SC AO5 Critic Quotes

‘Blanche must finally have the understanding and compassion of the audience’

- Raymond Williams

‘to carry on is sometimes the hardest, most tragic thing of all’

- Sean McEvoy

'a poetic tragedy’

- Tennessee Williams

‘down-at-heel newcomers… in troubled pursuit of the American Dream’

- Sean McEvoy

‘the size of her feeling is too great for her tpo contain without madness’

- Tennessee Williams

‘Blanche is the invader in an unfamiliar world which resents her and will destroy her’

- Porter

‘Despite its seemingly less restrictive mores, the new society of Elysian Fields sees Blanche as unclean due to her affairs and denies her a place in its world’

- Reigh

‘the ravishment of the tender, the sensitive and the delicate by the brutal forces of modern society which destroys those who don’t conform’

- Tennessee Williams

‘the plantation served as a symbol of the past’

- Adler

‘Stanley and Stella’s baby stands for the way the working class ethos will be carried into the future’

- Adler

‘Stanley, the master player and Darwinian survivor, controls all’

- Reigh

‘Williams displays Stanley as bestial, driven more by instinct than rational thought’

- Bubb

‘Stanley’s assertiveness is clearly dependent on his relationship with Stella and his ability to crush opposition’

- McDonough

‘he [Mitch] cannot break through the sexual code upheld and policed by Stanley’

- McDonough

‘poker is a microcosm of masculinity’

- Webb

‘Blanche infests…

…the sacred marriage of Stella and Stanley’

‘a sombre,

Darwinian tragedy’

‘Williams depicts Blanche as little more than a loud-mouthed and flirtatious whore’

Lant

‘he [Stanley] is a bully’

Gilbert

‘Blanche is painfully aware of the chasm between

her presentation of herself as a demure Southern Belle and the reality of her status’

‘she [Blanche] is an aging spinsterm who is homeless,

jobless and with a reputation in tatters’

Mitch cannot see her ‘underlying panic and need for protection’

- Tennessee Williams

Blanche ‘perceives herself as a victim of

desires and circumstances that she cannot control’

sexual desire is presented as ‘exhilerating and vital, but also as compulsive and debasing’

- Reeve-Tucker

‘Blanche’s feeble aristocracy is thrown into sharp contrast by

Stanley’s vitality’

‘he [Stanley] represents the macho,

forward-driving future America’

Blanche is ‘punished by Stanley and society’

- Webb