Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: The Uneasy Marriage of Success and Idealism

Abstract

In the psychological study of literature, it is assumed that a work of imaginative writing is always, to some extent, autobiographical; works of art, like dreams, are seen as enacting the author's psychological states, internal conflicts, and current concerns. Like the people in dreams, the various characters in a story or play can resemble significant others in the author's life, but each of them may also stand for the author's self. The principal characters in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof — Brick and Maggie — can be interpreted as representations of Tennessee Williams himself. In their evolution from their first appearance in a short story through the original and Broadway versions of the play, Tennessee Williams has symbolically worked through a turning point in his own life as an artist — namely, the point at which he could choose either to shape his play according to his and others' ideas of a big hit, or to become paralyzed as a writer by the weight of forbidden truths that he lacked courage to bring to light in his art. In this psychobiographical reading, Skipper stands for the suppressed truths, Brick is the artist immobilized by guilt, and Maggie represents the impulse toward artistic survival at any cost. In allegorical shorthand, Maggie is Success and Brick is Idealism.