streetcar malfi quotes (some with comparisons)

‘poison’t near the head, / Death and disease through the whole land spread.’ ~ ‘white frames, weathered grey’

CORRUPTION, DEATH, DESIRE, VIOLENCE, APPEARANCE VS REALITY

• rhyming couplet makes it an explicit foretaste of the impending corruption vs stage directions to suggest a more implicit setting that was once pure, tainted by modern american values

• disease imagery implies some sort of innate corruption that infects the inhabitants vs the colour imagery suggests the corruption of the characters has tainted it

• both plays are consumed by corruption from the exposition, implying a sense of tragic inevitability

• both are emblematic of the characterisation of the inhabitants: in malfi they are sadistic and corrupt, despite their positions of honour (Cardinal) vs in streetcar they all try and hide their insecurities and corruption

‘Stella for star’ / ‘STELLAAAAHHHHH!’ ~ ‘I am Duchess of Malfi still’

WOMEN, LOVE, FAMILY, IDENTITY

• stella’s name is symbolic of her character being the fulcrum between two energetic, antithetical forces - the ‘feverish’, neurotic Blake and sexual magnetism of Stanley vs the Duchess’ name which also reminds the audience of her aristocratic status despite her marrying to Antonio - also shows the modern blurring of clarity

• it shows stella’s mildness and adaptability in the contrast between the sibilant term of endearment from blanche opposed to stanley’s ‘bellow’ vs the duchess’ declarative underscores her characterisation as integrous and courageous and championing her own identity, indstead of letting her brothers define her

‘This is my father’s poniard. Do you see?’ ~ ‘Ticket. Back to Laurel.’

WOMEN, VIOLENCE, CORRUPTION, DEATH, FATE, DESIRE, APPEARANCE VS REALITY

• ferdinand’s monosyllbic declarative amplifies the subtextual threat vs the minor sentece of stanley which also evokes a domineering, hegemonic sense of masculinity

• both use props to maintain masculine control over their female character foils

• ferdinand’s purient, sadistic use of the phallic ‘poniard’ is explicit vs stanley’s implicit prolepsis to blanche’s tragic cataclysm

‘farewell lusty widow’ ~ ‘Blanche ain’t no lily’ / ‘sister Blanche’

GENDER, SEXUALITY, DESIRE

• both place the value of women based on their sexual relations with men

• both use perjorative terms of address to ridicule the characters of their foils

• Stanley uses satire to ridicule Blanche vs Ferdinand who overtly coverys a bitter tenor

‘[mildly] Don’t holler at me like that’ ~ ‘Whose throat must I cut?’

GENDER, POWER, CLASS, VIOLENCE

• both evoke a sense of cognitively dissonant compliance with systems or relations they are aware are corrupt or exploitative

• both suggest Darwinian conventions of survival of the fittest

• stage direction vs aside

‘heaves’ the ‘red stained package’

• proleptic to abuse through colour imagery and careless kinsesics despite the harmless denotations

‘incongruous to this setting’ / ‘her uncertain manner as well as her white clothes that suggests a moth’ ~ ‘this foul melancholy shall poison all his goodness’

CORRUPTION, APPEARANCE VS REALITY, DESIRE

• both characters struggle with supressing their identities or true values in exchangefor social security

• marxist: in Blanche’s case this is ironic in marxist capitalist dialect considering her impluses do not reflect her social positon vs Bosola’s machiavellian desire to climb to the top due to his abasement

• Blanche’s tragic indulgence in magical thinking one can feel sympathy for vs Bosola, who the audience may feel contempt for due to his comedic and incessent amorality until his abrupt redemptive arc

‘They told me to take a Streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries’ ~ ‘We are merely the stars’ tennis balls, struck’

DESIRE, CORRUPTION, FATE

• this is an explicit, eponymous foretaste for the tragic arc of the play through the extended metaphol of the names of the cars, but also the metaphor of the ‘streetcar’, fixed on its one way path to death

‘she pours half a tumbler of whiskey and tosses it down’ ~ ‘He should have been the Pope, but instead of coming to it by the primitive decency of the church, he did bestow bribes’ (Antionio about the Cardinal)

CORRUPTION

• the stage direction with just Blanche onstage gives the audience a sense of intrusion into Blanche’s private life, whilst ambivalently also an immersion into her psychee that is later amplified by the plastic theatre vs Antonio is used to reveal the inner corruption within the characters, which sets the precedent for Antonio’s goodness and amplifies the Cardinal’s duplicity, withdrawing any sympathy or good notions

• both characters have intrinsic flaws that are ironic considering their external veneers

‘merciless glare’

• sibilance evokes a sinister tenor, which reflects Blanche’s disdain for reality

‘I I I took the blows to my face and my body! […] The long parade to the graveyard. Father, Mother! […] they even cry out to you, ‘Dont let me go!’’

