본문 바로가기
  • Home
Basic Search

The Story Beyond the American South: Segregation and Corruption in Sweet Bird of Youth

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2013, 26(2), pp.27-49
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

Soim Kim 1

1건국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Tennessee Williams’s Sweet Bird of Youth (1956) has been analyzed as the ugly portrait of the American South which was obsessed with racial segregation. To be sure, the play is the product of America of the 1950’s which was filled with continuous legal and social conflicts surrounding racial segregation. Despite its popularity on the Broadway stage, critics claimed that the play lacks an integrated structure and plot development. But in-depth study of the play’s structure, spaces, plot, and characters reveals the great extent to which this lack of integration works within the play. It becomes apparent that the various forms of segregation found throughout Sweet Bird of Youth reinforce the play’s theme of segregation and isolation. Most of all, the play dramatizes racial segregation. Boss Finley, the political leader of St. Cloud, is a fanatic about the purity of white blood and makes no scruple of lynching and even castrating anyone who threatens his sacred beliefs and ideas. But the play also dramatizes Princess’s cultural isolation, and Chance’s psychological isolation. The play implicates a combination of different kinds of segregation in Chance’s castration, which is St. Cloud’s ultimate act of depravity. For instance, Princess, the aging actress from Hollywood, with various cultural experiences beyond that of St. Cloud and insights into humanity, chooses to maintain disconnection from the community, by ignoring the social conditions of St. Cloud. She never interacts with the St. Cloud’s residents and fails to provide positive influence upon the town. Chance Wayne psychologically blocks the positive influence of Princess as well as the warning remarks from old friends in his home town. His failure to build a meaningful relationship with anyone in St. Cloud including his girl friend, Heavenly, complete the total fiasco. The tragic ending of the play seems to suggest that unless we overcome segregations whether they are racial, sexual, cultural or spatial, castration which could be real or metaphoric, can haunt us in an unexpected moment.

Statistics

  • 215 Viewed
  • 8 Downloaded

Tools

Issue List

Citation status

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

Basic Search Advanced Search