Streetcar Context

Question 1

What was the Great Depression?

Answer 1

1930s -
the entire nation suffered from extremely high unemployment
and interest rates, and millions of Americans found themselves
buried in deep debt.

Question 2

What was the impact of the Great Depression on class relations?

Answer 2

The upper classes were looked down upon
by the lower classes, who saw the wealthy as uncaring about their
daily financial struggles.

Socially at this time people had more
respect for the lower classes as they worked hard for their living
and cared about the others around them.

The men in the play
represent the everyday American that society championed after
the Depression – the hard working men who were proud of all
the work they had accomplished themselves.

Question 3

When was Streetcar published?

Answer 3

1946

As America coming to terms with the horrors of the war

Question 4

What is the significance of Elysian Fields?

Answer 4

Refers to the place that ancient Greeks believed served as a home for the dead. After victorious soldiers died in battle, they went to Elysian Fields for eternity, to celebrate their lives, their courage, and their accomplishments.

Stanley Kowalski and his friends return to Elysian Fields after the war, coming back to the States as successful and hopeful soldiers ready to make a name for themselves on their home soil.

Question 5

Why was there an uneasy transition for some as men returned from the war?

Answer 5

men returned to their civilian life to reclaim their jobs and positions within their homes. (women?)

Question 6

What happened to the American economy after WW2?

Answer 6

The country experienced one of the biggest economic booms in history -
with the return of soldiers came an increase both in the production and in the consumption of goods, and the economy soon soared.

Consequently, one could say that America experienced a second Industrial Revolution after World War II.

This revolution effectively killed the mystical charm of the Old South, where aristocracy and chivalry reigned.

Question 7

What was the effect of the postwar boom, the second industrial revolution, on the Old South?

Answer 7

This revolution effectively killed the mystical charm of the Old South, where aristocracy and chivalry reigned.

Question 8

What happened to American values following WW2?

Answer 8

At the time the nation had suffered through a terrible war, and it was ready to embrace the “old-fashioned” values of family and home.

Stanley has just come back from the war as a decorated soldier, and after proving his masculinity on the battlefield, he is ready to assert his manhood within the home.

As a result, the theme of pure, almost savage masculinity that is so clear in A Streetcar Named Desire is one that permeated America after the war - an air of bravado and victory following its defeat of the Nazi threat.

Question 9

What effect did the WW2 have on class relations?

Answer 9

1) During the war, many socialised with a wider range of people than those in the neighbourhoods in which they grew up.
2) This led to the possibility of greater fluidity between social classes, which
3) sometimes caused conflict with those who were clinging onto an older social order.

Question 10

What happened to the population size after WW2?

Answer 10

The population increased rapidly due to
1) the ‘Baby Boom’,
where soldiers returned from war and were keen to start families and
settle down immediately.
2) the American South has many
ports, making the migration of people from other countries easy and
frequent.

Question 11

What was ‘bright lights syndrome’?

Answer 11

Migrants were attracted by the rich culture and thriving cities,
developing the ‘bright lights syndrome’ where they believed all their
problems would be solved by moving into the city.

1) The French, Spanish,
Cajun, Creole, African and Caribbean-influenced culture is especially
strong in the southern portion of the state.
2) From its many cultural
influences, the South developed its own unique customs, literature,
cuisine and musical styles.

Question 12

What are some the different aspects of race and attitudes towards social class shown through the conversations of Blanche, Stanley and Stella in the first scene?

Answer 12

Blanche, out of the three characters, is the one who comes across as most uncomfortable with people she perceives to be different from her.

Question 13

What is a key source of conflict in the play?

Answer 13

The struggle between Blanche and Stanley as representatives of two contrasting and warring classes.

1) Blanche is a representative of the dying aristocracy, with its history of land-owing, education, etiquette and formal social gatherings.
2) Stanley, on the other hand, is the son of Polish immigrants, proudly American and poorly educated. He seeks not only to advance himself, but is also determined to bring Blanche down.

Question 14

What was the American Dream?

Answer 14

Stanley aspires to the American Dream, believing that by hard work and determination he will achieve a higher standard of living than that of his parents, unlike Blanche who has fallen from a higher status.

Question 15

Who is Huey Long?

