Domestic Tragedy

Hi everyone,

Coursework questions have been approved by the moderator so you must seriously be reading the play with your chosen question in mind. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of independent, additional reading on the subject of modern American domestic tragedy and also alternative viewpoints on Streetcar. PLEASE go to the school library where you will find a lot of wonderful resources. By reading more widely you will give yourself the best chance of producing a piece of coursework that is both well-informed and engaging. Remember, generic answers are GCSE level, you must be constantly probing and aiming for analysis that is relevant to the question, thoughtful and demonstrates an ability to spot and comment on the nuances (subtleties) of the text.


Some key points to note concerning domestic tragedy:

• An important feature of domestic tragedy is the slow revelation of information to the audience. The audience then works out why particular characters behave the way they do.
• Consider the way Williams' is continually building towards the tragic climax of the play through his presentation of Blanche (refer to your character profiles: her fragile physical descriptions, her constant need to bathe, her drinking, her desire for illusion and the symbols associated with this particularly the Chinese lantern).
• Also consider how the characters interact on stage. The tension that is mounting between Blanche and Stanley is set in motion from Scene 1. Again, consider how this develops and use this to show your understanding of how, in a domestic tragedy, information is revealed slowly to the audience. 
• Finally you should comment on the dramatic effectiveness of this slow relevation of information. Obviously by working towards a climatic episode or denouement (French word for the point at which things become clear in a text) Williams' instils a certain 'shock' value for his audience and thus the cathartic impact is heightened.

• Modern domestic tragedies tend to be 'issue-led.' This means that the tragedy looks at a particular issue and examines its effect on the central characters. Consider what the main 'issues' are that propel Streetcar and importantly how these issues effect Blanche, Stanley, Stella and Mitch. Be aware that most modern domestic tragedies focus on the anti-hero (tragic heroine in the case of Blanche) who do not quite fit the society in which they are involved. Again, consider how Blanche is a misfit in her society (note the differences in her clothes, how she speaks, the things she says that reveal her social status, her mental instability etc).

• Modern domestic tragedies can still have the same effects on the audience as those identified by Aristotle, but they also cause the audience to question established systems, principles and assumptions about life. Consider the ways in which Williams presents the horror and tragedy of modern life, the sense of loneliness and alienation that pervade his characterisation of Blanche and Mitch.

• Structurally, in a domestic tragedy, you should expect to see much more emphasis on exactly what the set should look like, as well as on costume, sound, lighting, stage directions and how particular sections of the text are to be spoken. In your coursework discuss these features and their effects. Also note the section on the blog on plastic theatre and how the elements of stagecraft intensify the impact of the tragedy we see unfolding on stage. To gain the highest marks at AS you must show an awareness and appreciation of Williams' dramatic methods. Thus, a discussion of stagecraft is mandatory whichever question you choose.

Please refer to your resource packs on tragedy too to support the information here. Remember it is not enough to think of domestic tragedy as a tragedy centred on family life. Rather, you need to heed the points above to ensure you demonstrate in your coursework that you understand the various idiosyncrasies of the genre. Do all that and you will excel this year! :)

More will follow on this closer to coursework deadlines.

Homework question for Thursday

What impressions are we given of Blanche and Mitch's relationship in Scene 3?


You should comment on:

• Things they say;
• Nuances in the stage directions
• Significance of symbols (silver cigarette case, paper lantern etc)
• How is their relationship tragic?

Additional reading (quite challanging but give it a go!)

Modern Critical Interpretations
Tennessee Williams's
A Streetcar Named Desire

The Tragic Downfall of Blanche DuBois

Leonard Berkman

(P33)

Especially after the late 1940s it became commonplace for critics to talk of the ubiquitous “common man” of modern American drama, one who is already defeated at the outset of the play’s action, who struggles at best passionately but always futilely, and who is always too low in mankind’s moral (if not occupational) hierarchy to manage any semblance of downfall, let alone a downfall with tragic impact. Whereas Arthur Millar tried doggedly to develop a sense of tragedy within such dismal boundaries, insisting upon the commonness of his protagonists while insisting too that ‘victory’ remained nevertheless impossible for them, Tennessee Williams turned feverishly towards opposite aims. Enlisting the array of forces – temporal and eternal, comprehensible and beyond human ken- against which the heroic struggle must be waged, A Streetcar Named Desire is an inspired refutation of the linking of modern American drama with the common man.

