Paper 2 - Streetcar Named Desire

Oh, I guess he's just not the type that goes for jasmine perfume, but maybe he's what we need to mix with our blood now that we've lost Belle Reve.

Blanche relays their conversation to Stella, however she paints the scene as to appear genteel and aristocratic, rather than tinged with violence, flirtation and lust. She then comments that Stanley's animal blood might be just what their aristocratic strain needs. Outside the building, a tamale vendor yells, "Red-hot!" The tamale vendor yelling "Red-hot!" symbolizes the power of the red-blooded physical world over lost dreams of the past.

Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

Blanche's final line is poignant because of its apparent innocence. Her surrender to faith in others has a religious tinge to it as well: Blanche submits herself to a higher power. Blanche is also playing a very melodramatic part here. She casts herself as a martyr figure, relying on the kind nature of others. Blanche's pronouncement line also underscores Stella's guilt regarding the treatment of her sister. And it's true, ever since her husband's suicide she has always relied on the kindness of strangers, though that kindness was not the polite gentlemanly kindness but rather sexual "kindness" of men she did not know. But she means the former here, indicating her complete withdrawal into her idealized past.

Mielziner door realism

I took a fine, rather ornate door and worked over it to show the nudged handprints of the no longer genteel and careful Stella, the scourged heel marks of her angry and temperamental husband. The door became a symbol of the fall of Stella's family from elegance to seediness.

Tiger-tiger! Drop the bottle-top! Drop it! We've had this date with each other from the beginning!

Scene 10 - 1. references her primal nature to 2. Stanley's admonition to her to drop the bottle has several layers of significance. Blanche is holding a broken bottle at Stanley in threat, so he wants her to let go of the weapon and surrender to her carnal passion. Stanley also wants Blanche to let go of the security blanket of alcohol. Rather than drowning her feelings in liquor, and drowning the present in her memories of the past, Stanley insists that she occupy the harsh, merciless present.

When she thinks Stella has stained the dress, she overreacts 'Blanche gives a piercing cry' 'Why did you scream like that?' '...nervous about our relations. [She begins to talk rapidly and breathlessly.]'

Scene Five - as though Stella has ruined her whole dream of herself, and she is overly relieved when the stain blots cleanly away.

Do you remember Shep Huntleigh? [Stella shakes her head.] Of course you remember Shep Huntleigh. - quote questions the character's authenticity

Scene Four - A different type of dependence upon the male character

"What you are talking about is brutal desire-just-Desire!-the name of that rattle-trap street- car that bangs through the Quarter."

Scene Four - Blanche also knows that desire is the passion that drove her to New Orleans in the first place. Allegorically, succumbing to illicit desire drives Blanche out of her hometown, and then Desire literally drives Blanche to Stella and Stanley's apartment.

There are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark-that sort of make everything else seem-unimportant.

Scene Four - Stella's demureness and roundabout way of discussing sexual relations (couching it in the language of shadows and euphemism) around Blanche is ironic in the context of what is later revealed about Blanche's sexual history.

Don't-don't hang back with the brutes!

Scene Four - it becomes reflective of Blanche's fear of Stanley. Instead of acting as a proper warning for Stella it just portrays her as weak. Blanche's rant demonstrates the last gasp of the agrarian South, the melodramatic notion held by many former plantation owners that the end of life in estates such as Belle Reve was the end of civilization.

"Her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light. There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth."

Scene One

Since earliest manhood the center of [Stanley's] life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence, dependently, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens.

Scene One

I was just obeying the law of nature.//Which law is that?//The one that says the lady must entertain the gentleman — or no dice!

Scene Six -

I'm looking for the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters

Scene Six -

Mitch is bearing, upside down, a plaster of statuette of Mae West, the sort of prize won at shooting-galleries and carnival games of chance.

Scene Six -

Sometimes-there's God-so quickly!

Scene Six - Blanch is revealing her most sorrid secret in a romanticised manner which aligns with her ideals of concealment. She is not being truly open as she still attempts to portray herself as a charter that deserves pity, clinging onto mitch tightly and depicting herself as a victim of this tragedy. She reminds within this favourable light. Blanche comments on how quickly everything is moving, but of course she's done a lot of quick-moving in the past. She's still playing the innocent ingénue.

'Voulezvous couchez avec moi ce soir?'

