Costume Flashcards
(7 cards)
How is costume presented throughout the play?
-In A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams uses costume not merely as visual ornamentation but as an extension of identity, illusion, and power
-Through the theatrical textures of Blanche’s fading gentility and Stanley’s bold physicality, Williams stages costume as a battleground of social conflict and psychological defence. Clothing becomes language — a way for characters to conceal, assert, or unravel themselves — revealing deeper anxieties about gender, class, and the collapse of constructed selves
How does William’s present BD’s clothes?(1)
-Williams presents Blanche’s costumes as physical embodiments of illusion — garments stitched with memory, fantasy, and denial. From her entrance in a “white suit with a fluffy bodice,” she is immediately marked as “incongruous to the setting,” her attire signalling not just her social displacement but her psychological fragility
-The whiteness gestures towards purity and faded Southern refinement, while the “fluffiness” implies a lack of structure — a softness easily unravelled
-As the play progresses, Blanche’s clothing becomes increasingly performative. She dresses in “feathery white dresses,” “pink silk brassieres,” and even a “tiara” — garments that blur the line between reality and fantasy, adulthood and masquerade
-These costumes are not mere vanity but a strategy of survival. Like her use of soft lighting and poetic speech, her clothes are an armour of femininity designed to distract from age, trauma, and truth
How could BD’s costume link to Freudian themes?(1)
-Williams uses costume here in Freudian terms — as a manifestation of the ego’s attempts to manage the inner conflicts between desire and social expectation
-Blanche cannot reconcile her past with the present, so she adorns herself in the relics of what she once was or imagined herself to be. Her “scarlet satin robe” becomes iconic in this regard: a symbol of sexual history disguised as theatrical glamour
-But Williams also shows how fragile this illusion is. When Mitch rips away the “paper lantern,” he does more than expose her face — he tears through her costume of fantasy. As John McRae notes, Blanche “dresses for the world she wishes to inhabit, not the one she’s in,” and Williams stages that dissonance not just psychologically, but materially
How do Stanley’s clothes contrast to BD’s?
-In direct contrast, Stanley’s costume affirms his presence, his masculinity, and his alignment with the brutal immediacy of post-war America. He is introduced wearing “blue denim work clothes,” a uniform that signals both physical labour and national identity. Stanley does not dress to perform refinement; he dresses to assert ownership — of space, of narrative, of Stella
-His wardrobe, particularly his “coloured shirts” and “vivid green silk bowling shirt,” reflects a masculinity that is vibrant, tactile, and dominant. Williams uses these costumes to express Stanley’s unapologetic place in the New America — ethnically diverse, working-class, and forward-facing. Where Blanche clings to the performance of the Old South, Stanley is entirely present. His clothes do not disguise, they declare
–From a Marxist perspective, Stanley’s “silk bowling shirt ” symbolise the working-class man’s appropriation of luxury once reserved for the aristocracy, a physical assertion of his triumph over the old class order Blanche represents
What is the significance of Stanley undressing?(2)
-As the play develops, his undressing becomes symbolic: during the poker night, he removes his shirt and “stands in his underwear,” a moment both sexual and threatening. Williams crafts this image to expose the raw power Stanley wields — a masculinity that strips away Blanche’s artifice both metaphorically and literally
-The final scene, in which Stanley gives Blanche her “party dress” to wear to the asylum, is among the most chilling uses of costume in the play. By placing her back into one of her fantasy garments, he reinforces the illusion one last time — only to ensure its collapse
-This act becomes not compassionate, but cruel: Stanley uses costume not to protect, but to disarm. Through this final gesture, Williams suggests that while Blanche dresses to escape reality, Stanley uses costume to control it
-The clash between their appearances mirrors the ideological clash at the heart of the play: illusion versus realism, the aesthetic past versus the industrial present, feminine performance versus male presence
What could you conclude about costume from the play?
-Williams transforms costume into a site of conflict and exposure — a language through which identity, power, and memory are contested
-For Blanche, clothes are a desperate attempt to maintain a coherent self, a stitched-together dream of gentility and safety. For Stanley, they are a tool of assertion, grounded in the raw materialism of a changing America
-As the silk slips and the denim tightens, the audience is left not with a costume drama, but with a tragedy woven in fabric — where illusion cannot be worn forever, and reality insists on being seen in full light
Why are Stanley’s blue denim clothes important?
-He is consistently dressed in “blue denim work clothes,” aligning him with labour, industry, and the new meritocratic post-war America
-From a Marxist perspective, Stanley represents the rise of the working class dismantling the remnants of Southern aristocracy
-He has no need for illusion—his clothes, actions, and objects assert ownership and control
-As John McRae argues, the play is about “the dead hand of the Old South” being defeated by modern, physical dominance. Stanley is not just a man but a force of historical change
