Family And Love In Tennessee Williams's Major Plays

This thesis aims at exploring Tennessee Williams's outlook on family and love reflected in three of his most famous plays, "The Glass Menagerie", "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It consists of four parts. Upon giving a general introduction to Tennessee Williams's life and his writing career, this thesis discusses different aspects of Tennessee Williams's notions about family shown in his three major plays, which reflect Williams's increasing negation of the traditional concept of family, and at the same time it focuses on the tendency of change in the expression of love between different characters in the three plays. This paper concludes that Williams's handling of the themes experiences three stages, that is, from the affirmation of the traditional value to the doubt about the traditional value and finally to the negation of the traditional value, which reflects Williams's gradual progression of anti-traditionalism. His voicing of his own outlook about life, along with his unique style of poetic theatre, makes him one of the greatest American playwrights.