A short story written in 1943.
SYNOPSIS
The Narrator, a young writer who lives in the French Quarter of New Orleans. He rents an attic room in a boardinghouse owned by a ruthless and bitter old woman. The Narrator despises his shabby living con-ditions. There is an alcove in his room with a bench seat. The moonlight floods his room every night, and he is thankful for its beauty. Every evening as he is nearing sleep, an apparition, a Madonna figure, appears on the bench. The figure reminds him of his grandmother and he is comforted by her presence.
One evening, the Narrator receives a visitor: a fellow tenant, a Young Artist who is dying of tuberculosis.
The two young men have a romantic encounter under the gaze of the apparition sitting in the alcove.
The young writer is surprised that she does not have a look of disapproval on her face, and she remains his guardian after this incident.
The Young Artist has an argument with the Landlady, who coldly reminds him he is dying and evicts him from her boardinghouse. The young man runs out of the building, hysterically yelling and coughing in the streets. The Narrator watches the painter from his alcove window. The Land-lady’s maid salvages the painter’s belongings and places them under a tree near the house. Eventu-ally the painter returns to collect his things. The Narrator once again watches him from his alcove window. For several nights after this explosive episode, the apparition does not reappear in the alcove of the Narrator’s room. The Narrator decides this is a sign that he should leave the boardinghouse; he sneaks out and never returns.
COMMENTARY
Largely autobiographical, “The Angel in the Alcove”
is reminiscent of Williams’s experience as a young artist living in the French Quarter of NEWORLEANS, LOUISIANA, during the late 1930s. Williams moved to New Orleans in 1938, and the vibrant environ-ment of the French Quarter became a major influ-ence in his development as a writer. This bohemian locale introduced him to a community of fellow arti-sans and liberated Williams socially, artistically, and sexually. He would later describe New Orleans as
“the paradise of his youth” (Holditch, 194). It was a paradise presided over by suspicious, unstable, and often violent landladies. One such landlady, Mrs.
Louise Wire, who owned and ran the boardinghouse Williams lived in at 722 Toulouse Street, became the inspiration for the landlady character in “The Angel in the Alcove,” THELADY OFLARKSPURLOTION, and VIEUXCARRÉ.
“The Angel in the Alcove” chronicles Williams’s experience as a boardinghouse tenant coming to terms with his sexuality within the confines of the French Quarter. Far from the puritanical environ-ment of his SAINTLOUIS, MISSOURI, home, Williams was free to explore his sexuality. Although he had left his prudish mother behind, Williams (and the Narrator of the story) found an equally domineer-ing surrogate in the “paranoidal[ly] suspicious”
(Leverich, 428) landlady, who made him feel guilty without cause. This tyrannical figure, simultane-ously a stand-in for his mother and a personifica-tion of his own deep-set feelings of guilt and internalized homophobia, is juxtaposed with the compassionate and affirming apparition, the spirit of his grandmother.
In the story, the young writer is surprised that the Angel does not react negatively to his intimacy with another man. He is bewildered that she returns and remains his guardian. The Angel offers the young man acceptance, which comforts and relieves him. Williams received this same uncondi-tional love and devotion from his maternal grand-mother, ROSINAOTTEDAKIN. She was a source of beauty and light in his life, just as the Angel and her moonlight made the filthy surroundings of the Narrator’s squalid room glow an iridescent blue.
26 “The Angel in the Alcove”
Williams’s grandmother is memorialized in this and numerous other works, such as GRAND. Her tragic death from lung cancer is also recalled in this short story and in other works such as “ORIFLAMME” and KINGDOM OFEARTH.
“The Angel in the Alcove,” and its collection of colorful artists and sadistic landlady, served as the basis for two later works: the one-act play The Lady of Larkspur Lotion and the full-length play Vieux Carré. However, within the impoverished, lonely environment of this story, Williams creates a world that possesses instances of immense beauty quite unlike its successors.
