secrecy / exposure Flashcards
(10 cards)
“faded white stairs”
white used as a motif to reflect purity but the weathered condition of the stairs reflects that if you live long enough corruption is unavoidable, that a life of purity is not a life lived yet society expects us to pretend and create an image of this purity and innocence that is impossible to sustain
“delicate beauty must avoid a strong light”
light reflecting honesty/exposure, blanche is only beautiful and desirable when not fully exposed (both physical and metaphorical) her age juxtaposes her debutante appearance
“daylight never exposed so total a ruin!”
daylight is natural, softer exposure that blanche cant handle showing how far she is hiding away from the truth, daylight also reflects society and the outside world which Blanche doesnt want to accept is moving on and changing
“theres no door between the two rooms, and Stanley- will it be decent?”
setting creates lack of privacy and increases tension in desire for secrecy and delusion, impossible to uphold when completely surrounded by stanley and stella
[he holds the bottle to the light to observe it… “Have a shot?”
stanley immediately presented as the exposure and threat to blanches way of lide, juxtaposition between him (man, new orleans, changed by the war, modern job) and her (women, south, changed before the war, stuck in the past) he is the threat of society blanche is so scared of
“blanches dress, a flowered print”
flowers represent innocence, youth and potential for growth that blanche has
fabric tho, reflecting the idea of potential, but the actual flowers have been replaced by cities - new america and individualism / capitalism over community
“he rips off the ribbon and starts to examine them.”
exposes her
“rips” violent
“ribbon” blanches pretense, and also what is holding her, identity and emotionally, together
his commitment to exposing her despite the consequences on her, because he feels he has the right as a man? new american worker?
he is purley unsympathetic to her concealing of herself
“poker should not be played in a house with women”
the poker game is an allegory for gender violence and the conflict of the play
reflecting that the men make the rules ‘for women’, justifying the absence of women in heirachy
also hypocritical, blaming poker for the actions of stanley
“her eyes go blind with pleasure”
she cannot see the truth due to her humanity, her desires are stronger than her perception
stellas failure is her inability to see past her own desires of toxicity to recognise the danger
“please, blanche! sit down and stop yelling!”
stella is not enabling blanches hysteria, but as a result has silenced her
stella is addicted to stanley, blanches reaction is fair, but because everyone else is ok with it she comes off as hysterical
forces blanche into silence because she doesnt fit in with this new society, with its new permissive acceptance of desire
