Tom and his feminine mystique: four acclaimed actresses compare notes on Tennessee Williams's incomparable heroines.(Panel Discussion)

American Theatre, September, 2004 by Gener, Randy

BECAUSE TENNESSEE WILLIAMS WAS A HOMOSEXUAL, THE TRAGIC, WEARY and self-loathing female characters that populate many of his best-known plays have frequently been viewed as strange and suspect. So bitter (and for Williams, personally destructive) has been the dispute over the supposed inauthentic nature of his women figures that it is seen as a persisting chink in the writer's dramatic armor.

"Ostensibly liberal critics claimed that Williams's female characters were nothing but men in drag (would one say that of the creations of a heterosexual like Shaw or Ibsen?)," notes an entry on "Gender and Sexuality" in The Tennessee Williams Encyclopedia, just out from Greenwood Press. Another entry, dealing mainly with his "male characters who are free to boast of...