PUBLICATION HISTORY
“The Angel in the Alcove” was first published in the short story collection One Arm in 1948. It was subsequently published in the short story collec-tions Three Players of a Summer Game (1960), Col-lected Stories (1985), and The Night of the Iguana and Other Stories (1995).
CHARACTERS
Landlady The landlady is a miserable woman who owns a boardinghouse in New Orleans. She enjoys bullying her tenants and maintains a very strict curfew. The landlady is suspicious and accusa-tory, believing that many of the low-life characters who live in her house are committing the crimes that happen in New Orleans. The landlady espe-cially enjoys accusing the Narrator of crimes she has read about in the newspaper. She evicts a young artist from her home because he has tuberculosis.
Narrator The Narrator is a young writer who lives in a New Orleans boardinghouse run by a tyrannical Landlady. He receives nightly visits from the apparition of his deceased grandmother, who comforts him. The Narrator has a secret ren-dezvous with a Young Artist, a fellow boarder, who is dying of tuberculosis. When his lover is evicted and the apparition stops appearing, the Narrator also leaves.
Young Artist The Young Artist is dying of tuber-culosis, but he refuses to believe he is sick. He has intimate relations with the Narrator, and he leaves
the boardinghouse when the Landlady verbally attacks him.
FURTHER READING
Holditch, W. Kenneth. “Tennessee Williams in New Orleans,” in Magical Muse: Millennial Essays on Ten-nessee Williams, edited by Ralph Voss. Tuscaloosa:
University Press of Alabama, 2002, pp. 193–206.
Leverich, Lyle. Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1995.
At Liberty
A one-act play written before 1940.
SYNOPSIS
The play is set in Blue Mountain, Mississippi, in the modest living room of Gloria Bessie Greene and her Mother. A “glamour photo” of Gloria is prominently featured in the room. The time is two-thirty in the morning, in early autumn. The rain can be heard and seen streaming down the living-room window outside. Gloria’s mother sits alone in the darkened living room. She has sat up all night waiting for Glo-ria to return from her date with Charlie. Upon her return, Gloria can be heard in the hallway bidding Charlie farewell. Charlie does not appear onstage but can be heard leaving Gloria reluctantly. He makes further advances, which Gloria rejects. Glo-ria enters the house and is in a bedraggled state. Her white satin evening dress is wet, soiled, and torn.
Gloria’s mother addresses her as “Bessie,” interro-gates her about her evening, and expresses her frus-tration about Gloria’s choice in men. (All of her dates are men she “picks up” in hotels.)
Gloria’s mother admonishes her for ruining her reputation and becoming the subject of town gossip.
Mother reminds Gloria that she is recovering from tuberculosis and pleads with her to heed the doc-tor’s advice to take bed rest. She encourages Gloria to give up her hope of fame and glamour and con-sider Vernon’s offer of marriage. Gloria shows her mother an advertisement she has placed in Billboard magazine, proclaiming her skills (“singing, dancing specialties”) and her immediate availability to take At Liberty 27
any role offered. Gloria’s mother accuses her of falsi-fying her age and abilities in the advertisement.
Gloria chastises her mother for trying to destroy her confidence and crush her dreams. Gloria begs her not to “stifle” her passion. She declares that she has a “cry from [her] soul” that needs to be expressed.
Gloria opens the window and surveys the small town that lies before her. She recalls a former child-hood love named Red Allison who died.
Gloria’s mother again reminds her of her illness, but Gloria refuses to accept her limitations. She acknowledges her entrapment but does not allow it to discourage her. Gloria concedes that for the time being luck has not been on her side. She runs from the room, sobbing uncontrollably. During Gloria’s absence her mother quietly admits her dissatisfac-tion with the state of her own life and returns to the sofa.
COMMENTARY
Written around 1940, At Liberty is linked chrono-logically and dramaturgically to the works of Williams’s early AMERICANBLUESperiod. Similar to the one-act plays in the American Blues collection (MOONY’SKIDDON’TCRY, THE DARKROOM, THE
CASE OF THECRUSHEDPETUNIAS, THEUNSATISFAC
-TORY SUPPER, and TEN BLOCKS ON THE CAMINO
REAL), At Liberty illustrates the working-class quest for a better and more expressive way of life. Here, as in Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry, the American dream is a dream that is repeatedly deferred.
