A Streetcar Named Desire AO3 + AO5 Flashcards
(23 cards)
Williams’ on female heroines
“I’ve written so many southern heroines. They have a tendency to guild the lily, and they speak in a a rather florid style which seems to suit me because I write out of emotion and get carried away by emotion”
Pagan ‘A Postmodern Approach to Tennessee Williams”
“Williams has repeatedly claimed ‘I am Blanche Dubois’ and has identified with her, particularly in terms of a shared hysteria. Also like Blanche Williams had a tendency to lie. One example of this is William’s and Blanche’s shared propensity to mislead people concerning their age”
New Orleans became a _______ ___ of culture
Melting pot
Williams’ on society within his work
“I have only one major theme for my work, which is the destructive power of society on the sensitive, non-conformist individual”
Louise Blackwell
“Williams is making a commentary on Western culture by dramatising his belief that men and women find reality and meaning in life through satisfactory sexual relationships”
Anca Vlasopolos
“If generic criticism has tended to remain neo-Aristotelian, it has conveniently discarded Aristotle’s caution about the limitations of women heroes and the implications of his remarks”
Dawn Berry
Dawn Berry, author of The Domestic Violence Sourcebook notes “Battering often escalates when something changes in the violent home, and pregnancy–especially the first–may trigger an increase in abuse” and “Abusive men have a terrible fear of abandonment and become desperate when they feel they could lose their partner”
Klara Bodis
“As we cannot fully accept or reject Blanche, when she is eliminated we don’t fully sympathise nor do we rejoice fully”
Criticism of Elia Kazan’s film
Criticism of Elia Kazan’s film “Among the most significant were eliminating any reference to homosexuality, getting rid of, or considerably weakening, the rape, outlawing any erotic behaviour’ Kolin
What greek symbol could be used to describe ASND’s structure?
Ouroborus Symbol - The snake eating its own tail
How does Williams adhere to tragic convention?
Williams breaks conventional 3 Act tragedy genre he does however, obey the unities of time, place and action
Domestic violence in Williams’ life
Williams’ father Cornelius would frequently return home intoxicated and fly into a rage with their mother in 1933 William’s brother stated that once “Edwina ran into the bedroom and locked herself in. (Cornelius) broke the door down, and in doing so the door hit her and broke her nose”
The origins of hysteria
Hysteria was a joint publication by Doctor Sigmund Freud and Breuer. (Freud) held that the belief that the cause of hysteria was not physiological but originated from deep within the mind. He also believed that in most cases, this hysteria was related to some of sexual incident in the patient’s life.
“How can you expect audiences to be impressed by plays and other writings that are created as a release for the tensions of a possible or incipient madman?” - ‘The World I live In’ by Williams
To the question: “How can you expect audiences to be impressed by plays and other writings that are created as a release for the tensions of a possible or incipient madman?” His response “It releases their own” ANALYSIS: and in some ways this is an answer to why humans are so encapsulated by misery being portrayed on stage it goes back to the Greek origins of Catharsis thus why Streetcar was vital in understanding the challenges that 1947 America provided.
Criticism on commodity fetishism and a individualistic world
“No man has a monopoly on right or virtue”
Cleopatra of the Nile and Blanche Dubois of the French Quarter by Kolin
Five years earlier when ASND premiered at the Ethel Barrymore, Katharine Cornell was starring as Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra at the Martin Beck down the same street
Williams wanted to cast Cornell as Blanche though he later changed his mind
“Like her Egyptian counterpart, Blanche is branded as a temptress, a deceiver of men a Circe (an enchantress)”
Mary Ann Corrigan
It was reported that audiences actively cheered Blanche’s rape the scene is seen as justified due to Blanche’s behaviour as the initiator through her flirting and exhibitionism
Flannery O’connor
Flannery O’Connor point is “Grotesque literature exists because writers are faced with the reality that they live in an age whose distortions function as indicators of how far man has drifted from his true image as a creature of God”
Van Gogh 1888 quote
“I’ve tried to express the terrible human passions with the red and the green.” “Everywhere it’s a battle and an antithesis of the most different greens and reds”
Williams death quote
“We have had no deaths in our family but slowly by degrees something was happening much uglier and more terrible than death”
Stagecraft Dr Will Norman
“We can understand Blanche as a character obsessed with the managing of the production of her own private play” - she chooses her own costume from costume box, she puts on music from the radio and she manages her own lighting “Stanley of course is bent on disrupting Blanche’s stagecraft”
Dr Will Norman on Williams clever use of stagecraft
“Williams made a conscious decision to elevate stagecraft from its traditional role as a secondary technical concern to being a central one”
Tragedy criticism Jennifer Wallace
‘Tragedy is the art form created to confront the most difficult experiences we face: death, loss, injustice, thwarted passion, despair.’
