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Streetcar AO3
a-streetcar-named-desire-bill-cannon (Williams…
Streetcar AO3
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The great depression
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Rise in unemployment worldwide, lots of immigration (migrants going back home), homelessness
1929-1939, book written a few years after this had finished
The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world, lasting from 1929 to 1939. It began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors.
Hurt Polish workers due to their role in industry, at height of Great Depression 50% of Polish people unemployed
American History
Prohibition 1920-1933 due to 18th amendment, created speakesies
After WWII many white people in New Orleans emigrated, meaning black population was huge
The New Orleans is in the deep south of America, and was famous for its jazz music, clubs, multiculturalism, and one of the first places where homosexuality was tolerated.
Plantations and Slavery
The DuBois family’s wealth would probably have been built on slavery, abolished in the South in 1865.
After the Southern Confederate states lost the Civil War (1861–5), the South became poor and families like the DuBois declined.
The decline of wealthy (but slave-owning) Southern families was romanticised in literature and the cinema, for example in Gone with the Wind.
Blanche’s refined tastes, including her dislike of vulgarity, reflect the values of the old South.
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Role of women
Women became more liberated and were called 'flappers', gaining freedom and jobs
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Napoleonic code
Women cannot sell/buy property, have to be completely obedient, places women's property in rights of husband
This code lasted from 1800-1820, meaning stanley was about 120 years late
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Southern belle
It can be said easily that Blanche is a "southern belle", yet her past promiscuity goes against the expectations of her 'role'
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Expected to become ladies of society dedicated to husbands/family/community, characterised by southern hospitality/beauty/flirtatious yet chaste demeanour
South vs north
Blanche as the old, romanticized culture of the South
Stanley as the urban and greedy new America of the North
South wanted to seperate and become a confederacy partly due to their pro-slavery ideals, but civil war meant that they lost and north won- much like Stanley vs Blanche
Blanche's demise
She is being destroyed because of all she has been through and her struggles to catch up with the demands of the new world
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Williams can be seen as part of the ‘Southern Gothic’ movement, characterised by a rich, even grotesque, imagination, and an awareness of being part of a decaying culture
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Williams
Blanche is character based on his sister Rose who was sent to the asylum when he was 16- book written partly to pay for her private institutionalization
Rose who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young woman. In 1943, as her behavior became increasingly disturbing, she was subjected to a lobotomy with disastrous results and was subsequently institutionalized for the rest of her life.
After some early attempts at relationships with women, by the late 1930s Williams had finally accepted his homosexuality.
In the summer of 1940 Williams initiated an affair with Kip Kiernan (1918–1944), a young Canadian dancer he met in Provincetown, Massachusetts. When Kiernan left him to marry a woman, he was distraught, and Kiernan's death four years later at 26 delivered another heavy blow.
Streetcar was written three years after Kiernan's death, possibly meaning that Blanche's stpry about Alan is based on him
Stanley may have been based on Pancho Rodríguez, a loving and loyal companion. However, he was also prone to jealous rages and excessive drinking, and so the relationship was a tempestuous one.
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Suffering from depression, he resorted to heavy drinking (like Blanche) and drugs
He had a lifelong fear of death, especially death from cancer – hinted at in the death of Margaret, one of the many at Belle Reve
Race
Stanley feels he is all-American, and that America is ‘the greatest country on earth’.
Polish communities targeted in the 20's, KK leading protests in Polish neighbourhoods
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Second wave of polish immigrants following WW2, with a strong cultural identity after it gained independence, assimilated quickly though (many seeked refuge in USA)
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