Absent presence: homosexuality in three plays by Tennessee Williams

Having as a corpus three plays by Tennessee Williams, A streetcar named Desire, Suddenly, last summer, and Cat on a hot tin roof, this text seeks to observe, using historical-social analysis and literature review, how the absent homosexual characters become present and how, even absent, they constitute breaking points in the works. The analysis is undertaken aiming to understand Williams’ discourse when dealing with homosexuality in the plays. We concluded that, even with absent homosexual characters, Williams manages to make them present through the characters’ speeches, bringing to light the issues that victimized them to be discussed.