John McRae Notes

Scene One

• It was written less than a hundred years after the civil war
• The timing is through a 'long, hot summer'
• A lot of the scnes take place in the dark of the night
• The integration of New Orleans is more advanced at this time than any other place in the United States
• The soundtrack is the 'emotional undercurrent of music, voices, characters'
• It sets up atmosphere before the main characters are introduced
• Blanche's description is one that makes us think of a moth to a flame
• Blanche is trying to make herself at home in this society throughout the play even though she is a complete outsider
• 'We own this plae' but Blanche owns nothing anymore
• Blanche is from Mississippi which is seen as more old fashioned than New Orleans.
• Even though Blanche pretends not to drink, the audience knows that she is an alcoholic
• 'Funerals are pretty, compared to death'- funerals are made to try and make death seem more pretty
• Stanley Kowlaski is the new man in modern America and is the alpha male
• All of Stanley's possessions symbolise the new culture of America which is one of capitalism

Scene Two

• There is a pick up of speed in the second scene
• The paper work represents the dead hand of the past catching up with the future and the future is represnted by Stella's baby
• Blanche is childless in a 'end of the line' way
• Blanche is the product of her history
• She latches onto the doctor and the nurse because they represent another chance at the future
• 'I was flirting with your husband!'- it's the only thing she knows to do and she thinks that's what men want

Scene Three

• Steve's joke is about sex and it shows how it is a priority for them over food
• The first conversation between Mitch and Blanche is one about physical need
• 'Gallantry' - old fashioned, echoes the old-south

Catharsis

Tragedy- Int its pure form a character from high social position (king) falls due to their fatal flaw. The end result should be dead.
The release of these emotions is called catharsis.

Key Quotes in 'Streetcar'

Key Quotes in 'A Streetcar Named Desire'

Blanche

'Whoever you are -  I have always depended on the kindness of strangers'
'I want to be near you, got to be with somebody, I can't be alone'
'Stella, you have a maid, don't you?'
'You have to watch around the hips a little'

Stanley

'Stanley carries his bowling jacket and a red-stained package from the butchers'
'[He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images flashes into his mind and determining the way he smiles at them]'

Stella

'But of course there were things to adjust myself to later on'
'[dutifully]: They haven't slipped one particle'
'[She laughs but her glance at Blanche is a little anxious]

 

Notes on Context of 'A Streetcar Named Desire'

Notes on Context of 'A Streetcar Named Desire'

Southern Belle

The southern belle is based on the young, unmarried, upper-class women of Southern society. They were expected to find suitable husbands, raise families and retain the social status of the family by socialising. The character of a southern belle represents the expectations of southern women to be dedicated to community and family and to have a 'flirtatious yet chaste demeanour.

New Orleans and Immigration

In the 1940s there were more immigrants than ever in New Orleans and although people tended to gravitiate towards people of their own ethnicity, New Orleans remained very intermixed and multicultural.

Tennessee Williams' Other Plays

The Glass Managerie was the play that catapulted Williams' career and has strong autobiographical elements. It features characters that are based on himself, his mother and his mentally fragile sister.

Williams' Life and Times

Tennesse Williams spent the first ten years of his life living at his grandparents' home as his father was a travelling salesman. He then moved to St. Louis with his family when he was twelve, a town similar to New Orleans in Streetcar, and the nastiness of city life left an impression on him, which can be shown in many of his plays.
It was in St. Louis that his older sister, Rose, failed to cross over from a child into adulthood, inspiring the character to Laura in The Glass Managerie.
Williams attended the University of Missouri for three years, until his father got him a position in a shoe factory. He suffered a nervous breakdown two years later and recuperated in Memphis, Tennessee , with his grandfather.

Goblin Market Summary

The poem Goblin Market, written by Christina Rossetti and dedicated to her sister, begins with two sisters, Lizzie and Laura, hearing the calls of goblin men trying to entice people to buy their fruit.

Despite Lizzie's warnings not to, before Lizzie ran home, Laura approaches the goblin men and trades a lock of her hair for some fruit and proceeds to gorge herself and then return home.

After Laura eats the goblin men's fruits she begins to waste away, causing Lizzie to eventually go and see the goblin men in the market. /Despite the goblin men trying to tempt Lizzie like they did Laura, Lizzie stands firm, casuing them to try to fill her mouth with their fruits but as she squeezes her mouth shut, she instead just gets covered in the juice. When Lizzie gets home, Laura kisses the juice causing her to be painfully cured.

Lizzie and Laura become wives and mothers and tell the story to their children, as a cautionary tale.

Maude Clare - Notes

Summary- Maude Clare was in love with a man who she couldn't marry because he was of a different social class to him even though she is like a 'queen' to him.
He marries someone else through an arranged marriage and Maude Clare interrupts the wedding.

