The plays A Streetcar Named Desire and A View from the Bridge are both plays that focus on mainly the theme of domination of the female characters by the males. Where A Streetcar Named Desire is a Southern Gothic, A View from a Bridge is a tragedy that is actually similar to Williams’ play as they both end tragically for the main character. Each playwright uses their own method and techniques in order to get the message or point of view across to the audience members.
In A Streetcar Named Desire, the form of a Southern Gothic gives the readers its distinct build – up of tension in the play’s scenes. Throughout the play, the structure closely follows the confrontation between Stanley and Blanche and the tension starts to build up. As the tension increases, the structure changes to compensate for the conflict. Tennessee Williams does this through the play’s stage directions. One such example is where the playwright forebodes future events in the play – ‘The boy [...] I’m going to be sick!’ This cliff – hanger at the end of scene one suggests that Blanche has a mysterious past and it urges the audience members to read on as they are curious to this sudden shock. Like most dramas similar to A Streetcar Named Desire, it follows the common structural points – exposition to dénouement. Williams structures the play as eleven different scenes – each which have different time periods to show the progression of the play from May to September.
Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge is a typical Greek Tragedy as the protagonist dies. The difference between A Streetcar Named Desire and A View from the Bridge is that where A Streetcar Named Desire does not have a narrator in the play, A View from the Bridge does have a narrator, Alfieri. Alfieri...
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...l reflect how women were portrayed in the 1940’s and how they were treated. Stanley’s masculinity threatened Blanche’s magical realism and reigned dominant over Stella. Williams’ presentation of women is shown to be as clear and effective by how his play is well – structured and the play’s genre of a Southern Gothic play. On the other hand, Arthur Miller portrays the domination of women in A View from the Bridge by his use of the narrator, Alfieri, to symbolise the connection between Italy and America after the Second World War. Miller has used external analepsis to create that realistic feeling throughout the play’s acts. The structure in the play allows the frequent interval of Alfieri to give his own opinion on the current events and it also allows the plot itself to have a flow which gives the play its identity of a Greek tragedy through its domination of women.
Comparing A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof In the game of life, a man is given the option to bluff, raise, or fold. He is dealt a hand created by the consequences of his choices or by outside forces beyond his control. It is a never ending cycle: choices made create more choices. Using diverse, complex characters simmering with passion and often a contradiction within themselves, Tennessee Williams examines the link between past and present created by man's choices in "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. "
The dawn of the twentieth century beheld changes in almost every aspect of the day-to-day lives of women, from the domestic domain to the public. By the midpoint of the twentieth century, women 's activities and concerns had been recognized by the society in previously male-dominating world. The end of the nineteenth century saw tremendous growth in the suffrage movement in England and the United States, with women struggling to attain political equality. However, this was not to last however, and by the fifties men had reassumed their more dominant role in society. Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire around the time this reversal was occurring in American society. In this play male dominance is clear. Women are represented as
As women's studies programs have proliferated throughout American universities, feminist "re-readings" of certain classic authors have provided us with the most nonsensical interpretations of these authors' texts. A case in point is that of Kathleen Margaret Lant's interpretation of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire in her essay entitled "A Streetcar Named Misogyny." Throughout the essay, she continually misreads Williams' intention, which of course causes her to misunderstand the play itself. Claiming that the play "has proved vexing to audiences, directors, actors, readers, and critics" (Lant 227), she fails to see that it is she herself who finds the play vexing, because it does not fit nicely into the warped feminist structure she would try to impose upon it.
In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, main character Blanche Dubois to begin with seems to be a nearly perfect model of a classy woman whose social interaction, life and behavior are based upon her sophistication. The play revolves around her, therefore the main theme of drama concerns her directly. In Blanche is seen the misfortune of a person caught between two worlds-the world of the past and the world of the present-unwilling to let go of the past and unable, because of her character, to come to any sort of terms with the present.
In Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire the characters represent two opposing themes. These themes are of illusion and reality. The two characters that demonstrate these themes are Blanche, and Stanley. Blanche represents the theme of Illusion, with her lies, and excuses. Stanley demonstrates the theme of reality with his straightforward vulgar ness. Tennessee Williams uses these characters effectively to demonstrate these themes, while also using music and background characters to reinforce one another.
In Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams uses the suicide of Blanche's husband to illuminate Blanche's insecurities and immoral behavior. When something terrible happens to someone, it often reveals who he or she truly is. Blanche falls victim to this behavior, and she fails to face her demons. This displays how the play links a character’s illogical choices and their inner struggles.
Character Conflict in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a play wrought with intertwining conflicts between characters. A drama written in eleven scenes, the play takes place in New Orleans over a nine-month period. The atmosphere is noisy, with pianos playing in the distance from bars in town.
A Streetcar Named Desire was written by Tennessee Williams in 1947 and it is a play that takes place after the second World War in the South of the United States; New Orleans, Louisiana. The play ultimately explores on the conflict amongst Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski as they both have a connection to Stella Dubois. Blanche being her sister, and Stanley being her partner. This play is considered to be a tragedy. Twelfth Night was written by the World renowned William Shakespeare and it explores the story of siblings being separated after a tragic accident at sea. ‘Without character there can be no drama’ is the overall theme of this comparison as every character contributes to a story, causing drama to arise in one way or another. This piece will ultimately explore the similarities and differences between Viola from ‘Twelfth Night’ and Blanche from ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. Although Viola and Blanche come from two different books written by two different authors in different time periods, we can draw the conclusion that they both possess the theme of deception.
Written in 1947, A Streetcar Named Desire has always been considered one of Tennessee William’s most successful plays. One way for this can be found is the way Williams makes major use of symbols and colours as a dramatic technique.
“A Street Car Named Desire” is a critically acclaimed play by Tennessee Williams, which emphasizes the sexual desire and tension between characters Blanche Dubois, Stanley Kowalski, Stella Kowalski and Harold Mitchell. Throughout the play, Blanche is so nervous and on edge that a slight disturbance could shatter her sanity. However, Blanches ambition for love and “magic” is what truly affects the other characters in the play and cements the idea that Blanche is a proper lunatic. A street car named desire not only focuses on tense family relationships present in the play but as well as the affects of insanity caused by an individual ambition, which in this case is the desire for love through the protagonist Blanche Dubois. In the play “ A street car named desire” by Tennessee Williams, Williams creates the idea that Blanche’s crazed ambition for “magic” and love is impossible because of her destitute and unforgettable past and her ambition for love leads to her own collapse and downfall.
The characters in “A Streetcar Named Desire”, most notably Blanche, demonstrates the quality of “being misplaced” and “being torn away from out chosen image of what and who we are” throughout the entirety of the play.
Tennessee Williams gives insight into three ordinary lives in his play, “A Streetcar Named Desire” which is set in the mid-1930’s in New Orleans. The main characters in the play are Blanche, Stanley, and Stella. All three of these characters suffer from personalities that differentiate each of them to great extremes. Because of these dramatic contrarieties in attitudes, there are mounting conflicts between the characters throughout the play. The principal conflict lies between Blanche and Stanley, due to their conflicting ideals of happiness and the way things “ought to be”.
In 'A Streetcar Named Desire' we focus on three main characters. One of these characters is a lady called Blanche. As the play progresses, we gradually get to know more about Blanche and the type of person she really is in contrast to the type of person that she would like everybody else to think she is. Using four main mediums, symbolism and imagery, Blanche's action when by herself, Blanche's past and her dialogue with others such as Mitch, Stanley and the paperboy, we can draw a number of conclusions about Blanche until the end of Scene Five. Using the fore mentioned mediums we can deter that Blanche is deceptive, egotistical and seductive.
There are 3 major themes in the play A Streetcar Named Desire, the first is the constant battle between fantasy and reality, second we have the relationship between sexuality and death, and lastly the dependence of men plays a major role in this book.
In Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" two of the main characters Stanley and Blanche persistently oppose each other, their differences eventually spiral into Stanley's rape of Stella.