A Psychological Reading Of Tennesee Williams And His Three Women Characters

Tennessee Williams is a controversial author in American literary history. His status in literature world never caught up with the first raters, but that does not weaken his popularity all over the world. Blanche, Amanda and Maggie are respectively three protagonists in Williams's three most important representative works. My assumption in the thesis is that the deep reason why Williams created such characters is that the playwright himself is suffering from the torments which his characters are suffering from. The torments grow into drives that urge Williams to resolve his psychic troubles in writing. He intends to release his anxiety and sexual repression in his writing. Only in this way can he avoid becoming a neurotic.Based on the above-mentioned assumption, the approach of Freudian psychoanalysis is adopted in the thesis. This thesis firstly applies Freud's psychoanalysis to the study of the three major characters in Williams's plays so as to have a new and deeper understanding of them, and especially their state of mind. Then the thesis further analyzes the creator Williams and discovers the playwright's innermost feelings and unconscious motive of creating such characters.Accordingly, in structure, the main body of the thesis consists of a brief introduction, three main chapters, and a short conclusion. The author and his works' background will be given in the introduction. In Chapter One, some of the most important Freudian psychoanalytic terms, theories and approaches are introduced. In Chapter Two Freud's psychoanalysis about the personality is applied to analyze the three protagonists' behaviors and deep thought. Then their various anxieties and repression are discovered in the hope of finding something contributing to the internal causes of their tragic life. In Chapter Three Williams is carefully read by Freudian psychoanalysis and Horney's theory of anxiety. This chapter discusses Williams's childhood traumas and analyzes their influence on Williams's psychic makeup, including his basic anxiety and his sexual orientation which results in his repression. After a thorough analysis of the three women characters and the playwright, in the conclusion the author of the thesis discovered that these heroines are more than some simple characters, but actually Williams's own psychological and emotional reflection.