The Rose Tattoo by Tennessee Williams

First published: 1951

First produced: 1950, at the Erlanger Theatre, Chicago, Illinois

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of work: 1950

Locale: Sicilian immigrant village on the Gulf Coast

Principal Characters:

• Serafina Delle Rose, a Sicilian woman
• Rosa Delle Rose, her teenage daughter
• Assunta, an old woman
• Estelle Hohengarten, a neighborhood woman
• Alvaro Mangiacavallo, a young man
• Father de Leo, the neighborhood priest
• Jack Hunter, a young sailor and Rosa’s boyfriend
• Miss Yorke, a schoolteacher
• Flora, and
• Bessie, customers
• The Strega, a witch

The Play

The Rose Tattoo is a three-act play set in a Sicilian immigrant village on the Gulf Coast of the United States. The play opens at dusk and Serafina Delle Rose, the main character, is sitting in her living room, waiting for her husband, Rosario, to return; she is pregnant. A sign reveals that she is a seamstress, and Estelle Hohengarten arrives with a piece of rose-colored silk she wants made into a man’s shirt. During the course of act 1 the audience learns that Rosario is a truck driver who is engaged in smuggling to earn enough money to pay off his truck. Serafina reveals to Assunta that on the night she conceived her son, she awakened to feel needle pricks on her breast and saw there a rose tattoo, exactly like Rosario’s tattoo. The tattoo disappeared, but she knew she had conceived. Later, the neighborhood women and Father de Leo come to tell Serafina that Rosario has been killed. In defiance of the Church’s strictures, Serafina decides to cremate Rosario and to keep his ashes. The trauma causes her to miscarry.

Scene 4 opens in June, three years later, with Serafina besieged by women who have paid her to sew graduation dresses for their daughters. Serafina is disheveled and disoriented, and Rosa is locked up in the house naked because Serafina learned that she met a sailor named Jack at a high school dance. Miss Yorke, one of Rosa’s teachers, arrives and persuades Serafina to let Rosa attend the graduation ceremony.

While Rosa is gone, two customers, Flora and Bessie, arrive on their way to an American Legion convention. During a confrontation about their morals, they reveal to Serafina that Rosario was engaged in a long-term affair with Estelle Hohengarten. Serafina chases them out of the house with a broom. Rosa arrives with Jack and cleans up Serafina so she can meet him, and Serafina makes Jack swear on his knees before the shrine to Mary that he will respect Rosa’s purity.

Serafina fears that the story about Rosario may be true and asks Father de Leo about the rumor, but he refuses to answer. Alvaro’s appearance and his fight with the salesman reveal his overtly emotional nature and his similarities to Rosario. Serafina gives him the rose-colored silk shirt to wear, which she made unwittingly for Rosario. Their attraction is obvious, and it is not surprising that Serafina invites him to come back.

Later that night, Serafina’s appearance echoes her look in act 1, and when Alvaro enters with a box of chocolates, he reveals that he too has a rose tattooed on his chest. During the course of the evening Serafina telephones Estelle Hohengarten, who confirms her affair with Rosario, prompting Serafina to smash the ash urn on the floor. Eventually, after pretending to leave, Alvaro returns by the back door and goes to bed with Serafina. Meanwhile, Rosa’s return with Jack reveals that she wanted to have sex with him, but he could not break his oath. Their plans to run away together are Rosa’s idea, prompted by her strong desire to experience sex with Jack.

During the final confrontation between Serafina and Rosa, prompted by Alvaro’s behavior upon seeing Rosa on the couch, Serafina is initially duplicitous about Alvaro, pretending she does not know who he is or why he is there. After some argument, Serafina runs him out of the house. Rosa realizes Serafina is lying about her relationship with Alvaro and makes her intention to go with Jack clear. Serafina eventually admits to the relationship with Alvaro and tells Rosa to go to Jack, which she does. Assunta arrives, and Serafina reveals that she has just felt the burning on her breast of the rose tattoo, meaning she has again conceived. She runs to join Alvaro.

