essay: fantasy/facade

intro:

• Streetcar:

  • Blanche’s facade/attempts to retain her Southern Belle-ness

  • Stella = fantasy n facade, choosing to overlook the abusive aspects of her relationship w Stanley#

• Beautiful:

• TLQ:

p1 - streetcar:

• AO1: blanche embodies theme of f+f through deliberate attempts to mask past + present cultivated, idealised image of self - facade of southern belle

• AO2:

  • initial appearance in ‘white suit with ‘earrings of pearl and ‘white gloves’

  • degradation of stanley

    • ‘polack ‘ape-like’

  • ‘put a paper lantern over the light’

  • ‘merciless glare’

  • attachment to belle reve: translates to beautiful dream, underscores desire to live in fantasy that shields her from losses

    • illusory existence systematically dismantled throughout play, reflects incompatibility of her romanticised world w brutal realism of

  • new south blue piano EXPRESSIONISM

• AO3:

  • play post WW2 america: old souths traditional aristrocratic values + class hierarchies fading

  • southern belle archetype, which blanche embodies, rooted in antebellum south, representing women of privilege, charm and grace

  • rise of new south (eg stanley) eroded values - blanches clinging to southern belle demonstrates longing for era of social superiority that no longer holds relevance to modern world

• AO4:

  • beautiful: women are reduced to physical appearance by others - not own will

    • snd: blanche clings to own beauty as her primary source of power - contrasts to the unwanted, imposed standards on women of ‘beautiful’

    • demonstrates the huge emphasis placed on beauty standards, by women themselves, and society at large

• AO5:

  • a psychoanalytic critic might argue that blanches fear of light + reliance on illusions can be interpreted as defense mechanisms (idea posited by freudian psychoanalysis) to repress guilt + trauma stemming from husbands suicide + her sexual past

  • shows attempt to cling to facade as coping mechanism

p2- beautiful:

• AO1:

• AO2:

• AO3:

• AO4:

reiterate AO1

p3 - streetcar:

• AO1: stella kowalski represents another form of facade + fantasy by choosing to overlook the abusive aspects of her relationship with stanley

• AO2:

  • ‘men are drinking and playing poker, anything can happen - s4

  • ‘narcotised tranquility - scene

  • ‘im not in anything i want to get out of scene 4

  • ‘smashed all the light bulbs with the heel of my slipper! i was sort of thrilled by it - s4

• AO3:

  • societal expectations of women in 1940s america trap women in cycles of dependency

  • after WW2 women who entered workforce expected to return to domestic roles: shift oft referred to as ‘gender reconversion : reinforced traditional patriarchal norms

  • stellas decision to stay with stanley reflects societal expectations as being subservient wives - women pressured to accept husbands dominance

• AO4:

  • stella’s coping with situation by denying reality of stanley’s violence, compares to endurance portrayed in TLQ

  • queens reign over teas + wombs signifies womens historical role of bearing + enduring suffering

  • both explore how societal expectations force women to internalise + normalise their pain as part of their identity

• AO5:

  • feminist critic may argue that stella may have financial dependency on stanley

    • thus even if she recognises her fantastical delusions of stanleys abuse, she unable to leave due to her economic reliance

    • delusion = survival mechanism to cope w lack of autonomy