Cat Context and Quotes

    Cards (17)

    • The 1958 film starred Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor. While it was successful, it is often criticised for diluting the drama, for example by removing the play’s homosexual themes.
    • Following WWII, in the US there was a period of economic growth in cities and a decline in agrarian economies.
    • Williams collaborated with director Elias Kazan on re-writing Act 3 in order to ensure its success on  Broadway. 
    • In 1974, Williams changed the epigraph to lines from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”, suggesting death and mortality as the primary focal points of the play
    • Three major changes to the Broadway Act 3 version include: 1. Brick undergoes a change following his Act 2 conversation with Big Daddy, becoming supportive towards Maggie and eager to turn his life around. 2. Big Daddy remains onstage, an unshakeable and powerful figure who has become accepting of his mortality and reconciliatory to his wife. 3. Maggie is more likeable.
    • Williams was not convinced by the changes to Act 3. Among other things, he felt that the “moral paralysis” of Brick was key to the tragedy; he also felt that a single conversation could not realistically shift a character’s entire outlook in this way. 
    • Susan Abbotson, in writing about “Cat” as a tragedy, argues that the play is what Williams saw as “specifically American tragedy”: a result of the contradiction between the original Puritan settlers’ desire to escape religious persecution and their strictness in persecuting those they deemed sinful. 
    • The Lavender Scare of the 1950s involved the targeting of government-employed homosexuals as potential threats to traditional American values, as well as easy prey for Soviet spies. 
    • Susan Abbotson that “Williams’ tragic protagonists all must live under the constant threat of displacement and/or destruction.”
    • The figure of the Southern Belle was a romanticised, ante-bellum (Old South) myth. Traditionally the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner, she was meant to be charming, attractive and flirtatious, as well as modest, domestic and submissive.
    • The play conforms to some ideas of the Aristotelian tragedy, such as the unities of time, action and place, as well as an eminent man brought to misfortune through an error (hamartia). Different characters could be argued to be heroic, however, and the original Act 3 does not offer a resolution. The Broadway Act 3 also offers a sense of catharsis.
    • Patriarchal ideas–common in the 1950s and in particular in traditional Southern families–are pervasive in the play. The characters are identified by their positions within the patriarcha order (i.e. Big Daddy, Big Mama, Sister Woman, Brother Man).
    • Southern writers often felt under pressure to exploit the myth of the Southern Grotesque in order to achieve success, especially with Northern audiences. This involved presenting characters as “backward and illiberal” and showing them to have a “unique moral perversity” (Allen Tate). This can be seen even in the names of Williams’ characters (Big Mamma, Big Daddy) and the animalistic descriptions of the children and Big Mama.
    • In the 1950s, the typical role for men saw the male as head of the household and the main breadwinner. Heterosexuality was the norm. Critics such as Savran point out that Big Daddy has a ‘divided’ position here: he seems to ‘epitomize the orthodox heterosexual masculinity of the 1950s that simultaneously desires and degrades women’ BUT he also speaks to Brick about the importance of developing ‘tolerance’ (p64) and criticises Brick for his failure to support his friend Skipper.
    • The myth of the American Dream is that idea that with enough work and determination anyone can become anything, regardless of background. The rags to riches story similarly presents this idea. 
    • The male labour shortage during WWII brought more women into the workforce, challenging maternal and domestic female roles. This could particularly be seen in forceful, independent female characters in the theatre. 
    • Onyett writes: “[Maggie and Big Daddy] embody the brute strength of the survivor”