• Play title: The Strangest Kind of Romance
• Author: Tennessee Williams
• First performed: 1942
• Page count: 23

Summary

The Strangest Kind of Romance: A Lyric Play in Four Scenes is a short work by Tennessee Williams. The subtitle suggests a play that captures a particular emotional state, which it does. The setting is a boarding house presided over by a Mizz Gallaway. One Autumn day, an Italian man of quite a small stature arrives looking for a room. He is also seeking work in the locality as a labourer. Upon being shown a room vacated by a previous tenant, a Russian, the Little Man makes his acquaintance with the Russian’s recently orphaned cat named Nitchevo. The pair soon form a special bond, which amuses all those who later witness it. The Little Man quickly finds work at the local factory and makes friends with his landlady’s father-in-law, but he mostly just keeps to himself. Williams’ play is a character study of loneliness. Solitary, fragile people are shown to be especially vulnerable to the whims of fate.

Ways to access the text: reading/listening

The text of the play is available via Scribd, which offers a free trial. The playscript is quite short and is reader-friendly thanks to Williams’ free-flowing dialogue.

It is also possible to listen to an audio recording of the play on Mixcloud. It is listed on the site as “Short Play 25: The Strangest Kind of Romance by Tennessee Williams.” The recording is 42 mins long and stars Kathleen Turner as the landlady and Michael Stuhlbarg as the Little Man.

Why read/listen to The Strangest Kind of Romance?

A friendship between a lonely man and a cat is a strange idea upon which to construct a play. However, Williams does just that in this imaginative and enigmatic work. The charm of the piece is that nothing is quite as simple as it appears. The Little Man is an unskilled factory labourer, and yet he is a fragile soul in a world that does not understand him. The local factory is a vital source of labour but also a symbol of heartless capitalism. Mizz Gallaway’s father-in-law is a senile, drunken, old fool. However, he is also kindness personified, and incidentally, a look-alike of Walt Whitman. Overall, the play communicates far more than one would expect. At the centre is a little man who has somehow been emotionally damaged and has subsequently retracted almost completely from the world. A stray cat becomes his only friend and a lifeline too.

Post-reading discussion/interpretation

_{Living a Boxed-In Life}

The Strangest Kind of Romance is an odd, little play with a diminutive, foreign-looking, vagabond-type figure at its heart. The Little Man arrives in a boarding house with a suitcase that is so old and battered that it falls apart, and everything tumbles onto the floor in his soon-to-be new room/home. It is a play about an emotional state, let us call it loneliness – but it is somehow more tragic than a single word can accommodate. Williams returns one to a bygone era of American boarding houses and the transient workers who occupied their confining, often soul-destroying, little rooms. The play is out of date, far too reflective of its author’s own struggles with his sexuality, and worst of all – it is uneventful. Unless one considers a depiction of crushing self-doubt to be a full story (?). Like Philip Larkin once wrote, “Man hands on misery to man / It deepens like a coastal shelf.” That particular poem entitled “This Be the Verse” is famous as it humorously tackles the progeny of bad parenting, but the Little Man will unlikely ever parent a child or even be remembered after he dies. He does, however, carry the burden of some old hurt, or secret, which progressively wears him down, like the attrition elegantly described by Larkin. The play is engaging for the very reasons that one would not typically like it; it is about the sad, tragic side of life. It is also the study of a character that seldom takes the lead in any story – the almost invisible loner. Unboxing the Little Man requires one to contemplate the pressures, both past and present, which have led him to his final predicament in the coffin-like space of his rented room.

There is a homosexual subtext to the Little Man’s story. This is a salient yet not defining element of Williams’ play. The risk is that by focusing on the Little Man’s sexuality, one may, albeit unintentionally, tie him a little too closely to his creator, Williams, and thereby reduce the character to a revelation by proxy of Williams’ own demons about his sexuality. Nonetheless, an exploration of the Little Man’s hinted-at sexual preference lends itself to a better understanding of his life including the apparently celibate time he spends in Mizz Gallaway’s boarding house. Misaligned with the flow of normal society, the Little Man is the essence of queerness, but sexuality is just one façade of that label.