• she presents some form of thanatos by reliving the trauma of death and in turn almost enabling herself to be compelled towards her own death

• her histrionic morbidity is emphasised by the non-fluency features and direct speech that she recounts to amplify the difficult she finds in reexperiencing it

‘richly feathered bird among hens […] he sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications flashing into his mind […] determining the way he smiles at them’ ~ ‘he and his brother are like plum trees that grow crooked over standing pools’

GENDER, POWER, VIOLENCE

• metaphor to liken him to an animal, not only showing his sense of pride and self-importance but also his primal desire to dominate women vs simile to depict their sense of inate corruption

• prolepsis to when he smiles at Blanche

• both use imagery of some sort to liken the corruption or subversive desire of the characters to something non-human

‘[a cat screeches near the window]’ / ‘What was that?’

• disturbing verb

• alludes to sexual violence

• territorial cat - darwinian tragedy of the survival of the fittest

• proleptic to her inevitable inability to ever survive in this setting

‘Stella’s spoke of you a good deal. You were married once weren’t you?’ / ‘The boy - the boy died. I’m afraid I’m - I’m going to be sick!’ ~ ‘You are a widow. This was my father’s poniard. Do you see?’

• Stanley’s interest in Blanche relies solely on her realtions with men

• implicit sadism in his interrogative, dramatised by the non-fluency features in Blanche’s dialogue, suggesting his animalistic desire to gauge her breaking point - defense mechanism

• Blanche’s attitude is self-vistimising which is the tragedy of someone who cannot overcome their PTSD - the traumatic tumor metastasises into a relentless self

‘the music of the polka rises up’ / ‘blue piano and trumpet and drums’ / ‘polka tune fades out’ / ‘The Varsouviana is heard, its music rising with sinister rapidity’ / ‘rapid feverish polka tune’ /’ The Varsouviana is filtered into weird distortion’

• as her trauma develops and engulfs her the leitmotif of the polka music becomes distorted and ‘hot’, which parallels the rising intensity of her descent into madness

‘Blanche is bathing’

• after the introduction to Blanche’s traumatic past we are introduced to the motif of bathing, which symbolically alludes to her incessant desire to be cleansed of the trauma of her past

‘you’d better give me some money’

• alludes to Stella’s pragmatic acceptance of Stanley’s abuse - it is the only means to survive in a Darwinian milieu

‘Have you ever heard of the Napoleonic code?’

• the implict belittling in the interrogative alludes to his attempt to assert power intellectually

• there is irony here as Stanley subverts the marxist traditional archetype of the proletariat as the property owner

‘jerks out an armful of dresses’ / ‘hurls’ / ‘pulls’ / ‘‘The treasure chest of a pirate!’

• proleptic to when he ultimately strips Blanche of her satorial plumage which she uses to hide from reality

• the aggressive verbs maintain the allusive motif of violence before it reaches its apogee

• he views Blanche and the Old South as a contemptuous eyesore

• characteristically marxist in his hyperbolic perjorative caricature

‘the Kowalskis and the Dubois have different notions’ ~ ‘This goodly roof of yours is too low built’

• white woods

• triumph of social mobility illuminated by the amalgamation of culture and Stella assuming the name of the proletariat

• emblematic of his tribal attititudes

• everything carries a darwinian agenda

• ironic as there is subversion of the typical archetype of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie

• Stanley has a sense of disdain towards the clas separation and feels the urge to be in control vs the Duchess controls the relations between her and Antonio and moreover has no regard for the class divide, which is why Antonio is reluctant to pursue her

‘Now that you’ve touched them I’ll burn them!’

