Blue Mountain and Blue Roses: An Exploration of the Feminine Psyche in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams, the remarkably outstanding American dramatist of the 1920s, through his plays, presents a marked concern for the identity crisis a woman faces. He projects the crisis arising out of the conflict between a woman’s own aspirations and the traditional role expectations. The Glass Menagerie (1945) depicts the life of two women- Amanda Wingfield and her daughter Laura Wingfield. Amanda is the typical Southern belle that suffered a reversal of economic and social fortune, who withdraws from reality into fantasy. Her daughter Laura, the physically and emotionally crippled heroine of the play is a self-less character who does not speak as much of others. She is extra-ordinarily sensitive and delicate; and her cripple isolates herself into her own illusory world with her own glass menagerie. This paper is an attempt to close study the women protagonists in this play and to reveal that they are a combination of a particular personality type. Williams seems to be interested in the personal and psychological aspects of his women. This paper tries to analyse the psyche of these women and prove that they seem to be more complex and complicated than portrayed in the work.

Bless your heart

Language and identity are intricately woven into the personal and public lives of social groups. Words and phrases may originate in a subculture morphing into mainstream culture on the comingled streams of interactions among the masses. These words and phrases have specific meanings within their original contexts in their home cultures, yet they vary and evolve as they travel on the above-mentioned comingled streams of interactions and conversations. In this paper, we explore the typified Southern expression, ‘bless your heart,’ examining the ways in which this phrase is used, understood and reinterpreted as it circulates within the South and outside of it. We examine data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and substantiate those findings through sociolinguistic interviews focusing on individuals’ experiences with this phrase. We first note that when this phrase is used, it is capable of accomplishing a range of meanings, but positive and negative; however, when it gets spoken about, a singular, negative connotation of the phrase and those who use it emerges, conjuring images of the ‘sassy Southern belle.’ Despite this dichotomy of how the phrase is used and spoken about, a third, and more nuanced, understanding of the phrase was often evoked by the interview participants. Our research highlights the complexity of this phrase for both cultural insiders (i.e. Southerners) and outsiders (i.e. non-Southerners) and the potential negative repercussions of the monolithic representation of white Southern women and the iconic link between this figure of personhood and the seemingly innocuous phrase, ‘bless your heart.’

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE IMAGES OF LIGHT, DARKNESS AND THE MOTH IN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS' A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

Objectives of the study: This study aims to present a critical analysis of the significance of the images of light and darkness in association with the image of the moth in Tennessee Williams' most famous play: A Streetcar Named Desire. It also showcases the tremendous contribution of these images to the vigour and depth of many aspects of the play. Methodology: The article presents a close analysis of textual evidence from the play, following a comparative approach in the study of these images, and is constructed around discussions of their contribution to the thematic and structural aspects of the play. Juxtaposing these images as part of the binary oppositions in the play reveals its richness and depth. Main Findings: The images of light, darkness, and the moth serve a variety of purposes. They are strongly related to the thematic structure of and characterization in the play. They are also important for demonstrating the poetic touch characteristic of the play. The combination of the images illuminates Blanche's dilemma as a broken Southern belle, her frustration, inevitable deterioration, and eventual downfall. Application of the study: This article contributes to the body of the critical study of Williams' drama, in particular, and the study of literature, in general. Given the variety of imagery in the literary canon in all genres, this study can be useful to students and researchers alike in their analyses and appreciation of the significance of imagery in literature. The novelty of this study: This study opens up new venues for the discussion of the play. It also illuminates some aspects of the character of Blanche DuBois which cannot otherwise be illuminated and, at the same time, gives a deep insight into the play as a whole.

Wither the South on Screen: Revisiting Some Recent Releases

My article deals with the construction of a different South on screen in the posthuman context. It focuses on the way previous idealized embodiments of the South on film are being displaced to give way to an alternative South on screen informed by our contemporary aesthetics characterized by violence and human reification. The filmic South increasingly coheres with the historical South through the rewriting of formulaic tropes such as the plantation, the Southern belle and gentleman, and the staging of significant historical moments such as the Nat Turner rebellion and the Civil War. Recent releases perform national cultural work at a time when the demons of Southern history have come back to haunt the national imagination, as recent events such as the shooting at Immanuel church (June 2015) and Charlottesville (October 2017) have tragically shown.