Scene Six - Blanche's sexual seduction in a language that Mitch cannot speak further emphasizes her hidden past and her complicated relationship with sex.

'When I was sixteen, I made the discovery — love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow ... And then the searchlight which had been turned on he world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that's stronger than this — kitchen — candle.. '

Scene Six - Romanticised the story through light

I guess it is just that I have — old fashioned ideals [She rolls her eyes, knowing he cannot see her face.]

Scene Six - while rolling her eyes - Blanche wants to cultivate the image of herself to Mitch as a young, dainty ingénue, so even though she is quite sexually experienced, she pretends to be naïve, even though she knows—signfied by her eye- roll—that it's an illusion.

"The kitchen now suggests that sort of lurid nocturnal brilliance, the raw colors of childhood's spectrum. "

Scene Three - Stanley's domain appears garrish, it is on display without the nuances which influence Blanche's character. He turns night into day and is unafraid of the light. he puts all his cards on the table

"STELL-LAHHHHH!"

Scene Three - after the domestic violence his actions continue to align with his overbearing physicality. The stage direction calls for Stanley to shout "with heaven-splitting violence," Stanley's shout comes as a distinct contrast to Blanche's repetition of Stella's name. Blanche emphasises the fantasy and beauty that Stella's name evokes, referring to Stella as "Stella for star." However, Stanley turns Stella's name into a primal yell.

"I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action. "

Scene Three - she wants to take symbolic control over the setting so that she can have control over her flirtation with Mitch. the vulgar actions part also portrays her as an aristocratic woman with high standards who lives an impeccable, well-mannered life.

I never met a woman that didn't know if she was good- looking or not without being told, and some of them give themselves credit for more than they've got.

Scene Two - Stanley cuts straight through her coy banter. She has just come out of bath and feels pure again but stanley undermines this, revealing the bath as a temporary respite. He has undermined her flirtatiousness, which is Blanche's source of power.

After all, a woman's charm is fifty percent illusion.

Scene Two, Blanche

Stella, oh, Stella, Stella! Stella for Star!

Scene one: A warmth that borders on hysteria. demonstrates her desperation and desire for the alternate, beautiful reality (Stella means star in latin). Similarly Blanche herself is already attempting to act out the meaning of her own name by dressing all in white, since "blanche" means "white.

Sit there and stare at me, thinking I let the place go? I let the place go? Where were you! In bed with your-Polack!

Scene one: But Stella is not embarrassed to be married to Stanley. Rather, Blanche is projecting her own feelings of shame onto Stella. Blanche cannot face her own guilt over letting Belle Reve collapse into both social and financial ruin. Instead, she makes herself feel morally superior by blaming Stella rather than herself. She also calls Stanley a "Polack" and makes snide remarks about the state of the Kowalski apartment in order to maintain her own sense of external social superiority.

They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields! 'The sky that shows around the rim white building is a peculiarly tender blue, almost a turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere for decay'

Scene one: Literal journey here, yet the directions also illustrate the allegorical journey that Blanche has taken throughout her life that has led her to this spot Very paradisal and non-real.

Now let's cut the re-bop!

Scene two - Continues to undermine Blanche's flirtatious nature. "Re- bop" is a word borrowed from jazz culture, not from Blanche's aristocratic background, and the term makes Stanley, rather than Blanche, in control of the terms of the conversation. Rather than engaging with her vocabulary, Stanley shouts with his own slang, forcing the conversation into his domain.

Stella asks him to stop eating chop with his fingers, he goes on a tantrum "King of the House. "

Stanley's gobbling of the chop and Stella's disgust is a reversal of the opening scene, where Stanley tosses a piece of meat up to Stella and she is delighted: this reversal shows the tension that has escalated in the house as a result of Blanche's arrival. But they later make up in a non-verbal manner 'he holds her in his arms' and says everything will be OK once Blanche leaves

"Voluptuously, soothingly Now, honey. Now, love. Now, now, love"

Stella sobs "with inhuman abandon" however she has made her choice

Upstairs Eunice accuses Steve of cheating and he hits her.

Scene Five - a mirrored relationship with the same ferocious underpinnings. Sex and violence are paired on both floors of the house. They however, make up just as quickly and passionately as Stella and Stanley did earlier.

