I have written about “Sense of Place” before. I try to point
out when an author uses the technique to create a character out of places like
farms, towns or churches in a story. Sense of place can be grander like our
famous Mississippi authors who use words like the Delta or South to conjure a
feeling.
Sense of place is not necessarily a positive character
either. Small towns have a reputation for being constrictive in “Coming of Age”
stories. For instance, it was a cumulative of small town ideas that made Shelly
run to the city. She could get lost in a city. In the city no one would know
her name or her family, etc.
Last night I sat amongst likeminded Mississippians
discussing the plays of Tennessee Williams in the Cutrer Mansion in Clarksdale.
Our leader, Professor Colby Kullman, instructs at Ole Miss. The plays we
focused on were Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Streetcar Named Desire.
Since we were in Clarksdale, Colby spent time on the
characters and their hometown connection. He had a lovely picture of the real
Baby Doll who was a classy lady and not the floozy portrayed in the screenplay
by the same name. We learned that Brick from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was the
name of a bully that harassed little Williams in the neighborhood.
Colby startled me when he started talking about
geopathology. I had never heard the term. It is defined in Chaudhuri’s book
titled Staging Place as “the problem of place.” It, “informs realistic drama
deeply, appearing as a series of ruptures and displacements in various orders of
location, from the micro- to the macrospatial, from house to nature, with
intermediary space concepts such as neighborhood, hometown, community, and
country ranged in between.”
Instead of “Sense of Place” in Tennessee Williams’ drama
there is the “Painful Politics of Place.” He used the Delta and its colorful
inhabitants to create tension in his early plays. You might not see the loam of
the fields or the lazy river through the stage windows, but they are there
creating this negative force as palpable as an evil person.
On a positive note, although the plays depict a strangling
of the natural self, they do provide Clarksdale with a steady stream of
visitors. The world is fascinated by the Delta and people are willing to travel
far to experience its sensations. Thank you, Tennessee Williams.
5 comments:
Love this! One of my favorite things about Southern literature is, of course, the sense of place. Thanks for sharing what you learned!
Thanks Tiffany! Hope you are getting some reading in while raising your little baby doll! :D
I was recently reading a book about paddling a river while thinking about changes needed in the environmental movement (I'll post a review soon). The author suggested that the sense of place needs to be strong in an environmentalist, otherwise the burnout is high.
Sage, I like that theory. I am falling more in love with Mississippi as I run outside and read books by MS authors in MS settings. The beauty is as vast any national park. Environmentalists are stronger in local settings, or am I being a generalist?
Great reading your bblog
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