The play’s title is the first signal of the protagonist’s divergent life. The use of the superlative ‘strangest’ places the romance at the very edge of what can be considered acceptable: while still technically qualifying as a romance. Williams wrote the play in 1941 so whether one imagines the romantic partner as being a much-loved cat or another man is unimportant, since either would have been spoken of derogatorily, even with a little disgust. The title assumes a level of justified moral unease and a healthy measure of related condescension. A man who chooses a pet cat to the exclusion of human relationships is an oddity. Loving Nitchevo is branded “the strangest kind of a romance” (144) by Mizz Gallaway, the red-blooded, heterosexual woman who runs the boarding house. She had an intimate relationship with the room’s former tenant, the Russian, but she felt excluded from his full affection due to his pesky pet. The Little Man adopts the cat yet has no interest in performing the Russian’s other duties. For Mizz Gallaway, the cat becomes a barometer of a man’s sexuality. The Little Man’s love of the cat evolves into an excuse to avoid Mizz Gallaway’s amorous attentions, but it may also be a clear indication of the romances he formerly pursued, namely with men.

The second word of interest in the title is ‘kind,’ which may be defined as a group with similar characteristics: a particular type. What type is the Little Man? Although not published until 1976, gay writer Christopher Isherwood’s memoir entitled Christopher and his Kind is a helpful reference point for a definition of who is being referred to here. The strangest kind of romance by 1940s standards is unquestionably one that excludes women. For a man, this most typically means homosexual. The title can mean the disproportionate love of a pet but only ever in a humorous way. Suspicions arise if the man subsequently shows no interest in the opposite sex. Dean Shackelford states that “Of course, the relationship to which Williams’s title refers is clearly encoded as a metaphor for gay romances” (127). Thus, the play title is the first, easily solvable clue to the Little Man’s story. The first burdensome truth that must not be revealed.

The room

The “furnished room” (Williams 135) that the Little Man rents from Mizz Gallaway is an uncomplicated symbol of refuge. Shackelford argues that while the play “discloses homosexuality only indirectly,” the room “symbolizes the protection of the closet” (120). He writes that “As long as the Little Man is in his room with Nitchevo, he can feel secure and invulnerable. He can find the protection of the closet” (120). Although sexuality is a crucial theme in the play, the Little Man’s problems encompass wider issues. Williams deliberately provides a detailed description of the meagre room. For instance, the room has two windows with one overlooking the manufacturing plant while the other offers a view of a tree. The room’s occupant looks out upon either nature or industry. The Little Man cowers before the demands made on him by his new factory job (capitalism) and by Mother Nature (the demand to be normal). Thus, the room is a refuge from various demands encircling his life, not just a homosexual hideaway.

Another salient point about the room is that it is not fashioned to suit the Little Man. It is a basic room in a boarding house that serves the plant’s need for fresh, unskilled labour. Williams explains that the occupants of the room are “the itinerant, unmarried working-men of a nation” (135). In this regard, one is speaking about a large, diverse community of lone men who are tragically disconnected from one another. The room is a mark of the men’s failures in society in myriad ways. Robert Skloot highlights the fact that Williams uses the potent motif of single rooms in his plays and explains the relevance as follows:

“With good reason do Williams’ plays, stories and poems take place in motels, hotels, rooming houses, whorehouses, or decrepit and crumbling houses, for it is in these environments that his transients are most vulnerable and most desperate to touch another wandering creature before they are evicted, committed, or destroyed, all the while contesting to the limits of their fragile strength the demons of greed, drink, bad luck, disease, and death.”

(Skloot 202) 

Conversely, Mizz Gallaway chooses to explain the plights of the working men as somehow natural. She dismissively comments on the various signatures adorning the room’s wall: “Birds of passage. You ever try to count them? Restlessness – changes” (139). The tale of the illiterate Russian gives the lie to this description. He was not merely a large man but “tremendous!” in stature (139), and yet the strain of working at the factory resulted in his poor health and eventual death from tuberculosis. He vacated the rooming house as a broken man. Rather than face reality, Mizz Gallaway shares her theory that the Russian’s “bad run of luck” (136) was on account of the cat. In truth, she rents the room to hard-up, unskilled labourers, who are often foreigners, and then she facilitates their speedy introduction to Mr Woodson at the plant. The room is the first cog in an exploitative system.

It is subsequently surprising that from the Little Man’s perspective, “the room is home” (145). The antithesis of homeliness becomes a home out of sheer necessity. A consideration of this point leads one to consider the intimacy of the space too. The room is furnished including bed linen, so a succession of single men has slept in the same bed with the same old, washed-out sheets. These men would have looked out of the same two windows onto the same scenes. They likely even had similar thoughts concerning the plant’s working conditions, money, and their futures. There is an accidental intimacy to the space on account of all the past and even prospective future male occupants. Within the privacy of this small room, the men dress and undress, bring back sexual partners, or sometimes masturbate alone at night. The room encloses each man’s life in a tiny space for a fleeting period. It is a doomed space that constricts lives that will, in many cases, soon expire. The room is a false friend since it facilitates the Little Man’s further exploitation as opposed to his rehabilitation or recovery.