Imagery which connotes to the Renaissance iconography of the Virgin Mary in Scene 11

"Bella Robbia blue. The blue of the robe in the old Madonna pictures" and "Silver backed mirror" Cathedral chimes are heard "the only thing clean in the Quarter" and she will die a death of martyrdom as she claims that "I shall die of eating an unwashed grape one day out on the ocean...And I'll be buried at sea sewn up in a clean white sack and dropped overboard--at noon--in the blaze of summer---and into an ocean as blue as [chimes again] my first lover's eyes" Significance of the non-diegetic chimes as she thinks of her overly romanticised first love. Stella accepts her baby wrapped in a 'pale blue blanket' - renewed life after Blanche's exit. But it is also an evolutionary metaphor which relates back to procreation and protection, notions which are connoted to the overarching motif of primal, animalism. The baby is represented of the choice made to replace Blanche and the innocent mask which veils Stanley and Stella's corrupt relations.

Scene 7 closes with

'The distant piano goes into a hectic breakdown'

This "Blue Piano" expresses the spirit of the life which goes on here. - Scene One

Initial mention of the "Blue Piano" is found in the opening stage directions of the play. Foregrounding it as an important, reoccurring motif. The piano remains diegetic whilst the polka is not Williams uses music to play with the boundary between the interior and the exterior. The "blue piano" that frequently plays outside evokes tension and fraught emotions inside the apartment. Although the blue piano is a part of the exterior world, it expresses the feelings occurring inside the characters. Scene 7 closes with 'The distant piano goes into a hectic breakdown'

On the combination of realism and expressionism

It is an attempt to find "The unity of expressionistic distortion and psychologically realistic characterisation" "sometimes a living quality is caught better by expressionism than what is supposed to be realistic treatment" - Williams

This is a poetic tragedy, not a realistic, naturalistic one.

Kazan notes the "Poetic Realism" and sense of lyricism in the play. The merging of expressionism and realism. - Useful for Scenes 10 and 11

to make her <i>special</i> and <i>different</i>

Kazan on Blanche's necessary romanticism of the incident to align herself with the 'traditional romantic ladies of the past'

Her <i>Spine</i> is to find protection. The tradition of the old South says that protection comes through another person.

Kazan on Blanche's spine, where 'Her problem has its base in her tradition'

But today the tradition is a nonfunctional anachronism

Kazan on the fact that tradition used to provide a sense of security and importance to women as they had their own positions and functions -- a special worth. But that was back in the 19th century.

Blanche's memories, inner life, emotions are a tangible, actual factor. We cannot understand her behaviour unless we see the effect of her past on her present behaviour.

Kazan on the necessity of a stylised production.

It is important symbolically that Blanche is an English teacher. She is the last repository of culture.

Kazan on the symbolism of Blanche's career

The actual description of the scrim

Mielziner - The street "and can be seen, when lighted, through back walls of apartment, these being constructed of gauze on which the outlines of windows are appliquéd. Also backdrop suggesting railroad tracks.

Blanch must believe it (in tradition) because it makes her special, because it makes her sticking by Belle Reve an act of heroism, rather than an absurd romanticism.

More on Blanche's romanticism by Kazan

Stella's literalist sharpness

Only Poe! Only Mr. Edgar Allan Poe!— could do it justice! Out there I supposes the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir! No, honey, those are the L & N tracks.

Stanley: Catch! Stella: What? Stanley: Meat! Scene one - Lines 3 to 5 of the play

Opens with the primal, animalistic features of desire. Where the play then becomes a discussion fo the nature of innate desire. Particularly characterising Stanley to represent 'uncultured' desire.

"The night is filled with inhuman voices like cries in the jungle.. shadows and lurid reflections move sinuously as flames along the wall spaces" "Through the back wall of the rooms, which have become transparent, can be seen the sidewalk. A prostitute has rolled a drunkard. He pursues her along the walk, overtakes her and there is a struggle. A policeman's whistle breaks it up. The figures disappear." "maybe you wouldn't be so bad to -- interfere with," causes "inhuman jungle voices [to] rise up" and Stanley is animalised "He tajes a step toward her, biting his tongue which protrudes between his lips"

Scene 10 - As her world, mental stability and interiority deteriorates Williams reflects such turmoil through dramatising a disturbed topography of Blanche's consciousness through post-modern/expressionist sound and moving image. Cracks the division between interior and exterior space through the transparent scrim. This expressionist dramaturgy works to make objective reality and Blanche's consciousness indistinguishable.

Lurid, grotesque shadows and re ections on the wall surround Blanche.

