Lights, sound and action in the play

• Blanche hates light - light represents truth, age
• Stanley grabs, bigger, stronger action
• Blanche's jewellery looks glamorous but is fake - Like Blanche symbolic of facade - not real or authentic
• Harsh light represents harsh truth - Mitch drags Blanche into the light
• Throws radio out the window
• Other poker players all masculine - contrast
• Stanley and Stella's sex life symbolised by "Coloured lights"
• Blanche's clothes mark her as an outsider
• Dim light at the birthday party - dark situation - trapped
• Stella makes it obvious that Stanley owns her
• Vasvouvian Polka - simplistic, light hearted, childish, innocent - pathos
• Blue piano goes into hectic breakdown - Blanche's breakdown of mentality

Can mention the film but it is a play!

Old South and New America

Elements of gothic literature - Tense, suspenseful, macabre events, supernatural elements, deranged and damaged characters

Macabre events - Blanche's Husband's suicide
Supernatural elements - Past events haunting
Deranged and damaged characters - Blanche

Belle Reve means beautiful dreams - it is ironic why?
- It is introduced as being lost
- It is never a reality in the play

Blanche -

• Not down to earth
• Lives in a dream
• Racist
• Talks in an archaic, out dated way
• Way she likes to be treated

Stanley

• He is straight talking
• Harsh
• Masculine
• Uses colloquial language

What they wear is important

Blanche - white clothes, neat, fine, vulnerable, easily destroyed

Stanley - Rough, hard wearing clothes

Blanche's loss of mentality reflects loss of the old America

Rape - death of culture

• Europeans colonised America in 1500-1600 - french name from this time - landowning
• Kowalski, polish - immigrant

Symbols - death of old America

• Blanche's "students no longer interested"
• Stanley throws radio playing classical music out of the window

Blanche's health

• Lost Belle Reve through excess
• Old family corrupt - gambling, slavery, exploitation 

Just after war in 1945 - civil war

No help from other classes to save belle reve

Past catching up with her

Family buried like rubbish

Elysian fields - joke to Blanche

Events are symbolic

Street car named desire goes to cemeteries - progression of the play

• Stanley lively, loud
• Multicultural, less reserved
• Blanche doesn't fit in
• Blanche escapes into imaginary world
• Stanley destroys it by calling it all lies
• Handing over of papers

Setting

Vibrant, multicultural, diverse, loud, rustic, liberal

- Port city "Vitality, fertility and variety"
- Chaotic environment - hurricanes

1940s - lawful racial segregation
Segregated facilities not considered unequal until 1954

Why New Orleans?

1938 - Tennessee lived there - went to seek acceptance as a gay guy

Lax, liberal

'It's as if New Orleans is a character in this play, one that holds the anxieties..."

Stanley represents - modern masculine world
Blanche - aristocratic and rural - old world

Racial variety of characters
The area is poor with "raffish charm"

In essay ALWAYS MENTION SETTING!

Soeur Louise De La Misericorde

It is a poem about giving something up

Tone

• Emotional conflict
• Struggling
• Used
• Despondent
• Conflicted
• Melancholy
• Obsession
• Bitter
• Struggling with the demands of religion
• Distressed
• Distraught

Fire used figuratively for desire

Vanity - desire is selfish - to desire someone is selfish - fulfilling own appetite

Repetition - obsession

Alliteration

Distraught distressed voice - Hyperbolic

Last stanza rhyme falls through - distraught losing control - used up by feelings

Beginning proud of it but on closer examination lead her places - distraught

Scene 1

Through a long hot summer
Not just a few characters it is a whole society
The stage directions communicate to all senses


"Two women, one white one black"
-Integration - multicultural

A Streetcar Named Desire - Overview

It is set less that 100 years after the civil war - America was no the same as today
The south was seen as a different country - world removed from the rest of America


Tragedy but no death at the end
Tragedy of deteriorating mind
Tragedy of gender
All about desires
Exclusivity of masculinity - Poker night

Essays - tips and problems

Introduction
- Contextualise (say what it's about)
- Contextualise the other poems
- For top grades get in broad context - e.g. when written in the victorian time a woman's role was different

Essay Structure

1. Topic Sentence
- Address question
- Attitudes of the narrator

2. Quotations and analysis
- Contextualise (What's happening?)
- Vary the analysis

3. Context

4. Comparison
- More than 1 sentence
- Marks for knowing lines form other poems

Rossetti's life - timeline

1830 (5th december)
- Born the daughter of Gabriele and Francis - Religion from mother art from dad
1940
- Although originally evangelical Rossetti turned towards Trachtarians
1845
- Mental and physical breakdown - various doctors consulted diagnosed as 'Angina Pectoris'
1848
- Engaged to James Collison - ended when he reverted to roman Catholicism
1853
- Professor Rossetti (dad) retires from poor health - Rossetti and mum try and make money by starting a dad school but they gave up within a year - after this Rossetti lead a retired life interrupted by recurring illness diagnosed as Angina and sometimes Tuberculosis
1860 (Early)
- In love with Charles Cayley - According to brother William she marry him because "She enquired into his creed and found he was not a christian"
1866
-Rejects Cayley
1870s
- work of the society for promoting christian knowledge - suffered from neuralgia
1872
- Emotionally troubled by Dante's breakdown
1882
- Dante dies - Rossetti's last 12 years of life were quiet
1894 (29 December)
- Rossetti dies of cancer

Gender roles in the Victorian era

Separation

Originally women would have helped their husband or parents with the family business but as the 19th century came men were more and more frequently travelling to work instead. Wives, sisters and daughters were left out home to oversee the domestic chores but this was becoming a job for servants. By the 1830s women wore crinoline skirts which made it virtually impossible to do any chores.

Men were considered stronger yet morally superior to men. It was therefor a woman's job to instil this quality in any children. It was this power that women had in the home that was used as an argument against women getting the vote.

Education

To suit this new role women, rather than being taught to clean and cook middle class women were instead taught to have "accomplishments". Although even if educated and bright women were expected to pass it off with femininity and gracefulness for fear of being called a "blue stocking". A Blue Stocking was the name given to any women who spent too much time following intellectual pursuits. This was believed to be unattractive as it was stupid for women to try when men were obviously superior. Doctors actually said that a women, if educated would become less feminine and their ovaries would be damaged.

Marriage and sexuality

Women were expected to want marriage only as a means to have children not to satisfy any emotional or sexual satisfaction. A doctor, William Acton wrote in his medical text, The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs in 1857 ‘the majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled by sexual feelings of any kind’