A05-Critical Analysis

Question 1

Tennessee Williams ‘I don’t want to focus…

Answer 1

‘I don’t want to focus guilt or blame on any one character but to have it a tragedy of misunderstanding and insensitivity to others’

Question 2

Tennessee Williams on desire

Answer 2

It is ‘rooted in a longing for companionship, a release from the loneliness that haunts every individual’

Question 3

J.M. McGlinn ‘(Stanley) wishes to…

Answer 3

‘(Stanley) wishes to destroy (Blanche’s) composure to make her recognise that she is the same as he is, a sexual animal’

Question 4

Katrina Duerre ‘(Blanche) attempts to maintain her ___ ___ life…

Answer 4

‘(Blanche) attempts to maintain her past luxurious life by holding onto and creating new desires rather than adjusting to her reality’

Question 5

Robert Brustein ‘The conflict between Blanche and Stanley…

Answer 5

‘The conflict between Blanche and Stanley allegorises the struggle between effeminate culture and masculine libido’

Question 6

Mihaela Magdic Stella ‘escaped her old life only to…

Answer 6

Stella “escaped her old life only to create almost the exact same version of it’

Question 7

Elia Kazan on how Stanley is right

Answer 7

Blanche is dangerous. She is destructive. She would soon have him
and Stella fighting. He’s got things the way he wants them around
there and he does not want them upset by a phony, corrupt, sick,
destructive woman. This makes Stanley right! Are we going into the era
of Stanley? He may be practical and right. […] but what the hell does it
leave us? [C

Question 8

Julie Adam Elia Kazan directed the play to portray Stanley and Blanche as…

Answer 8

‘the moral victor and the physical victor’
The rape is also how Blanche ‘atones’ for her actions towards Allan

Question 9

Nina Leibman on Stella’s sexuality

Answer 9

Stella’s sexuality is approved because ‘she is not the lustful instigator but the passive respondent’

Question 10

Jacqueline O’Connor on captive, oppressive settings

Answer 10

Blanche comes from one institutional setting (the plantation) to another institutional setting (the marriage flat) and will eventually leave to reside in the asylum

Question 11

Harold Clurman on Blanche and Stanley

Answer 11

Blanche is “the martyred poetic instinct and aristocracy of feeling”
Stanley’s “mentality provides the soil for fascism, viewed not as a political movement but as a state of being”

Question 12

P Allan on Blanche and magic

Answer 12

‘She craves magic because the truth of post-war America is too harsh to bear’