A Streetcar Named Desire

LECTURE 2

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{FOCUS}oComparing TextsoRemembering OthellooRecap last weekoHistorical ContextoSettingoKey Players

{Gist}The protagonist, Blanche DuBois, has

come to visit her sister, Stella, who lives in a shabby neighborhood in New Orleans

near the railroad tracks. Blanche is immediately at odds with this backdrop,

being at once judgmental of Stella's blue collar, rough and tumble husband,

Stanley, while simultaneously being at the mercy of his hospitality (and

hostility).

{Historical

Context}• A Streetcar Named Desire is a stage play with elements of tragedy and pathos.

• Play represents the decline of the aristocratic families traditionally associated with the South.

• These once influential families had lost their historical importance when the South's agricultural base was unable to compete with the new industrialization.

• Many landowners, faced with large areas of land and no one to work on it, moved to urban areas.

{The Play}• A Streetcar Named Desire, is one of the better

known and much staged plays of Tennessee Williams.

• The play was first produced in New York and Boston in 1947. A film version directed by Elia Kazan followed in 1951.

• Set in New Orleans, Louisiana, shortly after World War II, the play explores the plight of impoverished Southern gentry and the rapid changes of Southern society in the industrial age.

{The Play}• Williams turned to his personal life

for the subject matter for his plays, • …and yet there is a certain

universality about them, for his own life aptly depicted the shattering of the American Dream and its effect on the American people.

{When?}The action takes place between May and September in a shabby apartment building in the working-class district of New Orleans in the 1940s, shortly after the Second World War.

{Dramatic

Techniques}• Language – diction, imagery, style, symbolism, allegory, register,

• Staging – directorial devices (stage directions), costumes, props= creation of setting

• Structure – Act/Scene structure, plot

{Comparing Texts}Thematic

Concerns of Paper

Dramatic Techniques

{CENTRAL QN:How do both playwrights convey similar

thematic concerns regarding the Individual and Society through similar or

different dramatic techniques?

{Othello}• Individual & Society• The Other• Displaced from Original Society (?)• Alienated• Roles & Expectations of Men &

Women in Society• Class & Hierarchy of Social Status

{Keep in Mind}• When comparing and contrasting texts:– Ideas, issues, themes– Representation of the Individual and the

Society– Dramatic techniques: similarities &

differences[eg. Similar or different use of stage directions,

metaphors, imagery, allusions, music etc]- Effects of these techniques: how similar, how

different…?

{Background &

Setting}Othello• Shakespeare• Elizabethan Era• Setting

– Venice– Moves to Cyprus– Two settings

Streetcar• Tennessee Williams• 1947 America• Setting

– America in the 40s– New Orleans– Single setting

{Structure}Othello

• 5 Act Play• Setting shifts from

Venice in Act 1 to Cyprus for the rest of the Acts

• Venice: – powerful city-state in

16th C– Commercial centre– Orderly, law-abiding,

formal

Streetcar• No Acts• Eleven scenes• No interval• Each scenes on a

dramatic gesture• Single setting

throughout the entire play: The Kowalskis’ house

{Streetcar

Symbols}• Naked Light Bulb – truth, reality, epiphany• Paper lantern – disguise reality, create illusion BUT

temporary• Colour symbolism

– White clothing – symbolises purity and innocence– Red stained meat package – sexuality, establish gender roles

• Music as symbol for emotions– Blue Piano – present when Blanche discusses loss and hope– Polka music that Blanche hears, real or imagined?

Represents for Blanche death and imminent disaster

• Animal symbolism

{Epigraph}And so it was I entered the broken worldTo trace the visionary company of love, its voiceAn instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)But not for long to hold each desperate choice.– “The Broken Tower” by Hart Crane

{Epigraph}And so it was I entered the broken world

To trace the visionary company of love, its voice

An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)

But not for long to hold each desperate choice.

– “The Broken Tower” by Hart Crane

• Function: • Introduces reader to thematic concerns of

the play, raises questions essential to the play

• “Broken World” – metaphor for the themes of love and loss

• Provides poetic language against which we can measure the less formal linguistic register of other characters in the play, illuminating Blanche’s literary background

{Setting A1S1}At night, in a street outside Brabantio’s house in Venice, two men whisper their secret griefs.

