欲望号街车 终板

characters
• Blanche, because of her “inappropriate manner”, she loses her job and leaves her hometown to live with her pregnant sister. She is highly vulnerable and neurotic. She looks Stanley as a rude man and always has conflicts with him. In the end, being raped by Stanley ,she lost her mind and is sent to an insane asylum .
• Many of Williams’s plays reflect the romantic Southern Tradition as is exemplified in the works William Faulkner and sexual freedom as in the novels of D.H. Lawrence. His characters are victims of having outlived the southern past in which they had been at home.
• Stella, Blanche’s sister, Stanley’s wife, a simpleminded woman who is intrigued to her husband. Like Branche, she is from an upper-class family in the south, but she has a totally different attitude towards love from her sister.
Major Plays
• The Glass Menagerie (1945), Williams’s first major success, won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award.
• A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), his second major play, won a Pulitzer Prize, and established him as an major American dramatist.
Several elements in
A Streetcar Named Desire
《欲望号街车》戏剧赏析
Tennessee Williams
(March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983)
Tennessee Williams (191Biblioteka Baidu—1983),
• One of the most prominent playwrights in United States after World War II.
2020/3/2
How come the play is named
A Streetcar Named Desire？
• In scene one, Branche’s first line is: “They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at -- Elysian Fields!”
• It may be formed by such factors as the prevailing conventions and definitions of art, or current moral codes. Such ‘horizons’ are subject to historical change, so that a later generation of readers may see a very different range of meanings in the same work, and revalue it accordingly.
• Among the play‘s greatest achievements is the depiction of the psychology of working class characters. Williams tries to portray the bluecollar characters on their own terms, without romanticizing them.
Plot
• 布兰奇·杜包尔斯，因为“不适当”的行为而被解除了教师职务。她只得到 新奥尔良妹妹家居住。妹妹一家住在一栋肮脏的公寓里。姐妹俩都接受过 旧式的南方教育。俩人都为爱而嫁，但姐姐的婚姻却很不幸。妹妹丝黛拉 嫁给了波白移民的儿子——斯坦利。布兰奇与斯坦利一见面，俩人就对对 方产生了厌恶感。斯坦利认为布兰奇不值得信任，会给妻子带来不好的影 响，而且他作为一家之主的地位也会受到威胁。布兰奇认为斯坦利是个没 受过教育的波兰小混混。 布兰奇在逗留期间遇到了斯坦利的朋友米奇。米奇很善良，也很喜欢布 兰奇。布兰奇告诉米奇自己丈夫不幸的死亡。斯坦利由于不满布兰奇对妻 子和朋友施加影响的作法，而准备毁掉她。但怀孕的丝黛拉却不准斯坦利 碰姐姐一下。经过一番调查，斯坦利终于发现了布兰奇的秘密，原来她并 非那么纯洁，他让米奇知道了这个秘密，米奇觉得受了愚弄，喝得大醉。 他无情地抛弃了布兰奇。 这时，斯坦利的孩子降生了。他从医院醉酒回家，发现布兰奇准备“同 以前的男友私奔”。在酒精的刺激下，斯坦利疯狂地追上了布兰奇并强奸 了她。布兰奇真的发疯了。
• Mitch, Stanley’s friend, who initially wants to marry Blanche, knowing her past from Stanley, he leaves Branche and coldly insults her which partly leads to her madness.
Style and Features
Like Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams wanted to challenge some of the conventions of naturalistic theatre.
Williams is known as a "poetic" realist. His plays explore ways of using the stage to depict the interior life and memories of a character.
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Stella: Why are you sensitive about your age? Blanche: Because of hard knocks my vanity’s been given. What I
mean is –he thinks I ‘m sort of prim and proper, you know! [ She laughs out sharply.] I want to deceive him enough to make him- want me… Stella: Blanche, do you want him? Blanche: I want to rest! I want to breathe quietly again! Yes- I want Mitch…very badly! Just think! If it happens ! I can leave here and not be anyone’s problem…
• He wrote about sensitive, poetic misfits who escape from reality into a world of illusion/art.
• Williams propounded the feminizing of American culture as a counter to a society built on masculine ideals of strength and power.
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), also a Pulitzer Prize
Themes
• Many of his plays are autobiographical, including references to elements of his life such as homosexuality, mental instability and alcoholism.
Horizon of Expectation
• a term used in the reception theory of Hans Robert Jauss to designate the set of cultural norms, assumptions, and criteria shaping the way in which readers understand and judge a literary work at a given time.
Fantasy Cannot Overcome Reality
• Stanley, a bad tempered blue collar ,who is Blanche’s brother-in-law, devoting himself to alcohol, gambling and desire. He hates Blanche because of her influence on his wife, so he wants to destroy her dignity and pride. He reveals Blanche’s past and ruins her engagement. Finally, he successfully gets rid of Blanche and sends her to an asylum .
• Regarded as controversial and poetic, his plays write about the loneliness and isolation of modern man, revealing themes such as violence, frustrations, sex, even homosexuality.
• The complexity of A Streetcar Named Desire is not the plot of its story, but its social background and the creating motive of the auther Tennessee Williams who puts his own personal experiences into this drama. These two points lead to reveal the essential elements of the drama and reflect a variety of themes in it. There will be different themes when we read it from slightly different angles.