(P34)

For a thorough account of what he calls Williams’s ‘unsparing’ analysis of Blanche, turn to John Mason Brown:

          Her abiding tragedy comes neither from her family’s dwindling fortunes nor from her widow’s grief. Is it sprung from her own nature. From her uncontrollable duplicity. From her pathetic pretensions to gentility even when she is known as a prostitute in the little town in which she was brought up. From her love of the refined when her life is devoted to coarseness. From the fastidiousness of her tastes and the wantonness of her desires. From her incapacity to live up to her dreams. Most particularly, from her selfishness and her vanity, which are insatiable.

Mr. Brown appears willing to apply “tragedy” to Blanche’s situation despite his not finding her character inspiring in the least, and despite his not remarking upon even one instance of Blanche’s self-awareness or effort at overcoming “her own nature.”

There are faulty defences of Blanche that must be dismissed before a more pertinent appraisal of her can be attempted. At the core of these defences is the deference to Blanche as representative of the artist. She is, after all, an English teacher, she values “culture”, she is sensitive, she opposed Stanley’s brutishness. Above all, she is misunderstood. The enveloping effect of Williams’s play, when it is interpreted from that perspective, is to generate intense self-pity among all those spectators who have thought of themselves as fragile, gifted and rejected.

Edited and with an introduction by
Harold Bloom

Chelsea House Publishers
NEW YORK: PHILADELPHIA 1988

Plastic Theatre

Plastic Theatre

“To express his universal truths Williams created what he termed plastic theatre, a distinctive new style of drama. He insisted that setting, properties, music, sound, and visual effects - all the elements of staging—must combine to reflect and enhance the action, theme, characters, and language.” (Alice Griffin: Understanding Tennessee Williams. Columbia: University of South Carolina , 1995.

The scholarship that has focused on Williams' plastic theatre principally examines its practical implications. Roger Boxill states, for instance, "The 'new plastic theatre' must make full use of all the resources of the contemporary stage—language, action, scenery, music, costume, sound, lighting—and bind them into an artistic unity conceived by the playwright.” (Boxill, Roger. Tennessee Williams. Modern Dramatists Series)

The purpose of this 'plastic theatre,' of which lighting, music, set, and props are essential elements, is to provide 'a more penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are.

Read more at http://www.tennesseewilliamsstudies.org/archives/2002/3kramer.htm

Lillie Recommends...

Lillie kindly recommended www.sparknotes.com as a useful source to get overviews of what happens in Streetcar, character information and also some points on context. Feel free to have a look at the website but be aware that the information sparknotes gives you MUST be complimented with your own personal analysis and critique.

To achieve the highest grades this year you need to probe more deeply. By all means use sparknotes as an initial point of reference but compliment it with your own insights as you think about how Williams presents tragedy in Streetcar.

To remind you all, you should be aiming to comment on:

   1.Content (What is happening, being said, being thought etc)

2. Form (Williams dramatic methods - how is the drama presented? Stagecraft)

3. Effect on audience (catharsis) – the ability of the tragedy to elicit an audience’s response (arouse anger, fear, pity, grief etc)

Homework Questions on Scene 1 and Character Profile

 For Thursday, there are two parts to your homework.

PART 1: Answer these questions as fully as you can, supporting your opinions with quotation from the play.

 

1.Discuss the significance of place names in the opening scene: Desire, Cemeteries and Elysian Fields.

 

2.How is Blanche received by Stanley? How does Williams create a sense of tension between them?

 

3.What is the dramatic effect of using the sound of a cat screeching and polka music at the end of Scene 1?

 

PART 2: Create a character profile for Blanche based on what we learn about her in Scene 1. Dedicate several pages (either in your class books or in a notebook) to Blanche's character profile and keep adding to it as we read further on in the play.

You should base your character analysis around the subheadings: 

 

1. Physical Appearance;

2. Key things she says;

3. How she talks (consider what the stage directions tell us);

4. How does Williams use Blanche DuBois in Scene 1 to suggest tragedy will

permeate the play?

If you have any questions, ask me or post a comment on here. I will get feedback from you all at the start of Thursday's lesson.

ENJOY! 

CLM.

Rich Hall's 'The Dirty South'

Key points from Rich Hall’s ‘The Dirty South.’

