Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer and Euripides' Bacchae PDF

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Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer and Euripides' Bacchae I JANICE SIEGEL Tennessee Williams' 1958 play (and subsequent film) Suddenly Last Summer resonates strongly with many of the themes and plot details of Euripides' Bacchae. Much of the action in both plays turns on the co...

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Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer and Euripides' Bacchae I JANICE SIEGEL Tennessee Williams' 1958 play (and subsequent film) Suddenly Last Summer resonates strongly with many of the themes and plot details of Euripides' Bacchae. Much of the action in both plays turns on the consequences of a perverse sexuality born of repression (manifested among other ways as a disturbing sexual connection between mother and son). Other shared themes include the son's search for a god he sees as a Destroyer, the irresistible pull of eros, the consequences of the psychological fragmentation of an individual, the struggle between those w h o seek to reveal truth and those w h o are determined to conceal it, and the participation of a mother in the destruction of her own child. Each male protagonist is pursued, ripped apart, and consumed by the members of a community he sexually infiltrated. The truth about each sparagmos (rending) and omophagia (raw-eating) is uncovered in similar scenes between "psychotherapist" and amnesia victim. But while the truth brings destruction to each murdered man's mother, only in Suddenly Last Summer is anyone saved by the awful revelation.

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' n Tennessee W i l l i a m s ' p l a y Suddenly Last Summer (1958, h e r e a f t e r SLS), 2 S e b a s t i a n 9Venable's cousin, C a t h a r i n e Holly, is i n s t i t u t i o n a l i z e d a n d t h r e a t e n e d w i t h a l o b o t o m y

1. This essay developed from presentations at the 2003 meeting of the American Philological Association (New Orleans) and the 2003 Centennial Meeting of the Classical Association of Great Britain and Ireland (Warwick, UK). I have benefited greatly from the insightful comments of Diana Wright, J. Michael Walton, Wolfgang Haase, and the anonymous readers for the International Journal of tile Classical Tradition. - A summary of this essay entitled "The Classical Side of Tennessee Williams: Euripides' Bacchae as Model for Suddenly Last Summer" was published in Theatron 2.2 (Spring 2004, 18-20), a semi-annual theatre journal published out of Washington University. Translations of Euripides' Bacchae are from Tile Bacchae of Euripides, ser. Focus Classical Library, Stephen J. Esposito, ed. (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 1998). Quotations from Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer are from the 1958 edition published in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Vol. 3 (New York: New Directions, 1971), 345423. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from Tennessee Williams' plays are from the same series, The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, 7 vols. (New York: New Directions, 1971-1981). Lines that appear in the film but not in the published play are so noted. 2. "Suddenly Last Summer, with Something Unspoken, were presented together under the collective title of Garden District at the York Theatre on First Avenue in New York on January 7, 1958, by John C. Wilson and Warner LeRoy. It was directed by Herbert Machiz; the stage set was designed by Robert Soule and the costumes by Stanley Simmons. Lighting was by Lee Watson and the incidental music was by Ned Rorem" (The Theater of T. W., Vol. 3, 345). See Maurice Yacowar's Tennessee Williams and Fihn, ser. Ungar Film Library (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1977), 50, for some similarities linking the two plays. Janice Siegel, Department of Foreign Languages, Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790.

International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 11, No. 4, Spring 2005, pp. 538-570.

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because her returning m e m o r y brings a truth f o r b i d d e n b y her w e a l t h y A u n t Violet (Sebastian's mother). S u d d e n l y last summer, maintains Catharine, Sebastian was p u r s u e d , r i p p e d apart, and d e v o u r e d b y an a n g r y m o b of boys w h o s e c o m m u n i t y he h a d sexually infiltrated. Despite its setting in 1937 N e w Orleans, Tennessee Williams' play has b e e n touted as "one of the few m o d e r n American plays that captures the a t m o s p h e r e of Greek tragedy. "3 A n d the Greek t r a g e d y Suddenly Last Summer m o s t clearly recalls is the Bacchae, written b y Euripides and p r o d u c e d p o s t h u m o u s l y in the Theater of Dionysus on the s o u t h e r n slope of the Acropolis in 404 B.C. M u c h of the action in b o t h plays turns on the consequences of a perverse sexuality b o r n of repression (manifested a m o n g other w a y s as a disturbing sexual connection between m o t h e r and son). Other shared themes include the son's search for a god he sees as a Destroyer, the irresistible pull of eros, the participation of a m o t h e r in the destruction of her o w n child, physical d i s m e m b e r m e n t as a symbol of the inevitable consequence of the psychological fragmentation of an individual, the struggle b e t w e e n those w h o seek to reveal truth and those w h o are d e t e r m i n e d to conceal it, and the transforming p o w e r of truth if one has the courage to accept it. The truth about Sebastian's sparagmos a n d omophagia is u n c o v e r e d in a scene b e t w e e n the p s y c h o t h e r a p i s t and Catharine not unlike the one p l a y e d out b y C a d m u s and Agave. In addition to the play's plot, characterizations, and themes, Williams' dramatic t e c h n i q u e - - h i s poetic imagery, rhythm, and d i c t i o n - - a l s o recalls Euripides' Bacchae. 4 Given Williams' formal e d u c a t i o n - - a s well as his keen personal i n t e r e s t - - i n classical literature and theater, it cannot be d o u b t e d that he k n e w this play b y Euripides. 5 It is, h o w ever, certainly possible that the m a n y similarities b e t w e e n his Suddenly Last Summer and

