Scene Three Flashcards
Opening stage directions
‘Van Gogh’s of a billiard-parlour at night’
‘lurid, brilliance, vivid’
‘red-and-white check’
‘as coarse and direct and powerful as the primary colours’
Only artwork we are told about, visual intertextuality, product of the era.
Semantic field of light.
Uses colours to represent the ugliness of life, raw and realistic’ cursing, drinking and domestic abuse. Stella’s submissiveness allows the abusive/ dysfunctional relationship to continue.
Mitch as an anomaly to the darker colours.
Ao5 ‘ primary colours to provoke intense feelings of emotions on edge’.
Mitch- ‘You are all married’
Sensitive masculinity, Mitch subverts the expected heteronormative ideals of the era, the roles are inversed he is controlled by her.
Blanche- ‘Please don’t get up’
Stanley- ‘Nobody’s going to get up’
Blanche as the Southern Belle; instilled manners.
Horrible reply, represents the New world’s repression of the ‘Old South’
Blanche- Mitch seems ‘superior to the others’
Categorises the men in the play, social Darwinism or an instilled sense of authority from her past.
Blanche- ‘sick people have such deep, sincere attachments’
Emotional connection to Mitch, she has personal experience.
‘sick’ metaphor for the ideology towards minority groups in 1947 such as homosexual people.
Blanche- ‘ she’s somewhat older than I’
Pathological drive to lie
Blanche- ‘ I can’t stand a naked lightbulb’
Symbolic use of the paper lantern to cover up her flaws.
Dominant personalities in the house- Stanley will disagree with this.
There is a sound of a blow, Stella cries out
Domestic violence is hidden, social taboo, it is normalised in 1947.
Mitch- ‘Poker shouldn’t be played in a house with women’
Women blamed for the men’s fault.
Homosocial setting.
Outside
No architectural safety inside for the women.
SD- the blue piano plays for a brief interval
Reminder that life goes on, highlights the normalisation and concealment of domestic violence.
SD- ‘Stella slips down the rickety stairs’
Slip- to fall into error. Rickety- unstable, unsteady, crumbling.
Exposes the nature of their relationship, social Darwinism., gender roles. Stella metaphorically and literally descends to Stanley’s level. The depiction of Eunice’s ‘upper apartment’ as a place of security, sisterhood, female dominated and the position of the woman has definition.
SD- raises him level with her
AO4- Duchess and Antonio.
Stanley vs Mitch
Egotistical masculinity vs fragile masculinity.
