Category: A Streetcar Named Desire

Character Analysis of Mitch

flynnta16Leave a comment

Hello all,

Beneath is the first essay I wrote for A-level English literature on the presentation of Mitch in Tennessee William’s Streetcar Named Desire. Reading over it was a painful experience, there are a number of ways in which it could be improved and areas that I would expand upon now. Still, reading through old essays is a useful exercise in tracking the development of your writing.

The following was noted for its outstanding fusion of objectives with a critical style, whilst lacking development in the conclusion along with the recommendation that it was worth placing the marxist interpretation earlier in the introduction in order to ‘umbrella’ the argument overall. It was given 23/25 as its final mark.

“You’re not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother.”

Mitch is presented as gentle with a sensitive nature that place him low in the hierarchy of masculinity. William’s presentation of Mitch in his unassuming and uncertain masculinity makes him a dramatic vehicle for the transitional male between the hyper-masculine aggression of Stanley and the relative effeminacy of Allen Gray. Initially, he appears to lean towards the latter in Blanche’s attraction towards Mitch, yet their class differences and romantic sensibilities separate them as a potential pair. By the end of the play, Mitch has taken after Stanley; a blue-collar labourer unable to match Blanche’s upper-class sensitivities and restricted by the limits of his poor education. Although sympathetic to Southern traditionalism shown by Blanche, he can only make a clumsy attempt at the act. Mitch’s character is a warning to a subversive type of masculinity that conceals and contains sexual desire. Ultimately, Mitch comes to represent the destructive impulses that lay at the heart of the crisis of masculinity that struck post-war America.

Amongst the hyper-masculinity of the poker players in scene 3, Mitch demonstrates a gentle sensitivity that, in the mind of the audience, redeems him from him fellow men. He appears as a foil to Stanley, governed by the feminised control of his mother that ‘she says to go out, but I don’t like it.’ Despite this, he seems attracted to the status derived from the hierarchy of masculinity. Longing for female attention, his lack of excludes him from the circle of men that he makes note to emphasise, ‘you are all married. But I’ll be alone when she goes.” His attachment to his mother demonstrates a great fear of loneliness that pre-empts his need for marriage. Yet, even whilst longing for female approval, he appears to lack ‘sufficient’ masculinity, rather he shows an affinity with the feminine, retreating to the bathroom setting that has since been associated with Blanche’s own sanctuary. His desire to be dealt out of the masculine realm of the card game, “I’m going to the ‘head.’ Deal me out’ can be interpretated as another way in which Mitch’s incomplete masculinity is characterised. The audience, however, may recognise this gentle masculinity as an appeal to Blanche who has antagonised the dominant and aggressive Stanley Kowalski.

Mitch’s attachment to Blanche demonstrates his sincere sensibilities that proves him as a potential suitor for Blanche. Whilst they are both drawn together by the operatic drama of lost love, both having suffered the loss of loved one, Mitch has been made honest and genuine but has driven Blanche to the refuge of delusions and imagination. His difference foreshadows their incompatibility. By Blanche’s recognition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43, “And if God choose — I shall love thee better after death,” remind the audience Blanche’s possession of cultural capital far overshadows that of the ignorant Mitch. His gentleness offers Blanche a security and protection against the harsh aggression of Stanley’s masculine world; from “Thank you for being so kind, I need kindness now!”  emphasises the delicate and fragile basis of their relation built on a ‘kindness’ that sharply contrasts with the bestial attraction of Stella and Stanley.

Mitch stands in-between the states of being a man and boy. He is tied to an unassuming and passive femininity, evident by his relatively effeminate interest in fashion and focus on his appearance that marks yet another similarity with Blanche in “It don’t look neat on me.” In both characters, their concern for the outer exterior demonstrates an attempt to appeal to the other gender. This concern distinguishes mitch from the hegemonic form of masculinity in post-war America inclined towards a ruggish handsomeness. This is however contrasted with masculine ambitions to physicality in “I work out there with the weights.” Williams hints towards the inclination to violence as he asks Blanche to “punch [him]. Williams, here, warns of the falling for the guise of the transitional man. Mitch acts liminally along a spectrum of masculinity with Allen at one end and Stanley at the other. The question of Mitch’s character is to which form of masculinity will he pursue.

The incompatibility between Blanche and Mitch means that any potential romance will only be one of practical union, soothing their shared loneliness and lacking in the mutual sexuality of Stanley and Stella. Demonstrating this, Blanche’s joke in French of “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir?” places them of different planes of thought entirely in terms of intention and purpose. The further reference to La Dame aux Camellias by Alexander Dumas implicity comparing herself to a Parisian call-girl. One way in interpreting this dialogue is in Blanche divulging her ‘secret history’ as a prostitute, yet Mitch lacks the cultural knowledge to understand her — this is perhaps emblematic of their relationship as a whole for Mitch can never understand Blanche, separated by class ideals and comprehension. Mitch can certainly offer her protection, “You need somebody. And I need somebody too. Could it be you and me, Blanche?” but by the dying away of the Varsouviana at his embrace, this use of plastic theatre could imply that he will be the one to save her from the memory of her dead husband. In this way, this embrace can be analysed as a way of Blanche merely mirroring her lost marriage in her romance with Mitch. However, Mitch shows glimpse of masculine protection in the kindness he offers, separating him from Allen that becomes distinct in his outburst of aggression in scene 9.

Scene 9 is proof that, in spite, of Mitch’s seemingly gentle exterior; he, like Stanley, harbours a dangerous desire that appears in him with the form of a dormant masculinity. From this point, Williams presents Mitch in likeness with Stanley: he proudly wears his “work clothes’ that distinguish him, a blue-collar worker, from the upper-class Blanche, adorning a “red sating robe.” This scene may read as an exposure of both their hidden natures — in Mitch, hew shows a sexual aggression having been deceived by Blanche. He adopts Stanley’s systematic and factual language in “that’s a fact,” as he realises “I’ve never had a good look at you.” The act of “turn[ing] the light on,” is an act of cruelty that shows his shift to the masculinity symbolised by Stanley. Still, he uses the excuse of his “mother” and Blanche not being “clean enough.” Despite his mimicry of masculinity, he will never be whole, even using his mother to rid himself of Blanche. A Marxist interpretation would read the failure of their relationship as representative of the emerging power of the working-class and the still-present resistance to accepting this direction of America from the South. Crucial is their inability to coexist, without the disintegration of the upper-class, Blanche would need to sacrifice all that she values to be integrated into the new, modern America with Mitch.

