Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Williams, Tennessee (Vol. 19) - Foster Hirsch

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

FOSTER HIRSCH

Although they often contain sensational elements, Williams's plays are as moralistic as they are literary…. The plays are a series of moral allegories in which Williams, an entrenched puritan fascinated by his own and others' sinfulness, judges his characters. He is a moralist who exposes corruption: "I think that deliberate, conscienceless mendacity, the acceptance of falsehood and hypocrisy is the most dangerous of all sins. The moral contribution of my plays is that they uncover what I consider to be untrue." Williams's characters are thus examples of various roads to ruin and the consequences of sin. Since Williams has never shaken the notion that sex is at least partly sinful, all of his sexually troubled characters are held to a strict moral reckoning; and their unhappy histories are designed as warnings. Williams concocts exotic sexual fantasies, yet he hovers puritanically over the revels, seeing to it that the misbehaving characters are...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Robert Brustein
3. Gerald Weales
4. W. Kenneth Holditch
5. Foster Hirsch
6. John Beaufort
7. Walter Kerr
8. Roderick Mason Faber
9. Copyright

1. Tennessee Williams