OTHELLO

{Setting Scene

One}The exterior of a two-storey corner building on a street in New Orleans which is named Elysian Fields and runs between the L & N tracks and the river. The section is poor but unlike corresponding sections in other American cities, it has a raffish charm. The houses are mostly white frame, weathered grey, with rickety outside stairs and galleries and quaintly ornamented gables. This building contains two flats, upstairs and down. Faded white stairs ascend to the entrances of both. It is first dark of an evening early in May. The sky that shows around the dim white building is a peculiarly tender blue, almost turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay. You can almost feel the warm breath of the brown river beyond the river warehouses with their faint redolences of bananas and coffee. A corresponding air is evoked by the music of Negro entertainers at a bar-room around the corner. In this part of New Orleans you are practically always just around the corner, or a few doors down the street, from a tinny piano being played with the infatuated fluency of brown fingers. This blue piano' expresses the spirit of the life which goes on here.

STREETCAR

{Setting Scene

One}The exterior of a two-storey corner building on a street in New Orleans which is named Elysian Fields and runs between the L & N tracks and the river. The section is poor but unlike corresponding sections in other American cities, it has a raffish charm. The houses are mostly white frame, weathered grey, with rickety outside stairs and galleries and quaintly ornamented gables. This building contains two flats, upstairs and down. Faded white stairs ascend to the entrances of both. It is first dark of an evening early in May. The sky that shows around the dim white building is a peculiarly tender blue, almost turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay.

STREETCAR

{Setting Scene

One} You can almost feel the warm breath of the brown river beyond the river warehouses with their faint redolences of bananas and coffee. A corresponding air is evoked by the music of Negro entertainers at a bar-room around the corner. In this part of New Orleans you are practically always just around the corner, or a few doors down the street, from a tinny piano being played with the infatuated fluency of brown fingers. This blue piano' expresses the spirit of the life which goes on here.

STREETCAR

{Setting Scene

One}

STREETCAR

• New Orleans - is a cosmopolitan city where there is a relatively warm and easy intermingling of races - the idea of NEW.

• Introduction (and esp attention to social context) is important

• Atmosphere established in this particular setting

• Note especially how Blanche brings to the Kowalski apartment her prejudices, which prove to be out of time and place.

• Class distinctions don’t matter here

{Setting Scene

One}Elysian Fields:- Elysium or the Elysian Fields is a conception of the afterlife- Initial admission - reserved for mortals related to the gods and other heroes. - Later, included those chosen by the gods, the righteous, and the heroic, where they would remain after death, to live a blessed and happy life.

STREETCAR

{Setting Scene

One}Elysian Fields:

Part of the underworld and a place of reward for the virtuous dead. However, viewed as a temporary place of the souls’ journey back to life.

STREETCAR

{Setting

Where?}• Many of the major themes of A Streetcar Named Desire are embodied in the history and culture of New Orleans.

• The lively setting of the French Quarter, with its streetcars, bars, entertainment, and jazz and blues music, provides a rich background for the emotional events of the play;

• the setting also draws symbolic attention to changes which were taking place in American society, especially in the South during the Post World War II years of the 40’s

{Setting

Where?}

{Setting}• At the Kowalskis, the audience is

introduced to the characters that are of varied origins in their nationalities, in their backgrounds, and in their beliefs.

• Through the play, therefore, the reader is given a glimpse of the world in coexistence.

{Setting}• Neighbourhood is situated between

the L&N railroad tracks near a bowling alley and jazz bar.

• They live in a two room apartment that is part of a two family house.

• Small and very cramped with three adults sharing the space.

{Stagin

g}

{Staging}

{Staging}• Important that audience can see the upstairs, the

downstairs, the interior, and the exterior. • Seeing the "outside" allows one to observe

characters on the street [racial relations]• Dramatic action of play takes advantage of the

flexibility of this setting

{Staging}• Cramp and tight space – increases tension/

conflict between characters• Stanley Kowalski’s small apartment = his

kingdom. . • Blanche = an outsider and intruder to his

environment. • She occupies the room adjacent to theirs -

invading his privacy, encroaching even between Stanley and Stella’s sexual space

{Major}• Blanche Dubois• Stanley Kowalski• Stella Kowalski• Harold Mitchell (Mitch)

{Minor}• Eunice & Steve Hubbel• Pablo Gonzales• Negro Woman (unnamed)• Newspaper Boy• Mexican Woman (flower vendor)• A Doctor• A Nurse