• hightens the tension between them both

• clear class tenion as Blanche views Stanley as dirty

• perhaps this is the first time the audience’s sympathy for Blanche is undermined

‘The blind are - leading the blind!’ ~ ‘For I am going into a wildreness / Where I shall find nor path, nor friendly clew’

• in both no one knows where this is leading to or what is happening in the moment - yet it is proleptic to her blind waltz into her figurative death

• the Duchess is likened to Christ or perhaps Thesius and the Minotour to emphasise her strength and purity and awareness of the dire straits of reality (to an extent) vs Blanche’s oedipal blindness to her flaws as the tragic protagonist

‘The Poker Night.’ / ‘This game is seven-card stud’ ~ ‘Integrity is fame’s best friend, which nobly, beyond death, shall crown in the end.’

• the motif of gambling illuminates the implicit corruption of all the characters of the milieu as well as the hegemonic masculine force that dominates

• there is a sense of dishonesty and duplicity evoked which reaches the apotheosis in the final scene vs the restoration of hope as the incidious characters are eliminated, with the rhyming couplet to amolify this sense of hope opposed to the extended metaphor of poker

‘coloured shirts […] as powerful as the primary colours’ / ‘vivid green silk bowling shirt’ / ‘brilliant silk pyjamas’

• the motif of intense colour imagery opposed to Blanche’s meek ‘white’ clothing is emblematic of their ‘powerful’ force which dominates Blanche

‘stains the time past and lights the time to come’

• there is a layer of irony here is the time to come will indeed be absolutely cataclysmic because of her actions (obviosuly we love her though)

‘I can’t stand a naked bulb’ vs ‘Diamonds are of the most value, / They say, that have passed through the most jewellers hands’

• Blanche’s aversion to light (truth, reality, herself, desire) is emblematic of her continuous desperation to deny who she really is which drives her to death vs the Duchess utilises euphemistic language to suggest her subversive and sarcastic acknowledgement of her own desire, yet her acceptance of such is perhaps what drives her to death

‘waltz’ / ‘tosses the intstrument out of the window’ / ‘white radio’

• the ‘white radio’ is symbolic of the Old South culture than Blanche is also emblematic of

• first real violence is introduced, with the theme of polka

‘Drunk - drunk - animal thing , you!’

• this is one of the only times Stella truly stands up to Stanley

• non-fluency features

• like Blanche

‘There is a sound of a blow’

• brutality, violence and coarseness of Elysian Fields

• foreshadows the violent climax, which also happens offstage - trop of modern domestic tragedies

‘[sadly but firmly] poker should not be played in a house with women.’

• understandable response to normalised attitudes

• he comes across as Stanley’s foil

‘low clarient moans’ / ‘low, animal moans’

• characterises the sexual ‘moans’ in both musical and carnal terms to suggest moments of genuineness amongst the barbarity, or alternatively their primal, desire driven lust

• plastic theatre

‘narcotised tranquility’

• suggests an addiction to the violence / or a trance in survival mode

‘Stanley’s always smashed things’ […] ‘I was - sort of - thrilled by it!’

• she accepts this in exchange for something she wants or needs even more - security

• marrying him allows Stella to break away from the restrictive Sourthern Belle archetype

• non-fluency features either show shock at herself or perhaps an lack of conviction

‘Do you remember Shep Huntleigh? […] Of course you remember Shep Huntleigh’

• the nomenclature of ‘Shep’ suggests that he is less wealthy than Blanche has imagined

• the rhetorical question alludes to the the sense of imagination

‘Stanley Kowalski - Survivor of the Stone Age!’ / ‘swilling and gnawing and hulking’

• there is a sense of disjointed anger through the diatribe and polysyndetic listing

• she only really succeeds at alienating herself

‘The Hotel Flamingo’ / ‘I’ve seen it and smelled it’

• sensory verbs to suggest the visceral flashback she may be having

• ‘flamingo’ is the ancient egyptian symbol of healing, which symbolises Blanche’s desire to escape the trauma of Belle Reve here

‘And so the soft people have got to - shimmer and glow - put a - paper lantern over the light… […] And I - I’m fading now!’

