streetcar quotes Flashcards
blanche arrival metaphor for everything
they told me to take a streetcar named desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at - Elysian Fields!
horniness runs in the family
our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications
Blanche’s feels on Mitch
B: I want to deceive him enough to make him - want me…
S: Blanche, do you want him?
B: I want to rest!
Blanche describes falling in love with Allan
It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that was how it struck the world for me.
Allan’s suicide’s effect on Blanche
And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off and never for one moment since has there been any light that’s stronger than this - kitchen - candle…
stanley pre-smashing plates at Blanche’s birthday tea
“Pig–Polack–disgusting–vulgar–greasy!”–them kind of words have been on your tongue and your sister’s too much around here! What do you two think you are? A pair of queens? Remember what Huey Long said–“Every Man is a King!” And I am the king around here, so don’t forget it!
blanche’s feeling when mitch comes scene 9
she is so excited that her breath is audible as she dashes about
why is blanche a ho
after the death of Allan - intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with.. I think it was panic, just panic, that drove me from one to another, hunting for some protection
evidence Blanche told Stella about the rape
‘I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley’
williams on heroes and villains
I don’t believe in ‘guilt.’ I don’t believe in villains or heroes—Blanche and Stanley are neither–I only believe in right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents.
blanche patronising stella behind her back
‘the poor thing was out there listening to us, and I have an idea she doesn’t understand you as well as I do’
Blanche and stella’s relationship
‘you never did give me a chance to say much, Blanche. So I just got in the habit of being quiet around you.
mitch could relieve Blanche’s trauma
I forgive you because it’s such a relief to see you. You’ve stopped that polka tune that I had caught in my head.
(the polka tune also ‘fades out’ when he embraces her after he opens up about Allan)
stella infantilising stan
He was as good as a lamb when I came back and he’s really very, very ashamed of himself
new orleans
a cosmopolitan city where there is a relatively warm and easy intermingling of races
stan aint no polack
what I am is a one hundred percent American, born and raised in the greatest country on earth and proud as hell of it, so don’t ever call me a Polack
blnache qua being a fibber
I don’t tell the truth. I tell what ought to be the truth.
‘napoleonic code’ -> isn’t fussed that Stella has lost family home and may have been swindled, but
‘when you’re swindled under the napoleanic code I’m swindled too’
characteristics associated with bold colours
(they are men at the peak of their physical manhood,) as coarse and direct and powerful as the primary colours
blue piano
This ‘blue piano’ expresses the spirit of the life which goes on there”
polka
- when stan asks about her marriage
- when she’s talking to mitch about her marriage
- when stan gives her her ticket home
- first time stanley speaks to her after the rape and she runs from the doctor ‘the varsouviana is filtered into wierd distortion’
why blanche drinks
he music is in her mind; she is drinking to escape it and the sense of disaster closing in on her
only time blanche wears colour
scarlet satin robe scene 9 (mental breakdown after birthday, mitch comes round)
the matron is scary
Divested of all the softer properties of womanhood, the matron is a peculiarly sinister figure in her severe dress
williams view on mental hospitals sneaks in
the unmistakeable aura of the state institution with all its cynical detachment
blanche’s take on why she’s where she is
I’ve run for protection, stella, from one leaky roof to another leaky roof - because it was storm - all storm, and I was caught in the centre…
williams on expressionistic theatre
Expressionism and all other unconventional techniques in drama have only one valid aim, and that is a closer approach to truth. Everyone should know nowadays the unimportance of the photographic in art: that truth, life, or reality is an organic thing which the poetic imagination can represent or suggest
streetcar themes shocking
a Chicago judge called Streetcar “‘an immoral picture’ dealing with ‘sex, nymphomania, and liquor’
Scene 10 the back wall becomes transparent so you can see the events in the street behind - what are they
- a ‘struggle’ between a prostitute and a drunkard
- negro woman rifling through prostitutes bag
scene 2 relationship between stella and stanley
‘don’t be such an idiot stanley!’
(you come out with me while blanche is getting dressed) ‘since when do you give me orders?
streetcar first production date
salesman first production date
1947
1949
Harold Clurman’s criticism of the original broadway production of streetcar
criticized Mr. Brando making stanley too sympathetic - With the ‘‘collusion’’ of the audience, said Mr. Clurman, the play became ‘‘the triumph of Stanley Kowalski’’ rather than the tragedy of Blanche DuBois.
