Streetcar Context

Purple = Biographical (less important than other categories) / Red = Socio-political (gender, queerness, race/immigration, class) / Blue = Historical / Green = Literary (techniques/allusions)

Year written?

1947

Colonisation and change

French 1718, United States 1803

Pre civil war era

Antebellum Era

• Economy spearheaded by slave plantations

• New Orleans was a trading port, inc. bananas and coffee

Southern Belle

American Civil War

1861 - 1865, South vs North, Abolition of slavery

Technical Abolition of slavery

1863, Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation

Post-civil war

Reconstruction, freed slaves given Citizenship and some civil rights - but Jim Crow laws still in place which caused racial segragation

Economy boom!

1920s

Wall Street Crash

1929

Great Depression

1930s, ¼ of men were unemployed in America, Huey Long speech/ Autobiography

Race/ Immigration

American Dream:

• People fled Europe during the 20th century for this promise — New Orleans became a cultural hub

Slavery:

• Emancipation proclamation, civil rights movement = progress

• But Jim Crow laws still in place in 1947

Causes of the Deep South’s poverty and loss of grandeur

Civil War (1861-1865), Great Depression, WWII

Challenging racial segregation

Civil Rights movement, post WWII

Jim Crow Laws

Still in place in 1947

World War Two + Stanley

• 1942-1945

• Stanley fought in Salermo (1943)

World War Two + Gender

• Millions of women joined the workforce/ war effort

  • Discovered independence + tenacity

• Forced return to domestic setting

  • Tension between the sexes

  • Masculine drive for domination

Napoleonic Code

• French Law

• Still applied to N.O.

• Husband had a right to own part of a property previously owned by a his wife

• NOT in Mississippi

Queerness

• Homosexuality = criminal bevhaviour

• Deeply homophobic society

• “Degenerate” - used by Stella to describe Allan = Dysphemism

Southern Belle

Flirtatious, virginal, young, wealthy, white woman living in a plantation house in the Antebellum era

Huguenots

• Many left France before revolution (1789-99)

• Protestant

• Escape persecution

• Means that Blanche’s family are aristocratic

Huey Long

• Speech/ Autobiography (1930s): “Every man is a king”

• Wanted an egalitarian society (redistribution of wealth, abolition of class)

Lobotomies

• Williams’ sister Rose diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young woman

• 1943 = lobotomy

• Insitutionalised for the rest of her life

Williams + Love

• Homosexual, in homosexual circles

• Kip Kiernan (1940) - left him to marry a woman, died 4 years later, distraught

• Pancho Rodriguez (1945-47) - Drunk excessively, jealour rages, tempestuous relationship, but remained friends

• Frank Merlo (1948-62) this is after streetcar, but was a period of General stability as Williams wondered if he’d go insane like Rose

Childhood

• Nearly died from Diphtheria

  • Was considered weak by his father (alcoholic, shoe salesperson, away from home)

Plastic Theatre

• Williams’ personal brand of expressionism

  • Inspired by Expressionist playwrights from 1920s

  • Disollusioned by realist playwrights from 1940s

  • Expresses the inner world externally through sensory symbols

  • Combines expressionist techniques with taboo themes

Elysian fields

• Greek, place for heroes to die

• Theme of death from beginning

Tableau vivant

• Living picture

• Van Gough’s paintings also highly symbolic, like the play

Elizabeth Browning

• Victorian Poet

• Sonnet expresses her intense love for her husband pre-marriage

Le Dane aux Camelias (1818)

• Heroine = upper class call girl

• French phrase said by Blanche = standard invitation of French prostitute

Paper Moon

• Popular Ballad

Audience Cheer

Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York

Original audience

During king speech

Freytag’s dramatic structure

• Exposition (1)

• Rising Action (2-9)

• Climax (10)

• Falling Action (Omitted)

• Denouement (11)