The Rose Tattoo _VERIFIED_
Serafina Delle Rose (Anna Magnani), a Sicilian seamstress, living in a community in proximity to the Gulf of Mexico,[4] fiercely proud of and loyal to her truck-driving husband Rosario, is pregnant with her second child. While he is sleeping, Estelle (Virginia Grey) asks Serafina to make a shirt for her lover from some expensive silk material; Serafina does not know that the lover is Rosario, and that earlier that afternoon, Estelle got a tattoo of a rose on her chest to match Rosario's.
The Rose Tattoo
Determined to find out the truth about her husband, Serafina heads to the church (where a bazaar is being held) to ask the priest if her husband had confessed to an affair with another woman. When he refuses to answer, she attacks him, and a truck driver named Alvaro (Burt Lancaster) pulls her off. Alvaro drives the dazed Serafina home in his banana truck, where she offers to repair his torn shirt. Serafina loans Alvaro the rose silk shirt that she had sewn the night of her husband's death until she is able to repair it, and they agree to meet later that night.
Alvaro returns, having impulsively gotten a rose tattooed on his chest. Serafina is disgusted and tries to throw him out, then demands that Alvaro drive her to a club her husband used to attend. Once there, she meets Estelle, who confesses and shows Serafina the rose tattooed on her chest as a symbol of her love for Rosario. Returning home, Serafina smashes the urn containing Rosario's ashes, and invites Alvaro to return in the night.
The play is an emotional rollercoaster shot through with a streak of poetic symbolism. Roses are everywhere as a substitute for the heart and the heart's love. Three people tattoo roses on their chests as marks of devotion or romantic hope. The rose on her husband's chest represents Serafina Delle Rose's illusions of perfection - he's her real religion. An urn of his ashes is her focus of worship. At one point she even recounts seeing the miraculous vision of a rose on her own chest.
Serafina also tells Alvaro about her husband's rose tattoo and boasts about him. It becomes clear that there is an attraction between Serafina and Alvaro. Alvaro, when he speaks, is practically asking Serafina to become his partner in life, if not in so many words, and Serafina is struggling to reconcile her attraction to Alvaro and her loyalty to her dead husband. They part with Serafina telling him to return and pick up his jacket later in the evening after his delivery rounds.
Alvaro arrives with chocolates and is spiffed up after a visit to the barber for "the works," and Serafina is waiting, nicely cleaned up herself. Serafina discerns that Alvaro has rose oil in his hair, which disconcerts her, as her husband used to do the same thing. A bit later, Alvaro tells her he has a tattoo, a rose on his chest. This shocks Serafina even more, until Alvaro admits that he had it done that very day since she told him about her husband's tattoo. Alvaro, clearly, is trying most diligently to win Serafina, but his plans go awry when a condom falls out of his pocket.
The neighborhood in the meantime has been roused by Serafina's earlier shouting about an intruder, and Assunta and the local women are watching events unfold. Rosa runs off and the women begin commenting on the presence of Alvaro and his rose tattoo (since his chest is bare). Serafina asks Assunta where the ashes of her husband have gone, because she wishes to retrieve them. Assunta tells her the wind blew them away. The local women are laughing at Serafina, but she does not mind. She believes she has conceived during her night of love, and the play closes with Alvaro and Serafina speaking to each other lovingly.
Williams employs many symbols in this play. Symbols are objects, names, or persons in an artwork that suggest many things as opposed to just one. Primary among the play's symbols are the character names, which are suggestive of the rose flower (Rosa and Rosario), Rosario's and Alvaro's rose tattoos, and Serafina's dress-shop mannequins.
Red roses are commonly associated with love and passion, and Williams exploits these associations to their fullest. The play's focus on life, physical passion, and the spiritual communion between lovers is made amply evident through its plethora of roses. Serafina's certainty that a rose tattoo temporarily appears on her bosom the night she conceives a child with her husband hints at Williams's desire to suggest a spiritual dimension to sex and love, the manner in which the closeness between lovers makes them mystically one and the same.
The second toy, the kite, reminds us of children's play, of a gleeful immersion in play's pursuit. The kite's color refers to the redness of the rose flower and evokes, as well, the free flight of birds and the wind that carries the women's songs. The third toy, the clown doll, is the first of the play's many clowns. It works with Alvaro's, Bessie's, and Flora's clownishness, not to mention Serafina's, and evokes Williams's comedic view of humanity in The Rose Tattoo. Clowns, traditionally, have sad faces and suffer hilarious mishaps. Even as Serafina suffers terribly the death of her beloved husband, Williams seems to say, she remains a mortal whose misadventures are also comic.
