The King's Need for His La Niña 

Red Devil Battery Sign is one of Tennessee Williams’ later plays that until recently has been categorized as not worth reading due to his association with alcoholism and fascination with the apocalypse. However recently, scholars have begun discussing the multiple layers of this play including loneliness, political effects, urbanization, racial stereotypes, and toxic masculinity within it. “Rule by Power: ‘Big Daddyism in the world of Tennessee Williams’s plays,” discusses the topic of ‘Big Daddyism’ which is defined as powers that run the country that are untouchable. For example, the Red Devil Company in Red Devil Battery Sign is one of these companies that have major political power and influence in the police, hotels, etc. These companies have such overarching power that people like Griffin in the play follow with blind faith squashing their individual thought or freedom. ‘Big Daddyism’ also refers to men with the role of a dictator in the home and need to control every other area of their life. According to the article, the King has lost his ‘Big Daddyism’ in the Red Devil Battery Sign (Kullman).

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In the play, the King is described in the stage directions as having, “a hint of bravado that masks an anxiety that the authority may slip from him” (Williams 7). To further emphasize this character trait, there are scenes where the King loses his fake masculine exterior and his fear of losing control shows through. However, Kullman’s article does not mention how the King deals with his loss of his role of “Big Daddyism.” Research glazes over how he deals with his loss of control and success. However, it is important to address the possibility that the King deals with his loss of control over his unnatural devotion to his daughter by projecting his feelings onto the Woman Downtown in an to attempt to regain control. The Woman Downtown becomes a persona of his daughter that he can mold, protect, and bring success to their family. By having the Woman Downtown as his project and object of his desire, he feels that he can succeed in life and pretend he has control since he has none over his household, personal, or work life.

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Red Devil Battery Sign follows the storyline of the affair between the Woman Downtown and King del Rey in the Yellow Rose Hotel set after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The mentally unstable Woman Downtown is in Witness Protection after stealing vital information about the assassination from her Mafia husband. The King, dying of brain cancer, is the forcefully retired leader of a mariachi band who associates the Yellow Rose Hotel as his false reality where he is still in control of his life. The King meets the Woman Downtown, and they fall in love with her, making her the final piece to his fantasy. The Woman Downtown becomes his project that he can control and fix unlike his household. His daughter, La Niña, is his greatest love who he associates with all his success. Unfortunately, she is living as a tramp and pregnant with a married man which breaks the King’s heart causing him to create a new La Niña, which is the Woman Downtown. In the end, the King comes to a realization that he cannot save his daughter from being with an unworthy man, but he can save the Woman Downtown by shooting her rapist with his dying breath.

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The King must associate the Yellow Rose Hotel and the Woman Downtown as his false reality because of the way he personifies his family members. The King sees his wife, Perla, as a controlling breadwinner in the household. He tells the Woman Downtown, “I am my wife Perla’s dependent, her invalid dependent, and if I don’t get home at night, she would hit the ceiling” (Williams 31). After the King had his brain surgery, he was considered a dependent, unable to work. Perla has to assume the role of the breadwinner and decision maker in the family. Because she has seized control out of necessity, the King has fabricated her treating him like a child, even establishing a curfew. Consequently, the King loathes his wife because she has taken his role and devotes all of his love to his daughter.

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The King’s daughter, La Niña, is his object of success, love, and devotion. The King sees La Niña as a child who has gotten away from him. As a result, his success as a mariachi band went with her. Her being called La Niña, with her true name never being revealed, is evidence of the King never seeing her as a grown woman. La Niña means, “the little girl.” The King believes that his daughter is the reason for their success because the band received their first tour when she began singing with them. He calls La Niña his star, and they sing love song-duets together in performances. There is a component of fascination unusual for a father-daughter relationship. His wife asserts, “Love songs, between father and daughter. Not natural, not right” (Williams 38). The King is obsessed with his daughter, wanting her to rely on him for all things. He could not emotionally handle her singing love songs with other members of the band with the opportunity of her falling in love. When the King is diagnosed with brain cancer, he is no longer able to perform, and the mariachi band must move on without him and his daughter. La Niña then moves in with a married man resulting in the King believing he has failed as a father and as a band leader. The King not only loses his daughter to another man, relinquishing control over her, but he also loses his object of admiration and success that he could mold into the persona he desired.

