A streetcar Named Desire TYPICALITY

Modern Tragedy

The play can be seen as a modern tragedy. = a character's fatal flaw that causes their demise.
typically focuses on domestic conflict and find interest in minor dramas of common people

The differences in time are managed by elements such as flashbacks, pauses, flash-forwards, and narrations.

Modern playwrights also use elements such as irony and sarcasm to highlight the flaws in characters.

Protagonists usually have a common, middle-class background.

Melodrama

Pathos, overwrought or heightened emotion,
moral polarization (good vs. evil)
non-classical narrative structure (especially the use of extreme coincidence)
sensationalism (emphasis on action, violence, and thrills).

Social realism

Literary realism represents reality by portraying everyday experiences as they are in real life.
Literary realism seeks to tell a story as truthfully as possible instead of dramatizing or romanticizing it.

Psychological realism

Psychological realism. A type of realism that's character-driven, focusing on what motivates them to make certain decisions and why. Psychological realism sometimes uses characters to express commentary on social or political issues.

Influence of Henrik Ibsen?

William is influenced by playwrights like Henrick Ibsen (A doll's house) and
how he uses social realism in his own play.
Ibsen sought to expose the social hypocrisy of this concept and inspire a nobility of character he believed would ultimately come from women, working-class men, and individuals "attaining to real liberty."

Plastic theatre

William broke with the tradition of realism and developed what he called plastic theatre - a non-realist style that exploits expressionistic devices to symbolically reflect the psyche of the characters on stage.

Plastic theatre utilises props, sound, stage direction, and costume to present poetic truths through symbolism. It is not intended to be realistic, but symbolic.

Elements of Plastic theatre?

1.The Varsouviana Polka
2. Blue Piano
3. Locomotives
4. "It's Only A Paper Moon"
5. Shadows
6. Meat
7. Piano and clarinets
8. Oil painting in the Poker Night

Southern gothic

Writers used the characteristics of traditional Gothic style to inspect the unsettling realities and twisted psyches beneath the surface of Southern respectability.

Characteristics of Southern Gothic include the presence of irrational, horrific, and transgressive thoughts, desires, and impulses; grotesque characters; dark humor, and an overall angst-ridden sense of alienation.

Music/sounds

The Blue piano
Polka music
Paper moon/paper doll
Locomotive sounds

Female characters? Reliance?

This fragility and vulnerability is caused because sometimes they rely too much on the comfort of men around them, and when the latter in turn fail or ruin them, they ultimately turn to the kindness of strangers, seeking love, affection and compassion.

This is what Tennessee Williams also longed for and sought almost all his life.

It is a well-known fact that he identified himself more with his heroines, a fact proven by him stating that "I am Blanche DuBois!"

Women characters?

Williams's women characters live caught up between illusion and reality, sexuality and love.