Streetcar/Malfi AO5

Dympna Callaghan

"The Duchess' brothers are the primary mouthpiece for the misogynist discourse of the era"

P.B Murray

"The radiant spirit of the Duchess cannot be killed"

R.S White

"The tragedy of a virtuous woman who achieves heroism through her death"

Nanci Roider

"[the play is] a cautionary tale which shows what can happen when women marry without being granted the "proper" consent"

David Cecil

"Webster envisages evil in its most extreme form: and he presents it as far more powerful than good"

A.Lopez

point to the view of women as merchandise"

Lee Bliss

"The Cardinal's cool, unemotional detachment is more terrifying than Ferdinand's impassioned raving"

Dympna Callaghan

"Webster takes on the challenge of representing a woman who is both virtuous and sensual"

Irving Ribner

The Duchess, not her brothers, stands for ordinary humanity, love and the continuity of life through children.

Irving Ribner

The final act is designed to show that the way of the Arragonian brothers is that of madness and damnation, the complete descent of man into beast symbolised by the lycanthropia of Ferdinand.

Irving Ribner

Webster's concern is with the ability of man in such a world without direction, to maintain human worth in spite of all

Bradbook

Bosola is never permitted the luxury of being a self

British Library

Defiance of social conventions, not through infidelity but through marriage

Irving Ribner

Webster's tragedies are a search for moral order in the chaotic and uncertain world of Jacobean Skepticism

Irving Ribner

Bosola becomes the agent through which the duchess is made to permeate the world

Irving Ribner

The cardinal stands for the guile and hypocrisy which render religion a shallow pretence

T.S. Eliot

(Williams) he saw the skull beneath the skin

C.G. Thayer

The Duchess being killed at the end of act 4 deflects attention away from her as the centre of the action

Bradbook

Julia is a foil to the duchess, who takes a man as she feels the impulse

Thomas P Adler

Blanche's opening line 'introduces the notion of a journey'

Blades

Stanley brings back with him all the brutality and agression of the battefield

Haley

(Blanche) is the sensitive, non-conformist individual, who must suffer at the hands of conventional morality

Haley

Many of Williams' sexual outcasts are devoured, literally or figuratively, as a punishment for sexual misconduct

Cardullo

Williams clearly suggests an identification between the tragic fall and the birth of another

Toles

Williams gives her unexpected authority where she previously had none

Toles

The torn lantern in Stanley's outstretched hand is his final, wordless verdict on what her inventions amount to

Galloway

Williams infuses Blanche ans stanley with symbols of opposing class and differing attitudes towards sex and love

T.S. Eliot

whispers of immortality (DOM)

Simon Bubb

This is a play in which there is not a single male character to whom we can look to for a truly positive embodiment of masculinity z

Elia Kazan

'an emblem of a dying civilization'

Benedict Andrews

'Stanley might represent that more animalistic presence and Blanche the illusory presence'

Jackie Shead ('life luggage')

Stanley's intrusion into the trunk marks the beginning of an invasion of Blanche's self, which does not cease until his ultimate penetration-rape

Brian Gibbons (on the Duchess' death)

'an inverted wedding celebration'

Tischler

'represents traditionalism and ide;alism'

John Mason Brown

'pathetic pretensions'

Nicole Onyett

Stanley strips her of her psychological, sexual and cultural identity.

Harold Clurman

brutish environment presided over by chief ape-man Stanley Kowalski

Tennesse Williams

Destructive power of society on the sensitive non-conformist individual

One Critic

Stanley's marriage is distablished by Blanche's arrival

One critic

Stanley is a victim of a masculine ideology that rewards and heroicises direct brutal honesty

Michael Billington (DOM)

A procession of morbid horrors

Whigham

Ferdinand strives 'to become more himself by reducing others'

Elia Kazan

Blanche is 'destructive'

Jackie Shead

the kind of travel particularised by a streetcar fits well with the play's representation of desire as a driving force

Jacqueline Pearson

the heroine dies well before the end of the play so that the significance of her death can be explored

Simon Bubb

men are ultimately shown not as active agents of redemption from suffering, but as its cause

J.M. McGlinn

Her refusal to accept Blanche's story of the rape is a commitment to self preservation rather than love

Susan Koprince

Eunice and Steve are the 'facsimile of a dysfunctional family which normalises Stanley's abuse'

Michael Billington

Blanche deceives others as a 'protection against solitude and desperation'