Being gay (therefore sexually restricted and an outcast from social norms), Tennessee recognized the spirit crippling power of loneliness and withdrawal from life, and offered immersion in sexuality as a life affirming solution. .
The non conformist individual in The "Rose Tattoo" is the heroine Serafina, who reflects George Jean Nathens' claim that the play is melodramatic with comic relief. Serafina encompasses in her temperamental personality great melodrama, but is also a comical figure. Serafina, as all the characters in this play, does not have much depth. Her thoughts and inner feelings are not described and mostly we get a visual physical description of "a plump little Italian singer" whose "black hair is done in a high pompadour" (Act I pg.2).Therefore she is created in a caricature manner. This enables her to act in an extreme manner befitting a melodramatic character. She is also quite an absurd caricature, thus adding to the comic relief in this play. .
Serafina goes through all three steps in the "Memory play". First, Serafina's profound experience is the death of her beloved husband. Second, after his death time stops for her, and she becomes obsessed with her late husband and refuses to move on. Third , after being told her husband had cheated on her and after having all what she believed in crushed, she meets Alvaro; "a clown with her husbands body". He makes her relive her experience with her husband, thus enabling her to move on and live with another man who truly loves her. However, the last step Serafina goes through does not fit the scheme completely, for she does not truly let go of her past. She is only able to love Alvaro because he reminds her of her late husband. He even gets a rose tattoo on his chest to look more like her husband. This ending is not a purely melodramatic "happy ending". It's actually quite absurd, and this absurdity adds the last note of comedy in this play.