Mitch’s role as a failed suitor to Blanche marks him as an equally dangerous form of masculinity to Stanley in repression of sexual desire. Yet, beneath the gentle and rustic exterior, Mitch proves to be only another brute.

There are some interesting ideas raised in this essay that require expansion such as:

  • Even in the dialogue, “You’re not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother,” implies a level of maternal dependency in shielding off Blanche’s romantic advances, unable to assert himself on his own terms. Williams makes a point to emphasise that Mitch has been mother coddled — could there be an implicit reference to Freudian psychology?
  • Mitch’s irrational hope that others will define his identity for him (perhaps, this is a rational reaction for at the end of the play he does seem to align with Stanley’s hyper-masculine, brutish persona) — oscillates between mother, Blanche, and Stanley as influences on his self.
  • Masculine hypocrisy — the conventional wisdom of the play informs us that Mitch is a gentleman, but by scene 9 his behaviour is anything but that. Although marriage is what they both desired three scenes prior, he rejects her for he past promiscuity. Although marriage is unacceptable, sex remains a possibility. Objectification of Blanche (See stage directions of Stanley in act 1: “He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images flashing into his mind)

These are just a few points that might make for a interesting discussion in any future essays.

Over the half term, I hope to upload notes and essays on Othello to make up for the relative lack of Othello content under our tenure along with any miscellaneous posts that may be of use.

— Tara

Character Analysis of Stanley Kowalski

flynnta16Leave a comment

Hello all,

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. The blog team has been busy with the start of the new term but we will be returning with full force. Below is an essay on the presentation of Stanley Kowalski that was awarded 25 marks for its critical evaluative argument. I wrote this essay around November of last year and it’s a strange experience to read it back. I would have liked to adopt more concision in my argument in addition to further quote analysis in conjunction with the text’s context.

‘The game is seven-card stud.’

Stanley Kowalski is presented as virile, loud, aggressive, and ambitious — essentially, all that contemporary society demands of a man. Underlying this image, however, there is a dark and potent sexuality that drives him which Williams warns against. Williams uses Stanley as a dramatic vehicle in warning of the sexual aggression of post-war aspirational masculinity. To a Marxist perspective, Stanley represents the emerging material power of the working-class that is impelled to rid the Southern aristocracy of it’s lasting power in a capitalistic race for America. Stanley places himself atop a hierarchy of masculinity, but this position is destabilised by the appearance of Blanche; their conflict is one of gain and loss. His destruction of her is one of crushing idealism and fantasy for a brutal reality. His actions are indicative of a violent masculinity, spurred to sadistic destruction. Williams ultimately presents Stanley as the incarnation of desire that is ungoverned and destructive in its brutal dismantling of the suppressed sexuality of the antebellum era.

To Williams, Stanley represents a Darwinian emblem of a man at the height of his potency, assured in his possession of home, wife and status. Williams defines Stanley in terms of his ownership over items, ‘his car, his radio, everything that is his.’ Stanley’s world is a hard one, a capitalistic race to which the idealistic Blanche is necessarily at odds. He is symptomatic of the consumer-driven American dream. The ‘blue-denim work clothes’ indicates his identity as the American man, aspiring to greater heights, keenly integrated into the capitalist ideology of America as he claims: ‘Luck is believing you’re lucky.’ In his world, people are deservingly rewarded for their hard work rather than being born into wealth and power. However, this ideology will serve as the crux of his antagonism later in the play as Blanche attempts to rob him of what is his — his wife, his friends, his privacy. Williams’ initial presentation of Stanley makes him likeable to the audience in his conflict with Blanche. In fact, he bears resemblance to the adored hero American westerns or detective mysteries; the gruff pragmatist that commands the adulation of women. Kazan’s production deliberately highlights Stanley’s positive traits, of the aspirations of the American everyman that initially make the conflict between Blanche and Stanley have a more ambivalent audience response.

Williams’ presents the strife between Blanche and Stanley as that of loss and gain. Stanley represents the wealth and power of the New America, brought forth by the emerging working-class and the consequent loss and disintegration of the traditional South. For Stanley, Blanche’s ‘papers’ represent proof of the powerlessness of the South for any lasting financial means can be gained by the ‘Napoleonic code.’ Here, Williams warns of the avarice of the New America that will swallow up the nation in pursuit of power and wealth. Scene four marks Blanche’s fist loss in ‘Stella has embraced him [Stanley] with both arms, fiercely and in view of Blanche.’ Stella has lost and disgarded her past for which she will willingly cast aside her Southern identity as the South is gradually falling apart. This stage dynamic, for ‘over her head, he grins though the curtains at Blanche’ renders her an outsider. Stanley, in turn, relishes in her loss. Ultimately, this will continue as the play ends on ‘seven-card stud.’ Stanley Kowalski, and his world order of grim reality will triumph over the fragile and ethereal world of Blanche DuBois.

In ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ Stanley is the bearer of reality. He is the Aristotelian antagonist to Blanche’s idealism and fantasy for he perceives the threat that she poses to his world. In retaliation, he must destroy hers with the brutality and cold abandon he has embraced. Through plastic theatre, William’s alerts the audience to Stanley’s presence by the sound of an approaching ‘locomotive’ — he himself is an icon of modernity. He is the modern man that is driven by the great destruction of its momentum to clash against the ‘soft colours’ that Blanche represents. Stanley runs a systematic and brutal undoing of Blanche’s fakery and lies, from ‘lie number one’ to ‘proof from the most reliable sources,’ Stanley makes no attempt to sympathise with Blanche or her ‘different notions,’ but instead takes joy in their most sordid details. Crucially, Stanley is incapable of understanding Blanche’s need for ‘magic’ rather than the ‘truth.’ Instead, he ‘seizes the paper lantern’ and destroys with it, her fantasies and sole method for coping with reality.