3. Bernard E Dick, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Twayne's Filmmaker Series (Boston: Twayne, 1983), 114. 4. As is true of much of Williams' writing, many of the play's details are taken from his own life experience: the unnecessary lobotomy of a troubled girl, the overbearing mother, the absent father, the Southern Gothic environs and mystique, the anonymous and predatory homosexual encounters of the male protagonist, even the desperately needed European getaway. In an interview conducted in 1975 (and first published ten years later), Williams cites Suddenly Last Summer as "the first work that reflected the emotional trauma, that of my life, very deeply" ("Tennessee Williams" by Charles Ruas as reprinted in: Conversations with Tennessee Williams, Literary Conversations Series, Albert J. Devlin, ed. [Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986], 284-295; quotation at 287). Debusscher ("Creative rewriting: European and American influences on the dramas of Tennessee Williams" in: M. C. Roudan6, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams, ser. Cambridge Companions to Literature [Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997], 167-188; at 178) points out similarities between Hart Crane, Williams himself, and the fictional Sebastian. 5. Williams took four years of Latin in high school and studied classical literature in at least two of the three universities he attended (Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Iowa). I am preparing a separate study of the influence of classical literature and culture in general on the writing of Tennessee Williams. 6. This is Gilbert Debusscher's ("Creative rewriting" [above, n. 4], 180) explanation for the correspondence between Williams' The Glass Menagerie and Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. The explanation seems equally appropriate here. Williams undoubtedly read the Bacchae, like The Seagull, in translation. His transcript from Washington University in St. Louis reveals two failed attempts to learn Attic Greek: he earned a D grade in Greek I in Fall 1937 and an F when he retook the course the following spring (telephone conversation with the university registrar, March 8, 2004). The recent 2004 discovery by Professor Henry Schvey of Williams' 1937 examination blue book (in a New Orleans bookstore) confirms both Williams' poor perfor-

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Euripides' Bacchae are accidental, that perhaps "subconsciously, he f o u n d in [the Bacchae] a preexisting pattern that contributed to shape his o w n play. "6 The film, however, emphasizes these similarities. W h e n Gore Vidal was chosen to a d a p t the play for the screen (the film was re-titled Suddenly, Last Summer [with the comma]), Williams expressed concern: " . . . I can't be sure h o w Gore's satirical genius will mix with m y romantic and d e c a d e n t inclinations. ''7 But the 1959 film, w h i c h stars Katherine H e p b u r n , Elizabeth Taylor, and M o n t g o m e r y Clift, has been praised as "the only Williams film adaptation of the decade that largely preserves the play's original dialogue and ideas, yet also develops these effectively t h r o u g h the c a n n y d e p l o y m e n t of the cinema's quite different resources. "~ In m a n y instances the screenplay, Joseph Mankiewicz's direction, and the set decorations b y Scott Slimon, Oliver Messel, and William Kellner enhance the resonances with Euripides' Bacchae that lie at the f o u n d a t i o n of Williams' original script. Indeed, V i d a l - - w h o m a y or m a y not have w o r k e d w i t h Williams as he w r o t e the screenplayg--is on record as noting that "the Bacchae is almost the same plot as the end of Suddenly Last Summer. "1~

The God-Figure

In the prologue of the Bacchae, Dionysus explains that he has come to Thebes to reveal himself as a god and to establish his sacred rites in the city of his birth. H e intends to punish the sisters of his mother, Semele, for rejecting her tale of Zeus' love, thereby denying his o w n g o d h o o d (Ba. 41-42). Dionysus m a d d e n s the w o m e n of Thebes (Ba. 37), and drives t h e m to kill Semele's n e p h e w Pentheus (Ba. 1079-81), the y o u n g king w h o also rejects him.