The sole record of the room’s numerous tenants is the list of signatures, x’s, and drawings on the wall. Mizz Gallaway tells the Little Man of her plans: “Some day I’m going to take me a wire scrubbing-brush an’ a bar of Fels Naphtha an’ leave them walls as clean as they was before the first roomer moved in” (140). The ease with which Mizz Gallaway may cleanse the room of the traces of its many inhabitants strikes up connotations of washing away filth, dirt, or possibly guilt. Her father-in-law hears her words and chastises her, saying, “These signatures are their little claims of remembrance. Their modest bids for immortality, daughter” (140). The empathic old soul, who is said to resemble Walt Whitman, defends the dignity of the transient workers. Total anonymity becomes both a threat and a grievous insult.

The Little Man

The Little Man is a mystifying character. It is far easier to classify him as a loner and societal outsider than to decode his inner motivations and worldview. Williams’ depiction of this strange character is all surface. Society generally casts a dispassionate eye on such people. Therefore, an audience is enrolled in the same subtle game of devaluing him. Yet Williams is sympathetic to his protagonist. Williams highlights this through his depictions of cold-hearted and selfish people like Gallaway and Woodson. Of course, the Little Man has a past, a family, possibly old loves, stories, and experiences; but we learn none of these essential elements that are a basic requirement to understand any man.

Williams acquaints us with one of life’s silent losers. The obvious defeat is not necessarily on account of any flaw in the Little Man’s character but rather because of the circumstances and job opportunities with which life has presented him. The mismatch between the man and his lot in life is succinctly outlined by Mizz Gallaway’s first impressions of him. She describes him as “dark and more delicate and nervous in appearance than laborers usually are” (135). These three distinct markers, namely the darkness of skin colour, the delicacy of physical build, and nervousness are all negatives. They instantly brand the Little Man as a foreigner, a weakling unsuited to hard labour, and a person with a social impediment in the form of low self-esteem. Nonetheless, Gallaway directs the Little Man to the factory to get work, which shows her insensitivity. A lack of options seals the Little Man’s fate. Skloot gives a summation of the kinds of characters Williams specialises in, and one can immediately recognise the Little Man in the following description.

““Freaks” is the harsh word which inspires Williams to create his most troubled characters. The word is organized society’s term for the incomplete people whose presence irritates and disturbs the vulgar and insensitive “normality.” These “freaks” become victims of the world’s cruelty, cruelty which often is manifested in the destruction of individual freedom, often seen in the denial of sanctuary or rest.”

(Skloot 200)

What is apparent is that the Little Man is fragile. A closeted homosexual, he may be, but there are numerous other hypothetical reasons for his inability to deal with the quotidian demands of life. He may have experienced trauma, physical illness, or mental illness in the past. Whatever the reason, the Little Man no longer feels like a real person and describes himself instead as “A kind of a – ghost of a – man” (145). He explains the situation to Mizz Gallaway.

“The body is only – a shell. It may be alive – when what’s inside – is too afraid to come out! It stays locked up and alone! Single! Private! That’s how it is – with me. You’re not talking to me – but just what you think is me!”

(Williams 146)

Mizz Gallaway makes the facile summation of his predicament as one of loneliness. Skloot explains Williams’ aim when depicting such damaged characters.

“A state of incompletion, then, is the state of the oppressed people who inhabit Williams’ world, and their struggle to overcome their condition is the action which his art describes. The unique part of his vision is that it is infused with a compassion for the plight of his characters which reaches to the deepest part of our understanding; it gives his early work a brooding often melancholic texture which no other American playwright possesses. But rather than detracting from the quality of his art, this compassion enriches it because it is based on an indomitable belief, an insistent faith in the worth of the most fragile and broken human soul.”

(Skloot 201)

The only person with whom the Little Man bonds is the landlady’s father-in-law. The old man is another broken individual: unemployment, old age, and alcoholism. As Skloot writes, Williams’ “fragile people seek each other out; whatever anguish they feel they know that the pain of life can be softened in the presence of others who are similarly pained” (202). The Little Man’s active search for completeness and healing is most evident when he accepts the companionship of a sympathetic friend. The bond is not sexual or even romantic. It is merely about the kindness that one person can lend to another. The Little Man is a victim of a harsh world, but his salvation is not entirely hopeless.

