Literature in English III – 2016

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Tennessee Williams (1911 - 1983)

A Streetcar Named Desire

The characters and the story…
A Streetcar named Desire as a tragedy

THE HERO AND THE TRAGIC FLAW

Blanche’s refusal to face and accept reality

“I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic!

I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things
to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to
be truth.” (117)
The conflict and its development

The struggle between illusions and
factual reality
 The Conflict

 “The particular conflict that most concerns Williams is the
struggle between what man feels he is or what he ought to be
and what society says he is or ought to be” (Sharp 160)
 “Williams opposes the unhealthy but attractive romanticism of
the past with the healthy but crude and unbeautiful reality of the
present.” (Sharp 161)
 “Blanche ‘wants magic’, not truth but ‘what ought to be true.’ Yet
her world of what ought to be must give way to something real,
tangible, because the real world of what is true cannot be faced
with anything as insubstantial as magic”. (Sharp 162)
 “Those whom time has ruined fear the freedom and strength of
the young, but most of all, they fear truth. This fear is the theme
of Streetcar, in which Blanche conceals her racy past as well as her
appearance.” (Pokin 55)
Another possible reading of the conflict


A Streetcar Named Desire as social drama

The old aristocracy of the South vs the working class.

Which characters embody the different poles of the

conflict?
CLASSIC vs. MODERN TRAGEDY
(Newton and Miller)

The tragic hero

The (lack of a) moment of anagnorisis

The type of conflict

 Modern tragedy: the hero

It matters not at all whether the modern play concerns
itself with a grocer or a president if the intensity of
the hero’s commitment to his course is less than the
maximum possible. It matters not at all whether the
hero falls from a great height or a small one, whether
he is highly conscious or dimly aware of what is
happening, whether his pride brings the fall, or an
unseen pattern written behind clouds, if the intensity
and the human passion to surpass his given bounds
are not present, there can only be an outline of
tragedy but no living thing. (Miller)
 On modern tragedy

“I aimed to make a play with the veritable countenance
of life. To make one the many, as in life, so that
“society” is a power and a mystery of custom and
inside the man and surrounding him, as the fish is in
the sea, and the sea inside the fish, his birthplace and
burial ground, promise and threat.” (Miller)
 From tragedy to Melodrama…

If the play chronicled the last stages of a woman’s epic quest
for magic against a world of cold truth, the film merely
traces a spiraling pathology to the traumatic loss of a
husband to suicide. Devoid of choice, Blanche’s
controversial behaviour ceases to constitute her tragic
flaw – her stubborn opposition against an existing order –
and becomes an irresistible random force. None of it was
her fault: she’s absolved of deliberate immorality. As a
result, the door is now open for viewers to finally identify
with the protagonist. (Schulz Jacques 36)
 Bibliography to consult…

 On A Streetcar Named Desire

Bak, John. “Criticism on A Streetcar Named Desire”.

Popkin, Henry. “The Plays of Tennesse Williams”.
Schultz, Jacques, Karina. “The Madwoman in the Quarter: A
Streetcar Named Desire as a Case of Intersemiotic Genre Shift.”
Sharp, William. “An Unfashionable View of Tennessee Williams”.
Vlasopolos, Anca. “Authorizing History: Victimization in A
Streetcar Named Desire”.

 On Modern Tragedy

Miller, Arthur. “Death of a Salesman: A Modern Tragedy?”

Newton, Ken. “Modern Tragedy”