In contrast to most of his major successes that were outbursts of personal lyricism, Williams writes The Rose Tattoo, a work that is more comedic, yet still contains many autobiographical elements.

His aim is to exorcise the problems of American society and, above all, the scourge of McCarthyism, the proliferation of female neuroses, and the anxiety of the petty bourgeoisie for social ascension.

For this reason, he crafts a work that, following the footsteps of ethnography, moves towards the conventional interpretation of natural phenomena to culminate in a tragicomic psychological portrait.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]