Nell

She feels superior to Maude Clare, 'Me best of all Maude Clare'
Is jealous of Maude Clare because her husband wants Maude Clare and not her.
Is satisfied that she's married and that she's secured her future by marrying someone with wealth, which Rossetti uses to show the shallowness of arranged marriages and how they are not for love but for wealth and status.

She rubs it in Maude Clare's face by saying that even though she's 'more wise and much more fair', she's better because she married the Lord. Rossetti does this to show how poeple use thier status and social standing to distract from their flaws and insecurities, and also use them to feel superior to others.


Nell also gets the last word, showing how she has more power than Maude Clare due to her status.

The Lord

The Lord as a character is more of a title than a character.
He reperesents how even though you may have a title and social standing, it does not mean that you have control over your life and don't have to obey society's expectations of you.

The Mother

Starts off as quite proud at the fact that her son has reinforced thier social status, and is not interested in the fact that he may not be happy with Nell, which is how Rossetti agains shows that shallowness of marriage.
There's a hint that she went through the same thing, 'your father thirty years ago had just your tale to tell' and he didn't love her but someone else who he couldn't marry.
Rossetti uses the mother to show how deep these kinds of loveless marriaged run through victorian society.

Maude Clare

She rises above the fact that she isn't able to get her own way.
She may be saying that Nell doesn't have a heart and so should take hers, 'Take my share of a fickle heart, mine of paltry love.
Maude Clare could be a represntion of Rossetti, swowing how she want to disrupt order.




The Lord's mother speaks first, showing how hse is trying to influence what happense and is trying to control her son, representing society's expectaions of what he should do and how is is controlling his decisions. She also represents the aritstocratric part of society.
Maude Clare speaks secons to help show how she has disrupted the wedding by interrupting the mother. This also shows the amount of power she has depite her class.
The Lord speaks third, showing how even though he is the one with the title and the power, he doesn't have much authority or control over what is happening.
Nell speaks last and has the final word, showing how she comes out of it above Maude Clare and gets her way in the end, despite how everyone else feels.

Views of Death in 'Song' and 'Remember' by Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti wrote the poems ‘Song’ and ‘Remember’ during Victorian times, which was when people had a fascination with death, and by this time people had reasonable expectations of living to old age, which is why death at a young age was considered tragic. Funeral and burial arrangements became more extravagant at this time as well, and loved ones were expected to mourn for a long time. Christina Rossetti’s poems ‘Song’ and ‘Remember’ contradict the Victorian views on death in many ways.

Firstly, both poems are about the speaker, who is going to die soon, telling a loved one that they should not mourn them. ‘Song’ contains the line saying that they do not want a  ‘shady cypress tree’, which is a tree which lives for a very long time and is used as a way of saying that a person’s spirit lives on, also allowing people to remember them for a long time. By saying that they do not wish to have one of these trees, they are implying that they do not wish to be mourned and remembered, and would rather their loved ones moved on. This goes against what the Victorian attitudes towards mourning, and is Rossetti’s way of saying that the traditions have to change.

‘Remember’ builds up to the climax of ‘Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad’, which show how Rossetti rejects the Victorian ideal of mourning and not being allowed to be happy for a certain amount of time after someone has died, as she would rather her loved ones be happy rather than be obligated to feel sad. Christina Rossetti also uses a euphemism in the poem ‘Remember’ for death which is, ‘when I am gone away’ as oppose to in ‘Song’ when she uses the line ‘when I am dead’. This gives the impression that the speaker in ‘Remember’ hasn’t come to terms with their own death as much as the speaker in ‘Song’ has.

Summary of 'Forbidden Fruits - Sex and Religion in 'Goblin Market' by Ray Cluley

'Goblin Market' written by Christina Rossetti, as Caroline Norton said, 'defied categorisation', meaning that it is incredibly open to interpretation.
The essay written by Ray Cluley talks about the links to sex and religion, littered throughout the poem.
For example, he says how the goblin's voices are linked to the coosing of doves which is an animal associated with Aphrodite, goddess of sexual love. I think that this is a very interesting point that has some solid evidence.

In the poem Laura gives away a lock of her hair in order to try the goblin's fruits, which is a sexual metaphor often used in literature, as Cluley says, and it may be Rossetti trying to show how women give away a part of themselves in  order to be married, and representing how women were expected to keep thier virginity until they were married.

Rossetti also makes it clear how the goblins are not what they seem to be due to the line 'they sounded kind', giving the impression that they were not actually kind and only 'sounded' to be.

Explore the Way Rossetti Presents Nature in her Poems

In many of Christina Rossetti’s poems, including ‘Shut Out’ and ‘Paradise in a Dream’, nature is presented in many ways and used to portray her love of God. Christina Rossetti, although she lived in London for all of her life, got her love of nature from the romantic poets, like John Keats, who were popular at the time and showed nature as holy and spiritual. Rossetti followed the tradition of writing about nature in this way, to communicate her love for God and also her yearning for spiritual connection.