• the imperatives suggest this is the only way for her to survive

• she is ‘soft’ mentally - broken

• monologue

‘Young, young, young, young man!’ / ‘presses her lips to his’ ~ ‘hands him the ring’

‘My Rosenkevelier! Bow to me first! Now present them!’

• back to the Southern Belle persona

• she takes control of the situation

• Blanche attempts to revatilse her situation and her womanhood

‘like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow’

• tragedy Oedipus

‘You disgust me!’

• pivotal to the play - the audience understands the Varsouviana, they understand her personality

• the direct speech intensifies her trauma

‘Sometimes there is god - so quickly!’

‘Every man is a king!’ And I’m the king around here, so don’t forget it!’ ~ ‘Eagles commonly fly alone’

• trying to reassert his identity when he feels threatened by Blanche

• both are solipsistic statements which liken themselves to the superlative of power through differing imagery

• both detached from their victims or subjects so to speak

• both appointing themselves the upmost power

‘I pulled you down off them columns, and how you loved it,’

• did he pull her or did she jump?

• like a paradoxical hero

• Stanley is reminding Stella of how he dragged her away from the prejudicial life of being a bourgeois

‘he tears the paper lantern off the lightbulb’

• Mitch is the one that put up the ‘lantern’/enabled the fantasy in the first place - tragically ironic

‘I don’t want realism’ / ‘I’ll tell you what I want. Magic!’

• she wishes for transformational change in her life

• she indulges in magical thinking to escape what the audience sees as the tragic inexoribility of her dire straits

• the ‘magic’ offers her temporary mental reprive

• subtext - she hides from herself

‘I don’t mind you being older […] but I was a fool to believe you was straight.’

• the patriarchal New Orlean society wants her to be a madonna

‘flores, flores para los muertos’

• rising motif of death

‘What I been missing all summer’

• madonna whore complex

• rape threat

‘You ain’t clean enough to bring in the house with my mother’

• deplorable hypocrisy

‘it’s a red-letter night for the both of us’

• colour imagery

• alludes to the baby being born - triumph of the new world

‘Oh’ repeated a lot ‘Caught in a trap. Caught in - Oh!’

• her absolute desperation to escape is palpable

‘roar of the approaching locomotive’

• symbolic of the new world

• verb

• phalic symbol

‘she smashes a bottle on the table’

• alcohol is the only thing allowing her delusions to grow, breaking it shows how Stanley has broken the foundations of her dreaming

‘the shadows are of a grotesque and menacing form’ ~ ‘I will throttle it’

• both are emblematic of the characters’ descent into madness from supression of their true ‘shadow selves’

• both take the form of stage directions in a sense

• both are taunted by the aggresive memory of their respective past actions or experiences

‘Tiger - tiger!' […] We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning’

• mocking with the zoomorphic imagery

• ironically romantic register

‘He picks up her inert figure’ / ‘[kneels] Come, violent death.’

• Stanley is obsessed with possession - not necessarily of the woman per se but in a similar vein to the logic of wanting to ‘own’ Stella’s social status, he attempts to lay clay over what Blanche represents

‘I couldn’t believe her story.’ / ‘luxurious sobbing’

• subtext implies she understands it is true, but chooses survival

• cycle of illusion and deceit

‘And when I die I am going to die on the sea’ ~ ‘What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut / With diamonds’

• both evoke a sense of escape through death

• water imagery

• Williams

‘Please don’t get up. I’m only passing through.’ / ‘The poker players awkwardly stand at the table’

• still holding the illusion of the Southern Belle

• she craves withdrawal

• Blanche is mentally and physically defeated, but emotionally victorious - the men give her a standing ovation of sorts

‘seizes the paper lantern’

• analeptic to Mitch in scene 9

• there is a continuous sense of tragic circularity

‘I’ll kill you!’

• there is an ambiguity of male relationships, which adds to the tension and tragedy - has Stanley and masculinity won?

‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers’

• irony - her dependence has catalysed her descent into ‘hysteria’

• total detachment from reality

‘places the child in her arms. It is wrapped in a pale blue blanket’ / ‘[He kneels beside her and his fingers find the opening of her blouse] Now, now, love. Now, love…’

• Stella’s baby being born on the day that the representative of this old culture is destroyed is intentional

• colour imagery

• shocking response from Stanley

• dialogue