The central symbol of the play, however, is the red rose flower, to which the symbol of wine is related. Serafina only drinks of the wine of the red grape from Sicily, and she parades in scenes in a pink slip with its bodice stained with wine. Wine is the gift of the god Dionysus, the drink of creative intoxication and the elixir of love. Serafina's stain is like a big rose on her chest, and so she has a rose tattoo like Rosario and Alvaro. She is bursting with life and is an embodiment of the life force and sexuality. The deep red of the red rose flower is the color of blood and its scent is intense and sweet; it is associated with love, romance, and all manner of passionate life.
The mysterious attraction is demonstrated through the rose symbolism. The rose appears in folk beliefs as a magical love-producing object. In fact, it is the talisman which often draws a lover to a woman, though Williams uses it to draw the woman to the man. The sexual bonds between Rosario and Serafina need little comment. But an even more interesting folk motif about roses is associated with Alvaro. Even though Serafina is already aroused by Alvaro, when he has the patronymic emblem of her first husband emblazoned on his chest, she finds Rosario Delle Rose again, or a more faithful though less attractive version of him. In essence, her "rose" has been transformed into a human being, a folk motif which is at the center of Serafina's discovery of self and the audience's demand for comedic harmony. Folklore also associates sexual powers with roses. By eating a rose, according to one superstition, a woman could conceive. Serafina's pregnancy by Rosario and her conception after sleeping with his humorous incarnation, the Tattooed Alvaro, recall the motif. As long as Serafina has a rose in her life, she does not need the sexual stimulation promised by Assunta's potion.
But his view is challenged by her present appearance; she has become a hobgoblin scaring the children away. Williams seems to transfer some of his former heroines' problems to Serafina. Statues ("The Grotesque Children of The Rose Tattoo") has concluded that, "In terms of Williams's typical character deployment, Serafina is actually a direct descendant of Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and of Alma Winemiller in Summer and Smoke." Although Serafina lives in her own world, a victim of her own dreams, the affinity with Williams' earlier female characters is tenuous. Serafina is much more adaptable than, say, Blanche DuBois. Serafina throws off the deception in time to marry Alvaro. But it is too late for Blanche and her Alvaro (Mitch), whom she loses too soon and wants too late. In short, Serafina is a complex, often contradictory figure whose failures and successes in love combine farcical comedy with tragic implications. The rapid changes, especially after Alvaro reveals his rose tattoo in act three, are characteristic of and suitable for a tragicomedy.
There are many myths and legends surrounding the creation of the rose. Its beauty, its fragrance, even the thorns have stories that explain the conception of this glorious flower. These rose tattoos are awesome embodiments of humans' constant attraction to a flower that has had everyone smitten since the dawn of time.
But why are roses, and rose tattoo meanings, usually matched with ideas of love and romance? "In mythology, Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, was often depicted with roses adorning her head, feet, and neck. This can be interpreted many ways, but the association comes from a rose bush that grew within a pool of blood spilled by her slain lover, Adonis, and so a common interpretation is that the rose symbolizes an immortal love that withstands time and even death."
Of course, part of the allure of the rose is its danger, like a real femme fatale, so it only makes sense that the rose would flourish under the hand of Flora by way of a corpse. The Goddess Flora, finding her most favorite and treasured nymph lying cold among the blades of grass, called upon the other Gods to turn the nymphs body into a flower.
The myth continues that Apollo breathed life into the bloom, while Bacchus gave her the flowing fruits of nectar, and Vertumnus, God of seasons, gardens, and growth, bestowed the rose with her intoxicating fragrance.
A yellow rose tattoo traditionally represents friendship, luck, and joy. This particular bud has also come to be tied to the history of Texas, from the nickname of Amarillo as well as the Battle of San Jacinto...but it is also the name of a very famous country folk song too!
A black rose tattoo can be a metaphor for death, mourning, and grief but keep in mind that Blackwork is also just a really popular style right now...the particular color of a rose may not define its meaning unless the person who carries it with them always had a specific concept in mind that they wanted to imbue their piece with. 041b061a72