SND Charactersz

Question 1

Blanche - the anti-heroine

Answer 1

• narcissistic personality disorder who uses alcoholism as a coping mechanism to forget her guilt from the past

Question 2

Blanche - key characteristics

Answer 2

Manipulative and pathological liar
- deceive Mitch into desiring her

Insecure and sensitive
- ageing
- spends time fixing appearance and fishes for compliments

Lonely
- even relationship with Mitch is built on mutual loneliness

Flirtatious and seductive
- bathing, images of nudity
- half dressed through gap of curtains, changes in light so silhouette of body visible to Mitch
- tries to relive youth, stuck in loop

Delusional in her flight from reality
- stuck in traumatic past
- states she doesn’t want realism but wants magic
She can switch into her fantasy world with ease
Her delusions and illusions mirror her desires to help escape her past

Question 3

Stella

Answer 3

Left laurel as seduced by the new American life in New Orleans
Her aristocratic descent is apparent in her disposition and manners

Question 4

Stella - key characteristics

Answer 4

Gentle, impressionable and Passive homemaker

• empathetic and forgiving in nature
  Easily manipulated by B and S
• tolerant of both and is so passive that she can reflect audience’s position of helplessness in the play
• as homemaker from a feminist lens, Stella reflects 1940’s SUBJUGATED AND DEPENDANT WOMAN - returns to S despite his abuse

Question 5

Stanley

Answer 5

• representation of new America (after world war)
• represents American dream of freedom, an ideal that transcends the boundaries of social classes
• domineering male
• misogynistic, hyper masculine specimen who believes in male superiority

Question 6

Stanley key characteristics

Answer 6

Working-class man and of immigrant descent

Violent and crude
- uses brute force to convey his emotions
- treats objects around him with underlying violence
- objectification of women
- stark contrast to wife and sister in law who are well read
- stage directions of S in scene 1 emphasise ANIMAL SEXUALITY and MASCULINITY
- His QUINTESSENTIAL DISRESPECT and MISOGYNY to women seen how he shouts at S and B during poker

Primitive
- parallels between S behaviour and primitive man

Question 7

Mitch

Answer 7

B’s main romantic interest
Stanley’s colleague and friend

Question 8

Mitch Key characteristics

Answer 8

Working class man

Gentle and sensitive
- well mannered
- made fun of for sensitivity of mother
- aware friends are “being a pretty rough bunch”, juxtaposed to what B is used to

Not dominating male
- antithesis of Stanley