Critical perspectives Flashcards
Whingham on Duchess’ marriage and ontological mobility
‘unequal marriage will legitimate many other sorts of deserving mobility’
Tapp on gender relations in Streetcar
‘dramatises the battle of the sexes’
Bloomfield on being true to self in chaos in DoM
“integrity of life” amid bloodshed and secrecy seems to be the best characters can hope for’
Williams on moral complexity of humans
‘no man has a monopoly on right or virtue any more than any man has a corner on duplicity and evil’
Ribner and chaos and underlying animalistic nature of humanity
‘the way of the Aragonian brothers is that of madness and damnation, the complete descent of man into beast’
Galloway on Stanley and Darwinism
‘Stanley survives because of sheer physical vitality, not because of any innate superiority’
Brooke on ubiquitous male threat to women in Streetcar
‘Ordinary, handsome, family men like Stanley can be rapists’
Williams’ belief on human nature
Believed that ‘we are all savages at heart’
Berry on the inner corrpution of all the characters in DoM
‘All characters in the play are, in fact, Machiavellian in their holllowness’
Lord Acton on the law and the state in a Machiavellian society
In a Machiavellian society ‘the law is not above the state, but below it’
Bradbrook on the Cardinal and his view on the sinfulness of Jacobean society
‘the Cardinal knows already that he is in Hell’
McGlinn on Stella, illusions, and survival
Stella ‘adopts her own illusion… her refusal to accept Blanche’s story of the rape is a committment to self-preservation rather than love’
Kazan on Blanche and societal survival
Blanche ‘threatened the security of a different world, and… was finally cast out allowing that world to survive’
Bloom on Stella towards Stanley
‘Stella is genuinley in love with her husband’
Williams on intolerance and destruction in society
‘the destructive power of society on the sensitive non-conformist individual’
Unknown critic, a Stanley-vocate
Stanley ‘can be admired for defending his home against the treachery of Blanche’
Berry on social identity
All the characters in DoM ‘have a sense of ontological mobility (that is, they are able to shift who they are) and thus unable to pinpoint their exact role in society’
Jankowski on societal reality vs potential
Webster presents a ‘dual background of corruption and idealism’
Bogard on the choas of Jacobean society
‘The ultimate tragedy of Webster’s world is not the death of any individual but the prescence of evil and decay which drags all mankind to death’
Tapp on the Stanley and Blanche as societal victims
‘Stanley is as much a victim of masculine ideology (like the Napoleonic code)’ as Blanche ‘is a victim of the mythology of the “Southern Belle”
Murray and the Duchess’ inner dignity
‘The radiant spirit of the Duchess cannot be killed’
Clurman on Blanche’s victimhood at hands of Stanley
‘Blanche is a delicate and sensitive woman pushed into insanity by a brutish envirmonment presided over by chief ape-man Stanley Kowalski’
RSC production - interpretation of play’s message about gender relations
‘asks how anyone can survive in a world where masculinity has become toxic’
Habermann on the law and gender in DoM
Webster ‘puts gender relations, rather than women, on trial’
Callaghan’s view on DoM’s feminist message
‘The play is not at all… sympathetic [to Renaissance misogyny]’
(treatment of Julia contradicts this?)
Elia Kazan, director of 1952 film on universality of Stanley as a male character
‘Every bar in the nation is full of Stanley’s ready to explode’
Belsey on DoM and the meaning of ‘family’ in the 16th and early 17th century
Family ‘as dynasty’ or ‘as private realm of warmth and virtue’
‘dynasty’ definition ‘dominate[d]’
Murray on goodness of Antonio
‘Antonio is modelled on the dieal of Christian gentility’
Someone (maybe Brooke) on reversed gender roles of Duchess and Antonio
‘Webster portrays the Duchess as a “mannish” strong woman and Antonio as a “womanish” man’
Could also be extended to Ferdinand?
Kazan on Stella and survival
Stella ‘has found a kind of salvation or realisation but at a terrific price’
Someone on Stanley, masculinity, and America
Stanley ‘represents the macho forward-thinking America of the future’
Leggat on Webster and paradox/ no certainties
‘instability itself cannot be proclaimed as a final truth’
Sims on Webster and lack of certainties
‘He leads us into certain perspectives only to unsettle any judgement reached upon them’
Billington on DoM and turbulance of humanity
‘A poetic evocation of human instability’