The Comparison Between Ideal Feminist and Discriminated Feminist From Characteristics of Amanda and Lauraas Seen In The Glass Menagerie Bytennesse Williams

The problem in this thesis is the analysis of ideal feminist and discriminated feminist from the characteristics of Amanda and Laura is based on the three waves of feminist movements. Both Amanda and Laura represents the different kinds of feminist in literaty work, Amanda is the strong woman as the representation of ideal feminist, whereas Laura is the weak woman as the representation of discriminated feminist. Then, the purpose of research is to describe Laura as the discriminated feminist, Amanda as the ideal feminist, and to explain Laura and Amanda as the ideal and discriminated feminist from The Glass Menagerie.In research methodology, the data collection is performed through library research, which the writer gains the data and information about his object trought the books and other audiovisual equipment that related and relavant to the topic in the form of words or pictures. In the data analysis, it uses genetic structuralism, it looks the external factor of the literature that conveys the internal element of literary work such the actions of the main character, such as characters and author. The findings in this thesis can be seen from the characters of Amanda and Laura represents the different kinds of feminist in literaty work, Amanda is the strong woman as the representation of ideal feminist, whereas Laura is the weak woman as the representation of discriminated feminist. Amanda, a typical southern belle, trapped by the cruel reality, seeks comfort from her glorious past and causes her isolation from her life, which is the embodiment of her alienation. Laura, a fragile and terribly shy girl with a crippled leg, withdraws completely to her own world made of glass animals and eventually isolates from the society. It is her disability and the family environment cause her isolation from the society, which is just the embodiment of her alienation.

Outside the Magic Circle of White Male Supremacy in the Jim Crow South: Virginia Foster Durr’s Memoirs

Virginia Foster Durr was born in 1903 in Birmingham, Alabama in a former planter class family, and in spite of the gradual decline in the family fortune, she was brought up as a traditional southern belle, utterly subjected to the demands of the ideology of white male supremacy that ruled the Jim Crow South. Thus, she soon learnt that in the South a black woman could not be a lady, and that as a young southern woman she was desperately in need of a husband. It was not until she had fulfilled this duty that she began to open her eyes to the reality of poverty, injustice, discrimination, sexism and racism ensuing from the set of rules she had so easily embraced until then. In Outside the Magic Circle, Durr describes the process that made her aware of the gender discrimination implicit in the patriarchal southern ideology, and how this realization eventually led her to abhor racial segregation and the ideology of white male supremacy. As a consequence, in her memoirs she presents herself as a rebel facing the social ostracism resulting from her determination to fight against gender and racial discrimination in the Jim Crow South. This article delves into Durr’s composed textual self as a rebel, and suggests the existence of a crack in it, rooted in her inability to discern the real effects of white male supremacy on the domestic realm and in her subsequent blindness to the reality behind the mammy stereotype.

Jenkins of Mexico

William O. Jenkins (1878–1963) was a Tennessee farm boy who ventured to Mexico in search of fortune and became that country’s wealthiest and most infamous industrialist. Dropping out of Vanderbilt, Jenkins eloped with a southern belle and settled in Mexico in 1901. Driven by a desire to prove himself—first to his wife’s snobbish family, then to elites who disdained him as an American—Jenkins would spend the next six decades building an enormous fortune in textiles, property, sugar, banking, and film. Already a millionaire when the Revolution of 1910 broke out, Jenkins began speculating in property in his adoptive state of Puebla. He had a brush with a firing squad and later suffered a kidnapping by rebels, an episode that almost triggered a US invasion. After the war he developed Mexico’s most productive sugar plantation, before diversifying as a venture capitalist. During Mexican cinema’s Golden Age in the 1940s and 1950s, Jenkins lorded over the industry with a monopoly of theaters and a major role in production. Reputed as an exploiter of workers, a puppet-master of politicians, and Mexico’s richest industrialist, Jenkins became the gringo that Mexicans most loved to loathe. After the death of his wife, wracked by guilt at having abandoned her, Jenkins became increasingly dedicated to philanthropy, finally creating a charitable foundation to administer his $60 million fortune. Still operating today, the Mary Street Jenkins Foundation helped set up two prestigious universities and set a precedent for US-style foundations in Mexico.