Stanley’s violent shows of masculinity reveals the fragility of Stanley’s construction of his own masculine world for at any implication of his own loss of power, he responds in a form of violence when confronted with domestic duty. Stanley’s diatribe that ‘Every man is a king. And I am a king around her,’ smacks of the patriarchal control that was province for both upper and lower classes. Stanley’s dislike of Blanche evidently stems from her reducing his ego with remarks of ‘pig — Polack — digusting — vulgar — greasy!’ intruding on his established pride and hard labour as a reminder of the class divide between him and the DuBois as a ‘pair of queens.’ The rigidity of his pride and these gender roles express themselves in violence for he ‘hurls a cup and saucer to the floor.’ The violence of his masculinity is equally shown in his great patriotism to the USA which also relates him to the American audience. He identifies as ‘one-hundred per cent American.’ To him, he has earned his place by fighting for his country. In spite of war’s traditional association with solely violence and destruction, war has granted him great opportunity, overruling class and culture. In that sense, he is a product of war whereby violence is his sole power.

Williams presents Stanley’s conflict with Blanche as one of sadistic destruction. This verges away from a form of protectiveness to a sadistic urge to destroy anything that might diminish his own power. A Marxist relation to this would be the inevitability of this conflict for two dominant classes to coexist, rather the aristocratic South must be lost to sustain a capitalistic society. In scene 10, Stanley takes a form of sadistic joy in Blanche’s lies and deceit in ‘ ‘Well, well, well, what do you know?’ that contrasts with his blatant ‘contemptuous’ mocking of earlier scenes. He learns to ignore Blanche’s fantastical deceit in the knowledge that she will soon leave. His perspective of ‘roughhousing’ shows only his desire to overpower her. At this point, the audience loses all degree of sympathy as he reveals himself to be the ‘brute’ described by Blanche.

Through all, the true driving force behind Stanley’s behaviour comes to be sexual desire. The climax of scene 11 shows how his power best manifests in the sexual desire that he harnesses over Blanche, relating to the constant allegory that desire is impelled to destruction. The ‘brilliant silk pyjamas’ that he wears form a symbol for his libido. They foreshadow a replication of his wedding night with Stella in crushing the status of the South by desire, as he ‘tore [Stella] off those columns’ of the South. The ‘silk’ of his ensemble underlines the gained wealth of the North that juxtaposes with Blanche’s ‘soiled’ attire. In scene 11, Stanley is at the peak of his manhood, more triumphant than ever in his virility at the birth of his child; this may be the reason that he feels the need to exert his potency in some way from ‘come to think of it — maybe you wouldn’t be so bad — to interfere with…’ For Blanche, sex has alway been her Achilles heel, but always Stanley’s sword and shield. This sexual dichotomy, of overt and covert sexuality, reveals the inexorable lead-up to the rape from ‘We’ve had this date from the beginning.’ The audience, here, cannot condone Stanley in robbing Blanche of her final dignity. Tragically, little changes for Blanche leaves and Stanley ‘kneels besides her [Stella], and his fingers find the opening of her blouse’ as their marriage remains in sexual thraldom. Regardless of Blanche’s suffering, Stanley’s desire carries on in perpetual force to be inflicted upon all.

To conclude, Stanley’s initial likeable presentation as the American everyman is soon degraded by his conflict for power with Blanche, demonstrating the need for sadistic destruction of his masculinity and sexual desire. He come to represent, in a Marxist analysis, the brutality of a Capitalist system that is unrelenting in its momentum and power. Williams’ presentation of Stanley forces the audience, as well as Blanche, to face ‘harsh reality,’ for they learn what they instinctively admire and view as healthy is really a base, egotistical force destructive of what it cannot comprehend.

Character Analysis of Blanche DuBois

flynnta16Leave a comment

Beneath is an analysis of Blanche’s character, touching on some of the core themes of the play and a discussion of relevant context.

‘Never inside, I never lied in my heart…’

Blanche is presented as a character in contradiction: she appears chaste, noble, and delicate in her dedicated role as a Southern Belle, yet we learn she is poor, promiscuous, and driven by an unbridled sexual passion.  Her central struggle in ASND is one of achieving intimacy, desiring mutual understanding and compassion within a relationship and in midst of the uncertainty of her character. The tragedy of this play is in that the romance that she desires may never be achieved in the world of modern America. Ultimately, she is a dramatic vehicle for the tender romanticism, prominent within the Old Southern culture, that has — in Williams’ eyes — been torn and mutilated in the modern, Capitalist progress of New America.

To a Marxist interpretation, Blanche is but a reminder of the decaying upper class of the old South, economically degraded by the civil war and in contest with the emerging working-class to whom America belongs. Blanche’s tragedy represents the inexorable path to destruction of the aristocratic South against the prosperity of capitalism of post-war American economy.

A: From Scene 1, Blanche’s proud class status excludes her from the working-class familiarity of New Orleans. The crux of Blanche’s identity is formed of the traditional, aristocratic standards to which she was born. Acting in a manner to befit her birth, she must be refined, elegant, and virginal — all of these traits belonging to a Southern Belle. However, the loss of Belle Reve marks the flaws in her carefully laid façade, lacking its historical wealth, and in its place, the ‘epic fornications’ of her ancestors reveal themselves in Blanche’s own promiscuity.

Key Quotations:

PLASTIC THEATRE: ‘Appearance is incongruous to this setting,’ ‘delicate beauty,’ ‘uncertain manner, as well as white clothes, that suggests a moth,’ The white ethereality of Blanche’s clothing shows her to be in this fleeting liminal state, almost between life and death. Her ghostly appearance representing the death of the South itself with Blanche its sole survivor. Blanche’s relation to the moth as a creature drawn to light, yet her ‘fragile’ exterior that is always at threat of harm leaves her in a constant state of evading it. She moves inextricably to what will destroy her.

