Context Flashcards
New Orleans
20th Century - pump system allowed the city to expand into low-lying areas which led to industrial development. Progressive major city
Tennessee Williams parents
Mother - obsessed with fantasies of genteel Southern living
Father - travelling salesman, distant and abusive
Tennessee Williams - sister
Rose diagnosed with schizophrenia + spent most of her adult life in mental hospitals
1943 - failed lobotomy which left her incapacitated
Williams never forgave parents + himself
“mad heroine” theme in his plays could be influenced by Rose
Tennessee Williams - outcast
Williams bullied at school for his Deep South accent and poverty, nicknamed “Tennessee”
Victim of a gay-bashing in 1979
Struggled with alcoholism and drug problems
William’s views on differences
The overarching theme for many of his plays, he claimed, is the negative impact that conventional society has upon the “sensitive nonconformist individual.”
Elements of Blanche’s behaviour, specifically her desire to create a more genteel, more perfect fantasy world, seem to reflect almost directly Williams’ own motivation for writing.
‘The World I Live In’
Tennessee Williams interviews himself (the back of the book)
“I have followed the developing tension and anger and violence of the world and time that I live in.”
“I have never written about any kind of vice which I can’t observe in myself.”
“I don’t believe in villains or heroes - only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken.”
Indicate thought processes behind the characters/events in the play.
Stanley as a WW2 Veteran
> sympathetic villain
increased sensitivity - evidence he could have PTSD
What is the play
Mid 20th century American Drama
Blanche’s past
bygone golden era where confederacy plantation owners held dominant social power in southern America
women born into sociocultural gentility were shielded from abrupt shifts in a morphing multicultural nation
Williams’ crafting of characters
deeply contradictory, inspire pity and disdain equally, audience conflicted emotional responses to the characters
Desire
epistemological - assert individual power and agency in a world that otherwise seems to reject or doubt the value of their their existence
sexual - contains sexual energy, manifested by Stanley’s rape