Answer 15

Stanley influenced by politicians such as Huey Long, whom he quotes in the play. Long was a controversial 1930s Louisiana politician who advocated the redistribution of wealth and popularised the slogan ‘Every Man a King’. He was a hero to many of the poor and working class in Louisiana

Question 16

Where is the play set?

Answer 16

The action of A Streetcar Named Desire is all set within the French Quarter (the Vieux Carré) of New Orleans in Louisiana, one of the ‘Deep South’ states of America. It is set soon after the end of World War 2, around the same time that it was written in 1946-7.

Question 17

What is ‘The South’?

Answer 17

Unseen but referred to throughout the play –
1) Mississippi and the ‘Deep South’, a name which stands not simply for a geographical location but also for
2) a set of values and a way of life.
3) 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) when white plantation owners had made fortunes from black slave labour.
4) 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.

Question 18

How does the South have complex connotations?

Answer 18

The South has 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.

Question 19

What was the Civil War (1861-65), the defining event of the South?

Answer 19

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.

Question 20

How was New Orleans?

Answer 20

Little in common with the values of the Deep South.

1) 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.
2) In the 1940s New Orleans was a place looking forward to the second half of the 20th century.
3) 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.

Question 21

How multicultural was New Orleans?

Answer 21

Mirrored national trends of urbanisation.

1) It was like many cities of the time in that it expanded, filled with immigrants, and experienced clumped settling patterns.
2) Although people tended to gravitate towards others of their same ethnicity, New Orleans was unique in that it remained very intermixed and multicultural.
3) Its reputation of being more accepting and diverse drew immigrants in and made New Orleans one of the oldest multicultural cities in the nation.

Question 22

What was New Orleans like in the 1800s?

Answer 22

1) 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.
2) 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.

Question 23

What was the American Ciivil War?

Answer 23

1) The American Civil War (1861–65) was between the northern or Union states and southern states, which, in February 1861, broke away from the Union to form the Confederate States of America (the Confederacy).
2) The states of the Confederacy were North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, and Arkansas.
3) The Confederacy fell after its army was defeated in 1865 and General Robert E Lee surrendered.

4) A key factor in the Civil War was the issue of SLAVERY, with the
- northern states supporting the abolition of slavery, on which plantation agriculture and the wealth of the plantation owners, depended. Slavery was seen as an evil in the North, but
- the Southern states regarded it as essential for the tobacco and cotton industries on which their wealth was founded.

Question 24

After the American Civil War, what happened to the South?

Answer 24

1) The South suffered economically.
2) sense that the old South was dying and 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. It became isolated from the rest of the nation.
4) Guilt carried over from slavery and it was viewed as ‘the benighted South’ – a land of racial prejudice, religious bigotry and poverty.
5) However, this air of decaying grandeur added to the romantic appeal for many writers including Williams.

Question 25

What happened to race relations and plantations following the American Civil War?

Answer 25

1) 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.
2) 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.

Question 26

What did one writer comment about the South at the end of the Civil War?

Answer 26

‘It was always so hot, and everyone was so polite, and everything was all surface but underneath it
was like a bomb waiting to go off. I always felt that way about the South, that beneath the smiles and southern hospitality and politeness were a lot of guns and liquor and secrets.’

Question 27

Who is the Southern Belle?

Answer 27

A stock character. Young woman of the American Deep South’s. Image developed in the South during the antebellum (pre Civil War) period. 
Unmarried woman in the plantation-owning upper class of Southern society. 

1) Antebellum fashion elements: a hoop skirt, a corset, pantalettes, a wide-brimmed straw hat, gloves. tanning poor, unfashionable; parasol umbrellas and hand fans are also often represented.
2) Expected to marry respectable young men, and become ladies of society dedicated to the family and community.
3) Southern hospitality, a cultivation of beauty, and a
flirtatious yet chaste demeanour.
4) 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.

Question 28

What happened to the South in Literature, the Southern Gothic?

Answer 28

Vision of a plantation South took on mythic proportions as southerners grew defensive and nostalgic about the Old South..

