malfi streetcar critics

"Webster invites us to think what is wrong with...

Marrying or being a lusty widow" Woodbridge

"If the metaphorical fountain of the court had not been poisoned...

Then Bosola would have been allowed to thrive." - Gunby

R.S white

the tragedy of a virtuous woman who achieves heroism through her death

"Webster envisages evil...

In its most extreme form, and he presents it.... as far more powerful than good" -Cecil

Antonio and the Duchess' marriage is...

"Perpetually clandestine" - Callaghan

"The play helps to reveal the contradictions in...

The position of a female ruler" -Jankowski

Jankowski

the play is set against a background of corruption and idealism

"In the Renaissance, female desire is seen as...

A disease and a monstrous abnormality" -Calllaghan

"Despite her political sovereignty, her brothers assume...

a patriarchal control over her body and sexuality, an assumption which extends over her political state." -Augherson

"The Duchess' brothers are the primary mouthpieces for...

the misogynistic disease of the era which hold that women are immortal, oversexed and weak minded." -Callaghan

"The Duchess transgresses her society's notion of proper female conduct by...

Choosing a husband who is her social inferior." -Callaghan.

"We cannot say that Webster condemns unequal marriages...

he shows what the world thinks of them." - Leech

"Cardinal thinks nothing of....

breaking the vows he swore." - Lennard

'Bosola, the chief instrument in the Duchess' betrayal...

and subjection, also bears the strongest witness to her virtues'- Bradbrook

McNary - death and the duchess

The Duchess "acknowledges that death spares...
none, regardless of class"

Smith - the duchess

"The Duchess is both...
culpable and innocent, victim and agent"

Peterson - body natural and politic

Body natural is superior to the body politic

Dusinberre-Ferdinand

Ferdinand has a 'dark web of lust' around his sister

Coddon-James I

Antonio's speech in Act 1 reflects the troubled court of King James I

Spinard

like the duchess, Elizabeth I entered into courtship with a man who she loved but was her social inferior

McNary

the brothers appear to forbid her marriage because of her political position in society

Aughterson

the arrival of Delio signals a triumph over the sycophantic political culture

Tapp - Southern Belle

Blanche Dubois is a victim of the mythology of the Southern Belle

Robinson

Blanche’s society is ‘transient,unreliable and corrupted’

Kazan - Blanche

She is dangerous and destructive

Clurman - Blanche

Blanche is a delicate and sensitive woman pushed into insanity by a brutish environment presided over by Stanley

Lart

"The play presents Blanche as a tragic figure and Stanley as an agent of her destruction"

Galloway

Blanche is a disruption to his and Stella's relationship

Melbourne Critics - Blanche's role

"Blanche is both a villain and a victim"

Bloom - Stella

"Stella is genuinely in love with her husband"

Sambrook - Mitch

"Shy and clumsy he acts as a foil to the shrewd, loud, domineering Stanley"

Krutch

"world of Stella and her husband is a barbarism"

Tenessee Williams - Play as a whole

the destructive power of society on the sensitive non-conformist individual"

Tenessee Williams - Stella

"natural passivity is one of the things that makes her acceptance of Stanley acceptable

P.Williams

" Stanley feels threatened by her intrusion... a territorial animal desperately defending it's lair"

Elliot - Alan Gray

Alan's death was the moment at which Blanche's innocence was lost

Bubb- manhood and Stanley

Stanley is far from an idealised version of manhood

Coult - Blanche

blanche is a relic of a time before the civil war that divided America

Hayman-Stella

'Stella represents the young america, torn between its loyalty to antiquated idealism and the brutal realism of the present'

WJ Cash

Blanche is ‘pure and chaste, yet desirable and flirtatious’