‘Hold as our flag! In this dark march towards what-ever it is we’re approaching… Don’t hang back with the brutes!’ We are presented with a national dichotomy, in Blanche’s mind, of her America and Stanley’s that will perpetually be at conflict. The anachronism of the Confederate flag of the South is transmuted into a new flag of tenderness and development of feeling — a renewed birth of the South for which Williams fights.

By a Marxist paradigm, Blanche, for all of her fragility, signifies the final stance of the Southern upper-class in the battle for dominance of America with the post-war power of the working-class.

B: Blanche seeks a comfortable relationship with a man in order to secure her own future. She sustains her image of gentle, femininity for the chief manner of appealing to men — her fatal flaw is that she can only be ‘seductive,’ for flirtation is the only language known to her.

STRUCTURE: The imperative to hurry is that she is ‘fading.’ The play lacks the Aristotelian unity of time, rather representing Blanche’s slow demise — the loss of beauty, her only weapon.

Key Quotations:

‘And if God choose, I shall but love thee better — after death!’ ‘Sick people have such deep, sincere attachments.’ Blanche and Mitch are drawn together by the high drama of lost love and in the vacancy left by the deaths of loved ones. In Mitch, the experience has made him sincere, but has driven Blanche into the refuge of concealment and delusions. This difference only foreshadows their incompatibility. Indeed, the cultural hegemony of the south demonstrated by her knowledge of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnets, reminder of her abilities as an English teacher — a romantic, artistic appeal of culture.

‘Shimmer and glow — put a — paper lantern over the light…’ ‘It isn’t enough to be soft. You’ve got to be soft and attractive. And I — I’m fading now!’ The dimming of the light, her tricks, and cultivated language are all methods in Blanche’s repertoire of hiding the reality to birth a soft fantasy.  However, Blanche’s fantasies are inextricably linked to her beauty and in losing that, she knows that she will await catastrophe. Her illusions cannot be sustained which inspires an impatience in her relationship with Mitch.

‘Blanche, do you want him?’ ‘I want to rest!’

FORM: The melody of the Varsouviana haunts the memory, and Williams used the device of this music to cue the intensity of Blanche’s memory and her rising hysteria — plastic theatre.

‘Sometimes—there’s God—so quickly.’ An enigmatic, proverbial aperçu that perhaps represents the pattern of Blanche being rescued and finding salvation with different men, only to be abandoned again. Tennessee Williams exposes the tragic cadence of Blanche’s life and raises a dread-filled question in the audience’s mind on whether she will find her rescue.

C: The paradox of Blanche’s existence forces her to run from the light; anything that can expose her delicate act. The fact that she cannot sustain the paradox of her appearance, of the past and the idealisation of her current state and reality forms her tragic condition.

FORM: ‘I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or vulgar action.’ That she must cover the light and live in the shadow indicates her twilight condition and her attitude towards life: ‘I don’t want realism. I want magic!’ Blanche lives between light and dark, avoiding the truthful glare of the former and unable to attain the latter.

‘Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir?‘ (Trans: ‘Do you want to sleep with me tonight?’)Her question has wider cultural currency than that French language, and Blanche takes a risk for her joke—the risk of destroying her pure Southern Belle image in Mitch’s eyes. This is one of the few scenes where Blanche seems aware that she is playing the role of the Southern Belle rather than actually being one. Her obsession with her role can be linked with her descent into madness. To emphasise the distinction between them, Blanche’s ‘joke’ places her and Mitch on separate planes with differing intentions and purposes.

‘I don’t want realism.’ I’ll tell you what I want. Magic!’ ‘I misrepresent things to them.’ ‘I tell what ought to be the truth.’ ‘If that is sinful, then let me be damned for it.’ forms her defence of the delicate. Blanche’s speech reveals a number of truths, the reasoning, however convoluted behind Blanche’s whimsy, is the connection of light to tragedy, the full vibrancy of love and the dousing of the light with Allan’s death. Anything too bright can only bring the memory back, and with it the guilt that has flayed Blanche.

D: The nobility and grandeur of Blanche’s character is marred by a sexual intemperance. She, too, is ruled by a desire that is powerful and overwhelming in its grip, undermining the conscious drive toward propriety and refinement that her upbringing and environment have confirmed within her. The pathos that the audience finds within Blanche that the characters of ASND, is a pitiable sincerity for compassion and loyalty, particularly the ‘kindness of strangers.’ The world that she finds herself within, of Stanley’s America, cannot comprehend the unwavering morality of Blanche in face of her past fleeting ‘intimacies’ with strangers, and this inability to understand or empathise, becomes a base, egotistical force as Stanley rapes her at the end of the play — Blanche ultimately is dragged into the unrelenting momentum of a modern America that will not let go.

FORM: ‘Scarlet satin robe,’ Here, Blanche is fully immersed in her own desire and her role as the seductress, embracing the dangerous sexuality that she has purposely hidden for a façade of innocent ingénue, dressed in white.

‘Intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with…’ Blanche speaks with the melodrama of a tragic heroine, acting theatrically rather than a role as a real woman. Mitch, however, wants reality. Her admission of her sexual history, coupled with sordid inventions to embellish her past is a confrontation of Blanche’s identity in her supposed respectability as a Southern Belle against her sexual history.

‘You lied to me, Blanche.’ ‘Never inside, I didn’t lie in my heart.’ When Mitch accuses Blanche of lying to him, she maintains that she never lied “inside. I didn’t lie in my heart.” Blanche means that she has used some deception to trap Mitch, but a certain amount of illusion is a woman’s charm, but as she said to Stanley in scene two, “when a thing is important, I tell the truth.” Indeed, it appears she did tell the truth to Mitch when she told him that she loved and that they needed each other.