1) Distinct Southern Literature: fascination with the past began to turn towards the economic decay symbolised by the decaying beauty of the plantations.
2) Southern writers characterised by rich imagination, often bizarre and grotesque.
3) ‘Southern Gothic’. 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.
4) The South as a broken, damaged society with the ripe charms of decay fired the imagination of Tennessee Williams.

Question 29

How does the power struggle between Stanley and Blanche convey culturally dominant ideas about gender?

Answer 29

he primitive nature, aggression and brutality of the masculine and the vulnerability and physicality of the feminine.

Question 30

What impact did the end of WW2 have on women’s gender roles?

Answer 30

World War Two provisionally allowed women a place in the working world BUT soon dismissed from such empowerment and were returned to the domestic sphere.

Streetcar inhabits an
uneasy period of TRANSITION for women between some empowerment during the war and a return
to patriarchal control once men returned from that
war.

That uneasiness is evident in the hypocrisy of
Stanley’s attitudes towards Blanche.

Question 31

What was life like for women by 1950s?

Answer 31

Women had few opportunities for independence and, indeed,
by the 1950s, American society was geared toward the family.
1) Marriage and children were part of the national agenda: The Cold War was in part a culture war, with the American family at the centre of the struggle. era of the “happy homemaker.”
2) For young mothers in the 1950s, domesticity was idealised, and women were encouraged to stay at home if the family could afford it.
3) Women who chose to work when they didn’t need the money were often considered selfish, putting themselves before the needs of their family.

Question 32

Being single and pregnant?

Answer 32

If remaining single in American society was considered undesirable, being single and pregnant was seen as unacceptable, especially for white women. Girls who “got in trouble” were forced to drop out of school, and often sent away to distant relatives or homes for wayward girls. Shunned by society for the duration of their pregnancy, unwed mothers paid a huge price for premarital sex.

Question 33

Homosexuality context?

Answer 33

Allan Grey, Blanche’s dead husband is portrayed (although it is not made explicit) as a gay man using coded language which audiences of the day would have understood.
In the 1940s homosexuality was illegal and was rarely mentioned in mainstream media or entertainment and was thought of as something to be condemned or even ‘cured’.

Question 34

Mental Illness in the 20thC?

Answer 34

Before the development of psychiatric drug therapy (50s), the most commonly used treatments for mental illness in the mid 20th century were
1) electroconvulsive therapy
2) insulin coma therapy
3) lobotomies.
These treatments often left patients severely damaged

Question 35

What do Tennessee William’s plays combine?

Answer 35

lyrical intensity, haunting loneliness, hypnotic violence

Question 36

Who was Williams drawn to when he began his playwriting career in 1930s?

What did he understand?

Answer 36

‘drawn to those on the margins, the damaged, the excluded, those who
had stepped off the American train to glory.’

As a gay man at a time when
homosexuality was illegal, he knew what it felt like to exist on the margins
of society’s considered ‘norms’.

‘understood the impulse
to shade one’s eyes against the bright light of reality, to deploy imagination
as the only available defence.’

Question 37

Quick summary of William’s family? idk if it will be relevant…

Answer 37

Difficult childhood. Father Cornelius was emotionally absent and abusive.
Mother lived young womanhood of a spoiled southern belle
1918 family moved from Mississippi to St. Louis: difficult for William’s mother
Rose was emotionally and mentally unstable; a big influence; close to her.
Her parents had her lobotomised shortly after Rose perceived Cornelius’ overtures were sexual and had a breakdown.

Question 38

William’s suffered from depression and lived in fear that he, like Rose, would go insane

Answer 38

..

Question 39

What was Williams interested in theatrically?

Answer 39

unforgettable characters, an incredible vision of life in the South, and a series of powerful portraits of the human condition.
His plays, for their time, seemed preoccupied with the extremes of human brutality and sexual behaviour: madness, rape, incest, nymphomania, as well as violent and fantastic deaths.
Saw violence as part of human condition.

Question 40

What were critics who attacked the ‘excesses’ of Williams work doing?

Answer 40

As with the work of Edward Albee, often were making thinly veiled attacked on his sexuality.

Homosexuality was not discussed openly at that time, but in Williams’ plays the themes of desire and isolation show, among other things, the influence of having grown up gay in a homophobic world.

Question 41

What did Jo Mielziner say about how he designed Streetcar?

