Observed," Saturday Review, XLI (January 25, 1958), 26. Since Mr. Hewes consistently refers to the playas Suddenly One Summer and renames its "hero" "Stephen" Venable, one cannot be certain how much attention he actually paid the drama. ' 392 1966 Suddenly Last Summer: MORALITY PLAY 393 pect because any writer endowed with a normal amount of self-love would hesitate to associate himself with the contemptible values professed by Sebastian. I should like to suggest here that Suddenly Last Summer has been misinterpreted because Williams' critics have turned the play's theme and characters upside down; they have insisted on seeing Sebastian as hero instead of villain, and in so doing they have not only misunderstood the play's point but accused Williams of attitudes which his drama in no way defends. I do not pretend that Williams has never condemned individual and social brutality, that he has not sometimes revealed men lost in a sordid, vicious world. But the point of Suddenly Last Summer is rather different. In that play Williams looks at the other side of the coin. What his drama proclaims is that recognition of evil, if carried to the point of a consuming obsession, may be the worst form of evil. To look about oneself for manifestations of sinfulness and to become so overwhelmed by the viciousness of humanity that one begins to see cruelty and vulgarity as the only truths about human nature is, for Williams, as it was for Hawthorne, a fearful sin. A daemonic vision of human nature may irredeemably corrupt the one who possesses that vision. Williams has elsewhere insisted that surrendering one's own personality and beliefs to the dictates of society or the values professed by groups is both dangerous and immoral. In Suddenly Last Summer he reminds us that separation from normal, human concerns belies all pretensions to humanity. In that play Williams dealt with homosexuality and cannibalismdisturbing subjects, no doubt-but they do more than shock; they act as metaphors; the playwright employs them to emphasize as...