Critics

Question 1

Williams - split personality

Answer 1

“I draw every character out of my very multiple split personality. My heroines always express the climate of my interior world at the time in which those characters were created.”

Question 2

Mihaela Magdić - Stella

Answer 2

‘a transitive type of a woman. She is neither a Southern belle nor a modern woman.’

Question 3

Nina Leibman - Stella

Answer 3

‘she is not the lustful instigator but the passive respondent’ - only sexual in response to male sexuality - the pinnacle of female entrapment.

Question 4

Tamanna Farahdina - Blanche

Answer 4

embodies the spirit of the late-nineteenth century
Feminist ideal of the ‘New Woman’, describing the desire for an ‘economically independent woman who wanted social, political, and educational equality among
men’.

Question 5

Kimmel - manhood

Answer 5

“The suburbs bec[a]me a central fact of postwar America and the new arena for proving one’s manhood”

Question 6

Panda - Stanley/Stella

Answer 6

“Stanley-Stella relationship is one of the supreme examples of hierarchization of activity/passivity opposition”

Question 7

The plays title emerges from reference to world beyond stage. What quote reflects the way the author arrived at the title when looking out of his New Orleans window?

Answer 7

Down this street, running on the same tracks, are two streetcars, one named Desire, the other Cemetery. Their indiscourageable progress… struck me as having some symbolic bearing of a broad nature on life.’

Question 8

Williams - plastic theatre (Glass Menagerie)

Answer 8

‘a new, plastic theatre which must take the place of the exhausted theatre of realistic conventions.’

Question 9

Williams - symbols (Intro to Camino Real)

Answer 9

‘symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama… the purest language of plays.’

Question 10

Williams - realism plus expressionism

Answer 10

‘sometimes a living quality is caught better by expressionism than what is supposed to be realistic treatment’. (Letter to Eliza Kazan 1947)

Question 11

C Vann Woodward - southern identity shaped…

Answer 11

by a failure to share in the great American traditions of ‘success, affluence and innocence’ Viewed as ‘the benighted South’ (racist, religious bigotry and poverty)

Question 12

Post-war mood (Chester Eisinger)

Answer 12

‘one of fear, terror, uncertainty, and violence, mingled with sad satisfactions and a relief at victory’.

Question 13

Williams in interview to ‘Gay sunshine’ - main focus of work on social issues not sexual orientation.

Answer 13

‘I am not about to limit myself to writing about gay people.’

Question 14

The extreme reactions to the play.

Answer 14

One critic called it the product of an “almost desperately morbid turn of mind”. In contrast, another described it as “a revelation. A lyrical work of genuine originality and disturbing power”.

Question 15

Williams - Justification for violent plays

Answer 15

“If there is any truth in the Aristotelian idea that violence is purged by its poetic representation on stage, then it may be that my cycle of violent plays have had a moral justification after all”.

Question 16

Williams major theme of work

Answer 16

‘I have only one major theme for my work, which is the destructive power of society on the sensitive, non-conformist individual’

Question 17

Williams summed up the moral of the play

Answer 17

‘If we don’t watch out, the apes will take over’.

Question 18

Benjamin Nelson - sex

Answer 18

for Blanche ‘has been her Achilles heel. It has always been his [Stanley’s] sword and shield.’

Question 19

Van Gogh on ‘The Night Cafe’

Answer 19

‘A place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime’.
titled perspective = moral degeneracy

Question 20

Streetcar about (Williams)

Answer 20

‘Ravishment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate, by the savage and brutal forces of modern society’.

Question 21

Harold Bloom

Answer 21

Desire is the single most important theme of the play — even Blanche, who initially seems to represent purity, is tainted by desire.

Question 22

Kazan - 3 opinions

Answer 22

Stanley didn’t want to rape Blanche- forced to by her refusal to bargain with him
on his own terms.
Stella has found a sort of salvation with Stanley, but at the tremendous cost that she must ignore how unhappy his actions make her
Blanche’s tragic flaw is that she adheres to the Southern tradition that she needs a man for completion — she can complete herself

Question 23

Brooks Atkinson –not political play

Answer 23

Streetcar is a deep exploration of a singular person with no sociopolitical
aspects

Question 24

Bert Cardullo – Blanche and Mary Magdalene

Answer 24

Blanche’s courting of Mitch mirrors Mary Magdalene’s courting of Jesus
and her eventual redemption through it; this is twisted by Mitch’s rejection of Blanche

Question 25

Aristotle - tragic hero

Answer 25

‘the tragic hero should be neither better nor worse morally than normal people, in order to allow the audience to identify with them.’

Question 26

J.H. Adler – Stanley creative

Answer 26

Stanley is more creative than destructive – he shows the vitality that the Old
South has lost

Question 27

Nancy Tischner – The play is decidedly not a classical tragedy

Answer 27

Blanche is “pathetically soft” and not a traditional tragic figure and we leave the theatre outraged rather than soothed.

Question 28

Judith J. Thompson– ‘myth for our time’

Answer 28

Williams’ drama is a “myth for our time”, portraying man’s constant
search for transcendence and imbuing the human with religious significance

Question 29

J.M. McGlinn– Stanley rape motivation

Answer 29

Stanley feels judged by Blanche, and his rape of her is his attempt to get her
to admit that she is a sexual animal, like him