Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire.ppt

1、A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams,American Literature Week 12,Prof. Zhou 26/11/2013,Tennessee Williams (1911-1983),Born in Columbus, Mississippi Died in the Elysee Hotel in New York One of the most important playwrights in American literary history: Eugene ONeill, Arthur Miller,“Tenness

2、ee” Williams,Original name: Thomas Lanier Williams Tennessee: his father was from Tennessee, his friends called him Tennessee for his southern accent,Family,Mother: Southern lady, educated, refined, daughter of the Minister, aggressive Father: traveling salesman, distant from home, abusive Family re

3、sembles that of D. H. Lawrence, sexually disturbed boy: clinging to Mother while alienated from Father,Sister Rose,Rose: elder sister, emotionally disturbed and spent most of her life in mental institutions Closely attached to his sister, felt lonely after she was hospitalized, turned to writing for

4、 expression, began to publish at an early age.,Homosexuality,Frank Merlo, met in 1947, died in 1961. Williams most productive years Homosexuality plays a subtle but important part in most of his plays,His major works,The Glass Menagerie 1944 玻璃动物园 A Streetcar Named Desire 1947 欲望号街车 Cat on a Hot Tin

5、 Roof 1955 热铁皮屋顶上的猫,Awards,Two Pulitzer Prizes (A Streetcar Named Desire , Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) The first playwright to receive in the same year (1947): The Pulitzer Prize for Drama, The Donaldson Award, The New York Drama Critics Circle Award,A Streetcar Named Desire,Epigraph,“The Broken Tower” b

6、y Hart Crane 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.,Major Characters in Streetcar,BLANCHE,STELLA,STANLEY,MITCH,ALLAN,SHEP HUNTLEIGH,Plot,Blanche DuB

7、ois is a fading, though still attractive, Southern belle whose pretensions to virtue and culture only thinly mask her alcoholism and delusions of grandeur. Her poise is an illusion she presents to shield others (but most of all, herself) from her reality, and is an attempt to make herself still attr

8、active to new male suitors.,Blanche arrives at the apartment of her sister Stella , which is on Elysian Fields of New Orleans; one of the streetcars that she takes to get there is named Desire. The steamy, urban ambiance of Stellas home is a shock to Blanches nerves. Stella, who fears the reaction o

9、f her husband Stanley, welcomes Blanche with some trepidation. As Blanche explains that their ancestral Southern plantation, Belle Reve in Laurel, Mississippi, has been lost due to the epic fornications of their ancestors, her veneer of self-possession begins to slip drastically.,Blanche tells Stell

10、a that her supervisor allowed her to take time off from her job as an English teacher because of her upset nerves, while in reality she was fired for having an affair with a 17-year-old student. This turns out not to be the only seduction in which she has engaged, and, along with other problems, has

11、 led her to escape Laurel. A brief marriage marred by the discovery that her husband, Allan Grey, was having a homosexual affair, and his subsequent suicide, has led Blanche to withdraw into a world in which fantasies and illusions blend seamlessly with reality.,In contrast to the self-effacing and

12、deferential Stella and the pretentious refinement of Blanche, Stellas husband, Stanley, is a force of nature: primal, rough-hewn, brutish, and sensual. He dominates Stella in every way and is physically and emotionally abusive. Stella tolerates his primal behavior as this is part of what attracted h

13、er in the first place; their love and relationship are heavily based on powerful even animal-like sexual relationship, something that Blanche finds impossible to understand.,The arrival of Blanche upsets her sister and brother-in-laws relationship dynamics and system of mutual dependence. Blanche an

14、d Stanley are on a collision course, and Stanleys friend and Blanches would-be suitor, Mitch gets trampled in their path. Stanley discovers Blanches past through a co-worker who travels to Laurel frequently, and he confronts her with the things that she has been trying to put behind her, partly out

15、of concern that her character flaws may be damaging to the lives of those in her new home, just as they were in Laurel, and partly out of a distaste for her pretense in general.,However, his attempts to unmask her are predictably cruel and violent. In their final confrontation, it is implied that St