Nitchevo the cat

The Russian most likely gave the cat its unusual name. John Foster Fraser explains the word nichevo (without a t) as “Russia’s motto of don’t care.” If one insists that it be spelt with the ‘t,’ then one may refer to the Bulgarian word nitchevo, which means threadbare. Thus, the cat’s name sums up the generally apathetic disposition of the broken Little Man in his cheap, shabby accommodation.

One need not doubt the Little Man’s affection and reliance on Nitchevo and still comprehend that the cat acts solely as a protective shield. Williams employs the cat to serve two quite distinct roles. First, the cat is a substitute for a romantic relationship with a member of the opposite/same sex. Second, the cat is a metaphor that communicates the kinds of trysts gay men had when homosexuality was still illegal and taboo. To begin with the substitute relationship – it is clear that the Little Man is too fragile to engage in a full, healthy relationship. He chooses an animal over a human since the cat is reliant on him for food, and therefore unwaveringly faithful to him. Additionally, the cat is a vital sounding board for his own inner dialogue. The Little Man chats with the cat, like when he explains the horrible incident at the factory, and he thereby enacts the illusion of never being alone. Despite his youth, the Italian never goes out except to work at the plant (143). When he is at home in his room, he is usually “Carrying on a one-sided conversation with a cat” (144). The cat stands in for a real partner whose profile we may only guess.

Williams presents the cat as the partner of last resort while simultaneously layering the story with sexual innuendos. The cat is a metaphor that describes forbidden homosexual trysts. For instance, Mizz Gallaway thinks at one point that the Little Man has brought home a woman when she hears chatter in his room. Gallaway cautions about the risks of picking up women on the street since they “aren’t likely to be very clean,” and she goes on to refer to “feminine hygiene” (144). The insinuation here is that prostitutes (or easy women) carry disease and therefore should be avoided. One may compare this to the tale of how the Russian found the “stray alley cat” and “let ‘er sleep in his bed,” which Gallaway calls “a dirty practice” (137). The alley is the taboo spot where lonely men may find companionship of one kind or another. If the Little Man did not have a cat for a companion, then maybe he would have to entertain his own troublesome questions about whom he is attracted to and where to find such company.

Sex

Mizz Gallaway makes what she believes is a deal with the Little Man to fulfil the duties of the late Russian, which included domestic and other (read sexual) duties too. She scolds the Little Man, advising that “Men that – live by themselves – get peculiar ways. All that part of their lives that was meant to be taken up with family matters is all left over – empty” (139). One may assume that she is not actually referring to the importance of parenthood, but rather the necessity of releasing pent-up sexual energy. When the Little Man shuns her numerous sexual advances, she unsubtly reveals her true desires – “Quit dodging the issue! … I thought I explained things to you. My husband’s a chronic invalid” (145). Sex becomes a test of normality that the Little Man utterly fails. Gallaway succeeded in initiating intimate relationships with the Russian and the newest tenant, the Boxer, so she undoubtedly possesses a particular sexual allure. In a later burst of anger, Gallaway tells the Little Man: “You’re not a man at all, you’re a poor excuse” (152).

Gallaway speaks with all the authority of a designated spokesperson of Mother Nature: “Nature says – “Man take woman or – man be lonesome!” (144). The Little Man’s response indicates a deep level of sexual repression or the possibility of asexuality.

“Nature has never said anything to me. …Oh, I listened. But all I ever heard was my own voice -asking me troublesome questions!”

(Williams 144)

One subtle clue provided by Williams at the opening of the play suggests an explanation for the Little Man’s sexual dilemma. When his tattered suitcase disintegrates in front of Mizz Gallaway’s eyes, various objects fall to the floor, including a rosary (135). Given that the Little Man is Italian, a once staunchly Catholic country, then his sexual repression may be interlinked with old-fashioned feelings of sinfulness and shame. One witnesses his fastidiousness, and his undisguised repulsion to any talk of sanitary matters (140) or female sexuality/hygiene (144). He is even embarrassed to be seen shirtless by his landlady (143). His apparent sexual repression is a key obstacle to any potential relationship. It is noteworthy that he welcomes the comforting, motherly embrace of his landlady while shunning her numerous sexual advances on him. Based on this example, he may see women only as nurturers and carers but not as sexual partners. If Nature says nothing to the young man, then it may be that he does not understand the ‘natural’ sexual urges that prompt men like the Russian or the Boxer. The ‘troublesome questions’ indicate a deviation from what was considered normal and acceptable, which could denote homosexuality or the complete lack of sexual urges. The repercussions for the Little Man are negative, stigmatizing labels like unmanly and odd. Nature, as represented by the tree outside his window, is strangely no less of an oppressive taskmaster than the factory bosses.

