Works Cited

Austin, Paula, Erica Cardwell, Christopher Kennedy, and Robyn Spencer. "Introduction: Teaching Black Lives Matter." Radical Teacher. N.p., 1 Oct. 2016. Web. 3 May 2017. 

Cutter, Martha J. "The Story Must Go On: The Fantastic, Narration, and Intertextuality in Toni Morrison's "Beloved" and "Jazz."" African American Review Spring 2000: 61-75. Print. 

Goldthree, Reena N., and Aimee Bahng. "#BlackLivesMatter and Feminismp Edagogy: Teaching a Movement Unfolding." Radical Teacher. N.p., 1 Oct. 2016. Web. 3 May 2017. 

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Vintage, 1987. Print.

Barnes and Noble review

Amazon Review

Goodreads Review

Compare and Contrast Time

>>My Theme: Sexual Slavery


Wow, it's been a long time coming for this post. I've done so much research comparing and contrasting Stowe's and Morrison's narratives that 'narrative' is barely a word for me anymore. But I'm glad I did. I covered a lot of topics with my presentation and the first half of this project, and now here's the good stuff: how Stowe and Morrison both use the topic of sexuality and sexual slavery in two very different ways.

First let's look at Stowe. In my first post, I talked about how sexual slavery is barely a topic she uses. The one time we see it touched on is with Emmaline and Cassy. Even then, though, it's just used as a plot device, revealing Eliza's heritage. Stow used it just to have a platform to push the story the last bit that she needed.

     >>When you dive in even further, you see the lack of mention of the sexual aspect of the slave trade, beyond a few passing mentions. A vast majority of female slaves were used in this manner; their bodies were nothing more than units to produce more children for sale or eventual slavery. Many were taken from their mothers at an early age and then had their own children taken away as soon as they had them. Or even worse, they would be subject to the sexual violence of their masters for nothing more than their master’s amusement. Stowe basically glosses over this fact, and when she does use it, it’s only to further the narrative. In fact, beyond Eliza, the only time we ever hear about anything that happened to slaves and their children is pretty much just for the shock value. We hear about Prue’s story on pages 198 and 199, and that’s all we get for it. While not necessarily sexual slavery, it ties in with slaves and their children. Stowe likes to pick and choose when she uses certain aspects in her story to effect the characters, but we don’t see much consequence beyond that. Even little Eva doesn’t react much to the story of Prue’s struggles.<<

I wasn't wrong, was I? Stowe cherry-picks quite a bit, using what she thinks will be impactful as a narrative piece rather than an actual commentary And I think that's the problem  with Uncle Tom's Cabin-- it isn't a slave narrative, it's a story. She might have intended it to be the story of the slaves, the unsung who did what they had to to escape with their lives and their family, but that isn't what it became. It became a white-tinted story; granted she couldn't help that  she was a white woman, and yes she might have had the best of intentions, but it just didn't succeed. Uncle Tom's Cabin feels like a story in every sense- it doesn't carry the weight Beloved does. 

Now let's focus some on Beloved. Morrison made it a point to tell the story as brutally as she could.
     "After I left you, those boys came in there and took my milk. That's what they came in there for. Held me down and took my milk. [...] 
     "They beat you and you was pregnant?"
     "And they took my milk!" [p. 19-20]
Stowe never got that down and dirty. And this is only the first 20 pages. Hell, in the first 5 we see Sethe exchanging sex for the engravings on her baby's tombstone. Sex is a very powerful symbol for Morrison in this book. If you think about it, all of these problems arise from sex in the first place- I   mean, how else do you make a baby? A baby that is eventually killed and haunts her mother, at least. In addition to just being a horrible case of sexual assault, Sether's milking is also symptomatic of the dehumanization faced by all the slaves. Dehumanization isn't my topic, but still it stands to be pointed out. 

Look at Vashti, Stamp Paid's wife. She was forced to become her master's mistress, just because it was what he wanted. Look at Ella, who was "shared by father and son"[p.256] against her will. for the women in Beloved, this is almost just a way of life for them. Sexual slavery was suffered by so many women, just for them to pop out more babies to be sold, or simply because their owners wanted to. Rape was so commonplace amongst slaves. Not just that, but things like Sethe's milking, the idea of sexual dominance, is also prevalent. There was no benevolent White Saviour like there was in Uncle Tom's Cabin. There was no kind white man/woman/couple/angelic little child to take pity on them, no one besides Amy Denver at least. It made for tough times for all of the characters, but it felt more true to the narrative. What made Uncle Tom's Cabin so nearly unbelievable for me (and unmoving, to be honest) was the fact that the character's struggles didn't feel genuine. It felt like it was Stowe's way of making the white readers feel good by saying "Oh, but these people were white and look at how good they were to the slaves! If you're good to slaves too, you're a good abolitionist!" I mean, maybe that was true. Being an ally to the persecuted is definitely a good thing to do but it felt so... comforting to the white reader, it didn't actually capture the struggle of the slaves. 

