Scene Two

Question 1

Key Quotes in scene two

Answer 1

-“She’s soaking in a hot bath to quiet her nerves”
-“You’re simple, straightforward and honest, a little on the primitive side”
-“These are love letters, yellowing with antiquity”
-“Thousands of papers stretching back over hundreds of years”
-“Exchanged the land for their epic fornications”
-“It’s fitting that Belle Reve should finally be this bunch of old papers in your big capable hands”
-“He’s what we need to mix our blood with now we’ve lost Belle Reve and have to go on without Belle Reve to protect us”

Question 2

Plot summary of scene two

Answer 2

• Stella tells SK about BD ‘losing’ Belle Reve and he talks of the Napoleonic code.
• SK invades BD’s wardrobe trunk.
• SK and BD thrash it out, she flirts with him, he looks at her love letters.
• The men gather for the Poker Party and the women leave for the Galatoires’

Question 3

What argument does John McCrae have on scene two? (AO5)

Answer 3

• Pace picks up significantly, emphasises BD’s fixation with the past through the letters and documents in contrast to Stella’s baby representing the future “the dead hand of the past catching up with the future”.
• The child not only represents the future, but also highlights BD’s childless state in a tragic way: no future to offer a child, no child to give her a future.
• We understand more of BD’s background through ‘epic fornications’, BD’s family’s self-destructive drive made her a product, self-destruction as genetic.
• Emphasis on property, BD preserves her body as it’s now the only property she has.
• TW wants us to sympathise with her and see her redeeming nobility despite the rest of her qualities falling behind.

Question 4

Contextual notes (AO3) in scene two

Answer 4

• Blue piano is an emblem of multiculturalism in NO, played by black musicians. BD never acknowledges it: it seems she can only hear the music of the past.
• Class divide between SK and BD means they have different ideologies - the nostalgic dreams of the Old Moneyed south contrasts with the reality of the American Dream.

Question 5

Notes on structure and stage craft (AO2) in scene two

Answer 5

• Offstage bathing motif (never see the bathroom) represents: purification, guilt, the past, necessary ritual of bathing - rejuvenation (fountain of youth)
• Love letters, links to past tragedy; loss of illusion; keeps them as a relic of a time before she discovered Allan’s truth? From the time of courtship? Image of the past.
• Wardrobe trunk - all of her property reduced to one trunk; lots of it is costume/ rhinestone (fake) so links strongly to ideas around property, fantasy, impermanence.
• Use of Sound, SK uses her fear of loud noises to intimidate.

Question 6

Links across literature in scene two(AO4)

Answer 6

• Image of bathing is a common trope of guilt linking to Lady Macbeth - the trope of female madness and hysteria. For BD it means the need to constantly cleanse herself as the trauma resurfaces and this image of washing away her sins is one consistent throughout the text.