Proper props: circulating objects in The glass menagerie and A streetcar named Desire

Building on recent theatre scholarship theorizing the role of stage properties, this article parses the function that objects acquire in Tennessee Williams’s plays The glass menagerie and A streetcar named Desire. Reconsidering these works through the role of objects such as clothes, baggage, letters, and bottles, allows for a deeper understanding of the issues embedded in the signifying economy of the two plays. A diachronic and synchronic overview of the meaningful and recurring props to be found in these works shows how certain objects circulate in a cultural landscape where gender and sexuality dominate the dramatic discourse of the era. Williams’s theatre thus proves preoccupied with a reductive sense of objectification that belittles and disparages human beings in general and women in particular. Through a subtle indictment of the materialist and consumerist world of 1940s America, these plays give objects the power to evidence gender inequalities and hegemonic sexual politics.