Stella Kowalski

1. In terms of casting for Stella Kowalski, the actress would have to be young and gentle looking. She would also most likely be of average beauty. In the play Stella is described as, “…a gentle young woman, about twenty-five, and of a background obviously quite different from her husband” (1778). This meaning that her husband is rough looking while Stella is delicate and small. Another example of Stella being slightly delicate is how Blanche refers to her. Blanche calls her a “precious lamb” (1781). Even though the name is endearing, it is a term most commonly used when speaking to small children or to babies as a lamb is very small and very delicate. The actress would also have to have a “radiant smile” (1784). So the actress would need to be young, gentle looking and is delicate in figure and in the way…

Blanche Dubois vs. Stella Kowalski A Streetcar Named Desire is an old American play that was published in 1947. It was written by an intelligent American playwright named Tennessee Williams. He is a well-respected writer, who wrote this play by using lyrical language. He uses this technique to carefully structure his characters’ emotions and actions. Most of his characters are realistic because of their way of thinking, lifestyle, and values. Two main characters that play a major part in A…

observe the downfall of a character like Blanche DuBois who was nothing like the idealistic conservative female that society expected her to be. Living in the household of the aggressive Stanley Kowalski, who was used to controlling everything around him, her feelings of inferiority were only intensified. By Williams representing both genders like this, it helped…

From a feminist's point of view, domestic abuse should not happen at any cost, not to anyone. In scene 10, the climax of the play we see drunk Stanley who has absolutely no control over himself raping Blanche. Even after Blanche tells Stella that Stanley raped him she refuses to believe that Stanley can do such a horrible thing, and she still lives with Stanley as she is dependent on him and has nowhere else to go. Another example of domestic abuse is from Scene three when Stanley gets drunk and…

Blanche is the main protagonist of A Streetcar Named Desire. She has a quite complex character which consists of stark contraries. She is dreamy and refined, educated and naive, childish and calculating, self-confident and shy, or angelic pure and immoral at the same time (Poppe 60). She grows up in a sheltered atmosphere with her sister, Stella, at the plantation Belle Reve. The name "Belle Reve" means "beautiful dream" in French and represented a wealthy and beautiful manor at that time. With…

it was for some to conform and showed how although new ideals were introduced, some of society’s ideals stayed the same. In the old south, women were seen as vulnerable and feeble. According to Jacqueline M. Allain, “Coupled with the notion of elite white female sexual virtue was that of white female vulnerability—the idea that plantation wives and daughters needed to be protected, defended, and sheltered. Women’s dependence on men stayed the same after the civil war. Stella and Blanche are a…

prominent figure will grant her satisfaction and respect. However, Blanche had a rude awakening when Belle Reve and everything she had known and lived for was taken away. Times had changed and hadn’t kept up to speed for Blanche. Men as she used to know, had taken advantage of her and her mental capacity and vulnerability. One had treated her with the upmost disgust and displeasure sending her deeper into her mental capacity, and on the other hand, one had wanted a wife. Either way Blanche had…

Blanche’s relationship with bright light reveals the most about the complexity that subsists beneath her vanity. Blanche associates bright light with both love and awakening: she describes falling in love as “suddenly turn[ing] a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow” (Williams 67). However, it also reveals the harshness of reality and she dims the lighting (with the paper lantern) to maintain an illusion of “magic” and present “what ought to be truth” (Williams 84).…

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Stanley is extremely violent and vulgar to not only, his wife, Stella, but her sister Blanche. He will yell and physically abuse Stella when she talks back to him. When Blanche and Stanley have verbal tension Stanley rapes Blanche. Stanley feels the need to have dominance over the women in his life because he feels he is superior to them and that they are at his service constantly. In A Doll’s House, Torvald treats his wife, Nora, like a child because he thinks that…

In A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, it is apparent that external flaws result from unresolved internal issues. This is especially apparent in the character, Blanche DuBois and can be observed further in scene six when Blanche tells Mitch, the man she has been seeing lately, about her late husband, Allan Grey, who committed suicide and the about last tune she heard while her husband was still alive, the Varsouviana, which haunts her. This tragic event resulted in Blanche’s…