Critics

Question 1

Emma Kirby
(Madness)

Answer 1

“Sanity is dependent on fitting in and adhering to the social roles expected of us.”

Question 2

Harold Clurman
(Sexism)

Answer 2

“Blanche is a delicate and sensitive woman pushed into insanity by a brutish environment presided over by chief ape-man Stanley Kowalski.”

Question 3

Katrina Duerre
(Illusion VS reality)

Answer 3

“[Blanche] attempts to maintain her past luxurious life by holding onto and creating new desires rather than adjusting to her reality.”

Question 4

J. M. McGlinn
(Illusion vs reality)

Answer 4

“Stella ignores the needs of others and eventually adopts her own illusion. Life with Stanley - sex with Stanley - is her highest value. Her refusal to accept Blanche’s story of the rape is a commitment to self-preservation rather than love.”

Question 5

The New Yorker
(Corruption VS decay)

Answer 5

“A play about the disintegration of a woman…or of a society”

Question 6

Nancy Tischler
(Old VS new)

Answer 6

“…sees Streetcar not as a drama of natural selection but rather as “a reversal of Darwin’s vision—back to the apes.”

Question 7

Elia Kazan
(Destruction)

Answer 7

“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!”

Question 8

Tennessee Williams
(Destruction)

Answer 8

“The [play shows] destructive power of society on the sensitive non-conformist individual.”

Question 8

P. Allan
(Illusion VS reality)

Answer 8

“[Blanche] craves ‘magic’ because the truth about postwar America is too harsh to bear.”

Question 9

George Hovis
(Southern Belle)

Answer 9

“Both a mask and a prison”

Question 10

Welsch
(Desire and death)

Answer 10

“Both psychologically and symbolically, Blanche’s sexual experiences lead her on a journey to death.”

Question 11

Shirley Galloway
(Desire and death)

Answer 11

“Blanche has her own desires that draw her to Stanley, like a moth to the light, a light she avoids, even hates, yet yearns for.”

Question 12

Jacqueline O’Connor
(Female entrapment)

Answer 12

The play represents Blanche as “one of a number of protagonists whose voices are silenced by the accusation of madness when they insist on speaking truths that the world is not prepared to hear.”

Question 13

Eliza Kazan
(Stella)

Answer 13

“Stella… becomes the field of battle over which Stanley and Blanche fight.”

Question 14

Jinchao Xu
(Female entrapment)

Answer 14

“Women like Blanche are ill equipped to survive in a changing world by any means except physical attractiveness.”

Question 15

Elliot Norton
(Masculinity)

Answer 15

“Marlon Brando plays the man Stanley as a bull and a bully.”
[Stanley] “…fired into anger by an underlying pride and vanity.”

Question 16

Nicole Onyett
(Identity)

Answer 16

Blanche has become a social outcast because she refuses to conform to conventional moral values. In cruelly unveiling the truth about her scandalous past, Stanley strips her of her psychological, sexual, and cultural identity.

Question 17

Burks
(Social class)

Answer 17

“Less (…) a struggle between good and evil” and more a “Social Darwinist struggle for survival between two species of human beings.”

Question 18

Eliza Kazan
(Blanche)

Answer 18

“…an emblem of a dying civilization…all her behaviour patterns are those of the dying civilization she represents.”

Question 19

Ruth Foley
(Stella)

Answer 19

Stella Kowalski represents a more classic example of a female victim in a patriarchal society where a woman accepts spousal abuse in order to be provided for and deludes herself into thinking that she is happy in this role.

Question 20

Feminist critics

Answer 20

A Feminist critic would sympathise with the women in this play as they are all victims of powerful men. They would also feel disappointed by the fact that Blanche was challenging Stanley but her own desires and delusions caused her to lose the battle.

Question 21

Marxist critics

Answer 21

A Marxist critic would feel satisfied that Stanley is triumphant in the end over Blanche, that he won the power struggle. Symbolically he has represented the North defeating the South, which Blanche is symbolic of.

Question 22

Tennessee Williams
(Identity)

Answer 22

“Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. Vanity, fear, desire, competition– all such distortions within our own egos..

Question 23

Tennessee Williams
(Blanche)

Answer 23

“I suppose I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.”

Question 24

Tennessee Williams
(Vulnerability)

Answer 24

“All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire a thing or to love a thing intensely is to place yourself in a vulnerable position…”