Purity and Corruption Theme Analysis

In Sweet Bird of Youth, the antagonistic Boss Finley sets forth bigoted notions of racial purity as well as patriarchal views regarding womanhood. Not only does this politician believe whites and blacks shouldn’t integrate or copulate, but he also thinks his daughter Heavenly has been corrupted—defiled—by her pre-marital sexual exploits with Chance Wayne. In other words, Boss Finley loathes what he sees as impurity, and so he brings his racist and misogynistic agenda to bear on the people around him. In turn, this leads him to promote unconscionable acts of violence. By portraying Finley as such a blatantly evil man, then, Williams warns against using the idea of purity to justify hatefulness.

Early on, Boss Finley warns Heavenly that her actions affect his political career. In particular, he scolds her for consorting with Chance Wayne, whom he hates and believes unworthy of his daughter’s love. Because of this dynamic, Chance has always felt he needs to become rich and famous so that Boss Finley will finally relent and allow him to marry Heavenly. To do this, he has spent the last several years trying to become a well-known actor, but because this hasn’t worked, he has resorted to what is essentially prostitution, working as a gigolo to earn money. During his last visit to St. Cloud, he transmitted an STD to Heavenly, forcing her to have a surgical operation that unfortunately went wrong, leaving her sterile for the rest of her life. To Boss Finley, this is the ultimate corruption of his young daughter’s purity. To make him even more furious, people have been taunting him at rallies by referencing Heavenly’s operation, which is why he decides that she must come to his next event dressed in all white. “You’re going to be wearing the stainless white of a virgin, with a Youth for Tom Finley button on one shoulder and a corsage of lilies on the other,” he says. “You’re going to be on the speaker’s platform with me… to scotch these rumors of your corruption.” Boss Finley is so horrified by the idea that his daughter has been “corrupted” that he tries to overcompensate, dressing her up to communicate a message of purity and innocence to voters. Of course, it’s clear the people of St. Cloud already know Heavenly’s secret, but Boss Finley still insists that she radiate the stereotypical incorruptibility of an unmarried young woman, desperately wanting his daughter to at least act as if she too holds his same ideas of purity in high esteem.

Presenting his daughter as uncorrupted and pure isn’t Boss Finley’s only goal. In fact, he has an ulterior motive driving his decision to have her stand next to him dressed in white—a motive that aligns with his political campaign. “Lookin’ at you, all in white like a virgin,” he explains to Heavenly, “nobody would dare to speak or believe the ugly stories about you. I’m relying a great deal on this campaign to bring in young voters for the crusade I’m leading. I’m all that stands between the South and the black days of Reconstruction. And you and Tom Junior are going to stand there beside me in the grand crystal ballroom, as shining examples of white Southern youth—in danger.” Here, Boss Finley reveals that he wants to use Heavenly to project the bigoted message of racial purity to Southern voters. Not only does he see womanhood as something that can be made impure by others, but he also sees the white race as something that is “in danger” because of the prospect of racial integration. Under this racist interpretation, white Southerners are under threat because they might soon come together with black Southerners. Instead of seeing this as a positive unifying experience, Boss Finley sees it as a corruption of racial purity, investing himself in homogeneity rather than diversity.

There are, of course, other bigoted people in St. Cloud who agree with Boss Finley’s racist ideas regarding corruption and purity. As Chance’s old friend explains at one point, a group of white men overtook a black man “and castrated the bastard to show they mean[t] business about white women’s protection in this state.” This, it seems, is the violent agenda advanced by Boss Finley’s racist rhetoric regarding purity and corruption. In his twisted view, castrating a black man is justifiable as a protection of purity, which is why he threatens to do the very same thing to Chance Wayne: he sees Chance as someone who has corrupted his daughter’s purity. He even unabashedly endorses the use of violence in such contexts. Indeed, when Heavenly ventures that he “wouldn’t dare” hurt Chance, he says, “A lot of people approve of taking violent action against corrupters. And on all of them that want to adulterate the pure white blood of the South.” In this moment, he conflates Chance Wayne’s so-called “corruption” of his daughter with integration, making it clear that the two matters are more or less the same to him even though Chance is white. After all, he believes that both black people and Chance present a threat to purity.

This is obviously a very narrow-minded viewpoint that lacks even the slightest trace of empathy, and the fact that Boss Finley uses such an absurd outlook to justify violence is a clear indication of his lacking moral character. As such, Williams emphasizes the ways in which bigotry and hate can lead to inexcusable behavior, demonstrating that people sometimes claim that certain values (like incorruptibility or purity) are upstanding when in reality they’re only using these values to advance divisive and violent agendas.