This early work also contains many of the themes, ideas, characterization, and environment that Williams would fully develop in his later drama and fiction, particularly the theme of “the artist in isolation.” Gloria, once the small-town girl with stars in her eyes, has become the showgirl past her prime. Poor health has propelled her back into the “dark, wide, spacious land” (Kozlenko, 174) of Blue Mountain, Mississippi. Blue Mountain’s vast open spaces only serve to remind Gloria of the gap-ing void between her ambition and her reality.
Gloria Bessie Green is an engaging character study reminiscent of many of Williams’s headstrong female characters, such as Heavenly Critchfield in SPRING STORM or Lady Torrance in ORPHEUS
DESCENDING. She shares their gritty determination
to survive against all odds, and in spite of societal expectations. She is strikingly similar in manners, appearance, and dialogue to Cassandra Whiteside in BATTLE OF ANGELS. Both possess a “feverish look” and appear in excessive makeup, dressed in white satin evening dresses that have been soiled by mud and rain. Both women are outcasts, who feel they are caged animals in their respective soci-eties. Gloria is also similar to Alma Winemiller of SUMMER AND SMOKE (and ECCENTRICITIES OF A
NIGHTINGALE), who is another passionate artist trapped in a stifling, repressed small-town environ-ment. As do Alma and Blanche DuBois (A STREET
-CAR NAMED DESIRE), Gloria engages in sex with strangers as a means to combat her sense of loneli-ness, isolation, and restlessness.
Gloria’s tale and her fate are reminiscent of those of many of the artist-characters who populate the Williams canon and find themselves trapped in a stagnant environment. Gloria has placed an ad in Billboard proclaiming herself “at liberty” to accept any stage role on offer, but she soon realizes that there are literally and figuratively very few “roles”
open to her either onstage or within the tiny com-munity of Blue Mountain. Her choices are either to settle down and play wife to a man she does not care for or to take on a leading role as the town’s most scandalous woman.
PRODUCTION HISTORY
At Liberty was first produced in New York in Sep-tember 1976.
PUBLICATION HISTORY
At Liberty was published in American Scenes: A Vol-ume of New Short Plays in 1941.
CHARACTERS
Greene, Gloria Bessie She is a thin aging
“ingenue,” a dancer/performer struggling for suc-cess. Her stage name is “Gloria La Greene.” The poor state of her health (she suffers from tuberculo-sis) forces her to return to her small rural childhood home of Blue Mountain, Mississippi. Gloria refuses to follow her doctor’s orders to stay in bed and insists on enjoying herself. Always an outsider in her community, Gloria, by her return and her 28 At Liberty
provocative behavior, generates considerable gossip in town. Gloria’s long-suffering Mother waits patiently for Gloria to return from her nightly excursions with men she meets in hotels. Similar to Alma Winemiller in SUMMER AND SMOKE (and ECCENTRICITIES OF A NIGHTINGALE), Gloria is a passionate artist trapped in a stifling, repressed small-town environment. As do Alma Winemiller and Blanche Dubois (in A STREETCAR NAMED
DESIRE), Gloria engages in sex with strangers as a means to combat her sense of loneliness, isolation, and restlessness.
Mother She is the long-suffering mother of Glo-ria Bessie Greene. GloGlo-ria’s mother worries con-stantly about her daughter’s ailing state of health, unhappiness, and reputation. She fears that her daughter is headed for ruin, death, or both. This middle-aged woman does not sleep at night, know-ing that her daughter is out on the town with strangers she meets in hotels. She hopes to salvage Gloria’s life and reputation by encouraging her to marry Vernon, a stable local man. Unknown to her daughter, Gloria’s Mother shares her daughter’s sense of mortality and isolation and her longing for
“good luck.”
FURTHER READING
Kozlenko, William, ed. American Scenes: A Volume of New Short Plays. New York: John Day, 1941, pp.
174–182.