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mance on his Greek exam and, apparently, his despair at flunking it: included in its pages is a 17line poem entitled "Blue Song." See http://news-info.wustl.edu/tips/page/normla/5OO5.html. Quotation from a letter to Herbert Machiz dated 25 November 1958 as cited by Brian Parker ("A Tentative Stemma for Drafts and Revisions of Suddenly Last Summer (1958)," Modern Drama 41:2 [Summer 1998], 303-326; quotation at 321). Cheryl Bray Lower and R. Barton Palmer, Joseph L. Mankiewicz: Critical Essays with an Annotated Bibliography and a Fihnography (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co, 2001), 159. In addition to this most recent study by Lower and Palmer (see 153-159 and 165-167), other critical comparisons of the play Suddenly Last Summer with the film Suddenly, Last Summer include: Yacowar, Tennessee Williams and Fihn (above, n. 2), 49-59; Gene D. Phillips, The Fihns of Tennessee Williams (Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1980), 173-196; and Dick, Joseph L. Mankiewicz (above, n. 3), 113-119. Both Williams (in James Grauerholz, "Orpheus Holds His Own: William Burroughs Talks With Tennessee Williams" as reprinted in: Conversations with Tennessee Williams [above, n. 4], 299-307; quotation at 304) and Vidal (in Robert J. Stanton and Gore Vidal, eds., Views from a Window: Conversations with Gore Vidal [Secaucus, N.J.: Lyle Stuart, 1980[, 132 and in Vito Russo, The Celhdoid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, rev. ed. [New York: Harper and Row, 1987], 117) claim that Williams had no part in writing the screenplay, despite the film credit to the contrary. But Brian Parker's (above, n. 7) research into primary documents leads him to conclude that "[Williams] did collaborate with his friend Vidal till quite late in the process, and most of the ingredients added can be traced to Williams's own discarded play drafts" (321). Interview with Gore Vidal in the video documentary Tennessee Williams: Orpheus of the American Stage, dir. Merrill Brockway (Princeton, N.J.: Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 1995).

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Fig. 1. Violet Venable's dea ex machina entrance. In Suddenly Last Summer, Sebastian's m o t h e r Violet is the m a n i p u l a t i n g god-figure. The film adaptation emphasizes this characterization. In w h a t Bernard Dick has d u b b e d "the most O l y m p i a n entrance on celluloid," Violet descends from above in a m o d e r n mechane - an elevator - in a w a y similar to h o w gods often arrive on-stage in fifth c e n t u r y tragedies. 11 The elevator is described in the play but remains u n u s e d (SLS 378-379); the spectacle of her entrance and her a c c o m p a n y i n g dialogue were written for the film (see figure 1). We hear her quoting her d e a d son even before she comes into frame: Sebastian always said, "Mother, y o u descend like a goddess in the machine." Gene Phillips notes that " . . . her voice wafts d o w n the elevator shaft from above as if issuing from some inaccessible goddess w h o has graciously d e i g n e d to come d o w n to earth for an audience with some p o o r mortal. ''12 Later in the film, Catharine (whose n a m e in the film credits is spelled "Catherine") will accuse Violet of "acting superior to mere mortals." Similar to Dionysus, Violet's mission in the play is to salvage the sexual r e p u t a t i o n of a dead family member, in this case her son Sebastian's. As in the Bacchae, the threat to his reputation comes from within the family, in this case from his cousin, Catharine (we are r e m i n d e d that Dionysus and Pentheus are cousins, too). Catharine explains that as his 11. Bernard F. Dick (The Apostate Angeh A Critical Study of Gore Vidal [New York: Random House, 1974]), 92. Dick (Joseph L. Mankiewicz ]above, n. 3], 119), again refers to Violet's "Olympian lift" in his 1983 bookqength study of the film's director. 12. Phillips, The Fihns of Tennessee Williams (above, n. 8), 195.

