Summary Comprehensive study resource: 'A Streetcar Named Desire'
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Course
7712B
Institution
AQA
A/A* resource providing an exceptional guide for understanding Williams' play, 'A Streetcar Named Desire'!
It offers perceptive, assured, and sophisticated notes. The resource delves deeply into Williams' authorial methods, offering insightful commentary on how his techniques shape the play's me...
‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ (1947) Revision by Jenny He
1
AO5
‘Blanche creates her own stagecraft[…]a character obsessed with managing the
production of her own private play in which she is the leading lady’
‘we witness her choosing her clothes from the costume box + turning on the radio to
create her own musical accompaniment and arranging her own lighting with those
Chinese lanterns’
‘Stanley is bent on (to be very determined to do something) disrupting B’s
stagecraft rifling through her costume box, throwing the radio out of the window +
tearing down the lantern’
‘Stagecraft provides important arena for dramatic conflict in play as
Stanley+Blanche each try to control the production of their own theatrical
atmosphere in apartment: he does it with mess, disorder and destruction; she with
carefully curated but fragile, genteel touches ‘ (Norman)
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory that humans are driven by two conflicting desires: that
of Eros, which governs our desires for survival and sex, and that of Thanatos, which
represents an unconscious urge for self-destruction and death (Stanley’s Thanatos
drives his aggressive violence and his Eros compels him towards sexual desires)
Nietzschean interpretation of Stanley + B would look at how the Apollonian Blanche
and Dionysian Stanley disintegrate when they operate as extremes
(a·puh·low·nee·uhn) (dai·uh·ni·zee·uhn)
‘Stella’s friend circle consists of battered housewives much like herself; they support
each other + develop female bonds over the suffering’ (Adler)
Stanley’s rape of Blanche is Williams’ punishment for her homophobia; rape scene
justified as an event initiated by Blanche through her flirting+exhibitionism
The attractiveness halo effect that Brando’s performance added to the character
makes it difficult for audiences to characterise Stanley negatively, making him a more
sympathetic character than Williams created
,‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ (1947) Revision by Jenny He
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‘Entire play revolves round Blanche’s effort to adjust to her surroundings. All the
other characters in the play exist merely to foreground Blanche’s crisis of identity
which arises out of failure to live with realistic notions of life’ (Hooti)
(Stafford) views play as ‘sensitive picture of an illusion-ridden woman, which depicts
a brutalising hero, brazenly (in a bold+shameless way) exploits violence’
Stella’s sexuality is approved because ‘she is not the lustful instigator but the passive
respondent’ (Leibman)
‘Williams has repeatedly claimed, “I am Blanche DuBois” and has identified with her,
particularly in terms of shared hysteria’ (Pagan)
AO4
Most of Williams’ plays set in South + usually portray neurotic people who are victims
of their own passions, frustrations + loneliness
World of South in Williams’ play characterised by short-lived beauty, animal-sex,
aristocratic deviations, frustrated human desires, ambitions and failures - also the
world of the past available only through memory, however, the characters remain
firmly rooted in this anachronistic world of past and refused to move with the time
Loss of self + quest for it has been pervasive theme in contemporary American
literature
Albee’s play, ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ echoes S.9 Mexican vendor mournfully
crying outside the building ‘flores para los muertos’; theme of scariness of
unmasking the truth also demonstrated in how George and Martha’s illusion of their
son, which sustains their tempestuous marriage
,‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ (1947) Revision by Jenny He
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Decline of wealthy Southern families was romanticised in literature and cinema, e.g.
‘Gone with the Wind’
Like Blanche, Tom in ‘The Glass Menagerie’ is also a victim of time, fate +
destructive reality
Almeida Theatre 2023 production was minimalist and lost the symbolism of props
compared to the National Theatre 2014 production which had more props on stage
The Berliner Ensemble 2019 production had actors moving up and down a
rectangular box mounted at an angle high on a traditional proscenium arch stage
while performing - power imbalance/ pushing against gravity/ instability/
claustrophobic - closed set of the Kowalskis’ cramped flat connoting a war for the
territorial control between the occupants
AO3
As technology of theatre production advanced, drama became more realistic towards
end of 19th century and continued to be a primary form of dramatic expression in
20th century + reached profound levels of psychological realism
Williams developed ‘plastic theatre’ - coalesce light, costumes and music to enhance
character’s emotions
American drama in post-WW2 era gained new openness to deal with taboo subjects
The 20th-century generation was reluctant to show any kind of belonging to the
existing perturbed world + sense of alienation created nothing more than nostalgia
During WW2, social differences between Stanley and Stella would likely to have
been diminished in such a time of upheaval; Stella coming to New Orleans for work +
Stanley being a respectable soldier seems to have blurred boundaries of their social
, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ (1947) Revision by Jenny He
4
divide; tremendous sociocultural disruption which war brought about, making their
meeting a possibility against the odds
Cultural clash between 2 symbolic characters, Blanche, a pretentious, fading relic of
the South, and Stanley, a rising member of the industrial, urban immigrant class
Stella, like Blanche, is a product of a bygone colonial era
Williams originally had Blanche in blue dress but Kazan thought white would help her
to bring out her vulnerability
Williams wrote to Breen (who objectified rape scene)in an impassioned letter that the
play’s meaning is ‘the ravishment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate, by the
savage and brutal forces of modern society’
Until 1970s, problem of domestic violence was normalised+condoned in American
society
Maintaining beauty + elegance, southern ladies are all strictly required in order to
satisfy men
1950s can be labelled as transitional - American had not fully recovered from
shattering experience of WW2 - faith in the human institution + communal life as
such had been lost + increasing disintegration of family-institutions was obvious
Before outbreak of American Civil War in 1861/ During period of Antebellum South,
plantation economy of slavery was economic basis for survival of plantation
slaveholders - racial hierarchy/ white supremacy
After American Civil War ended in 1865, new industrial class in North occupied
dominant position of society
WW2 enabled sense of heroism to develop, which was based on overcoming the
Great Depression and defeating Nazis - national spotlight shone on working-class
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