Self-Consuming Artifacts: Power, Performance and the Body in Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer

Abstract

Suddenly Last Summer is unique in the Williams canon in that its protagonist is literally and figuratively absent. The poet Sebastian Venable dies before the action takes place; he is at once a blank text, like the empty pages of the notebook his mother Violet brandishes in triumphant fury as proof of his inability to write his last Poem of Summer, and a palimpsest "awesome in his ambiguity." Images of Sebastian repeat and refract until the play becomes a dizzying hall of mirrors: Cousin George appears sporting Sebastian's wardrobe, Catharine wears a suit Sebastian bought for her, and Doctor Cuckrowicz wears all white, just as Sebastian did on his dying day. No Williams play is more haunted by the body, its directives and disguises; yet in no other play is the body in question so elusive.

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