‘She smashes a bottle on the table and faces him, clutching the broken top.’ The breaking of the bottle may be indicative of how Stanley has broken the foundations of her illusions that were so necessary for her life and the ‘clutching the broken top’ shows just how little she has in the aftermath of this symbolic violence; truly, if she suffers any further, her desires will drive her insane. Alternatively, this action is one of empowerment in Blanche taking her fate into her own hands, no longer reliant on the patriarchal security offered by men. She rebels against the sexual desires imposed upon her by a male lens. The tragic representation is that these attempts come too late for she is already entrapped in the vice of Stanley’s society.

The final rape scene comes to symbolise the ultimate destruction of Southern aristocratic culture, in Blanche’s figurative death and Stella’s safe self-immolation to be a part of the working-class America.

CONCLUSION: Blanche’s tragic power lies in her ultimate acceptance of that very future she has fought· so painfully, and almost successfully with Mitch, to resist: her ideals besmirched, she will never find love. The tragedy of her character is in the reverberations of her anguish, a fate undertaken with quiet dignity to have lost, having made her ‘desperate choice.’

Stella in a Streetcar Named Desire

flynnta16Leave a comment

Below is a rough outline of a potential essay on Stella. Please enjoy!

‘The best I could do was make my own living.’ — Stella Kowalski

Stella Kowalski is presented as passive, practical, physically and imaginatively static, yet also adaptable to her conditions. She is a woman committed to dependence on her man in the family relationship: to her, everything else is secondary. She is arguably a dramatic vehicle for the lasting connection between her home of Belle Rêve (a fleeting past that Blanche is desperately holding onto) and integration in the modern, capitalist America with Stanley in New Orleans. The conflict between these two dichotomous worlds orbits around Stella.

If we are to adopt a Marxist interpretation, Stella’s abandonment of her bourgeois identity permits her entrance to a future with Stanley, of potency over sterility. Despite belonging to the traditional Southern nobility, she is willing to give it all up for security. She essentially sacrifices her identity to be a part of the emerging working-class America that Stanley heralds.

1). Williams marks Stella’s introduction as the gentle, impressionable homemaker — her identity is marked in subjugation to others.

Key quotations:

‘Catch!’ ‘What’ ‘Meat!’ Stella responds automatically to Stanley’s masculine acts of aggression.

‘You sit down and let me pour the drinks’ “I just got in the habit of being quiet around you.’

‘I put you a cold plate on ice.’ ‘You’d better give me some money.’

‘I don’t listen to you when you’re being morbid [she advances with a bottled coke].’

From a Feminist lens, Stella may appear the conventional 1940s, subjugated, and dependent woman where, as Elia Kazan (director of the 1951 adaptation of ASND) notes, she is ‘Stanley’s slave.’ However, the audience notes that she increasingly takes a more independent role upon the arrival of Blanche in her financial and domestic powers.

For Blanche and Stanley, she alone is prepared to offer the necessary comfort and understanding from which the conflict for control over her is borne as they both pursue a feminine solace to their exterior troubles — for Stanley, that of his work and Blanche, the pressures of her past.

2). Background of her previous antebellum existence — Her disposition of aristocracy, for which the arrival of Blanche reminds Stanley, and the cultural disparity between her and his working-class habitus.

Key quotations:

Type of language: correct grammar conveys her education, but her speech is unemotional and dry.

“drunk — drunk — animal thing, you!”

“Mr. Kowalski is too busy making a pig of himself to think of anything else!”

‘The Kowalskis and the DuBois have different notions.’

Plastic Theatre: ‘Light blue satin kimono.’ use of colour as a parallel to her somber mentality.

Through a Marxist lens, Stella represents how the upper-class must adapt according to their loss of economic power, in terms of a shifting power balance to the emerging working-class. In becoming wife of Stanley, his property, the tables have fundamentally shifted. There is a potent sense of irony of her economic domination in historical context of the economic hegemony of the old South, with all of its traditional aristocratic wealth, pre-American civil war. Now, Stella, a descendant of this past, has been reduced to the passive homemaker for a ‘savage.’

3. Ease of integration into the working-class — Stella unlike Blanche, lives in the present and does not raise her eyebrows over the quality of her sordid existence. What matters more to her is the security and sense of (sexual) fulfilment in the love of Stanley. For Stella, passive by conditioning in a house in which the elder Blanche dominated, taking things as they came has been a way of life.

Key quotations:

‘It’s not that bad at all. New Orleans isn’t like other cities.’

‘The best I could do was make my own living.’

‘They come together with low, animal moans.’ ‘Her eyes go blind with tenderness.’

“Uh huh’ ‘That’s much more practical.’

‘How you loved it, having them coloured lights going.’ Like Blanche, Stella is led powerfully by her libido, although for different reasons. The union with Stanley made it possible for her to be a sexual woman without societal disapproval.

Rather than there being a joint union, the audience may read Stella and Stanley’s union as a cycle of domestic abuse, Stella Kowalski cannot escape lest she will be alone and at risk, unable to leave the husband who abuses her and unable to depend, even on “the kindness of strangers.”

4. Stella, too, finds that she must battle her own internal desires. The essential conflict between these the modern, American condition and the sexual repression of Southern manners will inevitably lead to the defeat of the old South for it can no longer offer the security, or unbarred sexual fulfilment that Stanley provides to Stella and the future generations that she represents. She will enter a future of uninhibited desire; nothing proves greater than the marital bliss of her sensual existence in the post-war America.

Key quotations:

‘Stella has embraced him with both arms, fiercely, and full in the view of Blanche.’ ‘Over her head he grins through the curtains at Blanche.’ ‘

‘Choral chant.’ ‘Serene in the early morning sunlight.’ Life continues to go on in the Vieux Carré, for Stella, she is better for it as Williams paints the scene for her angelic appearance, intoxicated in a sensual afterglow.

‘There are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark — that sort of thing makes everything else seem unimportant.’

‘I love him.’ ‘I was common […] I pulled you off those columns.’ The sexual desire of modern America drew Stella away from the traditional culture of the South. Desire, here, transplants class boundaries. Stanley, like his wife in an earlier scene, emphasizes their sexual connection. Like Blanche, Stella is led powerfully by her libido.