Answer 41

The magic of light opened up a fluid and poetic world of storytelling – selective light that revealed or concealed, advanced a set or made it recede. Throughout the play the brooding atmosphere is like an impressionistic X-ray. We are always conscious of the skeletons in this house of terror.

Question 42

What does Robert Cornfield tell us about the first production of the play?

Answer 42

Kazan and Mielziner designed a steady beam of light… to focus on Blanche throughout the play ‘in either blue or amber, depending on whether the light supposedly derived from daylight, moonlight, or candlelight’.

‘It isolated Blanche from the other characters and from the action, suggesting her increasing panic and inability to separate fantasy from reality.’

Question 43

The night is filled with inhuman voices like the cries in a jungle.

Answer 43

The shadows and lurid reflections move sinuously as flames along the wall spaces.

Question 44

During the rape scene in the first production, what did the director do?

Brenda Murphy

Answer 44

Replaced with a scene in which Blanche’s menace came not from her psyche, but from the social reality of the environment where the Stanleys of the world hold sway.
Instead of the overt indications that the action on the stage took place only in Blanche’s disintegrating mind, the new version of the scene represented action that could be taking place only in Blanche’s desperate imagination, but that also could and did take place often in the world of the Quarter.

How much of this action may be assumed by the audience to be objectively real and how much is the subjective phenomenon of Blanche’s mind was purposely left vague.

Blanche put down the phone in the middle of her call, trembling, as a man ran into the street, followed by three thugs who attacked him and were joined by another man… there was ‘an excited murmur of their voices’. The wounded man staggered off while Blanche grasped her jewel box and a couple of gowns from her trunk and went out onto the porch, where she came face to face with her muggers, just before they went out. Then she ran back into the apartment, knelt beside the phone and made her desperate call to Western Union. Here not only are Blanche’s fears encoded through flesh-and-blood signifiers of the threatening environment of the Quarter, but she confronts them in the objective reality of the play’s present.

“How closely her perception of these events matches what is ‘really happening’ is left ambiguous, leaving the subjective inextricably intertwined with the objective for the audience rather than separating them clearly as expressionism does. The changes in this scene brought it within Kazan’s conception
of the play as a conflict of social realities without sacrificing the subjectivity that both he and Williams considered central to its nature.”

Question 45

What was The Production Code of 1930? Film Version, Kazan

Answer 45

• In 1930 pressure from religious groups in American, a form of self-regulation for the movie industry. 

• The Code begins: ‘No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin’. 

• The Code outlined the things filmmakers should not express on screen: depictions of murder, detailed crime, sex, childbirth, adultery, sex ‘perversion,’ vulgarity, obscenity, profanity, nudity, explicit dancing, ridicule of religion, and unpatriotic feelings. 

• By 1934, a Production Code seal of approval had become vital for box office success. 


Question 46

How did Streetcar pose ‘three principal problems’ with regard to the Production Code/

Answer 46

April 28, 1950 letter to Warner Bros.
‘an inference of sex perversion..’ ALAN GREY
‘an inference of nymphomania with regards to the character of Blanche herself’;
and the ‘reference to the rape.’

Question 47

What were the solutions proposed to allow the film/plot to fit within the Production Code?

Answer 47

1) ‘affirmatively establish…some other reason for [Allan Grey’s] suicide which will get away entirely from sex perversion.’
2) Blanche appear to be ‘searching for romance and security, and not for gross sex’ and frequently call for ‘Allan,’ so that she would appear to be ‘seeking for the husband she has lost in any man she approaches.’
3) It was also recommended that all inferences to the rape be entirely eliminated and merely be Blanche’s hallucination, brought on by her ‘dementia.’
4) A July 25, 1950 memo. ‘so-called rape scene,’. suggested ‘that the indication of rape be simply abolished, and that in its place it be indicated that Stanley struck Blanche quite violently, and from this blow she collapsed. This would mean that his very pointed line, ‘We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning,’ would be simply eliminated.’

Question 48

How can all the characters been seen as trying to reconstruct their lives in a postwar America?

Answer 48

all the men who appear and gather around the table to play poker have all fought in the war and Blanche recalls memories of her liaisons with off-duty soldiers at Belle Reve.