Rossetti shows her love for Christ in ‘Paradise: In a Dream’ as she talks about the ‘Tree of Life’ which is a reference to Jesus being on the cross. This is reinforced when Rossetti says that it is ‘abundant with its twelvefold fruits’, referencing Jesus’ twelve disciples who were loyal to him. Trees are also seen as quite sturdy, so Rossetti choosing to compare Jesus on the cross to a tree shows how she believes that Christ is reliable.

 Rossetti also shows how much faith she has in God as she says that ‘its fruit the hungry world can feed’ showing how she believes that Christ has the power to save everyone spiritually, although she uses a physical metaphor for this.

Rossetti also shows her yearning for spiritual connection in ‘Shut Out’ when she says ‘from flower to flowers the moths and bees’ as flowers and bees depend on each other in order to survive and are in harmony with each other, bees need pollen to make honey and flowers need bees to fertilise them. As Rossetti never got married, even though it was expected of Victorian women, she lacked the connection that even bees and flowers had so she instead put all of her love into God.

Christina Rossetti also shows her love for God in the poem ‘A Birthday’, in which she mentions aspects of nature, that also have connections to fertility and purity, throughout it. She again uses the image of an apple tree, and says that her heart is like one ‘whose boughs are bent with the thickset fruit’, suggesting that her heart is ripe, like apples, and that she is ready to fall in love and have a spiritual connection with. Rossetti also mentions ‘pomegranates’, which have many seeds inside of them, giving the image of fertility.

Rossetti also uses ‘silver fleurs-de-lys’ to demonstrate purity and in nature, also when she mentions ‘gold and silver grapes’. As an underlining theme of this poem is that fact that she is in love with God and since she is also mentioning natural things with variations of perfection, it implies that anything in God’s image is perfect.

In conclusion, Christina Rossetti presents nature in a number of different ways throughout her poems, however she primarily presents it as something holy and spiritual, with connections to God, as many romantic poets at the time also did. However, she also uses nature to demonstrate themes of unity, as with bees and flowers, and spiritual connection, something that she is said to have lacked in her life.

Christina Rossetti

Life

·

•  She was born 5 December 1830 to Gabriele and Frances Rossetti.
• Rossetti was educated at home by her mother, who had strong religious views
• She came from a literary and artistic family
• She was never married as she declined marriage from three men, all for religious reasons

Role of Women in the 19th Century

Men and women inhabited what the Victorians called ‘separate –spheres’ and only came together at breakfast and lunch.

The role of women was to get married and raise families, which Rossetti never did, however they were expected to not to focus too obviously on finding a husband.

Male Perceptions of Christina Rossetti’s Poetry

Early male critics and reviewers of Rossetti’s poetry had different expectations of poetry written by men and poetry written by women. They thought that there was ‘not much thinking in them’. By dismissing any idea that there are deeper meanings and in her work, the reviewers were able to continue perceiving Rossetti’s work as what was expected of a female poet.

Themes in Rossetti’s Poetry

Although her poems contain themes of religion she never preaches about it. Her writings show her questioning her religious views and beliefs.

Even though Rossetti was ambivalent about women’s suffrage, her poems did contain themes of feminism.

When Rossetti was diagnosed with Graves’ Disease, her poems began to have the theme of loss of beauty in them.

I Come From

The poem 'I come from' has constant theme of identity throughout it, and it seems to be about a man thinking about his life while on a train journey, as the first and last lines are about trains.
This seems to suggest that he spends a lot of his life 'waiting forever for the train to London'.
He says that while the train to London comes from 'smashed windows' and 'graffiti', he himself come from 'clean handkerchiefs' and 'dinner money'. This suggests that his childhood is large part of his identity because he s thinking of the dinner money for his lunch when he went to school.

It is also suggested that a large part of his identity is about collecting things, as well as enjoying the outdoors as he has 'an almost complete set of Observer I-Spy books'. However since his collection isn't complete, it could suggest that he has been neglecting his passion for the outdoors lately, maybe due to spending too much time working in London.

The line saying that he comes from 'recorders, clarinets, a pianola', suggests that music is also a large part of his identity, however he also comes from 'silence' as well, which could suggest that he doesn't have very much time for i anymore.

Part of his identity is also from watching his 'father mowing the lawn in the dark' which is followed by another two lines about his garden when he was a child, suggesting that it was a large part of his life.

Overall, the speaker in 'I come from' creates a sense of his identity by reminiscing about hings that he enjoyed during his childhood and his childhood home, and using the contrast between living in the suburbs and living in London to show how homesick he feels and the differences in his life and identity.