‘[Fingers find the opening of her blouse.]’ Theirs is still a marriage of sexual thraldom, although the end is ambiguous. It is not fully clear whether Stella will accept him into her bed again. Though she does not brush away his fingers, she is in a state of extreme emotion. There is no telling what will happen tomorrow. Williams explores the fragilities and vulnerabilities of the feminine psyche.

In context, Stella’s union with Stanley made it possible for her to be a sexual woman without societal disapproval, particularly from the morality shown in Blanche’s futile attempts to appear chaste and virginal.

5). To live in the future, with Stanley and her baby, Stella must wholly abandon her past, even her sister. Stella will happily leave Belle Reve for all that Stanley can offer her.

‘Have you been listening?’

‘I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley.’ Stella remains with Stanley, not so much because she loves him, but because she can see no other choice. He is a matter of survival for her and the baby, though Stella’s affections have shifted. She can safely be enthralled with the baby and suffer no societal misfortune for it. Her passionate nature, unlike her sister’s, can be redirected without fault. Eunice is the voice of reason, of pragmatism, suffering the same fate of Stella who is similarly entrapped in a domestic sphere. Eunice expresses only the remorseless, unforgiving momentum of modern life in America and perhaps, she foreshadows Stella’s fate.

‘The child in her arms. It is wrapped in a pale, blue blanket.’

‘Something luxurious in her complete surrender.’ gone.’ Stella oddly returns to her origin in her ‘luxurious’ surrender. She is reminded of her own familial tie to Blanche, the understanding that can be gained from a common background. Equally, Stanley has destroyed her, her lingering attachments to her home and trapping her into Vieux Carré.

The audience is affronted with the fact that Stella has no alternative options but Stanley. For a woman, who has always been preoccupied with her security as a wife and mother, she must prioritise her husband and family sphere.

Conclusion: Initially, Stella offers the audience an ideal of genuine fulfilment based on sexuality but, more significantly, she thereby stumbles on the urgent need for that tenderness and compassion which, to Williams, is the key to the human predicament. Her categorical rejection of Blanche, unwilling to hear her pleas, demonstrates that she too has been swept into the rapid, momentum of life in modern America. Here, desire overrules human connection.

Presentation of Desire in a Streetcar Named Desire

flynnta16Leave a comment

Hello everyone,

Firstly, thank you to the previous Year 13 team who did an excellent job at running the blog this past year. We plan on carrying on their contributions but also adding our own amazing ideas to leave a legacy and inspire you all. We hope to carry forth what they attempted to achieve.

Welcome to the new team of bloggers hoping to guide you through exams with refreshing ideas, in-depth analyses, and fun suggestions all to do with English — clearly a passion of ours! Our resources include the new and improved podcast and the Instagram page full of topical posts which you will hopefully enjoy. Our editors are as followed: Tara, Naomi, Imi, Anina, and Millie.

Any questions DM us: @wymcolenglishblog and stay tuned for updates!

Y12 Editorial Team

The following is my typed-up manuscript from the Streetcar Named Desire assessment that was written at the end of last year. It was noted as a comprehensive analysis of desire as the ‘destructive/comprehensive force at the heat of human existence.’ There are a number of ideas within this that I wish I had returned to and made some further comments.

I could have further explored the backdrop of the play’s setting in the ‘sensual heat of New Orleans’ in the opening scene and the ‘intimacies with strangers’ in scene nine which is developed in a fourth sub-argument  in green pen.

Explore the Presentation of Desire in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

‘What you are talking about is brutal desire.’

Desire is presented as a brutal, unbridled, sexual passion to which all are held by its grip and that critically undercuts all notions of Blanche’s respectability as a Southern Belle. Within the aristocratic caste of Southern society, Blanche has been offered no mode of sexual release with the repressive sexual ideology of the old South, yet ironically the ‘epic fornications’ of her ancestors will reveal her undoing. Initially, she makes efforts to appear chaste, virginal, and pure; these standards in which she defines herself and rigidly attempts to uphold. However, her sordid past, in her promiscuity incurred by a deep loneliness at the loss of her husband, threatens to intervene in the reality that she manifests, Stanley, throughout, maintains an antagonism for his own hyper-masculine potency is necessarily at odds with the feminised deceit of her Southern manners. To a Marxist perspective, desire is but the method in which the emerging working-class, relishing in their post-war success, can destroy the inhibited Southern Aristocracy of the Antebellum America — indeed, the rape scene by Stanley pulls her into the modern, Capitalist progress of America that is not to let go.

It is a necessary imperative, to Blanche’s mind, that she appears within bound of the gender moral standards of the South: for that purpose, she follows a self-imposed instruction of fragility and virginal chasteness. Upon the audience’s introduction to Blanche, she adorns herself, through William’s use of plastic theatre, in a ‘white fluffy bodice.’ Her image of luxury and ‘delicate beauty’ is the method for her to maintain her façade of sexual purity. Her ‘pearls’ and ‘white clothes’ all denote the cleanliness of an aristocratic, wealthy, Antebellum existence. Still, her spectral appearance in white may relate to her decaying, anachronistic being, clinging onto her family’s history; her ethereality is perhaps suggestive of a liminal state between life and death itself. Ultimately, her appearance foreshadows her figurative death in the final rape, undoing her noble glory in an implosion of sexual violence. This is seen in the recurring motif that Blanche’s manners ‘suggest a moth,’ of a delicate beauty that is tragically impelled towards light but must elude it, lest it destroy her. The audience must observe the fate of her tragedy in the operatic romance that she shares with Mitch. Carefully, she employs the historical cultural hegemony of the South in order to note their similarities — her flirtation is reminiscent of the European, aristocratic courtship that is in contrast with the ’low, animal moans’ of Stella and Stanley. Her recognition of Elizabeth Barrett’s sonnet, ‘And if God choose, I shall but love thee better but after death,’ allows her a cultural currency to forge a gentle similarity between her and Mitch, both with dreams of the high drama of lost love; thus, she crucially evades a relationship driven by desire. Her courtship with Mitch — its ‘shimmer and glow’ — suggest her deep with for mutual compassion and sincerity, rather than the ‘brutal desire,’ for which she reprimands Stella. We note her mode of language for, ‘sick people have such deep, sincere attachments,’ indicates that she has yet to rise to such emotional connections. She can only make false performances of the true devotion of love.

