A streetcar named Desire massolit lecture notes - SCENE ONE (John McRae)

Atmosphere:

·         Long stage directions – clue to important themes of the play

·         The play is set from May to September: A long, hot summer – heat is apparent, scenes often take place in the evening once it’s started to cool down

·         The scene is full of people, jazz music (as opposed to just two or three characters on stage), it’s a representation of a whole society – a multi-cultural, multi-vocal society; communicating to all the audiences senses

·         Integration of white and black (Eunice and the neighbour): much more advanced than any place in the US in the 1940’s

o   Black

o   White

o   Latin

o   Polish

o   DuBois (French)

Characters:

·         First line between Eunice and neighbour: physicality, a dog licking a woman

·         “Red hot! Red hots!” and “Blue moon cocktail” Primary colours to echo vibrancy of the scene and of the integrated society

o   Blanche = White. Before she has even entered the scene she is already separate from the rest of society

·         Stanley, Mitch and Stella enter: audience doesn’t know who they are, they are established to be with money, odds and bowling – very lively, very active setting

·         Blanche arrives: Quiet and static movement in relation to the movement just witnessed by other characters – “incongruent to this setting” Blanche is in the wrong place right from the beginning.

o   Described as a moth: suggestion of a moth to flame, linking to the bright colours of Elysian fields. Alternatively, foreshadowing her downfall as she races for “fire” – with Stanley (passion), with trying to settle down in Elysian fields etc.

o   “Delicate beauty must avoid a strong light”: reinforcing the imagery of the moth and those interpretations

·         Eunice to Blanche: “We own this place” – Blanche owns nothing other than what is in her trunk

Blanche:

·        “Blanche sits in a chair very stiffly” – Reinforcing that static movement from earlier

·        She starts drinking by herself DRAMATIC IRONY because after this scene, Blanche consistently assures people she isn’t a drinker, when the audience knows that she actually is. (complicity and sympathy from the audience to Blanche)

·        When Stella enters and her and Blanche begin talking, Blanche brings up the deaths from Belle Reeve (The past – Blanche only has a history, no future)

o   “Funerals are pretty compared to deaths”

§  A prettification of death, Blanche is determined to find the beauty for things, even death: “…with pretty flowers. And, oh, what gorgeous boxes they pack them away in!”

o   Atmosphere established: Solitude, death, loss

Stanley:

·        Masculine character

·        The new man in modern America

·        “Since earliest manhood the centre of his life has been pleasure with women…with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens” ALPHA MALE

·        Polish

·        “gaudy seed-bearer”: The emblem of the new America of capitalism, materialism and integration – A representation of what Blanche cannot aspire to, she belongs to the old society in America (Laurel, Belle Reeve, Southern Belle)

·        Stanley and Blanche:

o   “You must be Stanley, I’m Blanche”: sets the tone for their relationship – power, attraction, Blanche’s vulnerability (Stanley changes his shirt, which for the 1940s was an intimate, sexual act)

o   Stanley asks Blanche about her husband and the whole tragedy is capsulated in the final words of the scene.