Following up from today's lesson...
Simply put, the tragic hero/heroine is the main character (protagonist) in a tragedy. In Aristotelian beliefs about tragedy it was imperative that the tragic hero/heroine was a person of nobility; a member of the aristocracy to make their tragic downfall more poignant and to ensure that an audience watching a play could be readily instructed not to repeat their mistakes.
However, in Streetcar Williams presents us with a tragic heroine in Blanche, who is ordinary; a 'human' tragic heroine. We get the sense that in the genre of domestic American tragedy Williams is at pains to emphasise Blanche's humanity; she is not the same type of heroine you might expect in an epic/classic tragedy. Rather, Williams arguably shares Arthur Miller's belief that the 'tragedy of the common man' (or woman if we are thinking about Blanche) is just as valid as the tragedies experienced by the characters in Othello, Hamlet and Macbeth for example. By emphasising the ordinariness of Blanche if you like, Williams stresses that all people have the capacity to experience extremely tragic circumstances and throughout the play we see Blanche attempt to, as Miller writes, "gain [her] rightful position in [her] society."
--Re-read Arthur Miller's work on 'Tragedy and the Common Man." Any questions? Ask me on Thursday.
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