Angel On Fire: The Misogynic Anxiety In Wise Blood And A Streetcar Named Desire

By whatever measures, Flannery O'Connor and Tennessee Williams remain among the cultural icons of the American South. Despite their different literary focuses, they are undoubtedly Southerners under the threat posed by an invading culture completely different from their own.This thesis is a study of the misogynic anxiety born out of the cultural clash between the South and the North. Through careful examination of the male-female relationships in both Wise Blood and A Streetcar Named Desire, I intend to identify the cultural roots of the said tension.Based on Marxist doctrines further developed by philosophers like Gramsci and Althusser, combined with Lacanian interpretation of Freudian psychoanalysis, I am inclined to identify the misogynic anxiety as a symptom of social illness caused by the irreconcilable struggle for the ideological dominance in a larger Southern cultural context. In this sense, it is a cultural experience of the South under the influence of a misplaced thus failing ideology threatened by a strong Northern industrialist existence.In consequence of this ideological struggle, the misogynic anxiety can be interpreted at both social and individual level. The overt conflict between "New South Creed" and the agrarian movement gave birth to a Southern cultural identity torn by Northern industrial might and acute response of the Southern intellectuals in an effort to maintain its cultural autonomy. This conflicting cultural reality then takes a personal toll, turning any individual within this larger Southern context into a self-fragmented freak with a strong feeling of marginality.