Home » Film & TV » American Literary Cinema » Victorian Themes in Tennessee Williams' Plays (Part Two of Two)

Victorian Themes in Tennessee Williams' Plays (Part Two of Two)

© Emily Woodward

Issues of spirituality abound in Williams's plays. Among these is the problem of religious doubt that first became prevalent during the Victorian Era. In the play Night of the Iguana, the protagonist, T. Lawrence Shannon, is a minister who experiences a crisis of faith. He refuses "to praise Western theologies that 'accuse God of being a cruel, senile delinquent'," (Falk, 71) much like the image of the divine evoked in Robert Browning's poem "Caliban Upon Setebos." (Damrosch, 1387-1393) For his blasphemous stance, Shannon is defrocked. He proceeds to find employment as a tour guide in the jungles of South America. It is a setting that closely resembles the Galapagos Islands, the part of the world from which Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution that led many Victorians to question their religious beliefs for the first time.

In the jungle, Shannon undergoes transcendence from the "realistic level" of human existence to a realm that he calls "the fantastic" (I, 42):

SHANNON. Yeah, well, you know we - live on two levels, Miss Jelkes, the realistic level and the fantastic level and which is the real one, really...?

HANNAH. I would say both, Mr. Shannon.

Shannon's progression to an alternate state of consciousness, which he achieves in the midst of spiritual upheaval, is reminiscent of the hallucination experienced by the speaker in Tennyson's "In Memoriam." This speaker, who also suffers from religious doubt, enters a "trance" that ends with the "dawn of the 'boundless day'." (Damrosch, 1234) Similarly, Shannon is brought "back to a more realistic level" by the onset of morning (II, 72). However, whereas the "In Memoriam" speaker emerges from his altered state with a clear sense of spiritual renewal - indeed, he is able to cope with his friend's death through the rationalization that he was too "noble" for his times (Damrosch, 1242) - Shannon's journey to the fantastic level ends more ambiguously. There is no concrete evidence that his faith in God has been restored in the wake of his transcendence. If anything, the decision Shannon makes at the end of the play to free the iguana - a recurring symbol of the dueling forces of creationism and evolution (Falk, 73) - suggests that he himself is now playing God (II, 75):

SHANNON. Now Shannon is going to go down there and cut the damn lizard loose so it can run back to the bushes because God won't do it and we are going to play God here.