A Streetcar Named Desire presents to us an uncertain world which seems to encapsulate the anxieties of a society in transition.

Question 49

What did Tennessee Williams write to Elia Kazan?

Answer 49

Bring this play to life exactly as if it were happening in life […]

I don’t necessarily mean
‘realism’; sometimes a living quality is caught better by expressionism than what is
supposed to be realistic treatment. […]

This is a poetic tragedy, not a realistic, naturalistic
one. […]

One reason a stylised production is necessary is that Blanche’s memories, inner life, emotions are a tangible, actual factor.

Question 50

What is a Tragedy, according to Aristotle?

Answer 50

tragedy involves the downfall of a great man (the tragic hero/protagonist) as a result of factors such as excessive pride (hubris) and a reversal of fortune (peripeteia) which is the result of his own actions and errors of judgement (hamartia). At the play’s denouement, the tragic hero gains some insight (anagnorisis). The onlookers are moved to feel pity and fear at what they have seen, thereby achieving a kind of spiritual cleansing (catharsis).

Question 51

Key features of tragedy?

UNITY OF PLACE
UNITY OF ACTION in focusing on Blanche

Answer 51

1) The drama is usually centred upon a character – often noble or high-born (the protagonist) - who acts in a way which proves disastrous.
2) Tragic protagonist: a character who enjoys a high reputation whose fall is due to an error, not deliberate wrongdoing, but this might be prompted by their hubris.
3) Hamartia: the protagonist’s error of judgement which brings about their downfall.
4) Hubris: excessive human pride, self-belief or self-importance.
5) The scope of the play’s action is limited in terms of plot (which should not be too complex). The time the action takes to elapse should also be limited, as should the location of the action. Aristotle described these aspects of tragedy as the ‘unities of time, place and action.’
6) There is a calamitous outcome (the catastrophe) which causes an emotional response in its audience.
7) Pity and fear: key emotions the audience experiences through tragic drama.
8) Peripeteia and anagnorisis: peripeteia is the moment at which events of the play turn in an unexpected direction for the protagonist. The moment of reversal may coincide with the protagonist’s moment of recognition (or anagnorisis).
9) Catharsis: from the Greek word meaning ‘purgation’, the emotional experience of the audience at the end of a tragedy – they feel cleansed/relieved of the strong emotions felt during the tragedy

Question 52

What did William’s write in his memoirs relating to modern American tragedy?

Answer 52

I write so often of people with no magnitude, at least on the surface. I write of ‘little people’. But are there ‘little people’?

Whatever is living and feeling with intensity is not little and, examined in depth, it would seem to me that most ‘little people’ are living with that intensity. Is Blanche a ‘little person’? Certainly not. The size of her feeling is too great for her to contain without madness.’

Question 53

What did Raymond Williams comment about the play?

Answer 53

the play ‘is a tragedy with the classic aim of producing a catharsis of pity and terror and in order to do that, Blanche must finally have the understanding and compassion of the audience.

This without creating a black-dyed villain in Stanley.

It is a thing (Misunderstanding) not a person (Stanley) that destroys her in the end. In the end you should feel – ‘If only they had known about each other.’

Question 54

What does Sean McEvoy comment about the tragedy of the play?

Answer 54

1) the tragedy in this play […] lies not in personal circumstances, but in the lives and losses of the culture and society itself. […]
2) As the play ends, the men return to their cards and Stella receives her baby from Eunice. Life and the community are still going to go on. […] here, in this melting pot of people trying to better themselves, Williams is showing us that just to carry on is sometimes the hardest, most tragic thing of all […]
3) His plays deal in a modern, social kind of tragedy – the tragedy of relationships in turmoil, of lovers on the edge, of ambitions thwarted, of families in despair.

Question 55

What is realism?

Answer 55

The ACCURATE depiction in any literary work of the
everyday life of a place or period. It has an emphasis on an OBJECTIVE presentation of details and events rather than a subjective concentration on personal feelings, perceptions and imaginings of various characters. Realists seek to
portray faithfully the customs, speech, dress and living and
working conditions of their chosen locale. Realists also stress characterisation as a critical element of a literary work.

new taste for realism emerged in postwar America

Question 56

What does one critic say of Streetcar, in relation to realism?

