The thesis this abstract summarizes provides an analysis of two Tennessee Williams dramas, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The
Night of the Iguana. The dramas are investigated from a
psychoanalitical and a gender point of view with archetypal patterns and homographs added.The main focus of the paper is on the two protagonists, Brick from Cat and Shannon from Iguana. Their relationships with other characters are examined, too. The psychoanalitical part attempts to reveal the repressed motives of the characters which make them behave in an obsessive and sometimes hysteric manner. These hidden motives have led to the primal scenes, which, in both characters' case, are related to narcissism. Since then on, Brick and Shannon try to master they primal trauma by repeating it and doing other compensating techniques. The psychoanalitical and the gender part of the thesis are closely related: at the root of their problems lies the wrong gender choice, that is, their biological sex and gender are not the same. They try to repress and ignore it, even by assimilating to the rules of the heterosexual society, but their behaviour gives them away. This includes a tension in Brick and Shannon, which reveals itself in their hysteric manner. Hystery is one of the most authentic representative of the female gender. In the analysis the writer highlights on the male protagonists' female attributes and the female characters' phallic nature, thus on the mixed-up gender roles. None of the heterosexual relationships in the dramas can be described as what is called 'normal'.The writer attempts to prove that the hidden levels of the dramas are very different from the surface level. The homographs in the seemingly heterosexual texts reveal the hidden homosexual layer of the dramas, which make references to the protagonists' marked but denied gender positions. The most overall homograph in them is the Narcissus myth, the mere mention of which justifies the presence of
homosexuality in the text. The final choice of Brick and Shannon also resemble to each other: They chose death, though they seemingly accept the heterosexual relationship offered by a woman, though neither of them say it plainly. But the result is the same: woman, for man, is death.