·        Heat in Southern American drama is a prominent feature. Quite often Southern American dramas are propelled by heated conflict; the physical heat suitably intensifies the severity of the physical conflict. (NB. In Streetcar the heat gives Blanche DuBois ‘the vapours.’) Look out for Blanche’s constant need to bathe and keep clean in the play and consider the symbolism inherent in this action.

·        Traditionally Southerners have been portrayed as a somewhat unsophisticated and unrefined race of people. However the ‘new’ South has developed a new motto: ‘The South will rise again.’

·        You can’t always understand the South: it is a place of complexity and contradictions. However, what is important is that you can feel it. Ultimately it is a very sensory place.

·        The South is famous for producing ‘memory plays.’ Aspects of the past always seem to impinge on the present. In short, the South cannot escape the stigma of losing the Civil War and a history plagued by racism. In many senses the South seems to be ‘waiting to get better.’

NB: In U.S. history, the Civil War (1861–65) was a conflict between the Northern states (the Union) and the Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederacy.

·        Southern humour and values: the South’s inherent stupidity has historically been a source of comic value and ridicule. (NB: The stock portrayal of Southerners as hillbillies and red necks). In the South, intuition is esteemed over intellect and practical skills championed instead of academia.

·        Historical contexts: Early 1900s massive industrialisation was drawing Southerners north as they sought out better work and more significant wages. In 1915 a tiny but deadly bug wiped out cotton in the South and resultantly the South languished economically.

·        Social Contexts: From 1915 onwards a new kind of class distinction was emerging: urban versus country. Some Southerners embraced this; others were homesick for the past. (NB: The effects on the South brought on by The Depression* and Prohibition**).

*The Great Depression began with the Wall Street Crash of October, 1929 and rapidly spread worldwide. The market crash marked the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth and personal advancement. Although its causes are still uncertain and controversial, the net effect was a sudden and general loss of confidence in the economic future.

**Prohibition in the United States, also known as The Noble Experiment, was the period from 1920 to 1933, during which the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for consumption was banned nationally as mandated in the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

·        Erskin Caldwell tried to portray the abuse of the Southern industrial worker and the disintegration of the family in the South through his writing.

·        America post World War II: A good place to be if you were white. Segregation was still very prominent on account of the mandatory Jim Crow Laws: black and white were ‘equal’ but ultimately separate. The South remained a complex and contradictory region. It was, at once, a place steeped in violence and racial segregation but simultaneously a place that celebrated gentility, politeness, manners and family. In his plays, Williams dramatises this complexity.

·        Tennessee Williams and the South: Williams reinvented the caricature of the South. He tried to make sense of it by making it sensory. Thus, he created a South putrid with physical and social displacement where self deception and sexual hedonism was rife.

·        A Streetcar Named Desire: Williams makes the screen throb with exciting life. Undoubtedly Williams writes with an evident love for the South but importantly he did not glorify the South. Rather he presents it as a place which is lost, an Eden gone bad.

·        Setting of Streetcar: a two-roomed apartment in New Orleans. It is loud, unsettling, raw and exposed. For the audience it can sometimes feel like you are starring into the open window of a sweaty, feral prison.

·        ‘Old’ South: realised in Blanche DuBois from Laurel, a faded Southern belle. She is a relic of the ‘old’ South and its values of gentility and politeness. Blanche is constantly trying to rise above her past. However, Williams makes his audience aware throughout Streetcar that the ‘old’ South was built on artificial values and deception.

·        ‘New’ South: realised in Stanley Kowalski, a Polack.

·        Williams gives us all sorts of insights into human beings through the conflict of these two worlds.

·        Stella DuBois (Blanche’s sister, Stanley’s wife) is somewhere in between. She has adjusted to her new world.

·        The desire and psychosis present in Streetcar made early audiences feel unnerved. Tennessee Williams (born in 1911) wrote in a way that was influenced heavily by much of his childhood. Father was extremely cruel, often beat Tennessee. His mother was the daughter of a Southern minister, a pillar of ‘old’ Southern ideals. Sister Rose was mentally disturbed. As a homosexual, Williams was extremely sympathetic to the plight of outsiders. (Consider this in his treatment of Blanche DuBois in Streetcar).

·        In Streetcar Williams presented a domestic situation that was closer to reality; dysfunctionality at the heart of Streetcar. In the play he gives the South a feeling; he makes it nasty, sexy, dirty and raw. Thus, Streetcar changed what American’s considered to be ‘culture.’

·        Music in Streetcar is crucial in the same way that the blues are a prominent feature of the American South.