A Streetcar Named Desire - Critical Quotes

Brooks Atkinson - Williams' presentation of people

"[Williams'] knowledge of people is honest and thorough"

Nathan - early view of the play

"unpleasant"

Bentley and Boxhill - type of play

"social historical drama"

Shaw - style

"triumphantly heightened naturalism"

Drake - pro-Blanche view

"presenting the pessimistic view of modern man destroying the tender aspects of love (...) and in Blanche's refusal to submit, she is being portrayed as the last representative of a sensitive, gentle love whose defeat is to be lamented"

Kazan's director's notebook - pro-Stanley

For Stanley to keep things his way, he must fight off the destructive intrusions of Blanche who "would wreck his home"

Taylor - not that tragic

"Williams creates opposition in Blanche and Stanley but not true tragic conflict"

Burks - Darwinist survival

"less (...) a struggle between Good and Evil" and more a "Social Darwinist struggle for survival between two species of human beings"

Adler - type of play

"a modern variation on the medieval morality play"

Cohn - Stanley is justified

sides with Stanley as protector of the family. "[Stanley's] cruellest gesture in the play is to tear the paper lantern off the lightbulb", we never actually see Stanley "hit Stella" or "rape Blanche" - argues the rape comes from Blanche's licentious provocation. Stanley is faithful and loyal - "his cruelty defends his world"

Vlasopolos - Blanche's 'death'

Blanche doesn't die at the end of the play but must suffer the consequences of the rape

Corrigan - the play as a psychological drama

"the external events of the play, while actually occurring, serve as a metaphor for Blanche's internal conflict" (psychological drama)

Paller - pro-Blanche, Stanley's ideologies vs Blanche's ideologies

"pits the alienated soul and lover of beauty and refinement - Blanche - against the crueller, cruder instincts inherent in much of American life - Stanley"

McGlinn - Blanche's detachment from reality

Blanche "refuses to accept the reality of her life and attempts to live under illusion" leads to "self-defeat instead of survival"

Cardullo - Blanche is her own problem

"Blanche's struggle in Streetcar is not so much with Stanley as with herself in her efforts to achieve lasting intimacy"

Melman - confinement of Blanche

Blanche is "externally and internally confined"

Melman - death and sex

Blanche "grasps at desire as a means of escaping death, her passion can only lead her closer to the grave for it fuels an attempt not to reach out to the future, but to deny it"

Hulley - destructive

argues it's a story about desire's destruction rather than desire

Kerr - the ending

"escape-hatch ending"

Bodis - lack of sympathy for Blanche

"as we cannot fully accept or reject Blanche, when she is eliminated we don't fully sympathise nor do we rejoice fully"

Berlin - a balanced play

"Stanley condemns Blanche for her sexual looseness and Blanche condemns Stanley for his apishness, each seems both right and wrong - right in the light of truth, wrong in the light of understanding"

Goodman - Williams' view of the world

the play can "be read as an allegorical representation of the author's view of the world he lives in" linked to Williams' view that "the apes shall inherit the earth"

Gassner - realism through surrealism

"poetic drama becomes psychological reality"

Tischner - Stella's choice

"apparently Williams wants the audience to believe that Stella is wrong in loving Stanley but right in living with him"

Krutch - Blanche doesn't betray her principles

"Blanche chooses the dead past and becomes a victim of that impossible choice, but she does choose it rather than the 'adjustment' of her sister. At least she has not succumbed to barbarism"

Gassner - belittling of tragedy

Williams has "reduced potential tragedy to psychopathology"

Gassner - Blanche is not wholly believable

"In so far as Blanche's role is concerned, only her illness is believable and even that is suspect, in so far as its inevitability is questionable"

Gassner - destroying possibilities of the play by limiting it to mere pathos

"the point of the play is precisely that Blanche, who needs every consideration, is thrust into a brute world that gives her no consideration, then, I say, Williams has destroyed the tragic possibilities of Streetcar in another way: He has settled for pathos whereas the ambience of his characterisation of Blanche suggests a play possessed of a sharper, more equitable, and harder insight namely, that of tragedy"

Brooker - general observation of people leading to a profound insight

"Out of nothing more esoteric than interest in human beings, Mr. Williams has looked steadily and wholly into the private agony of one lost person"

O'Connor - not prepared to hear the truth

represents Blanche as a one of a number of protagonists whose voices are silenced by the accusation of madness when they insist on speaking truths that the world is not prepared to hear

Hovis - southern belle

the role of the Southern Belle as a mask and a prison

Bak - species conflict

"Both fight over Stella, for in her choosing one species means the death of another"