Twenty-seven Wagons Full of Cotton, a one-act play in three scenes, begins and ends on that most southern of domestic architectural features, the front porch. The setting is Blue Mountain, Mississippi. Tennessee Williams, through detailed staging, requires enough appurtenances so that “the effect is not unlike a doll’s house.”

The play opens in early evening. The audience first sees Jake Meighan, “a fat man of sixty,” scurrying offstage with a can of coal oil as dogs bark in the distance. As he drives away, his wife, Flora, emerges from the house onto the porch in search of her white kid purse. The bovine Flora cries after her husband as “a cow moos in the distance with the same inflection.” At this point a distant explosion sounds, and various voices speculate about the noise. As Jake returns, Flora learns that the Syndicate Plantation has caught fire.

Flora berates Jake for leaving her with no Coca-Cola in the house, but Jake soon establishes his male dominance by treating his wife roughly. At this point it becomes apparent that theirs is something of a sadomasochistic relationship. He hurts her, and she seems to enjoy it. Jake had departed abruptly in order to blow up the Syndicate’s cotton gin so that he could profit from ginning the extra cotton. With considerable effort Jake fashions his alibi—he never, he repeats to Flora, left the front porch that evening. Flora’s reluctance to absorb Jake’s alibi suggests her stupidity and establishes her childlike innocence.

Scene 2 opens the same afternoon with Silva Vicarro, the superintendent of the Syndicate Plantation, joining Jake and Flora at their residence. Vicarro, a “rather small and wiry man of dark Latin looks,” contrasts with his beefy neighbors; he represents a recurring Williams character, the outsider. Jake, having exploded Vicarro’s cotton gin, assures his Latin neighbor that he will find a way to gin his cotton for him.

He introduces his wife to Vicarro and teases her about her weight while admitting that he prefers “a woman not large but tremendous.” After embarrassing Flora about her corpulence, Jake exits in order to gin Vicarro’s cotton. Jake’s absence allows Flora and Silva the opportunity to become better acquainted. Vicarro immediately begins flirting with Flora while seeking information about his ruined gin. Vicarro knows, or at least senses, that Jake has destroyed his cotton gin; he ironically taunts Flora about Jake’s “good-neighbor policy,” which Jake explains as “you do me a good turn an’ I’ll do you a good one.” Vicarro clearly intends to reciprocate. His suspicions about arson are confirmed when Flora spoils her husband’s alibi. Silva’s knowledge motivates his revenge, which is to abuse and violate his adversary’s wife. Initially Flora resists Silva’s advances but soon succumbs, the scene ending with the two entering the house as “the gin pumps slowly and steadily across the road.”

The final scene takes place that evening about nine o’clock. The front porch is empty but bathed in “a full September moon of almost garish intensity.” Flora emerges; “her appearance is ravaged.” Her eyes contain “a vacant limpidity,” and her lips are set sensually apart. Dark streaks on her shoulders and arms indicate that Vicarro has whipped her with his riding crop. Even though she has been raped and whipped, the stage directions suggest that the experience has not been altogether unpleasant. Jake ambles up, ironically singing to himself, “By the light of the silvery moon.” He then brags about the work he has done, ginning twenty-seven wagons full of cotton, as Flora says, “You’re not the only one’s—done a big day’s—work.” Without stating why, Flora...