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traveling c o m p a n i o n last summer, she learned that Sebastian was a homosexual, and that he was using her, like he used Violet before her, as bait to attract b o y s for himself. Accused by Violet of lying about the circumstances of Sebastian's death, Catharine stands firm: CATHARINE [springing up with a cry[: I can't change truth, I'm not God! I'm not e v e n sure that H e could, I d o n ' t think G o d can change truth! H o w can I change the story of w h a t h a p p e n e d to her son in Cabeza de Lobo? (SLS 392) But if gods cannot change truth, they can at least alter its perception. Dionysus does so b y m a d d e n i n g his victims and causing them to hallucinate. Violet has always d e l u d e d herself about her son's nature. Even Catharine admits that Violet " d i d n ' t know that she was procuring for h i m . . . " (SLS 412). Violet w o r k e d h a r d to keep that truth from herself. But although god-like, the mortal Violet is limited in her p o w e r s to d e l u d e ("sport with") others into confusing illusion with reality. She m u s t rely instead on her formidable p o w ers of persuasion and intimidation to deceive and mislead those a r o u n d her. 13 N o w that he is dead, Violet is more d e t e r m i n e d than ever to preserve the fiction of Sebastian as " d e v o t e d son, poet-priest, and visionary saint"14--to validate her view of h i m - - b e c a u s e this fiction has come to define her o w n existence. This m e a n s that unlike Dionysus, Violet uses her p o w e r to conceal a truth, not to reveal one. So she m u s t s u p p r e s s Catharine's returning memories of Sebastian's g r u e s o m e d e a t h at the h a n d s of the v e r y boys he exploited in the resort t o w n of Cabeza de Lobo. 15 A u n t Violet's generous offer to finance Catharine's lobotomy, the innovative cure c h a m p i o n e d b y the state a s y l u m ' s newest staff physician Dr. Cukrowicz, turns out to be a desperate p l o y to silence her. Catharine's m e m o r i e s have the p o w e r to destroy Violet's world. In the Bacchae, Dionysus comes from outside Greece (Ba. 13-22), in the guise of a stranger (Ba. 53-54), to destroy the w o m e n of Thebes (Ba. 52). Violet hurls a similar accusation at Catharine: "She's a destroyer. M y son was a creator!" (SLS 368). The line as rewritten for the film even more strongly resonates with the Bacchae: "You are the Stranger, the Outsider, the Destroyer!" Violet perceives Catharine as an e n e m y w h o m u s t be disarmed, charging that "with her tongue for a hatchet she's gone about smashing our l e g e n d . . . " (SLS 363). But the only thing Catharine threatens to destroy is the fragile fantasy that has kept Violet from having to face the ugly reality about her son, and about herself. Violet plots to destroy Catharine's credibility from the m o m e n t she learns of her son's death: MRS. VENABLE:

She babbles! They couldn't shut her u p in Cabeza de Lobo or at the clinic in Paris - she babbled, babbled! - smashing m y son's reputation. - O n the Berengaria 13. In this important way, Violet's ability to manipulate others falls short of her divine model. In Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), Helene P. Foley argues that "The god [Dionysus], unlike the tragic hero, never confuses representation with reality; instead he controls reality through representation" (243). 14. Judith J. Thompson, Tennessee Williams' Plays: Memory, Myth, and Symbol, University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 54 (New York: Peter Lang, 1987), 100. 15. Roger Boxhill (Tennessee Williams, ser. Macmillan Modern Dramatists [New York: St. Martin's Press, 19871) notes that the name Cabeza de Lobo (Wolf's Head) "puns on the surgical procedure in question" (126), Catharine's lobotomy. Also see Kevin Ohi, "Devouring Creation: Cannibalism, Sodomy, and the Scene of Analysis in Suddenly, Last Summer," Cinema Journal 38:3 (Spring 1999), 27-49; at 49 n. 16.

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bringing her back to the States she broke out of the stateroom and babbled, babbled; even at the airport w he n she was flown d o w n here, she babbled a bit of her story before they could whisk her into an ambulance to St. M a r y ' s . . . (SLS 364) Just as Dionysus (in the guise of the Stranger) befriends Pentheus and encourages him to take action that will lead to his death, Violet presents herself as Catharine's benefactor while plotting her demise. Financing her niece's psychiatric treatment appears to be her compassionate and generous response to a family m e m b e r ' s unfortunate illness. But Catharine is allowed no visitors and even loses her yard privileges for trying to flag down passing cars to communicate with their drivers. Catharine's "hospitalization" in a private sanitarium is in truth an incarceration, a solitary confinement. Violet also uses Catharine's personal history as a w eapon against her. Not long before Sebastian invited Catharine to go with him to Europe, Catharine had suffered a disastrous social debut. That night, she accused "a young married man" (SLS 392) of rape. Her story was not believed. While at St. Mary's, Catharine again claims to have been assaulted, this time by a staff gardener, and again her story is not believed. N ow considered a bonafi'deliar and trouble-maker, she is transferred to the state asylum. Given Catharine's apparent history of making unf ounded accusations, Violet finds it easy to convince everyone that her niece is a psychopath, determined to destroy men whose only crime is rejecting her sexual advances. Violet tells the doctor: "She was in love with m y son!" (SLS 392). Violet's power derives from the combination of her great wealth and the greed of those around her. In the past, she had always used her money to arrange "contacts" for Sebastian in "nice places" (SLS 412). N ow she manipulates Catharine's immediate family by threatening to contest Sebastian's will (which bequeaths to them the huge sum of $100,000) unless Catharine recants. Catharine's brother George cries, "We w o n ' t get a single damn penny, honest t'God we won't!" unless Catharine "drop[s] her story" (SLS 381). Even Catharin...