Streetcar Named Desire: Key themes Flashcards
Light
1) Her delicate beauty must avoid strong light.
- fragile and vulnerable from the beginning.
3) I can’t stand a naked light-bulb.
- pretence of values and need to be protected (Southern Belle).
5) the soft people have got to - shimmer and glow - put a - paper lantern over the light.
- Blanche is vulnerable and afraid.
6) blinding light
-Falling in love.
And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again.
-living in darkness: consumed by the past.
9) I like it dark. The dark is comforting to me.
- Blanche’s fear of Mitch discovering the truth.
- Light = truth and reality: Blanche doesn’t want reality.
Moths
1) There was something about her uncertain manner […] that suggests a moth.
- something that if near light is killed by it.
- Fatal flaw: fear of the truth being revealed as this will destroy her.
Poker (card games)
3) Poker is so fascinating. Could I kibitz?
- Breaking expectation of women at that time.
- “fascinating” reinforces how it is something foreign to Blanche/1940s women.
11) The atmosphere in the kitchen is now the same raw, lurid one of the disastrous poker night.
- foreshadows something of similar climax is to come.
- “disastrous” :Williams makes a statement about how hitting women is not acceptable.
Blanche’s trunk
1) carrying a valise
- Transitive verb “carrying”: More about Blanche to come. She comes with both physical and emotional baggage,
Children/babies
1) you messy child
- Blanche patronises Blanche and asserts authority. Reaffirmed by “I cry on his lap like a baby”.
7) little breathless cries and peals of laughter are heard as if a child were frolicking in the tub
- contrasts authority at the beginning.
- Blanche becomes more child-like and thus more dependant as the play progresses.
Drums, clarinet, trumpet
11) Drums sound very softly
- Doctor arrives but Blanche does not know it is not Shep Huntleigh.
- atmosphere of building to a climax.
The music of the polka
1) “You were married once, weren’t you?” [The music of the polka rises up, faint in the distance].
- Associates polka to reason for the end of the marriage from the beginning.
- repetition of polka throughout foregrounds how Blanche is trapped in this memory.
9) “The music is in [Blanche’s] mind […] The rapid, feverish polka tune, the ‘Varsouviana’ is heard”.
- oppressive memories of first husband’s death.
- makes Blanche more vulnerable as she is consumed by memory.
11) ‘The Varsouviana’ is filtered into weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle.
- chaotic atmosphere
- “distortion”: lack of distinction between reality and fantasy, truth and lies. Idea of the whole scene as Blanche is sent away despite telling the truth.
Bathing
8) What happened while I was bathing?
- Blanche’s beauty is so important that she misses the world around her.
- highlights her detachment from reality as she desperately tries to keep up the facade of her being young and untainted by the world, hence why she bathes.
9) Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub! And such a filthy tub!”
- Blanche resorting to childish rhyme. Desperation for the fantasy and fairytale to continue that she almost forces it with her childish words.
The sound of the streetcar (tram)
4) Under cover of the train’s noise Stanley enters from outside. He stands unseen.
- The Streetcar covers up.
- Plays a similar role as the “Double entendre” of “The Streetcar Named Desire”.
- Avoids facing the reality as Stanley avoids/delays the confrontation.
- In the same way he must eventually enter the room, Blanche’s promiscuity must eventually be revealed.
6) Is that streetcar named desire still grinding along the tracks at this hour?
- “grinding” suggests that it does not function smoothly, foregrounding Blanche’s shady and promiscuous past.
Sight/blindness
2) The blind are - leading the blind!
- As Stella and Blanche go out.
- “blind’ connotes vulnerability, suggesting that both of them, perhaps due to being women, are incapable of being seen as leaders in 1940s context.
3) Her eyes go blind with tenderness.
- Stella when Stanley is apologising to her.
- Women of 1940s were often blinded by the expectations of their gender: women had to see past the violent tendencies.
