Reputation S&M Flashcards
(11 cards)
AO1: key facts
Malfi was written in 1613. Reputation was a very important concept back then - Othello - reputation reputation oh i have lost my reputation. Othello propagated fact that reputation is based upon sexuality. He killed Desdemona for ruining his reputation by cuckolding him
Reputation for women then, was presented as based on their sexuality. If they cheated their husband their reuptation was ruined - if they were sexually voracious their reputation was ruined - strumpet.
A similar theme occurs in Streetcar, a woman’s reputation is based upon their sexuality - blanche’s sexually voracious nature makes her dangerous to the others. This is because female lust is seen as unnatural and unappealing.
However, for men, reputation is different, it is based upon your sexual conquest and the masculine dominance that you can assert - similarly to Malfi in a way - masculine reputation = control and power over women
The difference with streetcar is that in streetcar, reputation does is not dependant on class, this is due to the context of the ante-bellum south and the context of the corrupt court of James I
To Blanche, darkness hides her reputation - she finds security in its illusion, her southern Belle persona, her shrouding of the bare light bulb - in this sense her reputation is already destroyed, she cannot undo it so she tries to conceal it
In Malfi, darkness destroys and corrupts reputation - the duchess imprisoned, dark images - her reputation is destroyed by the darkness of her society, and the beacon of hope she offers is represented in images of radiance
AO4 – COMPARISON: Similarities (and differences-within-similarities)
- Sexual reputation and expectations
- In both plays, men interfere with women (especially through sexuality) to destroy their reputations
- Goodness and morality fails to survive in these worlds – only corruption and violence can thrive
- Inevitability – to what extent was the end of the Duchess’ and Blanche’s reputation inevitable?
o The idea of wheel of fate and foreshadowing
AO4 – COMPARISON: Differences
- To Blanche, darkness hides her reputation – she finds security in illusion and in her Southern Belle persona – in this sense her reputation is already destroyed, she cannot undo it so she tries to conceal it. The question whether the truth matters, or fantasy
- In Malfi, darkness destroyed and corrupts reputation – the Duchess imprisoned, dark images, etc – her reputation is destroyed by the darkness of her society, and the beacon of hope she offers is her hamartia.
- By the end of the play, the Duchess has literally been killed – her reputation was ultimately irrelevant in the face of male power. Whether a woman is considered “mad” or not is a question of her reputation, and what others say about her, exemplified by Blanche’s incarceration at the end of the play.
- Whilst in Streetcar, Blanche goes through a metaphoric kind of death as her reputation ends with the decline of her mental state, though she tries to maintain her Southern Belle image “always depended on the kindness of strangers” to the Doctor.
- You could argue that in Streetcar -> Blanche’s reputation is already over from the start whilst in Malfi -> there is still some hope for the Duchess as she tries to contest the metaphors used to describe her “diamonds, they are, are of most value…” vs. “Whores by that rule are most precious”. Power over language is key in this struggle.
“That body of hers, / While that my blood ran pure in’t, was more worth / Than that which thou wouldst comfort, called a soul.”
‘you’re not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother’
D: ‘Diamonds are of most value… that have past through most jeweller’s hands.’
‘B: ‘yes, a big spider! That’s where I brought my victims’
F: ‘we must not now use balsamum, but fire’
‘Happily, with some strong-thighed bargeman’
Mitch: (He tears the paper lantern off the light-bulb)
‘Their livers are more spotted than Laban’s sheep’
‘Tiger – tiger’ (Blanche about to throw bottle at Stanley as he is going to rape her)
C: ‘Whether the spirit of greatness or of woman reign most in her, I know not’
‘every man is a king, and I am the king around here
‘the diamonds were changed to pearls.’
Blanche is wearing a (somewhat soiled and crumpled satin evening gown and a pair of scuffed silver slippers with brilliants set in their heels… now she is placing the rhinestone tiara in her head)
AO5 – CRITICS: Malfi
Lacey Baldwin: People were longing for the ‘sea faring strength’ of Elizabeth I.
Gibbons: The Duchess is to prepare herself for burial in the same manner as a bride
AO5 – CRITICS: Streetcar
Shirley Galloway: There are no clear-cut lines of good vs evil, no character is neither completely good nor bad.
Tennessee Williams: The destructive power of society on the sensitive non-conformist individual.
Tennessee Williams: I am Blanche duBois
Harold Bloom: The play explores the “conflict between the Old South and the New, the past and the present, and the gentility and coarseness of human behaviour”
