Streetcar Critical Readings

Question 1

Wertheim

Answer 1

Stella and Stanley’s baby represents the future - a Kowalski future, not a DuBois future, as shown by Blanche being removed and Stanley staying in the household, the ultimate victory

Question 2

Nelson

Answer 2

Blanche’s tragedy manifests itself in the diegetic of the play, making it a universal tragedy (the Blind Mexican Woman is a pertinent example of this)

Question 3

Cardullo

Answer 3

Blanche’s courting of Mitch mirrors Mary Magdalene’s courting of Jesus and her eventual redemption through it; this is twisted by Mitch’s rejection of Blanche

Question 4

Atkinson

Answer 4

Streetcar is a deep exploration of a singular person with no sociopolitical aspects

Question 5

Kazan (director of film)

Answer 5

Stanley didn’t want to rape Blanche, but was eventually forced to by her refusal to bargain with him on his own terms

Stella has found a sort of salvation with Stanley, but at the tremendous cost that she must ignore how unhappy his actions make her

Blanche’s tragic flaw is that she adheres to the Southern tradition that she needs a man for completion — she can complete herself

Question 6

Bloom

Answer 6

With his characters, Williams builds up archetypes and then destroys our preconceived notions of them (i.e. Blanche as purity, Stanley as machismo)

Desire is the single most important theme of the play — even Blanche, who initially seems to represent purity, is tainted by desire

Stella is genuinely in love with Stanley, ‘like many battered women’

Blanche is ‘a failed Whitmanian’

Question 7

Popkin

Answer 7

Conducted a study of Williams’ work and found three major character types: the Adonis (Stanley), the Gargoyle (Stella) and the Failed Ingenue (Blanche)

Stanley’s ‘disrespectful’ speech symbolises his freedom and vitality while Blanche’s ‘respectful’ speech shows how she is rooted to the past

Question 8

Adler

Answer 8

Stanley is more creative than destructive – he shows the vitality that the Old South has lost

Question 9

McGlinn

Answer 9

Stanley feels judged by Blanche, and his rape of her is his attempt to get her to admit that she is a sexual animal, like him.

Blanche is not the only DuBois who lives in illusions: Stella is in an illusion too, that she is happy and free in her life with Stanley.

Both Blanche and Stella’s illusions are done for the personal good at the sake of the communal good

Question 10

Shead

Answer 10

Blanche’s trunk ‘unifies’ the poetic and literal realms of the play and is representative of her journey.

Question 11

Gassner

Answer 11

The poeticism of the play is representative of ‘psychological reality’

Viewing the play in terms of Aristotelian tragedy means accepting that Stanley performed the ‘act of destruction’ which Blanche should have performed herself
Psychopathology ‘is a substitute for fate’ in directing actions within the play when compared to traditional drama

Question 12

Clum

Answer 12

Blanche is a camp character who represents male homosexuality — she is not ‘straight’ and is in closest proximity to the ‘degenerate’ of the play

Question 13

Thompson

Answer 13

Williams’ drama is a ‘myth for our time’, portraying man’s constant search for transcendensce and imbuing the human with religious significance

Question 14

Kierkegaardian Reading

Answer 14

The aesthetic stage can be seen in Blanche and the ethical stage–albeit a misguided version–can be seen in Stanley; the religious stage is nowhere to be found

Question 15

Berkman

Answer 15

The trauma that underpins Blanche’s reality is not Allen Grey being a ‘degenerate’, as Stella believes, but the fact that she caused his suicide

Question 16

Quirino

Answer 16

Streetcar is an allegory for the journey the pure soul (Blanche) goes through when subjected to the brutality of matter (Stanley)

The card game is a symbol of fate and the way it can be manipulated

Question 17

McCarthy

Answer 17

Blanche symbolises art, as she veils herself from truth and is ultimately of a different type of people from those who exist wholly in the ‘real world’ of Elysian Fields

Question 18

Tischner

Answer 18

The play is decidedly not a classical tragedy - Blanche is ‘pathetically soft’ and not a traditional tragic figure and we leave the theatre outraged rather than soothed

The play is a collection of one act plays, forming a rather non-traditional narrative out of eleven separate narratives

Question 19

Nietzschean

Answer 19

A Nietzschean interpretation is based on the idea that there is a struggle existing in the best tragic works between the Apollonian, our higher functions - reason, imagination, and so on - and the Dionysian, our search for pleasure

Blanche and Stanley show how these two impulses can be dysfunctional when taken to an extreme: Blanche is the Apollonian who exists only in illusion and Stanley is the destructive Dionysian who gives in entirely to his base instincts

Question 20

Berlin

Answer 20

Sex equalises all characters in the play, as they are all beholden to their sexual impulses
Blanche uses as a refuge, where she can find ‘the kindness of strangers’ as cannot be found elsewhere in her life

Question 21

Psychoanalytic (Freudian)

Answer 21

The psychoanalytic perspective focuses on the way texts create representations of the mind and the way tics of the mind manifest themselves in texts

As the play focuses on the two drives Freud believed caused human activity - eros (sex/creation) and thanatos (death/destruction) - the play is a holistic account of human life

Question 22

Brustein

Answer 22

The conflict between Blanche and Stanley is the conflict between effeminate culture and masculine libido

Question 23

Dickinson

Answer 23

The play focuses on the modern symbol of the railways and links them to Stanley; at one time, the play ended with Blanche throwing herself on the rail tracks to kill herself