Not like Beloved. Beloved. Beloved is raw and brutal in the way it depicts slavery, in how it tells of the horrors these people experienced. There is no comfort for the white reader. There is no pat on the back. Someone in a review once said the book "made them feel guilty to be a white person ". To a certain extent, yeah. There is an inherent guilt that white people let this happen. There is a lingering bitter taste in the generations that have followed because of what happened. But, we aren't responsible for our ancestor's wrongs by the same token. We're clean slates, ready to do the right thing and try to right the wrongs that were done and make sure they don't happen again. Stowe doesn't leave that door open; Stowe is too clean cut, too nice in the way she closes up the story. Everyone is happy and everything is good, yay! Beloved, not so much. Beloved leaves them all still haunted, still clinging to their pasts. You feel for them, because that past is still clinging to you as well. Maybe not to the same degree, but it looms like a shadow. History always does. 

I've rambled enough, though. In my personal opinion, I think it's time we started phasing Uncle Tom's Cabin out of the spotlight in the curriculum. Don't stop teaching it entirely, because it is still important. It was the springboard of its time, the platform for the Civil War to blast it's many voices from. But now, it's outlived the narrative it once set down. Things have changed. We don't need to be delicate about racism anymore, we need to be frank. Brutally honest, now more than ever. Beloved does that, Beloved puts it in our face and doesn't let us forget what happened. We need that kind of openness when it comes to the dialogue on racism. If we don't learn from the past, we're bound to repeat it. That's where Stowe helps us. But if we can't accept that some problems are still around, like Beloved reminds us when it's mirrored with the BLM movement, then how are we supposed to move forward?

Contemporary Connections

>>The Subject: Repeating Racism in the 21st Century


This one strikes pretty close to home for me.

I can still remember exactly what I was doing when the Ferguson Riots were exploding all over the national news. I remember being at my dad's house, and looking at my stepmother to say, innocuously, "What do you think about all of this?" I expected her to have some kind of sympathy for what was happening, for the broken family and community, for the wasted life. I didn't expect to hear something along the lines of, "He got what he deserved." Whether you agree with me or not, that's not what I'm here to discuss. With the #BLM movement gaining steam and only getting bigger and more widespread, it's time we looked at the racial implications of it all. And how things really haven't changed since the time frame Morrison set Beloved in. Maybe they've gotten prettier, but racism is still alive and well.

The first article I read talked about Dartmouth University, about how they rallied together despite being such a small community (2% minority in the entirety of Hanover, 7% minority undergraduates). It reminded me of the end of the book, seeing the entire black community gather around 124 and lend support to Sethe. While not exactly for the same reasons, it still strikes a powerful chord. People will always rise up to protect one another, support one another, even if they are a small community.

Ferguson and #BLM also became a platform for teaching. By showing the inequality faced by blacks and minorities overall, #BLM wants to even the playing field and expose the injustices they face. Morrison wanted to do much the same with Beloved; she wanted to expose the sufferings of the slaves. What they went through was horrendous, and she waned to expose it to the world once again, without the pretty veil history tried to put on it . Without white people trying to brush it off as "a thing of the past". Both Morrison and the #BLM movement want to keep the truth out in the open. Racism is a live and well, and the voices it tries to oppress won't be silenced.

In a way, they're parallel. Morrison stated in the interview we watched that she writes to give a voice to the black community and the struggles they face, without the white-tinted lens over it. It's hard to really understand someone's struggles if  you cant actually experience them. But putting them on blast, putting it down for people to face as cold, true facts, it about the best you can do. Both Morrison and #BLM achieve this-- putting the racial issues down as true facts, without the pressure of making it "clean and acceptable" for the public, without fear of presenting it in a   nonthreatening way, helps it succeed. Racism isn't pretty, but the more we face it, the more we work to solve it, the quicker we can reach racial peace. Maybe it's too idealistic, but I'd like to think we can all play nice. And I think that's all Morrison wants, too. I think that's why she writes, so we can all see the injustices and think to ourselves, "how can I fix that?"

Beloved Critical Commentary

>>Article Used: The Story Must Go On: The Fantastic, narration, and Intertextuality In Toni Morrison's Beloved and Jazz, by Martha J. Cutter(Of course, I'll really only be focusing on the points about Beloved, since we haven't read her other novel, Jazz. I've heard it's excellent, though) 

Beloved in an exceedingly complicated novel. No one can really agree if Beloved was truly a ghost, if she was a figment of everyone' imagination, of if she was just some bad luck woman who really did exist, who really did cause all of that harm at 124. The scholarly essay talks about the idea of metatextual reading, how the reader and Sethe's viewpoints become in in the same, and how that can make it hard to separate from metatextual reading.

