symbols, motifs, plastic theatre streetcar quotes + analysis Flashcards
1
Q
plastic theatre
A
- props
- music light
- costume
- staging to help convey inner thoughts of characters
2
Q
‘her appearance is incongruous to this setting. She is daintily dressed in
a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earrings of pearl, white gloves and hat, looking as
if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district.’ (PT)
A
- purity
- cleanliness
- contradicts with blanche’s past
- symbolizes blanche’s fragility and societal superiority
- vanity and commodification of power
3
Q
stanley going through blanches trunk (PT)
A
- invades her privacy and exposes her hidden past, much like later he strips away her illusions, link to the paper lantern
- contents of the trunk reflect her attempt to hold onto her lost aristocratic past, fancy dress and furs that suggest wealth she no longer possesses
- ## the trunks mobility suggests blanche instability and transience, she is constantly on the move trying to escape her past, but never succeeding
4
Q
paper lantern
A
- protector of blanche’s past and exposition
- both for vanity and fantasy, avoiding being exposed
- the chinese paper lantern that Blanche begs Mitch to place over then light bulb symbolises her attempts to disguise and gloss over her disreputable past
- Here, it becomes a devise to let her play the role of the Southern Belle, soon to be torn down by the new society
- She feels such strong attachment to the lantern because it weakens the harsh, naked light
- williams exposes the inevitability of her mental disintegration through how easily the lantern can be torn off at any moment through the men’s actions e.g. Mitch `tears’ the lantern off symbolising the destruction of her illusions
- she tells mitch, ‘I dont want realism, I want magic!’ showing her preference for illusion over reality
5
Q
varsouviana - “the varsouviana rises audibly as blanche enters the bedroom”
A
- non-diegetic sound
- associated with regret and guilt
- insight into blanche’s emotions
6
Q
blue piano
A
- represents New Orleans culture and emotional tension
- this is symbolic of the masculine power exacerbated in the New America, and the simultaneous decline of Blanche’s mental state
- the Blue Piano exists inside the boundaries of the exterior world, but we can also argue that it is used to explore the ways that Blanche is fundamentally incompatible with the ways of the New South
7
Q
blue denim
A
- blue collar workers
- embodies working class identity and masculinity
8
Q
locomotive
A
- representation of stanley
9
Q
belle reve
A
- represents the traditional lifestyle of upper-class Southern landowners
- although it had been lost, blanche still clings to the values it instilled in her preventing her from adapting
- stanley does not understand the tradition associated with it, and for him it means money which he wants and needs
10
Q
bathing
A
- blanche frequently takes long baths, claiming they soothe her nerves. In reality, she is trying to cleanse herself of her past sins (her promiscuity, her role in her husband’s death, and her lies).
- stanley, who represents harsh reality, mocks her baths, calling them a waste of time
- despite her obsessive bathing, she cannot truly rid herself of guilt or trauma
- the baths provide temporary relief but do not change her fate - sings Paper Moon (illusion – symbol of femininity)
- her final bath before being taken away to the asylum underscores her complete mental collapse—she is trying to wash away reality itself
11
Q
polka music
A
- reflects blanche’s trauma and facade of liveliness
- williams uses dramatic irony in his presentation of the polka to symbolise Blanche’s interior spaces, and foreshadow her descent into insanity which arises from her delusional wish to conceal her past ; the tune is an aural illustration of her loss of her late husband Allan Gray
12
Q
alcohol
A
- represents blanche’s dependency and foreboding instability
13
Q
moth
A
symbolizes self-destruction and inevitable exposure
14
Q
vivid green
A
- masculinity and dominance in new south
15
Q
fantasy/illusion
A
- blanche dwells in this, this is primary means of self-defense both against outside threats and against her own demons
- her deceits carry no trace of malice but rather they come from weakness and inability to confront the truth head-on
- she is a quixotic figure, seeing the world not as it is but as it ought to be - fantasy has a liberating magic that protects her from the tragedies she has had to endure
- throughout the play, blanche’s dependence on illusion is contrasted with Stanley’s steadfast realism, and in the end it is Stanley and his worldview that win
- to survive, stella must also resort to a kind of illusion, forcing herself to believe that blanche’s accusations against stanley are false so that she can continue living with her husband
16
Q
the old south and the new south
A
- stella and blanche come from a world that is rapidly dying
- belle reve, their family’s ancestral plantation, has been lost, and the two sisters are the last living members of their family and, symbolically, of their old world of cavaliers and cotton fields
- their strain of Old South was not conquered by the march of General Sherman’s army, but by the steady march of time, and as Blanche’s beauty fades with age so too do these vestiges of that civilization gone with the wind
- blanche attempts to stay back in the past but it is impossible, and Stella only survives by mixing her DuBois blood with the common stock of the Kowalskis; the old South can only live on in a diluted, bastardized form
17
Q
primitive and the primal
A
- stanley represents a very unrefined manhood, a Romantic idea of man untouched by civilization and its effeminizing influences
- his appeal is clear: stella cannot resist him, and even blanche, though repulsed, is on some level drawn to him
- stanley’s unrefined nature also includes a terrifying amorality
- the service of his desire is central to who he is; he has no qualms about driving his sister-in-law to madness, or raping her
- in Freudian terms, Stanley is pure id, while Blanche represents the super-ego and Stella the ego - but the balancing between the id and super-ego is not found only in Stella’s mediation, but in the tension between these forces within Blanche herself
- she finds Stanley’s primitivism so threatening precisely because it is something she sees, and hides, within her.
18
Q
desire
A
- central theme of the play
- blanche seeks to deny it, although we learn later in the play that desire is one of her driving motivations; her desires have caused her to be driven out of town
- physical desire, and not intellectual or spiritual intimacy, is the heart of Stella’s and Stanley’s relationship, but Williams makes it clear that this does not make their bond any weaker
- desire is also Blanche’s undoing, because she cannot find a healthy way of dealing with her natural urges - she is always either trying to suppress them or pursuing them with abandon.
19
Q
loneliness
A
- between these two extremes, Blanche is lost
- she desperately seeks companionship and protection in the arms of strangers
- she has never recovered from her tragic and consuming love for her first husband
- blanche is in need of a defender. But in New Orleans, she will find instead the predatory and merciless Stanley.
20
Q
its only a paper moon
A
- a song sung by blanche, focusing on her struggle with truth versus illusion and her reliance on illusion to find love