Dramatic Devices

The most important devices used by Williams in The Rose Tattoo are multiple instances of symbolism, especially rose symbolism. The rose comes up over and over in the play, in the names of the major characters (Rosario, Rosa, and Delle Rose), the tattoos on both Rosario and Alvaro, the color of the silk shirt, the rose oil both Alvaro and Rosario use in their hair, and in many other instances. In fact, at times the symbolism becomes so pervasive and overt it ceases to function effectively as symbolism and becomes a distraction. However, the sexual symbolism of the rose and its connotations as a romantic flower do support the theme of the play, which revolves around the vitality and necessity of healthy sexual relationships without shame or guilt.

Other symbols employed by Williams include the moody lighting, especially naturalistic lighting such as truck headlights sweeping across Serafina’s house or the earthy atmosphere of her Sicilian neighborhood. The Strega (witch), with her evil eye and her goat that prompts comical chases through the yard, reinforces the ethnic origins and beliefs of the characters, even as they bedevil those who produce the play onstage. Several bits of comical action, including the slapstick set piece with Flora and Bessie, two characters described by Williams as “clowns,” tend to be heavy-handed and less than amusing, but they are clearly intended by Williams to symbolize the joyous celebration of life and vitality that Serafina represents.

Finally, the dressmaker dummies in Serafina’s house not only provide realism regarding her profession as a seamstress but also symbolize the lackluster neighborhood women who do not embrace the life-giving power of sexuality as Serafina does. Ultimately, Serafina both begins and ends the play filled with new life, having rediscovered the power and joy to be found in a full embrace of her sexual nature. The dummies with their empty insides provide a final contrast to Serafina’s being, filled with love and life.

Critical Context

Written only a few years after The Glass Menagerie (pr. 1944, pb. 1945) and A Streetcar Named Desire (pr., pb. 1947), the two plays that are arguably Williams’s masterworks, The Rose Tattoo represented a new direction for Williams, while still focusing on his core themes. Like Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire and to a lesser extent Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, Serafina Delle Rose is a southern woman whose life is largely defined and described by her interactions with men. However, Serafina has many important differences. As a Sicilian, Serafina represents a notion popular in Williams’s oeuvre and in American culture in the early twentieth century: Members of ethnic minorities are more “earthy” and in touch with the vital forces of nature. Certainly Serafina embraces her need for sex and her desire for Rosario with a vehemence and lack of shame that the furtive and flirtatious Blanche would envy. Nevertheless, though Williams’s affection for the Sicilian characters is readily apparent in the play, the underlying cultural ethnocentrism is sometimes startling and offensive to modern readers.

In addition to her ethnic background, Serafina is Catholic and working class. Unlike Amanda and Blanche, she has no glorified past on which to look back with longing. However, the fact that Rosario was a “baron” is a point of some pride for her, a point that echoes the destructive glorification of the past to which Williams returns as a theme again and again. The neighborhood women and their constant gossipy interference in Serafina’s life recall the gossip that proved so destructive to Blanche, and serve as such a concern for Amanda. The fact that many people are highly judgmental and careless about whom they hurt with their talk is also a constant theme of Williams. Serafina, however, deals more honestly and directly with the neighborhood snoops than either Blanche or Amanda, though they still manage to do their destructive work.

Overall, Serafina Delle Rose and her daughter Rosa denote a more positive look at the themes Williams treats in all his major works. Beset by gossip and tormented by those who are less sensitive, less honest, and uncomprehending of their honest embrace of sexuality, both Serafina and Rosa refuse to be cowed and destroyed, driven into madness or despair. In defiance of those around them who do not understand, they move forward at the end of the play, with a hopeful feeling for their futures.

Sources for Further Study

Bigsby, C. W. E. Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee. Vol. 2 in A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views: Tennessee Williams. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.

Devlin, Albert J., ed. Conversations with Tennessee Williams. Jackson: Mississippi University Press, 1986.

Spoto, Donald. The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams. Boston: Little, Brown, 1985.

Williams, Edwina Dakin. Tennessee Williams: A Tribute. Edited by Jac Tharpe. Jackson: Mississippi University Press, 1977.