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The King desired to use the Woman Downtown as a substitute for his daughter because La Niña was his greatest love. She is his only child and his legacy. She was someone he could control since he could not fulfill his duty as a husband. She not only depended on the King for her daily provision, she also was the cause of his success in his mariachi band. La Niña, through her angelic voice and flamenco dancing, attracted the attention of every man in their audience. When the King became an invalid, La Niña had to depend on another man, Mccabe. She did not require her father to care for her, and the King was forced to relinquish control over her life and her attention. He realizes she is not fulfilling his image of her when she walks into their house. According to the King, she, “looks like a tramp and is living with a-hood” (Williams 66). La Niña did not fulfill his expectations of her as a beautiful, pure flamenco daughter. She is a grown woman in revealing clothing with a baby bump causing his vision of her to be shattered.

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Not only was the King depressed over losing her undivided attention and becoming a woman he did not recognize, he also could not emotionally deal with the type of man Mccabe is. Mccabe is a married man who is living with nineteen year-old La Niña who has now become pregnant after having a miscarriage. The King is unaware of her miscarriage until she comes home and blames Mccabe for her pain and suffering. The King believes that Mccabe will never be able to care for her like he could nor will he give her success in life. The King’s vision for his daughter is revealed when Mccabe and the King have a heated conversation about his intentions with La Niña. Mccabe says, “She will deliver the child and she will go back to what she made for, by you” (Williams 79). Mccabe is referring to her job as a performer with the King who believes that Mccabe just was her for his comfort. The King believes he wants his daughter’s glory as a performer, when in reality, the King wants control over her life and success for himself. When Mccabe states that she will go back to what she is made for, the King finally understands that he will never have control over her life again. He also comes to the realization that she is not his legacy anymore; she is creating Mccabe’s legacy through her pregnancy. The only person left for the King to protect and control is the Woman Downtown who he pushes his wants for La Niña onto. King needs a person to fulfill his false reality so he does not have to face his present predicament of no control over his life or his family.

The Woman Downtown is the perfect person for the King to build his alternate life of control and success that La Niña has failed to give him. The Woman Downtown is described as beautiful, tall, and pale. She also speaks Spanish, like his daughter. When the King walks in, he notices that the men’s attention in the hotel lounge is on her. He also has an inclination of her being a hooker. The Woman Downtown asks the King to be her escort, which is right after a prostitute asks another man the same question. Being a prostitute would make her vulnerable and open to becoming whatever the King wanted in exchange for money. Not only are the Woman Downtown’s looks comparable to La Niña, her personality also reminds the King of her. After talking with her, the King comments to the Woman Downtown, “I think you got something in you that is wild like flamenco. You got something in you like my kid in Chicago- a heart on fire!” (Williams 33). Her determination could be the King’s key to his success in the band if she is wanting to rise form her current life predicament. In the King’s mind, the Woman Downtown could be his new La Niña, a beautiful flamenco performer who he could have masculine dominance over. With the Woman Downtown, he would not be the invalid failure that he believes his daughter and wife perceive him to be.

The placement of the Woman Downtown is also pertinent to the King’s use of her to maintain control over some aspect of his life that he lost with his daughter. The Yellow Rose Hotel has always been the King’s space for normalcy since his “accident.” He travels to the hotel multiple nights a week to drink beer and watch his former band play for the lounge. The King tells his mariachi players that La Niña is coming back and that his cancer is gone. His fantasy of still being in control of all aspects of his life is possible at the hotel. When he meets the Woman Downtown, his alternate reality can be complete. The King attempts to keep the Woman Downtown from becoming like his failed daughter who has lost her beauty and innocence. The King orders the Woman Downtown to stop drinking in bed to keep her beauty and youthfulness. He despises change and associates aging with loss of success. He implores her to take care of herself so she can keep the persona of La Niña and save his new object of affection from becoming like his failed past that he refuses to accept.