Metatextual reading itself is a crazy topic. It's the idea that one text can critique or comment on another through it's writing. The way this comes across is how the story can inspire the reader to seek out what made it so fantastic in the first place(Fantastic here is referring to the genre, not the adjective- "Todorov defines the fantastic as a literary genre that makes uncertainty on the part of its readers the very core of its rhetorical and thematic strategies". [Cutter, 2]) It's hard to deny this is true. Beloved leaves us with a prolonged feeling of something eerie, particularly when it comes to Beloved herself- was she a ghost? She had to be. "According to Todorov's definition, Beloved is an almost perfect fantastic narrative. However, some of its rhetorical strategies cause ti to seem more marvelous than fantastic. More specifically, its narration so closely entangles the characters' point s fo view with the point of view with the reader that, by the end of the text, it is difficult to separate the two, and many readers are likely to agree with Sethe and Denver that Beloved is the returning ghost of Sethe's deceased, crawling already? baby." (Cutter 3)That's when our ideas start to bleed over into our real world experiences; Is that actually a man I see in the corner of my vision, or is it just a tree? it has to be some kind of ghost, right? We are predisposed to the idea of the ghostly interference in our own lives because of what we've seen in Beloved. That hesitation between rationality and the supernatural is considered "the realm of fantastic".

By implanting the idea of the fantastic hesitation in our minds, Beloved becomes a metatextual reading on the real world itself- are we really so much different from Sethe now that we're experiencing the same ghostly occurrences? By the time we reread Beloved itself, it becomes impossible to make that separation- we are now stuck in the metatextual viewpoint. The reader is inexplicably linked with Sethe in their fantastic view on the world, in their second guessing of everything around them. Realistic explanations for events in the novel become harder and harder to believe, because we now have that silent commentary hovering over our heads. "At the end of a fantastic text the confluence between reader's and character's points of view self-destructs, forcing the reader to read metatextually, searching for the mechanisms whereby this identification was created and the ambiguous world of the fantastic was maintained." (Cutter 3) We can't abandon the newfound view of metatextual commentary, even in our own lives.

All in all, the article was complicated, but ultimately rewarding. I had never thought about the idea of metatextuality before, hell I hadn't even heard of the phrase. but it makes so much sense now that I think about it. Beloved was so spooky because much of it was possible in the real world- how many stories have you heard that include apparitions like the white dress, or a ghost throwing an epic tantrum with someone's furniture, like id did in 124? Beloved is both a commentary on the world we cannot always explain and how we deal with those uncertainties. I agree wholeheartedly with Cutter; once you see the metatextual side, you'll never be able to move past it. that's just one more way Beloved makes itself known to your memory forever, sticking there whether you'd like it or not. So the next time you think you see something over your shoulder, think to yourself- Is that my own Beloved?

Beloved Reader Responss

>>Reader Response
>>Responses taken from Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon review sites.

This section will be much shorter than the one for UTC, mostly because many people had the same general thing to say. What I talk about is what the overwhelming majority of reviews have in common.


 Average Goodreads Rating: 3.8

The most powerful review I found was right in the beginning. Even after some digging, I found that everything seemed to fall in the same area of thought. Beloved is being praised as one of the best novel the reviewers have ever read. All over there's praise for Morrison's writing style and characterization, the way she holds nothing back and gives everything. My favorite review on the site says "It's 6 o'clock in the morning and I have finished with one of the best books I have ever read in the course of my short life. I am sleepless and I need a moment to organize my thoughts, sort out my feelings. Come back to real life. But I can't." It speaks volumes about Morrison's writing style, that she can leave that kind of lasting impact on people. i know I harbor a lot of the same feelings. And the few people that did give it less than stellar reviews were met with hotly debating counter-comments. My favorite so far is "I didn't like this book very much but it wasn't because it made me "feel guilt for being white". White people are seriously some of the whiniest group of individuals I've ever come across. If one group isn't politically-correct and spouting off about how there should be more diversity the other group usually consists of individuals who complain about political correctness yet get offended by books like these. Grow up."
Yikes. 

I agree so strongly with the responses I've seen here. Everyone seems to have a more positive regard for this book than Uncle Tom's Cabin The reviews I saw here weren't without criticism, but overall, they seemed to have liked Beloved much better. And who could blame them? Morrison's mastery is undeniable. So many people were shaken by the story and the way it portrayed itself. Stowe's narrative just wasn't as impactful. Morrison brings out so many turbulent emotions in people, things we aren't supposed to be thinking about, or so we've been told. Slavery doesn't exist anymore, so we shouldn't think about it so much, right? Morrison isn't about to let that happen.



