A Streetcar Named Desire

Question 1

What does Kathleen Margaret Lant claim about WIlliams?

Answer 1

That Williams prohibits Blanche from the realm of tragic protagonist as a result of his own culturally ingrained misogyny

Question 2

How does Anca Vlasopolos interpret Blanche’s downfall?

Answer 2

A demonstration of WIlliams’ sympathy for her circumstances and a condemnation of the society that destroys her

Question 3

WHat does Kathleen Margaret Lant claim about Blanche?

Answer 3

Lant posits that Blanche had a responsibility as a wife to somehow rescue her husband from his own sexuality

Question 4

What does Judith Thompson say about STanley?

Answer 4

He is endowed with the many mythic attributes of Dionysus

Question 5

What does Henry Bradshow Fearon say about New Orleans?

Answer 5

To all men whose desire only is to be rich and live a short life, but a merry one, I have no hesitation in recommending New Orleans

Question 6

‘I’m looking for the Pleiades, __ ____ ___ _ _______’

Answer 6

The Seven Sisters, but these girls are not out tonight. Oh, yes they are, there they are!

Question 7

‘Power and pride of a ___ ______ ___ __ ___ ___’

Answer 7

Richly-feathered male bird among hens

Question 8

Who was one of WIlliam’s main inspirations growing up?

Answer 8

T.S. Eliot

Question 9

Which poem was his main inspiration from T.S. Eliot?

Answer 9

The Waste Land

Question 10

How does The Waste Land relate to ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’?

Answer 10

Eliot manipulates the continuous parallel between contemporaneity (Stanley) and antiquity (Blanche)

Question 11

What does Stella’s name mean, and how is this ironic?

Answer 11

Her name means star, yet, the sole character who looks up at the sky is Blanche

Question 12

WHat are the main quotes that show Blanche’s interest in Astrology?

Answer 12

‘I’m looking for the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, but these girls are not out tonight. Oh, yes they are, there they are!’ and ‘I’ll bet you were born under Aries’

Question 13

Why is Blanche’s interest in Astrology and constellations tragically ironic?

Answer 13

She fails to read the signs of her destiny, her tragic blindness is all the more ironic as the omen is inserted by WIlliams just before the peripeteia - in the next scene, Stanley goes on the attack to eliminate his enemy

Question 14

WHat is the significance of Blanche referring to the seven sisters?

Answer 14

Blanche trivialises the myth of the seven daughters of Atlas, who were pursued relentlessly by the mighty hunter of Orion until they were all translated to the sky.
- Both constellations rise in May and set in November, which is the approximate span of the play. In Ancient Greece, the constellation of Orion was associated with Dionysus (Stanley) and the Pleiades were known to antiquity as the Lyre of Orpheus (Blanche)

Question 15

How does William’s quote ‘all my characters are larger than life, not realistic’ relate to the Seven Sisters and Orion?

Answer 15

The conflict between Stanley and Blanche may be viewed as the clash between two rival myths

Question 16

How does Dionysus’s association with hunting relate to Stanley?

Answer 16

This si the first image we get of him, when he throws the ‘red-stained’ package at Stella, and in the earlier drafts of the play it was explicitly said that he did hunt it,

Question 17

How do DIonysus’ assumed animal forms relate to Stanley?

Answer 17

He shows the bestial imagery throughout the whole play, and it is stigmatised by Blanche ‘There’s something downright bestial about him’

Question 18

What does Mitch say to Stanley at the end of the play relating to Dionysus?

Answer 18

‘you…you…brag…bull…bull’, the bull and the goat were Dionysus’s favourite incarnations. Appropriately, Stanley is a Capricorn, born under the sign of the Goat, as Blanche finds out in Scene 5. The goat is commonly associated with lucifer

Question 19

How does ‘The Bacchae’ relate to ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’?