Notesale: Turn your study into money

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A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
ASSESSED ON
9/30 - Context
9/30 - Understanding, English Skills
6/30 - Interpretations
6/30 - Analysing quotes

A03 CONTEXT
• Tennessee Williams writes ASCND at the end of WW2 but the war has very little mention in the play
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• Stanley represents the american dream, that all men are born equal and can can succeed
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He said ‘
I write out of love for the south’… once a way of life that I am just able to remember - not a society
based on money… I write about the south because i think the war between romanticism and the
hostility towards it is strong here’
• He does not write about politics, more the emotional burdens of everyday life
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• Blanche tried to marry into ‘light’ and ‘culture’ but later discovers that there is corruption and deceit behind
the facade
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• Williams’ productions diverged from mainstream theatres conventional, linear narrative
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• Williams said there was only one theme to his work ; the destructive impact on society on the sensitive,
non-conformist individual
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- ‘the interbreeding
of different racial types’
• The binaries of racial difference, idioms, phonetics, dialogue, music, characterisation and sexual typecasting informs and is challenged by Stanley as the masqueraded black male
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• Blanche says; “I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be true
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THE PRIMITIVE AND THE PRIMAL
• Blanche calls Stanley ‘ape-like’ and primitive
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DESIRE AND LONELINESS
• Desire and intimacy is the heart of Stella and Stanley’s relationship
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THE OLD AND NEW SOUTH
• Stella and Blanche come from a world that is rapidly dying
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• Stanley represents the new south where chivalry is dead
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• Blanches cruelty is unintentional

LIGHT
• Blanche avoids any bright light
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The latter is not stable and it can be easily destroyed - just like Blanche’s
illusions and paper lantern
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Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I misrepresent things to
them
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And if that is sinful, then let me be damned
for it! - Don’t turn the light on” - only time she confesses

ALLUSIONS AND REFERENCES; A03 CONTEXTUAL EVIDENCE
• Napoleonic Code - law of property which gives Stanley rights to Belle Reve
• ‘and if God choose,/I shall but love thee better after death’ - From sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barret
Browning
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• Elysian Fields - A working-class district of New Orleans but a magnificent boulevard in Paris
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• Speech - Blanche speaks in an elegant manner, often quoting poetry whereas Stanley speaks the language of reality and brutality

SYMBOLS 

Belle Reve - beautiful dream, represents the dream that Blanche seeks but never experiences
Blanches white clothing - false purity, innocence masking her carnal desire and cloaks her past
Blanches frequent bathing - baptism, attempting to wash away the bad memories, sins and mistakes
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A05 CRITICAL READINGS
Darwinian Interpretation
• Williams said “you better look out otherwise the apes will take over”
• Stanley’s over-aggressive stance and presentation as the “gaudy seed bearer” is in fact ‘survival of the
fittest’ - as a ‘Polack’ he needs to be able to survive
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• Savarah says “William’s destabilisation of mid-century notions of masculinity and femininity is accomplished by his ability to expose the violence that accompanies the exercise of male authority and to valorise female power and female sexual desire
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Marxist Interpretation
• There is tension between social groups as Blanche does not see life in the New South as acceptable because it is not as sophisticated
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• The polarised streetcar destination of desire (heaven) and cemeteries link to the idea of Freud’s that humans are motivated by two conflicting central desires; love and death
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White - ‘purity’ which is ironic and hides her inner sins
Light colours shown the decline of the upper class and the fact they are fading into the background
Moths are temporary but beautiful
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“incongruous to the setting”
She's a lost moth that prefers to hide in a dark world of illusions
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fixation on cleanliness
baths; washing away sins & paper lantern - delicate, hiding truth of age
She is distinctly over-civilised and has repressed her vitality and sexuality
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“red satin robe”
red represents passion and promiscuity
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“they told me to take a street-car named desire and transfer to one called cemeteries and ride six
blocks and get off at Elysian Fields”
Allegorical version of her life up to this time
Her illicit pursuit of her sexual desires led her to her social death and expulsion from her hometown of Laurel
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(purgatory)
Fantasy/Illusion/Vanity

The Old South

Desire/Loneliness

Daylight never exposed so total a ruin (Scene
1, Blanche to Stella)

Than you sir! I appreciate your gallantry! (Scene Three, Blanche to
Mitch)

I want to be near you, got to be with someone, I can’t be alone! (Blanche to Stella)

“I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more
than I can a rude remark or a vulgar
action
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(Scene 3, Blanche to Mitch)

Blanche: I mean I haven't informed him - of my
real age!
Stella: Why are you sensitive about your age?
Blanche: Because of hard knocks my vanity's been
given
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(Scene 5, Blanche to Stella)

The Hotel Flamingo is not the diet of
establishment I would date to be seen
in! (Scene 5, Blanche to Stanley)

Yes - I want Mitch
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(Scene 5, Blanche to Stella)

I don't know how much longer I can turn the trick
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You've got to be study
and attractive
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I want magic! Yes, yes,
magic
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I do misrepresent things
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I tell what
ought to be truth
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And I need somebody, too
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Sometimes — there's God — so quickly
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Blue - strength, authority, masculinity, calm - complements his behaviour
Colour represents the liveliness of the working class shown by the opposite colours worn by Blanche
“we’ve had this date since the beginning”
ultimate power over Blanche
Using her sexuality against her - frowned upon in Old South but embraced in New South - old south is getting pushed out - survival of fittest
Post colonialist perspective - when colonialists colonise countries, overpower inhabitants and rape women
“carrying a red-stained package from a butchers”
‘heaves it at stella’
taking care of primal needs
sexual connotation
Stanley becomes associated with the world of flesh and corporeality
“I am 100% American, born and raised in the greatest country on earth and proud of hell of it, so
don't ever call me a Polack”
Stanley represents the New American Society
Blanche’s sense of superiority no longer has a viable presence in the American economy
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‘I’m the king round here’

‘the gaudy seed-bearer’

We've had this date with each other from the beginning
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“He takes a step towards her, biting his tongue which protrudes between his
lips
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Don't don't hang back with the brutes!”

Blanche : “Some things are not forgiveable
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It is the most unforgiveable thing in my opinion, and the one thing
in which I have never, ever been guilty
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People from Poland are Poles, not Polacks
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Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers (ironic
because Blanche has found the opposite in the Kowalski household)
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He heaves the package at her’
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Williams accentuates Stanley’s lack of education through his ungrammatical speech, ‘What’s all the rest of them papers?’

Sophisticated, elegiac language: ‘our improvident grandfathers
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Monosyllabic: Now let’s cut the re-bop – also shows Stanley’s
perceptiveness as he can see the falsity in Blanche’s interpretation
of life
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Stella is explaining her overwhelming love for Stanley in terms of physical passion
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Blanche can recognise desire, but she tries to pretend she can't, and refuses to get on board
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Stella's contentment with her relationship is
completely foreign to Blanche
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Stella is the interesting character in the final scene
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Her sister says that Stanley raped her
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Even though Stella knows deep down that Blanche was telling at least a partial truth,
she must now follow her sister's example and embrace illusion over reality, in order to continue living the life she had before Blanche ever came to New Orleans
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It clearly shows the difference between the men in Bell Reve and New Orleans
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Therefore she’s not used to the attitudes of the new
order in Elysian Fields
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By doing this she will carry her guilt as a price to be paid for the preservation of
her marriage
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This is similar to her sister –
Blanche and how she detaches from reality and sees life only as she wishes to perceive
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yes stella, i did flirt with your husband
the only way to live with such a man is to bed him
come to think of it maybe you wouldn't be too bad to interfere with



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