Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire was first staged in New York City in 1947 and remains one of his most celebrated works. Its main character, Blanche DuBois, is a sensitive and compromised Southern woman who succumbs to madness, overwhelmed by guilt and an inability to adapt to a changing world.

The Night of the Iguana (1960) was one of Williams's last great successes. This play explores a set of socially marginal characters who find redemption despite their weaknesses and disappointments.

Carson McCullers's novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) grows, like Williams's work, out of a strong Southern tradition in U.S. literature. This novel, like the Southern tradition in general, has strong gothic and grotesque overtones.

The Sound and the Fury (1929), by William Faulkner, is set in the U.S. South, as are most of Williams's plays. Like Williams, Faulkner explores...