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It starts to become evident the King is creating a persona of his daughter after he leads the disheveled Woman Downtown to her modest penthouse. There, she spills her suitcase contents on the floor. He picks up her lingerie and immediately drops it. This is significant because if the King saw her as a woman to have sex with like he did at the beginning, then he would not be concerned with her underwear. The King is already personifying his daughter onto this woman he barely knows purely on her instability and looks. After the encounter with her lingerie, the Woman Downtown starts to help pick the contents up, and the King yells at her to, “Set back down on the bed! – I put it in the box for you” (Williams 17). King notices through their short time together that she is damaged mentally and has no one to provide for her. Her adopted father is in the hospital, and she is being held captive through a Witness Protection Program. Because of this, the King is treating her like a vulnerable child he can pick up after and control due to her mental state. The Woman Downtown can be his false reality where he never loses control or his success in the first place.

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Further into their relationship, the Woman Downtown reveals to the King that she was in an abusive relationship with a mob boss. She was terrified and was required to serve her husbands’ work partners, trapped in her own home. When she finishes revealing her past, she breaks down sobbing on the bed like a child. King replies to her, “I think you’re a little girl that’s had a bad dream and run to papa’s bed to tell him about it” (Williams 54). The King’s reply is an indication of him asserting his dominance and treating the Woman Downtown like he would treat La Niña. The King does not truly believe the Woman Downtown’s story. He perceives her as an unstable woman who cannot differentiate between fact and fiction. This response also reflects the King’s mentality when it pertains to women. He portrays women as lower than him and that he is responsible for their actions. The King sees women, depicted in his treatment of the Woman Downtown, as people to be coddled and told what to do like children. Women require a man to guide them and control them. When he lost his power over his daughter and wife, he became a failure in his mind; he could not accept his reality which is where the Woman Downtown plays a role.

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One of the most evident scenes of the King personifying the Woman Downtown is near the end of the play. The King sings “Mujer” on stage, and the Woman Downtown kisses him. He then proceeds to stare at the Woman Downtown and calls her La Niña in a daze (Williams 45). The King is transported back to his former glory with his daughter on stage. One of his favorite songs to sing with his daughter is “Mujer.” In this moment, the Woman Downtown fulfills his fantasy of having his daughter back on stage with him before his brain cancer ruined everything. His false reality where he has control is coming to life. He then proceeds to say that his cancer is gone, and La Niña will be back in the band tomorrow. In this moment, he fully believes that the Woman Downtown is La Niña. However, his cancer is not gone and La Niña is not coming back to the band, but he wants to feel in control over his life. The King is willing to do or imagine whatever he must to regain control.

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The final scene is the greatest display of want for control and protection that the King can give. He uses his dying breath to shoot the drummer who sexually assaulted the Woman Downtown. He does this to save her from ending up in a relationship with him. The King could not save his daughter from being with Mccabe, but he could save the Woman Downtown who he sees as an extension of his daughter. The drummer dying also prevents the Woman Downtown from carrying on the drummer’s legacy through pregnancy like La Niña is doing for Mccabe. By using his final breath to shoot the drummer, it also allows the King to die with control over his life and over his false household. The character of the drummer also represents the progression of time that he cannot stop or slow down. The drummer took away the King’s place in the band. By shooting the drummer, he is attempting to keep the band in its former glory. Killing him is a physical representation of the King’s rejection of modern times emerging and time moving foward. The drummer was his replacement, and if it became permanent, it would solidify the King’s failure as a band leader. The King could not accept the fact that he was not going to die of his own volition, but through a disease he did not have the ability to control. The King died with a sense of masculine control over his life and his corrupted idea of his household that he so desperately desired and needed.

The King’s mentality of women and need to control his household as the sole breadwinner is reflective of the mindset of men during the time when the play was set. The Red Devil Battery Sign was written to reflect the time period of changes politically and privately in the household that were occurring in the late 1960s and seventies.

 

 The King’s mentality of needing control is evident of men during this time in the South. Women’s roles in the household were becoming more progressive with more women becoming breadwinners in the household. According the International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family, cohabitation also became more prominent and accepted starting in the 1970s (Ponzetti). Tennessee Williams is reflecting the loss of masculine control that fathers have over their daughters’ lives and choices through the King’s character. It is reflected in the King’s use of the Woman Downtown to maintain his false reality by personifying his daughter, La Niña, onto her. Men, especially in the South, have an issue with change, which is a common theme throughout Southern literature. The King’s character in William’s play shows the extent that men will go to to stop change from happening, especially within their households. Williams’ use of the King’s character to reflect the decline of men’s control over their household and the means they will go though to preserve it is another reason why Red Devil Battery Sign should be read and discussed by scholars in the Southern literature sphere.