DoM and Streetcar Critics (Hugo)

Bradbrook on F in DoM

'The sight of the Duchess' face awakens Ferdinand to what he has done.'

P.B.Murray on D in DoM

'The radiant spirit of the Duchess cannot be killed.'

Gunby on A in DoM

'Without the Duchess, Antonio is aimless and apathetic.'

Rabkin on D in DoM

'The Duchess' marriage to Antonio is wilful and irresponsible.'

Oakes on D in DoM

'At the end she is Duchess of Malfi still, [in which she] negates her relationship with Antonio and becomes the woman caved in stone that Ferdinand wants to be'.

Hart on C+F in DoM

Brothers have 'motiveless malignity' born in delight of malice itself. Contrasts Calderwood's opinion that there seems to be alternate motivation to brothers' actions: 'Ferdinand...is unsure of himself, not Webster'. He carries an 'incestuous jealousy'.

Bogard on DoM

'The ultimate tragedy of Webster's world is not the death of any individual but the presence of evil and decay which drags all mankind to death.'

Bliss on D in DoM

D 'seeks private happiness at the expense of public stability. As a ruler she can be no more lauded...than her brothers.'

Ribner on F in DoM

Ferdinand maps the 'Complete descent of man into beast'

Pearson on D in DoM

D dies 'so that the significance of her death can be explored'.

Cecil on DoM

Evil is in its 'most extreme form', and is 'far more powerful than good'.

C.W.E. Bigsby on Streetcar

Williams' depicts 'the romantic in an unromantic world...Increasingly he described those desperate attempts to hold the world at bay with alcohol, illusion and fragile sexuality'.

C.W.E. Bigsby on Streetcar

'the note of self-pity, which is never entirely absent, is contained by a rigorous honesty about the desperate self-deceptions practised by his characters and the fundamental evasions which may be implied by art.' Yes — though Blanche is our protagonist, the values which she stands for (freedom of human imagination, idealism etc.) are presented as flawed. E.g. paper lantern's purpose is deception, and when destroyed suggests that the world Blanche tries to create is flimsy.

C.W.E. Bigsby on Streetcar

Williams notes that 'truth, life, or reality, is an organic thing which the poetic imagination can represent or suggest in essence only through transformation' to Glass Menagerie. Fights for 'a new plastic theatre' that forgoes 'realistic conventions'. This comes through in use of dramatic effect: music, convergence of memory and reality and more.

C.W.E. Bigsby on Streetcar

Williams risks 'sentimentalising the misfit' who is unable to 'adjust to the new materialism'.

C.W.E. Bigsby on Streetcar

Streetcar carries 'moral seriousness and an aesthetic sensitivity'.

C.W.E. Bigsby on Streetcar

In essay 'Where I live', Williams claims to write in form of 'poetic tragedy...with a surrealist influence and a background of modern music'. Rejects idea of it being 'naturalistic'.

C.W.E. Bigsby on Streetcar

'If survival is a basic theme of his work it is scarcely surprising that he should have found so compelling those who seemed to be the master of their fate rather than its victim'.

C.W.E. Bigsby on Streetcar

'The only possible future is that constituted by Stella's child...she alone protects Blanche as long as she is able...Blanche's destruction is inevitable. Stella has the chance to rebuild. But, in fact, that future has been so compromised...that even this consolation is denied.'

C.W.E. Bigsby on Streetcar

Stella acts as 'the fulcrum between two such vital and energetic forces as Blanche and Stanley'.

C.W.E. Bigsby on Streetcar

'It is not just that Blanche is unreconciled and unreconcilable to the world in which she finds herself; she remains unreconciled to herself.'

C.W.E. Bigsby on Streetcar

'Stanley's dilemma is that he is locked into a logic which threatens to undermine his own self-image. He can only destroy Blanche by becoming what she has always accused him of being.'

C.W.E. Bigsby on Streetcar

'This was the first American play in which sexuality was patently at the core of the lives of all its principle characters, a sexuality with the power to redeem or destroy.'

Applies both to Streetcar and Duchess. Duchess has so 'sweet a look/That it were able raise one to a galliard/That lay in a dead palsy' but 'cuts off all lascivious and vain hope.' Her sexuality allows Bosola to redeem himself: 'This is manly sorrow!/These tears, I am very certain, never grew/In my mother's milk.'

Tynan on Streetcar

'The play's conclusion obscures moral judgement'

Riddel on Streetcar

'The play's conclusion obscures moral judgement'

Riddel on B vs. S in Streetcar

'Blanche and Stanley become antiphonal figures in a choric exchange of ideas...She is driven by guilt over the very indulgences that give his life a vital intensity.'

Riddel on Streetcar

'Blanche, in her psychologically ingrown virginity, is driven further into herself and her dream, not released, and is handed over to Williams's modern priest, the psychoanalyst.'

Elia Kazan on S in Streetcar

'Stella becomes the field of battle over which Stanley and Blanche fight'.

Elia Kazan on B in Streetcar

'Blanche chooses the dead past and becomes a victim of that impossible choice'.

Elia Kazan on B in Streetcar

'The truth dooms her'. Blanche is 'a phony, corrupt, sick, destructive woman. This makes Stanley right!'

V. Elliot on light motif in Streetcar

'Clear light is the antithesis of the fantasy world Blanche is trying to maintain'.

Brunstein on S in Streetcar

Stanley's 'sexuality, though violent, is unmental, unspiritual, and, therefore, in some way free from taint'.

McGlinn on S in Streetcar

'Stella ignores the needs of others and eventually adopts her own illusion...Her refusal to accept Blanche's story of rape is a commitment to self-preservation rather than love.'

Contrasts with Bigsby's opinion on Stella.

T.P. Adler on places vs. baby in Streetcar

'Just as the plantation served as a symbol of the past, Stanley and Stella's baby stands for the way the 'working class' ethos will be carried into the future.'

L. Kronenberger on B in Streecar

Blanche is 'the most demonically driven kind of liar — the one who lies to the world because she must lie to herself'.

Idealism? Not demonic... Far too sympathetic to Mitch. She 'never lied in my heart' — sense her lies were needed to survive (fresh start by dissociating from past which is like an 'old tin can' on the tail of a 'kite'). He starts to lie to herself only as she descends into madness.

Templeton

'Blanche, through her own "epic fornication," is just as responsible for her fall as the Old South is for its own demise.' Supported by p.24.

Gassner on psychopathology in Streetcar

'reduced potential tragedy to psychopathology'

Goodman on Williams' world view

Play mirrors his view that 'the apes shall inherit the earth'

Hulley on desire in Streetcar

Story is abt destruction of desire, not desire

Corrigan on psychological drama in Streetcar

'the external events of the play, while actually occurring, serve as a metaphor for Blanche's internal conflict'

(psychological drama)