16、anley rapes Blanche, resulting in her nervous breakdown. Stanley has her committed to a mental institution, and in the closing moments, Blanche utters her signature line to the kindly doctor who leads her away: Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.,Scene One,Blanches

17、arrival at Elysian Fields and her encounter with Stanley. Four parts: Meat scene: P 223-224 Blanche with Eunice: P 224-226 Blanche with Stella: P 226-231 Blanche with Stanley: P 231-233,The Meat,Symbol animal instincts in Stanley the harmonious sexual relation between Stanley and Stella.,Blanches ap

18、pearance,What is the reaction of Blanche at the first sight of Stellas home? Shocked disbelief (p.224) What are the effects/impressions of her appearance? Incongruous to the setting Daintily dressed Delicate beauty Moth (fragile, doomed),Blanche DuBois: The White Woods,From the South, French ancestr

19、y, the gentry society, a lady. “a cultivated woman, a woman of intelligence and breeding” Can “enrich a mans life immeasurably”,Blanche vs. Eunice,Eunice: represents the local people kind, warm-hearted, inquisitive, getting close with strangers quickly, not educated Blanche: out of place, incongruou

20、s, incompatible Polite, educated, aristocratic, good manners, alert, keep the distance,Blanche fantasy is her primary means of self-defense, both against outside threats and against her own demons. But her deceits carry no trace of malice, but rather they come from her weakness and inability to conf

21、ront the truth head-on. She is seeing the world not as it is but as it ought to be. Fantasy has a liberating magic that protects her from the tragedies she has had to endure. Throughout the play, Blanches dependence on illusion is contrasted with Stanleys steadfast realism, and in the end it is Stan

22、ley and his worldview that win. To survive, Stella must also resort to a kind of illusion, forcing herself to believe that Blanches accusations against Stanley are false so that she can continue living with her husband.,The Old South and the New South,Stella and Blanche come from a world that is rap

23、idly dying. Belle Reve, their familys ancestral plantation, has been lost, and the two sisters are the last living members of their family and, symbolically, of their old world of cavaliers and cotton fields. Blanche attempts to stay back in the past but it is impossible, and Stella only survives by

24、 mixing her DuBois blood with the common stock of the Kowalskis; the old South can only live on in a diluted, bastardized form.,Cruelty,The only unforgivable crime, according to Blanche, is deliberate cruelty. This sin is Stanleys specialty. His final assault against Blanche is a merciless attack ag

25、ainst an already-beaten foe. Blanche, on the other hand, is dishonest but she never lies out of malice. Her cruelty is unintentional; often, she lies in a vain or misguided effort to please. Throughout the play, we see the full range of cruelty, from Blanches well-intentioned deceits to Stella self-

26、deceiving treachery to Stanleys deliberate and unchecked malice. In Williams plays, there are many ways to hurt someone. And some are worse than others.,The Primitive and the Primal,Blanche often speaks of Stanley as ape-like and primitive. Stanley represents a very unrefined manhood, a Romantic ide

27、a of man untouched by civilization. His appeal is clear: Stella cannot resist him, and even Blanche, though repulsed, is on some level drawn to him. Stanleys unrefined nature also includes a terrifying amorality. The service of his desire is central to who he is; he has no qualms about driving his s

28、ister-in-law to madness, or raping her. In Freudian terms, Stanley is pure id, while Blanche represents the super-ego and Stella the ego but the balancing between the id and super-ego is not found only in Stellas mediation, but in the tension between these forces within Blanche herself. She finds St

29、anleys primitivism so threatening precisely because it is something she sees, and hides, within her.,Desire,Closely related to the theme above, desire is the central theme of the play. Blanche seeks to deny it, although we learn later in the play that desire is one of her driving motivations; her desires have caused her to be driven out of town. Physical desire, and not intellectual or spiritual intimacy, is the heart of Stellas and Stanleys relationship, but Williams makes it clear that this does not make their bond any weaker. Desire is a