New Orleans and the Old South Flashcards
How is the ‘Deep South’ presented in the play?
Unseen but referred to throughout the play is another setting – Mississippi and the ‘Deep South’, a name which stands not simply for a geographical location but also for a set of values and a way of life. This ‘South’, shaped by a belief in history and family ancestry, is a place looking backwards to before the American Civil War of 1861-65 (the antebellum era (‘antebellum’ = occurring or existing before a particular war)) when white plantation owners had made fortunes from black slave labour.
How is the ‘Old South’ portrayed as still being ‘alive’ in 1940s America?
Although this life no longer really existed by the
1940s, there continued to be a romantic view of both the past and its decline – kept alive by the blockbuster film Gone With the Wind, published in 1937 and made into a film in 1939.
How does the South have complex connotations?
It was seen as a place of great beauty by many writers but its wealth was primarily built upon its slave-owning past. The defining event of the South was the Civil War (1861-65) in which over 600,000 soldiers died and the Southern Confederate Army was defeated. Belle Reve would have been a remnant of the earlier pre-war age. Many families lost their wealth during the war, but Blanche also blames years of land being exchanged for her male relatives’ ‘epic fornications’. Such a reference reminds us of the corruption and hypocrisy underlying the romantic view of the Old South.
How is New Orleans presented in the play?
Urban, with a diverse, often immigrant population, it was a city with liberal (even risqué) values and morals, the home of jazz music, a place in which family name and ancestry had little weight. In the 1940s New Orleans was a place looking forward to the second half of the 20th century. It was the sort of place a playwright like Tennessee Williams, gay at a time when homosexuality was both illegal and considered a psychiatric disorder, might feel at home. New Orleans mirrored national trends of urbanisation. It was like many cities of the time in that it expanded, filled with immigrants, and experienced clumped settling patterns. Although people tended to gravitate towards others of their same ethnicity, New Orleans was unique in that it remained very intermixed and multicultural. Its reputation of being more accepting and diverse drew immigrants in and made New Orleans one of the oldest multicultural cities in the nation. As a principal port, New Orleans had a leading role in the slave trade, while at the same time having the most prosperous community of free black people in the South. The population of the city doubled in the 1830s, and, by 1840, New Orleans had become the wealthiest and third most populous city in the nation partly as a result of trade in tobacco, indigo, rice and cotton grown on plantations.
How does Blanche’s reaction to her surroundings in the play mimic the decline of the ‘Old South’?
Following their defeat by the Northern states, the South suffered economically. In the post war period there was a sense that the old South was dying and it was becoming like the rest of America, causing fear in the hearts of Southerners. A sense of bitterness is said to have remained in the South after the civil war and it became isolated from the rest of the nation. There was a sense of guilt carried over from slavery and it was viewed as ‘the benighted South’ – a land of racial prejudice, religious bigotry and poverty. However, this air of decaying grandeur added to the romantic appeal for many writers including Williams.
How is Blanche’s behaviour in the play an attitude that many others still held after the end of the American Civil War?
Although slavery had been abolished in 1865 at the end of the Civil War, segregation was still legal. Plantations still relied on cheap black labour. The combination of the Great Depression, the 2nd World War, and more liberal and progressive attitudes towards integration in the northern states all combined to threaten the wealth and way of life of plantation owners.
How does the image of a ‘Southern Belle’ accentuate Blanche’s “fading” image in regards to the vibrancy of the atmosphere in New Orleans?
The Southern Belle (derived from the French word belle, ‘beautiful’) is a stock character representing a young woman of the American Deep South’s upper socio-economic class. The image of the southern belle developed in the South during the antebellum (pre Civil War) period. It was based on the young, unmarried woman in the plantation-owning upper class of Southern society. Williams is emphasising how Blanche is antiquated and obselete in the futuristic, progressive society of New Orleans.
How does Blanche represent a ‘fading Southern Belle’?
The ‘southern belle’ archetype is
characterised by southern hospitality, a cultivation of beauty, and a flirtatious yet chaste demeanour. Blanche tries to mimic the conventions and courting rituals of the Southern belle whilst attempting to conceal her own
sexual desire - desires considered unseemly in young women of the period.
How did the Old South influence writers such as Williams?
Writers’ fascination with the past began to turn towards the economic decay symbolised by the decaying beauty of the plantations. One quality regarded as characteristic of the Southern writers was their rich imagination, often bordering on the bizarre and grotesque. ‘Southern Gothic’ was the phrase used to describe it. Its inspiration lay perhaps in an awareness of belonging to a dying culture - dashing, romantic, but at the same time living in an economy based on deep injustice and cruelty. The South as a broken, damaged society with the ripe charms of decay fired the imagination of Tennessee Williams.
