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So I may be fixated.... And ion know if my english teacher can tolerate my yapping anymore
•The apartment Stella is living in –
Williams lived in a small and cheap apartment with his family in St. Louis,
Missouri. Crowded space + lack of privacy
•Stanley/Masculinity – William’s father
being a “man’s man”, enjoyed gambling and was abusive towards his wife
(Williams’s mom being Stella). The toxic masculinity of Stanley being also
linked to Williams’s father as Williams’s would frequently be called weak by
his father throughout his childhood due to his illness. reasons, dated a man
named Pancho Rodríguez who was also went on a lot of drunken rages. The
relationship was described as “tempestuous” so Stella and Stanley’s love in the
play could’ve been mirrored off his own experience with Rodríguez.
•Alcohol/drugs – Williams’s father drank,
Williams drank when his mental health declined and most of William’s partners
abuse drugs. Stanley being the violent side of alcohol would come from
Williams’s dad and Blanche being the more sexual side to alcohol would come
from Williams’s past relationships since they were constantly coupled with
substance abuse
•Blanche – A mix of Williams’s and his
sister. The more outward “hysteria” of Blanche could easily be drawn from
Williams’s sister’s schizophrenia. The horrified reactions of the other
characters in the last scene could be inspired of Williams’s and his family’s
own reaction to his sister’s lobotomy. The voices Blanche experiences could be
a mix of how Williams’s imagined his sister’s schizophrenia hallucinations and
some of his own from anxiety. The overwhelmingness of Blanche’s insanity and
insecurity was clearly written from experience. When it comes to Blanche’s more
sexual side, it seems to relate to a lot of the average gay man’s (at the time)
experience:
ØBlanche’s self objectification – Gay men
are more prone to self objectification than a large majority of the LGBTQ: https://kb.osu.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/61a5b0d5-e020-5147-b6f7-c3e8066d03c3/content
ØBlanche’s paedophilia – Gay men have
constantly been labelled pedos since
the dawn of time. I swear it is the most disgusting yet long standing
stereotype for queer people. Making Blanche a paedophile could’ve been a way to
either highlight Williams’s shame of the label he was associated with or it
could’ve been him trying to distance himself/his sexual queer experiences from
Blanche (since a lot of Blanche’s issues with sex and vulnerability are very
similar to one of a gay person’s experience at the time). The play is in the
realism genre so it could even be combating said stereotypes, Allan wasn’t the
paedophile, it was Blanche. Williams’s could’ve easily still made Blanche a bad
person by maybe making her complacent with Allan’s affairs with kids or helping
him or just straight up gender swapping her (and the rest of the cast) but he
didn’t. He went out of his way to not portray his own community in that light,
and to make the predator be a woman too at a time where male victims were
barely acknowledged? The whole concept just goes against every norm at the
time.
ØBlanche “feels dirty” – Homosexuals often
being dehumanized and seen as gross. Constantly being told your queerness “goes
against nature” and seeing people visibly recoil in disgust when you show
affection to your partner is bound to get to a guy so Williams would understand
that feeling of “uncleanliness” (Obviously him and Blanche have different reasons but
the weight of the feeling is the same).
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