Streetcar

• Apollonian and Dionysian Values (Nietzsche)

  Apollonian represents the civil, the feminine/Old South/Blanche

  Dionysian represents the primal, the masculine/New America/Stanley
• Blanche represses the masculine within herself


  Because gender non-conformity has ended in tragedy for her in the past (Allan)
• Blanche's drinking

  Peeks through her repressed masculinity (Dionysus= god of wine)
• Stella


  Continuously infantilised by her sister and husband
• Men returned from war to their wives having greater personal and financial freedom
• In the words of Thomas Adler, they were "closer to drudgery than to reap the benefits of the American Dream"
• Domestic abuse was normalised at the time
• Critics like Helen Deutsch said women were masochists if they faced abuse
• Eunice allows the abuse


  By "acting as a facsimile to normalise Stanley's abuse" (Susan Koprince) and offering a refuge for a short time but excusing the abuse in the long run
• Lenore Walker's model of abuse

  Tension building, acute incident, period of loving contrition
• Stella is essentially a submissive, self-deprecating wife who tolerates and excuses her husband's behaviour (Susan Koprince)
• The men in the play take over Stella's domain (the kitchen) in their poker game

  This shows their power in comparison to the hues of Blanche and Stella
• Mitch

  A boy with an Oedipus complex, wanting to escape his mother yet loyally worshipping her (Sievers)
• Mitch fails throughout the poker game to win (at being manly if the cards are a metaphor for masculinity)

  Blanche's cultural superiority also emasculates him and he therefore realises she can never replace his mother
• The other men do not respect Mitch
• Mitch gets Blanche to admit the truth but is unable to rape her, leaving the job to the more manly Stanley (Phillip C Koln)
• Feminist critics see the ending of the play as a triumph of the patriarchy
• Williams presents the social aberration of sexism
• Blanche could be read as a proto-feminist victim
• Stanley

  The only character who exposes the reality of Belle Reve, showing the pretence of the Old South and its success (off the back of slavery) and how new american immigrants see through this guise
• Camp requires the construnction and deconstruction of social hierarchies (Pugh)
• Jokes using the N-word demonstrate casual racism and promote the idea that Black people have more primal desires
• Negro Woman

  Symbolises promiscuity (stereotypically) but also demonstrates the intermixing of races in New Orleans
• The jazz in the play is played by "brown fingers" which has an undertone of servitude
• Jazz is typically associated with African Americans
• Blanche

  Her continual use of "Polack" to offend Stanley, and her eugenicist comments about mixing blood show she holds his background against him, especially in her zoomorphic descriptions of him
• • Marxist critics would see the ending as a triumph of the proletariat, and the mixing of classes (Williams took inspiration from Brecht, a Marxist)
  • Brecht used methods of theatre to present social aberrations to his audience so that they couldn’t be avoided. Here, Williams presents the social aberration of class.
• Rape of the land

  Rape of the body ("epic fornications")
• Alice Griffiths: '"He insisted that setting, properties, music, sound, and visual effects—all the elements of staging—must combine to reflect and enhance the action, theme, characters, and language."'
• Plastic theatre


  Expresses emotions or themes through non-verbal elements of the play
• • Brecht, Chekhov, Hart Crane (quotes in the preface)
  • Brecht’s Lehrstucke, or morality plays for his communist ideas, seem to be reflected in SND. When Blanche encompasses all of humanity in her expression, Williams evokes Brecht’s works in asking the audience to draw parallels within their own lives.
• Plastic theatre elements

  • Varsouviana Polka to represent Allan
  • Locomotive to represent masculine power
• Williams


  Termed himself a symbolist
• Bigsby: 'Williams' radicalism is better viewed as a celebration of the outcast'
• Williams fits into the genre of Southern Gothic

  Because of his kindness and commonality with the outcast
• John S Bak: 'Blanche betrays her loyalty to Allan by exposing his homosexuality, just as Stanley does her sexuality'
• Lily

  Symbolises renewed purity after death, hence why it is used at funerals
• Motif of fire

  • The fireman's ball
  • The lurid shapes that move like fire before the rape
  • Blanche screams fire
  • Symbolises Blanche's destruction through sexual violence
• Clurman: 'The play becomes the triumph of Stanley Kowalski with the collusion of the audience, who are no longer on the side of the angels'
• • “Blanche is the artist in all of us” Harold Clurman
  • Shep Huntleigh as the embodiment of a perfect man, who is hallucinated by a delusional Blanche.
  • “Blanche lies as a protection against solitude and desperation” Billington