English Literature 9695

Sweet Bird of Youth: Men, Women and Relationships Between Them

Q. How does the play 'Sweet Bird of Youth' portray men and women and the relationship between them.

Tennessee Williams is a daring playwright. He explores issues rarely talked about during his time. Issues that people often shy away from. So, when he presented 'Sweet Bird of Youth' it was received with mixed feelings. This play reflects the society of his time that was perhaps filled with racism, sexism and hypocrisy. These reflections are illustrated through the men and women in this play and the relationships between them.

Williams begins the drama with two characters: Chance and Alexandra. One important difference that Williams has shown is that they are both from different cultures. Yet they are seen in a somewhat similar situation, however their fates end quite differently. Williams has depicted them both to perhaps be troubled over their waning youth as their careers depend on their looks but he has also shown a contrast where Alexandra is ironically the more successful one in their relationship in terms of their career while at that time in Chance's hometown women were not the ones gaining success over men. It is clear that Alexandra is the dominant one in their relationship, she pays him in exchange for distractions and he depends on her to continue living his illusion of grandeur, trying to convince people of his hometown that he is rich and well established by driving in her car and using her money while in reality nobody but himself is feeding into his lies. Throughout the play Chance is illustrated to use Alexandra to get Heavenly and to make his dreams a reality while neglecting Alexandra when she tries to be a friend to him. In the end Alexandra gets another chance to win her fame back, while Chance ironically loses all his chances and faces punishments for not only his bad deeds but also for not accepting reality and leaving his hometown while he had the chance. Thus Williams has established a strong female lead that shows women are capable of achieving their dreams and that perhaps culture plays a huge part in how a woman succeeds in life.

Williams has also established a male lead that reflects the consequences of perhaps not only taking women for granted but also for thinking that they can decide for a woman, for example Chance does not ask Heavenly if she still wants to leave with him, he just assumes that she does. Williams has also succeeded in portrayed that relationships such as the one Chance and Alexandra have are toxic and are perhaps bound to end tragically with one side losing perhaps all that they have, the way Chance is shown at the end of the play when Alexandra leaves him, alone and hopeless. We also see how men and women depend on each other to an extent, if one crosses the limits of that extent the results can be disastrous as shown by Alexandra depending on Chance for distractions until she no longer needs him and Chance depending on Alexandra for his livelihood which eventually leaves him empty handed when she deserts him.

Williams has portrayed the women in this play in such a way that they have come to terms with their circumstances while the men are seen to be fighting with their fates. Besides Alexandra's character who defies fate and achieves stardom we are also shown Heavenly who has perhaps come to terms with her infertility. We see a power struggle in gender relationships where one tries to dominate the other. Meanwhile besides Chance, Boss is also denying reality. While Chance is denying the fact that he's lost all his chances Boss Finley is denying the reality that he is corrupting his own people. He believes that white people and people of colour should not mix and when an Anglo-African man is castrated he condemns this crime to his audience while also saying that he wants to keep white blood 'pure' and also calls himself a friend to both black and white. When The Heckler asks a question related to Boss's hypocrisy, he is beaten; hinting that perhaps Boss Finley was not against the crime that he condemned. Later Williams displays how it is in fact Boss who has Chance castrated for not leaving town. Heavenly is seen to point out another hypocrisy of her father's. While he married her mother for love, he will not allow his daughter the same privilege. He is uses her, and others, to show how powerful he is, though this power is invariably linked to politics and hypocrisy. Boss and Heavenly have a strained relationship where he forces her to do things she does not want to such as accompanying him in his political rallies. He is shown to set her as an image of a pure white woman while ironically she is diseased which again illustrates that he may be in denial of his own hypocrisy. Thus Williams portrays the fact that hypocrisy and racism can exist in both men and women

The author depicts inequalities and hypocrisies that thrive unchecked in society and one way we learn about these is through the relationships between men and women in the play. Since the society of his time was male dominated like our society, we get to meet more men than women in the play. We see many flat characters in the play who represent people who live in our society but there are characters like Alexandra who present ruthless ambition in all its dark colours. She uses men and dumps them like the majority of the men do to women. In the end perhaps the audience witness how ambition, greed, hypocrisy and power struggles weaken gender relationships and make people lonely. We see the youth suffering, Heavenly getting humiliated in public, Chance getting punished. This does not perhaps give a good message. It does not give readers hope and does not teach one how to right the wrongs like Robert Frost's poems such as 'Two Look at Two' do. This play seems to spite at the word 'Chance'. The men and women are either portrayed as the victims or the culprits and thus Williams perhaps does not present strong contrasts among the characters to make the readers involved enough in their stories.