Critical Readings

Lee - SC

Play of sexual politics

Peter - SC

Darwinian tragedy

Bigsby - SC

Culture in a state of crisis…its myths collapsing

Some contemporary critical responses - SC

Stanley the victim of Blanche’s onslaughts against his name, his heratige, his masculinity and ultimately his family

Some audiences of Elia Kazan original stage production - SC

Cheered for Stanley during the rape scene

1984 Adaptation - SC

Blanche screeches and growls at Matron

Jardine - Malfi

Strong female role…only existed in the early modern stage to act as a terrible warning to society

Tapp - SC

Victim of the mythology of the Southern Belle

Aughterson - Malfi - Masculinity

Suggests alternative masculinites to those formulated within patriarchalism

McGlinn - SC

Commitment to self preservation rather than love

Elliot - Malfi

Webster saw the skull beneath the skin

Porter - SC

Structurally…Blanche is cast in the role of the invader

McRae - Malfi

Ferdinand does not control his desires, they control him

Templaton - SC

Blanche, through her own epic fornications, is just as responsible for her fall as the south for its own demise

Marcus - Malfi

Not an act of unbridled lust but an act of heroic resistance

Aughterson - Malfi - Control

Her brothers assume a patriarchal control over her body and sexuality…extends over her political state

Oakes - Malfi

She becomes the women carved in stone that Ferdinand wanted her to be…negates her relationship with Antonio

Murray - Malfi

Antonio is modelled in the ideal of Christian gentility

The radiant spirit of the Duchess cannot be killed

Hart - Malfi

Not driven by posessive outrage…motiveless malignity

Callaghan - Malfi

Combines virtue with powerful sexual desire

Ribner - Malfi

Complete descent of man into beast

Sezler - Malfi

Bosola's discontentment issues from lack of reward

Tischler - Streetcar

a reversal of Darwin's vision - back to the apes

Cardullo - Streetcar

They are less victim and villain... than mutual victims of desire.

Welsch - Streetcar

Blanche's sexual experiences lead her on a journey to death

Bloom - Streetcar

Cannot be blamed for protecting his marriage against the force that would destroy it

Adler - Streetcar

baby - the way the working class ethos will be carried into the future

Bubb - Streetcar

Instead of offering a positive alternative to Stanley's insensitive, bullish masculinity, Mitch has ended up imitating it