Scene 10 - Blanche usually cultivates shadows in the play, preferring to stay in half-darkness instead of facing the harsh light of reality. Now, however, the shadows are threatening.

"she's been drinking steadily" he is also drunk

Scene 10 - While Blanche has been drinking to escape her real self and the consequences of her past, Stanley's drunkenness emphasizes his virility. This sort of contrast between Stanley and Blanche is common in the play—they do the same things: drink, act physically and sexually, but in Stanley these actions are seen as powerful and in Blanche they are seen as signs of weakness and degradedness.

A somewhat soiled and crumpled white satin evening gown

Scene 10, just after Mitch has seen through her façade and tells her "You're not pure enough to bring in the house with my mother," It is a desperate attempt to recapture her fading ideals, whereas for Stanely is its merely a '"worn-out Mardi Gras outfit, rented for fifty cents from some rag-picker!" Hence her costuming is used to emphasise the crumbling of her illusion.

You left nothing here but spilt talcum and old empty perfume bottles-unless it's the paper lantern you want to take with you. You want the lantern?

Scene 11 - Blanche has fallen: she's gone from a wealthy, cultured upbringing to owning nothing but a piece of paper. Furthermore, throughout the play the paper lantern has signified Blanche's mania for hiding reality

'Please don't get up. I'm only passing through.'

Scene 11 - She thinks they perceive her as worthy of their gentlemanly actions. Her admonition to the men to stay seated represents the last gasp of Blanche's delusion. Blanche's utterance is one of extreme pathos. All the characters + audience see Blanche for who she really is except for blanche.

"You left nothing here but spilt talcum and old empty perfume bottles -- unless it's the paper lantern you want to talk with you You want the lantern?" Blanche "cries out as if the lantern was herself"

Scene 11 - When Blanche used it as literal protection from the hash light, and now connects it to her inmost self,Williams has created a seamless unity between literary symbol and visual stage metaphor

'the same, lurid one of the disastrous poker night'

Scene 11s normalcy is broken through the visual cue of the poker night

'Blanche is singing in the bathroom a saccharine popular ballad which is used contrapuntally with Stanley's speech.' 'It's only a paper moon, Just as phony as it can be-But it wouldn't be make-believe If you believed in me!'

Scene 7 - it's Only a Paper Moon is a jazz standard written in 1933 that became popular in the 1940s. Blanche sings in the bathtub as her truth is being revealed to Stella next-door. Just before 'Anagnorisis'

'I pulled you down off them columns and how you loved it, having them coloured lights going!'

Scene 8 -

I am not a Polack. People from Poland are Poles, not Polacks. But what I am is one hundred per cent American.

Scene 8 - her elitism only heightens the tension as Stanley snaps.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!"

Scene 9 -

No! Tarantula was the name of it! .. That's where I bought my victims.. hunting for some protection'

Scene 9 -

Mitch, "unshaven and disheveled", rings the doorbell. The polka stops. Blanche greets him excitedly and sprays some perfume before letting him in.

Scene 9 - For the first time, Mitch has lost his gentlemanly composure. Blanche still wants to maintain an image of herself as an innocent girl, hiding the evidence of the alcohol and covering up her natural scent.

I don't want realism. I want magic!

Scene 9 - She cries out melodramatically almost as a joke, but it is is reflective of herself and her fear truly.

I told you already I don't want none of his liquor and I mean it. You ought to lay off his liquor. He says you've been lapping it up all summer like a wild-cat!

Scene 9 -Mitch to Blanche. Later Stanley calls her a tiger just before raping her. This symbolically pulls Blanche from the realm of magic into the physical world.

'Astrological sign. I bet you were born under Aries. Aries people are forceful and dynamic. ... They love to bang things around!'// 'Capricorn — the Goat!' // 'Virgo is the Virgin' Stanley: 'Hah! Say, do you happen to know somebody named Shaw?'

Scene Five - Blanche tries to explain the world around her through mythology, but Stanley cuts through her fantasies and symbols. The discussion about the stars is also an oblique power struggle over Stella ("stella" means "star"): Stanley rejects Blanche's interpretation of the constellations.

'She reads over a just completed letter. Suddenly she bursts into a peal of laughter'

Scene Five - Blanche's lighthearted tone is a thin veneer over her pointed critique of Stanley and Stella's lower-class, non-aristocratic society: bowling and poker nights are a far cry from yachts and cocktail parties.