Blanche’s sordid history, upon the loss of Belle Rêve, all threaten to destroy her carefully-crafted image of sexual purity — even Blanche herself cannot maintain a control of herself, in uninhibited sensuality. Her attraction to the young boy from the ‘evening star,’ represents the sexual taunts that she represses in the recurring symbols of stars and light; objects that she must resist, else they should destroy her, She has been entrapped by desire, from her ‘discovery [of] love’ at ‘sixteen’ with Allen Gray that places her within a perpetual state of sexual juvenility. The loneliness of her torn heart, against the ‘spotlight’ of the harsh world (a dichotomy developed in her harbouring of a historical sexual repression with the sexual liberties of post-war America) creates a dangerous attraction to youth. Perhaps, this relates to Blanche’s yearning to return to a purer point in her life, having not been exposed to the wider landscape of America. She willingly begins to adopt the role of temptress, of melodramatic quality, to express a theatrical form of seduction that contrasts with the moderated courtship with Mitch. Her expressions of ‘eternity’ in her poetic romance contrasts with the brutal, sexual passion of New Orleans. Even in scene 6, the audience can witness the tender romance with which she infuses her desire. This gentle quality is that which Williams encourages the audience to develop for Blanche to become a figure of pathos in the tragedy of her destruction at Stanley’s hands. Still, her theatrics that she demonstrates with Mitch reveal an ironic recognition of her fakery of sexual innocence, as she ‘rolls her eyes’ at the suggestion of ‘old-fashioned ideals.’ Blanche knows that the mask of propriety has long since been stripped by desire. Once again, she employs a mimicry of European romance, adapted by the Southern aristocracy, to express the disparity between her and Mitch’s worlds. She solicits him in French, ‘Voulez-vous coucher avec moi […]?’ so that he cannot understand her — here, the audience recognises that they are entirely emotionally and sexually incompatible. The fact that she willingly pokes at the holes in her façade is perhaps evidence for her self-awareness in simultaneous performances of the purity of the Southern Belle and being enticed into a portrayal of sexual openness in the dramatic role of the temptress, freely adopting the role of the Dame Aux Camellias. In all ways, the two are critically incompatible for in Mitch, she cannot find the mutual understanding that she seeks, only security as she expresses to Stella — ‘I want to rest!’ Blanche acknowledges the need for security that she can only gain by a male figure: the outlet of the passions of Stella and Stanley coexists within the protected domestic setting of their marriage. The modernity of their sexual promise, an outlet within the confines of their marriage, contrasts with Blanche’s own anachronistic sexuality.

Stanley, in the potency of his sexual relationship with Stella, perilously unveils Blanche’s gentility as a Southern Belle. The reveal of her ‘secret history’  is impelled by her impeding on the free expression of his own sexual desire in the claustrophobic setting of Vieux Carré. Williams’s emphasises this by way of an Aristotelian unity of place that has the function of the compression of desire until the climax. His attempt to categorise Blanche’s past as a prostitute in her ‘pack of lies’ and calling upon insanity as ‘downright loco-nuts,’ may all be contextualised in the notion of the hysterical woman. Williams may be suggesting that this is instead a form of patriarchal categorisation of female characters, like Blanche. The threat that she poses against the freedoms of his desire mean the total destruction of her as ‘her future is all mapped out for her.’ His actions control her future, wielding his own desire as a weapon. This is best signified in the rape scene that totally destroys Blanche’s ideas of gentle intimacy — sex of understanding and compassion. Williams may have been calling upon the inevitability of their conflict as Stanley notes, ‘we’ve had this date from the beginning.’ Throughout ASND, this essential dichotomy between the Old South and Modern America is developed through the lens of the expression of desire. The ‘epic fornications’ of Blanche’s ancestors having degraded the economic and cultural power of the South, post-civil war that reduces Blanche to poverty and isolation. By a Marxist paradigm, the raping of Blanche by Stanley is emblematic of the necessary destruction of the Southern aristocrats by the emerging working-class. Stanley’s economic power and sexual potency as a labourer, proudly displayed in the ‘blue denim work-clothes,’ and to protect these gained powers, he must destroy Blanche to maintain his position atop the capitalist hierarchy. As she is ‘fading,’ the last destruction of her dignity, any notion of chasteness and class superiority is annihilated, pulled into the capitalist progress of modern America in the hands of desire.

Ultimately, Williams forms the notions of desire as a force of both brutality and destruction contrasted with its soothing against the harshness of the exterior world in the safe confines of a relationship that Blanche seeks. The desire of the new, industrial America, however, is of the former that must destroy the totality of Blanche’s hopes and all that she represents.

The sensuous heat of New Orleans is inhabited in the physicality and sexuality that infuses the play. In the opening scene, the polyphonic dialogue emphasises the brash familiarity of sexual vice, particularly of prostitution ‘tapping on the shutters.’ This pervading chaos of desire seems to infiltrate every aspect of those in New Orleans. It is this sense of passionate claustrophobia that ultimately entraps Blanche, The motif of her bathing becomes indicative of the sweat in the subtropical climate that seems to invite an outlet of desire, and as a space which Stanley freely maintains. The sexual tension between these characters comes to a head in ‘my clothes’re stickin’ to me,’ demonstrates the exertion of sexual power. He finds himself king in the animalism of the New Orleans climate that all seems to come to fruition in the inevitable rape of Blanche that depicts her being subsumed in the modern American capacity for sexual desire.

Essay – Masculinity in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’

elishacarter1 Comment

Hi everyone,

Below is an essay in response to how masculinity is presented in Williams’ ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. It scored 21/25 and though it could have been improved through discussion of foils, specifically Mitch and Stanley, it was noted that it had an ‘interesting thesis, well linked to context’ and ‘very detailed analysis of the play’.