The Plant (factory)

The Little Man is an insignificant worker caught in the heart of the capitalist system maelstrom. Unfair transactional relationships define Williams’ play. There are oppressive forces that push down on the Little Man to perform according to conventional, external demands. If Mizz Gallaway is the representative of Mother Nature, then Oliver Woodson stands in for the God of Industry. Woodson represents the unceasing demands of the free market for cheap, disposable labour. In the Little Man’s room, “The window in the right wall admits the flickering ruddy glow of the plant and its pulse-like throbbing is heard faintly” (141). The throb of the machinery has an undeniable hint of sex to it, but the juices are oil and diesel, and the progeny are market products.

In the factory, the Little Man experiences demands to perform beyond his capacity. He has problems with his hands and as a result, he cannot work the machines efficiently. One day he causes the machine to jam and the production line to grind to a halt. Mr Woodson grabs him and humiliates him on the factory floor, saying, “You clumsy Dago! Jammed up the works again, you brainless Spick!” (142). The Little Man is overwhelmed with shame and breaks down in tears. This is a turning point. The landlady’s father-in-law is an ex-worker from the plant, and he is a foreshadowing of the Little Man’s future: broken and alone. Reminiscent of a Christian martyr, the old man describes how he was nailed to the cross of “Cupidity and Stupidity” (150). David Radavich describes the enormous influence of industry in The Strangest Kind of Romance: “In the one-act set in Saint Louis, the [plant’s influence] … permeates the boarding-house where anonymous workers pass through, get used up as expendable human resources, and go away to die” (141). All the key relationships (work and personal) that the Little Man becomes entangled in merely exhibit the many ways in which he can be and is exploited.

Conclusion

After the incident at the factory, the Little Man has a mental breakdown and is temporarily committed to the care of the Catholic Sisters of Mercy. He cries when he returns to Mizz Gallaway’s after his hospitalisation and finds that the cat is gone and his room is newly occupied. A man named Bill now sleeps in what was once his bed, and the cat that was his only friend in the world has disappeared. The disposable nature of the Little Man’s life is emphasised by Mizz Gallaway’s final words to him – “Your stuff, your few belongings, are packed in the downstairs closet. On your way out you may as well pick them up” (155). The season has changed as attested to by the new leaves on the branches outside the window. The Little Man must now join the lengthy line of those who had bad luck and moved on. Williams presents a character whose problems may be summed up as a general sensitivity to the pressures of life. The complexity of his personal back story is never revealed but the effects are apparent.

“Turn out the light. I’ve lived too long in a room that was nothing but windows and always at noon and with no curtains to draw.”

(Williams 152) 

Yet a glimmer of hope appears right at the conclusion of the story. The old man finds Nitchevo in the alley, so the Little Man is reunited with his friend. The alley, which was previously stigmatized as a dubious location, is now transformed into a place of redemption. The landlady speaks of “The funniest pair of lovers” (158), but the statement is ambiguous in the context. Has the young Italian found a soulmate in his friend the old man, or is it simply that he and Nitchevo are together again? What is ultimately important is companionship and mutual sympathy. Williams depicts a man on the edge of society and yet hope is never lost.

Works Cited

Foster Fraser, John. “Nichevo!”–Russia’s Motto of Don’t Care.” The New York Times, 17 March 1918.  

Larkin, Philip. “This Be The Verse.” Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse 

Radavich, David. “Regional Tensions in Tennessee Williams’s Candles to the Sun and Spring Storm.” South Atlantic Review, vol. 72, no. 3, 2007, pp. 38–50. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27784724. Accessed 15 April 2023. 

Shackelford, Dean. “‘The Ghost of a Man’: The Quest for Self-Acceptance in Early Williams.” The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, no. 4, 2001. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/48615476. Accessed 17 April 2023. 

Skloot, Robert. “Submitting Self to Flame: The Artist’s Quest in Tennessee Williams, 1935-1954.” Educational Theatre Journal, vol. 25, no. 2, 1973, pp. 199–206. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3205870. Accessed 12 April 2023. 

Williams, Tennessee. The Strangest Kind of Romance. 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays, New Directions, 1953.