Streetcar - Context Flashcards
Context
American Dream
- Stanley mirrors the aggressive force that began to re-establish itself within a society destroyed by two world wars
- Stanley as the Polish immigrant commits himself to the meritocratic American Dream
The decay of Antebellum America
- Belle Reve vs New Orleans
- Industrialised New America taking over outdated ideologies of Old South (Stanley vs Blanche)
Role of the Southern Belle
- Instability of Southern Belle stereotype due to position of women being in flux, stemmed from women replacing male workers during WW2
- Stereotyped as being innocent, pure, charming
Rise of immigration post WW2
- Following WW2, immigration was highly encouraged, especially in areas such as England and USA to rebuild their nations after the war
- Increase in multiculturalism, presents threat to discriminatory, homogenous nostalgia of the Old South
Homosexuality
- Williams’s own struggles with homosexuality
- Emerging resistance against homosexual oppression that saw homosexuality as deviant
Female hysteria
- Williams’s sister and her battle with societal misunderstanding of female oppression and the judgement of their supposed hysteria (had a lobotomy), shown in how Blanche is presented
Genre
- Play is seen as a social tragedy that depicts the changing dynamics of American society recovering after two world wars
- Structure of the play loosely follows the tragic rise and fall, Blanche can be viewed as a tragic figure
- Expressionistic devices used so that the audience can have insight into how competing ideologies affect the mind of Blanche who finds it difficult to accept social change
- Play can be seen as southern gothic, a style of writing practiced by many writers of the American South whose stories set in that region are characterised by grotesque or fantastic incidents, this style often presents characters that belong to a dying culture but at the same time live in an economy based on deep injustice and cruelty
- Plastic theatre used, extra verbal or non-literary elements, such as light, movement, music, colours and design play an important part in how meaning is interpreted and constructed, this adds to an understanding as to Blanche’s thoughts and feelings as she reacts to a changing world
