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Explore the ways in which Williams makes use of confrontation in A…
Explore the ways in which Williams makes use of confrontation in A Streetcar Named Desire:
Physical acts committed by Stanley
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The poker night is a microcosm for the fragility of the antebellum/aristocratic old South when in competition with the meritocratic New South which represents more progressive working class values
Stanley feels comfortable to confront Blanche because he hears her criticising him for being a philistine
Clash between the Old South and New South
Stella is forced to confront Stanley's violent nature.
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'Dissonant brass and piano sounds'
Expressionist technique (musical motifs) used by Williams to demonstrate the incongruity and disharmony of the New South and Old South. This sounds as Stanley begins to calm down, regretting what he has done to Stella. This represents how as a couple they are extremely toxic, but remain wrongly forced together by societal expectations.
'Her eyes go blind with tenderness'
Not only does this expressionist metaphor demonstrate the emotional nature of the situation (because Stella is crying) but it's also a powerful metaphor to describe that Stella's unpreventable infatuation/reliance on Stanley does not allow her to truly be confronted with his violent nature. She attributes his misbehaviour to him being drunk, showing how she excuses him and this has certainly happened before.
'Her hair loose about her throat'
she is suffocated with the societal expectation to stay with her husband who abuses her, but she does not choose to free herself.
Psychological confrontation of Blanche's realities
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Blanche cannot escape her own downfall, though she flees to New Orleans to do so. Living with Stella and Stanley even speeds up this downfall, as she struggles to adjust to the modern working-class ways of New Orleans, whilst also struggling with the tragedies of her past.
Blanche's antebellum views are not compatible with the values of the New South. This is distressing for Blanche.
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Symbolised in the removal of the paper lantern, exposing and confronting her realities.
After the disillusionment of Mitch she is left ‘fall[en] to her knees’, a physical tableau to the audience of her tragic ‘fall’ into reality, and the subsequent loss of power, and sanity, that accompanies it.
exacerbated by Stanley in the final scene where he “seizes the paper lantern, tearing it”
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Williams experienced himself the horrors of mental illness. sister of playwright Tennessee Williams and the model for his heroine in “The Glass Menagerie.” In the late 1930s, she underwent a prefrontal lobotomy to cure a worsening case of schizophrenia. The operation failed, and she was institutionalized for the rest of her life.
Born into a family with a strong history of serious mental illness, Williams seemed to have had several major depressive episodes during his early adulthood, along with severe and worsening alcohol and drug dependence and abuse involving sedatives and stimulants throughout his adult life.
Stella's avoidance of confrontation:
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The lack of confrontation in this play holds just as a much a meaning as its presence. Stella, though she knows Stanley has raped Blanche, stays with him because she becomes confronted by the reality of being a single, financially-unstable women in 1950s America (seeing her sister become ill and be sent off).
Stella chooses to stay silent and fall back into the role of a financially dependent housewife, because she knows she does not have the strength or courage to stand up to Stanley, becoming a single-mother who would struggle to fend for herself.
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'There is something luxurious in her complete surrender now that her sister is gone'
She submits herself to Stanley completely, now that Blanche is no longer around to criticise her for it. This is a relief to Stella in a way almost, because she knew she would stay with Stanley and would not be able to survive without him in any case.
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Women in the 1950s were ultimately reliant on their husbands, particularly financially. Without financial independence women could not fend for themselves, seeing as they were in such a vunerable position in society.
INTRODUCTION: Williams presents confrontation as inevitable as inequality runs so deeply throughout the society that Williams is trying to criticise. All confrontations throughout the play are presented as an unpreventable consequence of rising tensions between the characters.