48 pages • 1 hour read
Tennessee WilliamsSuddenly, Last Summer
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1958A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Scene 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Scene 3 Summary
Catharine’s mother and younger brother, George, enter the garden. The stage direction describes Mrs. Holly as “fatuous” and George as tall and handsome. After expressing gratitude that Catharine is at St. Mary’s, Mrs. Holly asks Sister Felicity if she and her son might speak to Catharine alone. The nun reluctantly withdraws, whereupon George loudly berates Catharine for “ruining” the family. Catharine remarks on how “elegant” her brother looks, and Mrs. Holly tells her that George has inherited Sebastian’s clothes; however, everything else is tied up in probate. She iv hints that Violet may not have long to live and suggests that Catharine be “very careful” what she tells her about what happened to Sebastian at Cabeza de Lobo. She suggests that Catharine, the only witness who has come forward, must surely be suffering from some kind of delusion or nightmare and that the family stands to lose a great deal of money if Catharine continues to torment her aunt with that “horrible” story. George explains that Sebastian left the three of them $50,000 each, but Violet can legally block it for as long as she likes.
Catharine points out that if the doctor injects her with truth serum, as seems likely, she will have no choice but to tell her aunt exactly what happened to her son. Still, the two of them badger her to “forget” her story. Catharine affectionately reaches out to touch George’s cheek, but he wrenches her hand away and upbraids her, saying she is “crazy like a coyote” (381). Mrs. Holly asks her why she fabricated such a story in the first place, but Catharine insists that the story is true. George explodes at her, calling her a “bitch” who has no mental illness; she is just “perverse.” He says that he’s young and ambitious and needs things, so she should think of others besides herself. Mrs. Holly shouts at Catharine to do the right thing for her family just before George warns them loudly that Violet is approaching.
Scene 3 Analysis
In its development of the theme of Family Dynamics and Manipulation, this scene deepens the play’s portrayal of Catharine as a “saint”: a lone voice of truth and compassion amid pervasive corruption. Catharine defies her bullying mother and brother to insist on her account of what happened to Sebastian at Cabeza de Lobo. At the same time, she fends off the worldly temptation of wealth. By tying up Sebastian’s estate in probate, Violet seeks to shackle the Holly family (her poorer relations) to her purse strings, just as she has tried to bribe Dr. Cukrowicz. Catharine is uninterested in this, but she does suffer from her family’s anger, sobbing when George calls her “perverse.” Despite her mother and brother’s poor treatment of her, she continues to love them, further underscoring her selfless nature.
By contrast, Catharine’s younger brother George, who has taken over Sebastian’s wardrobe and looks forward to inheriting his money, threatens to follow, doppelganger-like, in his cousin’s footsteps. Like Sebastian, he is handsome, selfish, and unusually attached to his mother, and his sharp rejection of his sister’s gesture of affection (stroking his face) echoes Sebastian’s similar rebuff of her love. (When George angrily makes a “slapping” gesture and turns his back on her, Catharine sees this resemblance and “laughs wildly.”) Like Dr. Cukrowicz, another good-looking man who dresses in white, George is clearly in moral peril from the Venables. Though the late Sebastian Venable himself never appears onstage, the two male characters who do (George and Dr. Cukrowicz) function partly as his doubles: Part of the play’s suspense centers on whether these young men will take the wrong path—as Sebastian did when he broke away from Catharine and ran in the “wrong direction” at Cabeza de Lobo. It remains for Catharine, with her revelatory testimony in the last scene, to save them (and herself) as she failed to save her cousin.
Although the details of that testimony are as yet unclear, George and Mrs. Holly’s remarks suggest that Catharine’s account of Sebastian’s death is not only scandalous but incredible. In fact, Mrs. Holly accuses her outright of “invent[ing]” the story. The exchange has metafictional resonance given the play’s seemingly fantastical events; if something so bizarre must be fiction, the audience can rest assured that what they are watching is in some sense “untrue.” However, Catharine doubles down on the account, insisting not only that it is true but that it is representative of “[their] time and the world [they] live in” (382). This idea is key to the play’s exploration of Art Versus Life. While the play’s narrative may seem unbelievable, Williams suggests that this is precisely what makes it true: Reality is far harsher than what an artist could devise.
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