11) She allows him to lead her as if she were blind
- Blanche being led out by the Doctor.
- She has closure: end of the play and finally she is looked after and gets the protection that she has been so desperate for.
- Although a moment of complete vulnerability, also a moment of gratitude from Blanche.
Telephone
10) When the telephone rings and they say, ‘You’ve got a son!’ I’ll tear this off and wave it like a flag!
Operator, operator! Give me long-distance, please”
- Telephone is joy for Stanley but only sense of hope for Blanche.
- It is a life-line for the now desperate Blanche.
Belle Reve
1) a great place with white columns
- physical beauty hides the destruction of Belle Reve.
- metaphor for Blanche and her physical beauty being something she is desperate to upkeep to hide her vulnerability.
Repettion of Belle Reve being “lost”
- 1,2,9
- Something Blanche could not control.
7) you’ve got to realise that Blanche and I grew up in very different circumstances than you did
- Belle Reve is a symbol of status and class.
- Creates distance within the apartment as Stanley comes from working class.
- Class system more defined in 1940s.
- Almost an excuse for conflict: fundamental differences.
The colour white
1) daintily dressed in a white suit
- Blanche is presented as pure and innocent from the beginning.
- “daintily” suggests femininity: something very important to the image that Blanche wants to upkeep.
7) This is after the home-place had slipped through her lily-white fingers.
-Stanley uses it as an insult.
-Saracasm is clear.
“lily-white”: metaphor, assigns vulnerability to her, almost traps her to being vulnerable but not in a sense that gives her protection but instead exposes the true her.
10) soiled and crumpled white satin evening gown
- image of broken façade and fantasy.
- white connotes emptiness as opposed to untaintedness.
- crumpled and soiled show how the world has left marks on Blanche, contrasting her “white suit’.
Furs, feathers and costume jewellery
1) necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat”
- Blanche is flawless and untainted early on (or gives thta image when she is fully in control).
- Femininity.
10) placing the rhinestone tiara on her head
-trying to keep up the façade.
-“tiara” expensive and valuable.
“rhinestone” cheap and fake diamonds.
Metaphor for Blanche and how living in fantasy is not the same as fantasy becoming the reality, even through the deliberate action of “placing”.
Animals
3) Drunk - drunk - animal thing, you!
-Stanley’s uncontrollability.
“thing” : not understandable and beyond human.
Lower status?
4) He was as good as a lamb
-simile highlights how good behaviour lacks permanence (1940s male).
Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one
“one” strips Stanley’s identity and makes him beyond human.
Dynamic verbs exemplifies physical focus of male behaviour and how women were associated with emotions.
11) Making pigs of yourself
- Eunice’s comment.
- 1940s male expectation.
Alcohol
1) Liquor goes fast in hot weather
- Stanley is suspicious of Blanche from the beginning.
6) I want you to have a drink […] I want to create - joie de vivre!
- allows Blanche to live in fantasy and to tell stories.
9) (hearing polka) she is drinking to escape it
- method of escapism.
- Foreshadowed from the beginning that Blanche has many things that she wants to escape from.
Letters
2) she pours the contents of the envelope
- complexity of the past and Belle Reve.
- something Blanche wants to be free from.
5) What are you laughing at, honey?
Myself, myself, for being such a liar! I’m writing to Shep
- act of writing allows Blanche to be who she wants to be.
- encourages her fantasy.
10) I received a telegram from an old admirer of mine
- convincing herself of fantasy.
The colour red
3) She has slipped on the dark red satin wrapper
- It is flirtatious and shows Blanche’s need to be loved.
11) She has a tragic radiance in her red satin robe.
- Blanche’s vulnerability.
- Beauty of truth.
Silk clothing
3) She takes off her blouse and stands in her silk pink brassiere
- flirtatious
- feminine
- These are Blanche’s defence mechanisms.
10) vivid green silk bowling shirt
- contrasts femininity of Blanche’s silk.
- shift in colour changes atmosphere.
