Streetcar Named Desire Context Flashcards
Tennessee Williams
-Characters in his plays are often forced by circumstances to live a life against the grain
His characters struggle against a range of powerful forces- tradition, family honour, money and above all their sexual desires and frustrations. This has been viewed as his expression of life as a gay man.
-When Stanley declares ‘I am the King around here’ in Scene 8, his violence represents the displacement of the old agricultural south by new industry and new migrants
-Williams built on his own family’s experience of alcoholism and mental disturbance to express the fragile relationship between life and the American dream
New Orleans
-Blanche’s detachment from New Orleans underlines the illusion in which she has trapped herself. She is unable to move on from her privileged past and is unwilling to accept the modern world and the vibrancy of New Orleans
-Blanche seems to pitch herself against her surroundings and the sounds of the City and it’s music compete incessantly with her internal narrative
-Williams suggests that if she had understood the impossibility of reconstructing New Orleans as Belle Reve Blanch’s experiences would have been very different
The Costume design of Blanche and Mitch
-In order for Blanche to persuade Mitch to marry her, she must play a role that will fulfill both his sexual desires and his yearnings for a traditional wife. She frequently changes her clothes representing the different aspects of her character
-In Scene 3 she stands in the spotlight with her ‘pink brassiere and white skirt’. The girlish innocence of the colours appeals to his desire for a fresh faced Southern Belle while her partial nudity creates a sexual charge
-Mitch also plays a role when he takes her out on a date he wears an ‘alpaca coat’ instead of his usual denim work clothes. He feels constrained in his formal coat but refuses to remove it for fear of destroying the illusion
The Costume design of Blanche and Stanley
-Blanche’s costumes set her apart as an outsider in New Orleans with her ‘White suit with a fluffy bodice’. She is a Southern Belle whose ‘delicate beauty’ seems ‘incongruous’ at Elysian fields
-Stanley’s brightly coloured costumes such as his ‘vivid green silk bowling shirt’ and his ‘gaudy pyjamas’ reinforce his image as the ‘richly feathered male bird among hens’. His own costumes reflect his working-class status such as his ‘denim work clothes’ and his ‘grease stained pants’
-Stanley’s description of Blanche’s tiara as ‘a crown for an empress’ portrays his anxiety that Blanche might threaten his power as the ‘King’ of the household by reminding Stella of where she came from
