THE PLAYS
Sense of voice – engage with specific quote in question and personally responding into question
Exciting opening to essay
1. Decide on your comparative argument
2. Select characters and scenes
3. Three comparative parts
4. Alternative readings and context (4 references – a sentence)
THEMES
Marginality and madness – the outcast – mental health – ferdinand, blanche
Violence and conflict – poker night, rape, eunice and steve (sound of violence upstairs, he comes
with black eye, more powerful figure, used slightly comically)
Masculinity
Family – (Stella and Blanche) relationship between the brothers (act 2 scene 5), duchess relationship
with brothers, sibling jealousy between blanche and stella and Ferdinand and duchess’ relationship
with Antonio – my fathers poiniard. Stanley and stella, pregnant which excludes blanche consciously
– Napoleonic code, mitch and Stanley brothers in arms.
Gender struggle
Powerlessness of women -
Social class
Setting
Patriarchal society
Power battle
Desire/sexual relationships
Reality/illusion (appearance, reality, deception and deceit, clothing)
Death + mortality (Duchess, Julia poison bible, Bosola accidentally stabbing Antonio), symbolic death
of Blanche, Mexican flower women – references foreshadow, her husband Allan Grey, Belle Reve
funerals contrasting visions of death, unwashed grape romanticised version with young doctor)
COMPARING ANIMAL IMAGERY
> Stanley: “You hens cut out that conversation in there” (scene 3) – hens domesticated,
ownership, caged (Stage direction: richly feathered bird amongst hens)
> Ferdinand: “Methinks I see her laughing/Excellent hyena” – Duchess is the opposite to
jarring and hysterial, scavenging animal, link to wolves, own desire imposed on her as he
can’t acknowledge his own desire
> ‘melancholy perch’ – bird imagery, falcon imagery ‘bore you upon my fist’ ‘and let you fly at
it’ – release of tension and sexual desire - he controls her, entrapment of her marriage but
impotence to do anything about it, ‘tame elephant’ juxtaposed with bird, land locked and
heavy, slow to progress – using Julia as entertainment. Julia has element of sexual freedom
like duchess, different manifestations of the same desire but Duchess has political agency
> Stanley ‘To hold front positions in this rat race’
> Blanche – ‘Men are callous things with no feelings, but this does beat anything. Making pigs
of yourselves.
Sense of voice – engage with specific quote in question and personally responding into question
Exciting opening to essay
1. Decide on your comparative argument
2. Select characters and scenes
3. Three comparative parts
4. Alternative readings and context (4 references – a sentence)
THEMES
Marginality and madness – the outcast – mental health – ferdinand, blanche
Violence and conflict – poker night, rape, eunice and steve (sound of violence upstairs, he comes
with black eye, more powerful figure, used slightly comically)
Masculinity
Family – (Stella and Blanche) relationship between the brothers (act 2 scene 5), duchess relationship
with brothers, sibling jealousy between blanche and stella and Ferdinand and duchess’ relationship
with Antonio – my fathers poiniard. Stanley and stella, pregnant which excludes blanche consciously
– Napoleonic code, mitch and Stanley brothers in arms.
Gender struggle
Powerlessness of women -
Social class
Setting
Patriarchal society
Power battle
Desire/sexual relationships
Reality/illusion (appearance, reality, deception and deceit, clothing)
Death + mortality (Duchess, Julia poison bible, Bosola accidentally stabbing Antonio), symbolic death
of Blanche, Mexican flower women – references foreshadow, her husband Allan Grey, Belle Reve
funerals contrasting visions of death, unwashed grape romanticised version with young doctor)
COMPARING ANIMAL IMAGERY
> Stanley: “You hens cut out that conversation in there” (scene 3) – hens domesticated,
ownership, caged (Stage direction: richly feathered bird amongst hens)
> Ferdinand: “Methinks I see her laughing/Excellent hyena” – Duchess is the opposite to
jarring and hysterial, scavenging animal, link to wolves, own desire imposed on her as he
can’t acknowledge his own desire
> ‘melancholy perch’ – bird imagery, falcon imagery ‘bore you upon my fist’ ‘and let you fly at
it’ – release of tension and sexual desire - he controls her, entrapment of her marriage but
impotence to do anything about it, ‘tame elephant’ juxtaposed with bird, land locked and
heavy, slow to progress – using Julia as entertainment. Julia has element of sexual freedom
like duchess, different manifestations of the same desire but Duchess has political agency
> Stanley ‘To hold front positions in this rat race’
> Blanche – ‘Men are callous things with no feelings, but this does beat anything. Making pigs
of yourselves.
