The similarities in characters and situations in [the work of William Inge and Tennessee Williams] are obvious: sexual fantasies, frustrated women, the devirilization of studs—"homosexual spite"—homosexual characters studied covertly etc. However, Inge's plays add to the list of ruses the homosexual dramatist has been forced to employ in depicting his own experience, particularly with regard to "virile friend-ship," the caustic description of heterosexual relationships, and the portrait of "Mom," the overprotective and castrating woman and mother. (p. 121)

[A] careful reading of [Inge's] plays, beginning with the very first, clearly reveals that the studs [Turk in Come Back, Little Sheba, Hal Carter in Picnic, Bo in Bus Stop, and Rubin in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs] have feet of clay; Inge is methodically trying to show us that a virile appearance can conceal a lack of real masculinity. (p. 124)

[Turk is] symbolic: first and foremost, he is a muscle-bound male model, devoid of any psychological background other than that he is a big, handsome bozo, a good guy, a typically American category. Once she has used him sexually, Marie drops him very quickly to make a good marriage. He … is no more than a materialized fantasy; he has no real substance. (pp. 124-25)

The character of Hal is more concretely drawn than … [Turk]. However, the character's apparent muscular strength is not accompanied by any exceptional strength of character. On the contrary, he is very unsure of himself….

The author undermines "apparent virility" just as Genet does—a process Sartre has analyzed, calling it "homosexual spite." The stud whom the homosexual regards with love-hate emotion is divirilized through various processes which are summed up by Doc, who wants to "fix" Turk, i.e., castrate him. Tennessee Williams uses the same processes, situating the aggressively heterosexual behavior of his hand-some American animals in their pasts, but depicting them on the stage as nothing but beautiful bodies whose virility is suspect. (p. 125)

In the third act of Bus Stop it is revealed that Cherie has been Bo's first sexual conquest, even though he is tough and twenty-one years old. Although he has attempted to convince Cherie—and the audience—that he is a real hand with women, as were his predecessors, we later learn through Virgil, his mentor, that Bo has always been "shy as a rabbit." We find this basic fear of women in many of Inge's male characters, a fear that can be evidenced by a lack of sexual relations, or, as in the case of Doc, by putting the woman on a pedestal. In Bus Stop, furthermore, the character assigned to Bo is that usually assigned to a woman. He is a virgin and his greatest wish is to marry after his first sexual experience. (pp. 125-26)

Two factors contribute to divirilizing the stud in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs: the passage of time, and the stud's wife. Rubin loses his job because no one is buying saddlery any more, and he had been forced to sell saddlery because he had to stop being a cowboy. At the age of thirty-six, therefore, despite his physique and his sexual vigor, he is no longer the dashing cowboy who had literally abducted Cora.

The elements that contribute the most to domesticating the male are marriage and women…. The Dark at the Top of the Stairs contains another character who symbolizes the plight of the married man: Morris, impotent husband of Cora's vulgar, repressed sister Lottie. He is "a big defeated-looking man of wrecked virility." For the sake of domestic peace, he acquiesces with everything his wife says, thus recalling Doc. However, unlike Lola's husband, Morris does not drink to forget. He takes long, mysterious walks which make him feel depressed. Inge's studs fear turning into a Morris, who acts as an alarm bell, or a scarecrow.

Robert Brustein has noted that Inge's plays frequently end with a marriage, or in reconciliation between lovers or husband and wife. He sees this as an indication that the dramatist considers marriage the solution to every problem [see CLC, Vol. 1]. This is a major misjudgment. Aside from the fact that Broadway audiences like happy endings, Inge's "happy" endings are actually expressions of "homosexual spite." Supreme male emasculation consists in pushing a man into the arms of a praying-mantis female and wife. (pp. 126-27)

Come Back, Little Sheba describes no friendship between the male characters. Turk is indifferent toward Doc, and Doc loathes him, probably because he is secretly in love with Marie, the pretty boarder, but also because he envies the young man's youth and virility, which are a permanent reproach to his own impotence and domestication. In the latter instance, we may interpret Doc's hatred as an ersatz love, or—at the least—admiration.

We find the same love-hate relations between Hal and Alan in Picnic. In college, Hal—the athletic, nonintellectual student—was friends with Alan, the good student, the well-behaved boy…. Alan's role vis-à-vis his friend is something like that of an older brother or a father; Hal, although they are the same age, behaves with a certain immaturity. (This relationship between the adult, indulgent "mentor" and the undisciplined youth, an alliance of mind and muscle, of maturity and youth should be noted. It will recur with revelatory regularity throughout Inge's plays.) There is also an element of amorous rivalry between the two that recalls the rivalry between Doc and Turk, and in both cases, it is the wild young man who wins.