Answer 56

the play explores ‘down-at-heel newcomers, the lower depths working to better themselves the American way, in the troubled pursuit of an American Dream. The tragedy in this play lies not in personal circumstances, but in the lives and losses of the culture and the society itself.’

Question 57

What is expressionism?

Answer 57

Expressionists reject realism and share the impressionists’ intention to present a personal, subjective vision through their art.
Expressionists depict their subject through a sensory experience rather than through an objective, external viewpoint.
They seek to expose the often extreme states of human consciousness and emotions.
Their works often have a nightmarish atmosphere to accentuate the gap between perception and objective reality.

Question 58

What did Tennessee Williams say about expressionism?

Answer 58

‘Expressionism and all other unconventional techniques in drama have only one
valid aim, and that is a closer approach to truth. […] a more penetrating and vivid expression of things as they
are.’

Question 59

What is a memory play?

Answer 59

1) centre on a character undergoing an intense psychological crisis which is so profound that it triggers a time-loop trap during which the trauma must be continuously relived until the character comes to terms with it.
2) Thus the action of the play is non-linear, and consciously artificial and stylised dramatic techniques are used to suggest a psychological or spiritual ‘truth’ about the inner life of the main protagonist.
3) Memory plays seek to convey a symbolic truth as opposed to a naturalistic imitation of reality.
4) According to some critics, Williams created ‘a new genre in the modern theatre: a heightened naturalism that allowed dreams (or nightmares) to coexist with reality.’

Question 60

What is Plastic Theatre?

Answer 60

1) a way of conveying the characters’ states of mind on stage.
2) symbolic, non-realist, metaphorical theatre that uses objects, musical underscoring, costumes, props and theatrical space to create an experience for the audience that suggests poetic truths.
3) The visual aspect of A Streetcar Named Desire was clearly very important to Williams; partly perhaps as a result of his interest in the cinema.

Question 61

Examples of plastic theatre in the play?

Answer 61

1) In Scene 9 the Mexican flower-seller is a portent of death,
2) Scene 10 grotesque menacing shapes, jungle noises and distorted music are employed to reflect Blanche’s terror.
3) That the visual side of a stage presentation mattered greatly to Tennessee Williams may be noticed particularly in Scene 3 where a Van Gogh painting is evoked in the stage directions.
4) As well as visual effects sound effects are also used. Foremost among them are the “blue piano” representing the spirit of the rundown quarter, the polka for Blanche’s guilty memories of her husband, harsh discords for the rape and for Blanche’s removal to the mental hospital.

Question 62

What does Tennessee Williams say of Blanche?

Answer 62

She has great strength and personal vulnerability that is finally broken…It is the only solution for
her to go away, to be taken away or to go away. She is not adaptable to the circumstances as
they are, that the world has imposed on her. She is a sacrificial victim; she is metaphorical as a
sacrificial victim of society.

Question 63

What does Elia Kazan say of Blanche?

Answer 63

as if she were playing eleven different people… And all these eleven self-dramatised and romantic characters should derive from the romantic tradition of the Pre-Bellum South

gradually the audience should begin to
feel that Blanche is a complex, sensitive woman, out of her environment, really rather helpless
and in real difficulty. As this happens, the pain and the reality begin to appear – basic human
tragedy begins to show, and slowly the audience should start to pity and admire her.

Question 64

What does Harold Clrman have to say about Stanley?

Answer 64

“The unwitting

antichrist of our time. His mentality provides the soil for fascism”

Question 65

What does Elia Kazan say of Stella?

Answer 65

Stella is a refined girl who has found a kind of salvation or realisation, but at a terrific
price.

She keeps her eyes closed, even stays in bed as much as possible so that she won’t realise, won’t feel the pain of the price she has paid […]

She’s waiting for the dark where Stanley makes her feel only him, and she has no reminder of what she has given up.

Question 66

Living in New Orleans in 1946, what did Williams say about the cars?

Answer 66

Their indistinguishable progress up and down Royal Street struck me as having
symbolic bearing of a broad nature on the life in the Vieux Carre - and everywhere else for that matter.’

Question 67

The Mississippi

Answer 67

School