Blanche – belief in magic

alezeditorLeave a comment

Here’s an essay that I wrote during the beginning of year 12 – I hope that it might come in useful just to refresh your memory on one of our plays: ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. It received an A*3.

‘Blanch is a tragic figure. Her belief in magic is her fatal flaw’

Throughout the play, Williams presents the central conflict of reality against fantasy through the vessels of Blanche, representative of the Old South the Williams writes ‘out of a love of’, and Stanley, symbolic of the new, industrial world. Williams’ portrayal of Blanche as a decaying Southern Belle, a trope used in Southern Gothic literature, spirals into the audience’s understanding that Blanche has a loose hold on reality and truth, shown in her clutching for magic, and therefore cannot survive in the contemporary world. Ultimately, she is a decadent relic of the Antebellum era.

Like in many Tragic plays, Williams used Aristotelian Foreshadowing in the form of an Epigram to emphasise that Blanche’s eventual fall in the last scene is destined because of her belief in magic. Though written about another character from Hart Crane’s ‘The Broken Tower’, it is clear that Williams uses it as a depiction of Blanche. ‘And so’, Crane writes, ‘it was I entered the broken world’. The definite article ‘the’ suggests that Williams feels that Blanche was elsewhere beforehand, and did not picture herself as being part of the world. This links to Blanche’s loosening grip on fantasy, and her being forced into the foreign world of Elysian Fields. The Epigram also suggests that the character has been forced to accept the reality of brokenness – why else would they enter this ‘broken world’? This sense of claustrophobia and Blanche’s inability to leave Elysian Fields throughout the play links to William’s use of Unity of Place, another Aristotelian technique, meaning that all the action takes place in one setting: the flat – all adding to a sense of helplessness, perhaps suggesting that Blanche’s fatal flaw is that she is uncomfortable with reality, wants to leave, but cannot. Williams also presents Blanche as a character trapped between ‘desire’ and ‘cemeteries’, the duelling tracks beside Elysian Fields. Linking to Freudian Psychology, the two names seem to suggest Blanche’s imbalance of destructive and constructive tendencies. She wants to survive, donning the ‘white gloves and hat’ of a Southern Belle, suggesting this sense of inner fragility and how delicate she can be. This description in Scene 1 also presents her as someone who wants to seem attractive, linking back to her incongruity to the setting and comfort-finding in anti-truth that leads ultimately to her mental destruction, unable to cope with the harshness of reality.

Blanche’s lapsing back from reality is also presented in how the character is haunted by the ghosts of her past, ghosts being another trop of Southern Gothic literature. Throughout ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, Blanche is haunted by the ‘Versouviana’, music we know to have played whilst her late husband, Alan, killed himself. This revelation in Scene 6 is dramatised by Blanche telling Mitch that her love for Alan ‘suddenly turned a blinding light on’ that was ‘turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that’s stronger’. Linking back to the epigram, perhaps Williams in trying to show that Blanche is living in the past and feels that Alan’s death took part of herself away. The motif of light also seems to be symbolic of truth in the play, suggesting that Blanche can no-longer be looked upon by truth, but must hide away in fantasy. In Scene 9, we find out that this music is playing solely in Blanche’s mind, yet the audience can still hear it, suggesting that Blanche’s circumvention of not just light by reality allows her to break the “fourth wall”, granting the audience to engage with her mentality. Crucially, Mitch is unable to hear this music, implicating that Blanche has entered a world where people cannot understand her, and even accuse her of insanity (‘Are you boxed out of your mind?’), all adding to the tragedy of her story. This only affirms Blanche’s quasi-transcendence and how other she is. This, of course, ultimately dooms her, is her hamartia, as it makes her so unbelievable and distrustful form the perspective of Williams’ other characters. Perhaps Williams is longing to educate his audience on how Southern Belles and those who yearn for this unforgotten world will be excommunicated by society. Williams seems to blame this on a lack of understanding, shown no more clearly that in Mitch’s inability to hear the music.

Finally, Williams also explores how aware Blanche is of her flaws. Earlier on in Scene 9, Williams zooms in on Blanche ‘hiding the bottle in a closet’ as Mitch knocks on the door. Here, Williams gives the audience insight on what Blanche is like when she is alone. An alcoholic, using the substance perhaps to escape from the burden of reality. This is where Blanche’s façade begins to unravel, calling into question how aware she is of her own multifacetedness. On the one hand, when Mitch attempts to turn on the light, she screams ‘Don’t turn on the light!’ Through his use of Plastic Theatre, this is one of the only times that Williams allows us to see Blanche at her base, at her core, as she used imperative speech, suggesting how truly fearful she is of letting her façade slip, implying that she is fully away of her hamartia of the belief in magic. Yet, like so many other characters in literature’s tragedies (Othella, for example), Williams does not allow Blanche an epiphany, which ultimately could have saved her, showing a sort of mental death as opposed to the death of many characters at the anagnorisis of Aristotelian tragedies. Perhaps Williams felt that a character such as Blanche is beyond redemption? Or perhaps he uses Blanche to show how much more we ought to understand each other?

To conclude, Blanche’s belief in magic (and society’s dismal attempt to understand her) is her fatal flaw. The idea of Greek Myth’s Elysian Fields (“a resting place”) and the warning of the Epigram and first scene (‘must avoid a strong light’), all implicate that Blanche’s fall was inescapable because of how little Blanche is able to adapt – unlike her sister Stella, who makes an easy climatisation into modernity through marrying the very emblem of 1940s America, and Blanche’s failure to wed Mitch. Fantastical Antebellum dreams could not survive in the bleak, post-war climate of the late 1940s.

Wider Reading – A Streetcar Named Desire

shuruiLeave a comment

Articles are a really useful way to find information for context as well as pertinent arguments for your essays. The more you understand about the texts, the easier it will be to bash out essays!

Here’s a list of articles I found particularly interesting, followed by condensed notes that I hope you’ll find helpful. (Please take a chance to read the article BEFORE you read the notes in case anything is unclear).

The ones I have marked *** are super useful (in my opinion)

Read More »