In Picnic, friendship changes to hatred, a change that is obvious in the comparison of the two scenes of physical contact between Hal and Alan—scenes which also reveal the homoerotic basis of their friendship. In the first, they are reunited after several years. In order for their homoerotic passion not to seem overt, the pretext for their physical contact is an allusion to Hal's "outboard motor": "Hal makes noise of motor starting. Alan jumps up, throws legs around Hal's waist, grabs Hal's nose with one hand, steering him like an outboard motor." Later, when hatred comes to the surface because of their amorous rivalry, physical contact between them takes on the twisted features of sadomasochism. Hal is unwilling to fight with Alan since he is "the only friend I ever had." Alan taunts him until they do finally fight. In their friendship are the ingredients already noted in the various kinds of homoerotic relationships: youth and maturity (mental, in this case), jealousy and rivalry, a desire for physical contact that degenerates into sadomasochistic struggle. On stage, all of this can "get by," especially since there is a heterosexual "happy ending" to help the audience overlook the homosexual theme. However, in his revised version of Picnic (Broadway version), Summer Brave, Inge allows the love triangle to disintegrate at the end of the play. Madge loses both young men, whose friendship has changed into hatred. Neither the pretty girl nor the young man will end up with the handsome, muscular youth. This should not surprise us, since in the last analysis, neither of them has the author's sympathies.

The most interesting relationship between youth and maturity is found in Bus Stop, in which the character of the mature mentor of the handsome young Bo is presented in a highly revealing way. Virgil is virile (tobacco, corpulence, masculine clothing), a poet (he plays the guitar); he acts as both the younger man's father figure and his "adjunct." He is both a wiser version of Bo and at the same time his teacher and admirer. However, the word "adjunct" in the sense of "sidekick," is revealing, since it seems to indicate a kind of symbiotic union between the two men which is emphasized throughout the play…. It seems that Virgil has transferred all his tenderness to Bo. Virgil understands him and gets him out of scrapes (as Alan did for Hal). His tenderness is concealed beneath a rough exterior. However, as a musician, and thus a poet, Virgil is a character who has the playwright's sympathy—as in Tennessee Williams's plays. He might be the author's alter ego—Inge was around forty years of age, like Virgil, when he wrote Bus Stop. In any case, the author's sympathies are such that the relationship between Bo and Virgil represents the ideal of the mature homosexual.

In The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, there is another form of the homoerotic father-son relationship in the relationship between Sammy and Sonny. (pp. 128-30)

In Natural Affection the mysteries of this kind of relationship between an adult and a young man are further revealed. The play is given a homosexual flavor by the introduction of the character of Vince….

In a way, the Vince-Bernie couple is a caricature of the Virgil-Bo relationship. Vince is more overtly homosexual: Bernie—in a friendly way—calls him a "fag," and a "queer." Vince, the older of the two, dreams of giving in to the younger man's attraction, as shown by his falling into Bernie's arms while they are drinking together.

Furthermore, from the beginning of the play, Inge creates a homosexual atmosphere which develops the basic theme by means of allusions that counterpoint the dialogue. (p. 130)

[A prototypical short play is The Boy in the Basement.] Spencer Scranton, the protagonist …, is a man of approximately fifty years of age, living with his father and mother in an austere and somber Victorian house. It is both the family's home and place of business, a funeral parlor. Symbolically, Spencer's father is an invalid who sits for days at a time in front of the window; he is little more than a piece of furniture. Mrs. Scranton, his wife, has totally devirilized him and has reduced him to silence…. She, on the other hand, is "a very regal-looking woman in her early seventies, still very alert and active."…

Spencer's only source of human warmth is his friendship with Joker, a handsome adolescent with the physique of one of Inge's future studs. Joker is a well-adjusted teenager who will never turn homosexual. (p. 132)

In The Boy in the Basement the absence of female characters—whether frustrated, fickle, or stupid—and the presence of the "Mother," together illustrate the popular stereotypic schema of the homosexual situation: a totally devirilized father, mentally and physically hen-pecked, a domineering and strong mother, an immature and secretly homosexual son in love with a young, handsome, and heterosexual youth who symbolizes happiness, health, and adjustment. In this sense The Boy in the Basement is a literary archetype of the stereotypic homosexual situation. It is the model against which we can compare not only all of Inge's plays, in an attempt to discern their basic formulas, but also Williams's plays, and many American novels with predominantly homosexual themes….

[The] theme of discovery, scandal, is used in a highly dramatic way, shedding light on the protagonist's guiding obsession. The domineering mother, who is the cause of her son's problems, is transformed into an accuser, in line with a process familiar to those homosexuals whose mothers one day come to learn the truth. Spencer's mentality sheds light on the psychology of the mama's boys in Inge's plays, all of whom (though they may be married) are embodiments of Spencer, their prototype.

The Boy in the Basement provides a key to and is in effect the nucleus of Inge's work as a whole. His plays written for Broadway are only adulterated and diluted versions of this short play, which has nevertheless been overshadowed by his full-length works. The public for which he wrote forced him to disguise his thoughts and to warp his characters and his themes. (p. 133)