Young man! Young, young, young man! Has anyone ever told you that you look like a young Prince out of the Arabian Nights? 'Mmmm!' 'A cherry soda!' 'You make my mouth water.'

Scene Five - The newspaper is called Evening Star, and her reference to this literary figure alludes to her desire for a world of fantasy. also the Star paper and the song paper moon (scene 7) form a false, alternate reality. When the boy reveals that he has just had a cherry soda, Blanche lingers on the gustatory imagery, drawing out its sensuality.

Lyricism within the setting

Tennessee wrote: Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. The interior is therefore rather dim and poetic he didn't write: This dim, poetic interior was realised onstage with a set of gauze transparencies. The conventionally invisible fourth wall of naturalism was actually represented as the exterior of the building but in the form of a scrim through which the audience could look into the ... This simultaneous set makes possible the rendering of both inner and outer, past and present, in a stage device that acknowledges its own illusoriness... Its purpose is to take an audience within the individual minds capes of the characters rather than merely the interior of their homes. "Through the back wall of the rooms, which have become transparent" ... porsititue drunkard. Clearly Williams wanted to show a routine vignette of sordid urban life that is almost a parody of the horrific scene we are watching inside the apartment. — Using external figures and actions as occasional counterpoints to the drama: Red hot Red hot! scene 1 and Young evening star man in scene 5: this made for a much more continuous, less pointedly symbolic sense of the city environment. more on lycrism of the setting. The romannticing glamour continues with 'the blue piano expresses the spirit of life which goes on here' and the 'relatively warm and easy intermingling of the races'

Sound and visual expressionism of scene 11 break down

The 'Varsouviana' is filtered into a weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle. Blanche seizes the back of a chair to defend herself. 'the night is filled with inhuman voices like cries in a jungle. The shadows and lurid reflections move sinuously as flames along the wall spaces.' 'Through the back wall of the rooms, which have become transparent, can be seen the sidewalk. A prostitute has rolled into a drunkard. He pursues her along the walk, overtakes her, and there is a struggle.' -- demolition of barrier between exterior and interior. "a peculiarly sinister figure in her severe dress" the matron saying "Hello Blanche" is "echoed and re-echoed by other mysterious voices behind the walls"

On the Rape

The fact that we don't see the rape echoes classical Greek tragedy, in which the play's most climactic and violent act happens offstage.

When Blanche learns of stella's pregnancy end of SCENE TWO

The inner rooms fade to darkness and the outside wall of the house is visible. Stella, Stella for Star! How lovely to have a baby! Stella embraces he with a 'convulsive sob' to which Blanche relays her conversation with Stanley inaccurately. 'I treated it all as a joke, called him a little boy and laughed - and flirted! Yes - I was flirting with your husband, Stella'

First hearing the Polka

The varsouviana blends in with the blue piano from around the 'around the corner' of kowalski household end of scene 1. The music of the polka rises up, faint in the distance 'The boy - the boy died.'

Their difference in weight, scene one: Daylight never exposed so total a ruin! But you-you've put on some weight, yes, you're just as plum as a little partridge! And it's so becoming to you!

Though Stella's 'weight' has changed and moved into a new life, Blanche clings to her version of the past. Blanche's disapproval of Stella's lifestyle allows Blanche to reinforce her own sense of superiority. She romanticises the situation, envisioning herself as an ingénue in a tragic narrative. Draws a contrast between the physical life that Stella has chosen and the dream world that Blanche desperately wants to inhabit.

Miller on the the representation of realism in Streetcar

Williams is primarily interested in passion, in ecstasy, in creating a synthesis of his conflicting feelings ... An anthropologist may make the observation that WIlliams' picture of the South is unrepresentative.

Scene 1 'a woman carrying a shopping-bag full of parcels [who] passes wearily across the stage'

employs the scrim where. As in the establishing shots of a film, a whole social landscape is suggested. the realisation of the urban setting is of course intended to highlight the incongruity of Blanche's appearance in it.

Williams on the play

its "authenticity or its fidelity to life" "There are no "good or "bad" people. Some are a little better or a little worse but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice. Nobody sees anybody truly, but all through the flaws of their own egos"

Concealed Drinking, scene one:

shows her desire to escape reality as well as the fact that she is quite adept at hiding other things abt herself in an attempt to maintain her exterior appearance.