The Study on the Images, Performances, and Realities in The Gnädiges Fräulein (The Gnädiges Fräulein에 나타난 이미지, 공연 그리고 리얼리티)

Soim Kim (김소임)

The Study on the Images, Performances, and Realities in The Gnädiges Fräulein

Journal of Modern English Drama
Abbr : JMBARD
2010, 23(3), pp.53-75
Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

Soim Kim ¹

¹건국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The Gnädiges Fräulein provides the most shocking and grotesque images among Tennessee Williams’s plays. The play dramatizes the Gnädiges Fräulein, the former circus singer’s agonizing struggles between singing and catching fish from the fish-docks. As the play progresses, Fräulein’s bloody fight with a Cocaloony bird, the arch enemy in the fish hunt, gets nastier, and the images of the Fräulein whose eyes are sucked out and costumes torn apart, get not only outrageous but also complicated. Those images which combine the traits of various genres as well as many significant thematic implications, defy a simple definition and explication. Not only do these images combine contradictory characteristics such as a clown and a martyr, a tragic hero and an absurdist anti-hero, the structure of the play within a play also undermines the reality of the Gnädiges Fräulein’s ordeal. Indubitably these images cross the boundaries of genre, literary conventions, and dimension of reality. Especially Molly and Polly, who preside over the Gnädiges Fräulein’s performances by directing, commenting, and criticizing, build up the circus atmosphere, provide the implication that the Gnädiges Fräulein’s sufferings are parts of a performance, and unsettle any coherent signification that her ordeal might contain. As the play progresses, the circus atmosphere and the idea of performance are strengthened as well. In the end of the play, while clownish Molly, Polly and Indian Joe enjoy fish and wine happily, already blind, bleeding, and naked Gnädiges Fräulein rushes out of the house hunting for more fish. It is possible that she cannot come back to the inn alive. But the other character’s calm enjoyment of fish questions the reality of the Gnädiges Fräulein’s suffering. By transcending genre definitions and thematic clarification and complicating reality dimension, the play opens the way to deconstruction.

KEYWORDS

image, genre, circus, clown show, the Theater of the Absurd, the play within a play, metadrama, performance, religion

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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Journal of Modern English Drama 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.11