Suddenly, Last Summer

Content Warning: Suddenly Last Summer features brief descriptions of murder, mutilation, and cannibalism. An unseen character is also implied to be both gay and a pedophile, playing into stereotypes about gay men. The play contains extensive discussion of outdated and harmful approaches to mental health treatment. The guide also references suicide.

A wealthy widow who presides over a palatial estate in New Orleans’s Garden District, Violet is the main antagonist of Suddenly Last Summer. Domineering, predatory, and callous, she spent decades devoted to her only child, the recently deceased Sebastian Venable, whom she lauds as a prodigy and a poet of genius. After Sebastian’s mysterious death in Spain, she adopts the role of the keeper of his flame, fiercely protecting his “legend” from any and all aspersions against his character—most notably, the story that her niece, Catharine Holly, has told about Sebastian’s death. To this end, she has had Catharine committed to a mental home and now seeks to bribe a young neurosurgeon (Dr. Cukrowicz) to lobotomize Catharine to shut her mouth for good.

Despite her ruthlessness, however, Violet is more pathetic than evil. Her delusions about Sebastian, around whom she structured most of her life, reveal her to be both idealistic and vulnerable.