O Gótico do sul dos Estados Unidos em Um bonde chamado desejo de Tenessee Williams.

Abstract

Given the pluralities and possibilities of the Gothic in literature, for example, the traditional (male) Gothic, the Female Gothic, the American Gothic, this work aims to analyze elements of the American Southern Gothic in A streetcar named Desire (1947) by the American playwright Tennessee Williams (1911-1983). The play deals with the troubled relationships between the Southern Belle Blanche Dubois, a single woman in her 30s who has a traumatic and indecent past,and who is in a position of total financial and social destitution that affects her mental sanity; her sister Stella Dubois, a victim of domestic violence that it is imposed on her by her husband, Stanley Kowalski, a polish descendent, who is a brutal man addicted to gambling and alcohol, and that keeps her imprisionend by sex and economic dependence. Southern Gothic productions are marked by the gloomy past of the American nation rooted in slavery, and show southern characters terrified by a scary present, that is a contrast with their mythic and idelized past, in a society marked by puritan values. To develop the research, it was adopted a bibliographical review and the assumptions of field scholars, such as Hogle (2002), Savoy (2002), Punter and Byron (2004), Bigsby (2004), Botting (2007), Alegrette (2010, 2016), Walsh (2013), among others. The analysis of the play shows how Williams adopts Gothic characteristics to portray the culture of the South in the characters and in the plot.