Average Amazon Rating: 4.1

More overall positive reviews. Everyone seems to, again, be on the same page as one another when it comes to this. Everyone agrees that Morrison is one of the best writers they've read; One even claims "Toni Morrison's writing isn't 'great'. It's mind-blowing." The entire first page of reviews is almost exclusively five stars. In many cases, the only thing that held it back from higher ratings on anything less that five was the difficulty following the shifting narrative. I can understand, given that Morrison doesn't spell everything out for her readers, and that isn't for everyone. That is also a double edged sword, though, as one reader says "Unfortunately, I found this incredibly tedious to read [...] It felt almost as if the author was intentionally clouding the narrative." Also understandable. At times it was a little tedious to read, but that's also Morrison's signature style; heavy on symbolism and weaving visual scenery. Like I said, nothing is spelled out. Another great point I saw made was that it needs to be reread in some cases. "A lot of it needs to be reread because it makes you think about what she is really saying". It always comes back to Morrison's writing style, largely praised, but sometimes condemned for difficulty. 

This one gave me a lot more varied reviews while still being largely positive. People tend to be more talkative on Amazon reviews, Ive noticed. Why that is I have no idea, but it makes everything a lot easier to read through. I still agree with just about everything I've seen thrown down on Amazon. They were a little more critical of Morrison's writing while still enjoying it. As much as I praise Beloved, especially in contrast to Uncle Tom's Cabin, it's always nice to see the critical elements as well. no novel is perfect, after all.


Average Barnes and Noble Rating: 4 Stars

Why does no one ever want to write a review on this site?

A majority of the reviews are just star ratings, so this one took a little bit of digging on my part. The few on the first page were critical but still positive. In fact, the very first review puts it well when they say "This is a very complex novel with multiple themes, motifs and surreal events. Be prepared to read it through at least 2 times and find help to understand it deeper." Another repeating message or rereading. It's important with a book like this to actually get a chance to understand what Morrison is saying, and rereading will definitely give you that chance. the first time through, you're so absorbed in the book and its events, you don't have time to really pay attention to anything outside of it. When you know what to expect on the second read, though, it becomes a little easier to actually absorb what Morrison is writing, without having to pay extra special attention to the main plot. I was hard pressed to find any negative reviews, going through the first five or six pages just kept giving me five star ratings no matter where I looked. (And because Barnes and Noble doesn't have a "filter by rating" feature, scrolling took a LONG time. Also, special shoutout to the person that wrote their review all in caps. I love reading book reviews in an aggressive internal voice. Quite entertaining.)  

Everything I saw from these sites, I had to agree with. They were much more critical than they were with uncle Tom's Cabin, but not in the way you'd expect. While critiquing the story, they didn't neglect the reason it was so gory, so tedious, or so thought provoking It's an important narrative on the lives and horrors that slaves lived through, and that hasn't been lost since the slave trade itself came to be. Even now, a few hundred years later, the echoes of it's implications still haunt us. We can't escape it, and Morrison wouldn't let us, even if we could. 

"Lady Lazarus" as a Display of Power

>>Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

Fair warning, I’m going to be discussing the topic of suicide pretty heavily and the darker elements that go with it. Keep that in mind while you read.

Lady Lazarus is a show of power. Not necessarily just of the feminine persuasion, but as a whole. Maybe it’s made better by the fact a woman is putting these words to paper, who’s to say. But the fact remains that Lady Lazarus is a terrifying narrative. When you focus on the idea of Plath flexing some kind of proverbial power, you don’t need to look any further than  lines 79-81.

                Herr God, Herr Lucifer

                Beware

                Beware

                                (Norton Anthology, 1420)

What could be a bigger display of power than challenging God or the Devil himself? In the poem, Plath evokes this idea of an almost otherworldly being, someone that has died three times and still comes back for more each and every time she’s resurrected. It’s put even more into perspective when you think about Plath’s first suicide attempt. Whether by choice or by complete accident, she managed to survive. She rose up from that which would have claimed her the first time. It definitely adds this sense of morose power to her writing; She may not have liked that she survived, but she did, and continued to thrive afterwards. Like she had temporarily beaten down her own demons. Granted she did ultimately take her own life, but the time in between seems like a good time for her. At least in the terms of his poem.

Or, alternately, she feels powerful in the fact that she can control her own well being and her own fate. She could choose to take her life at any time, and yet she doesn’t. She rises from the proverbial ashes every time, renewed with her decision for another few moments of respite. No one can make the decision for her, she is ultimately in control of the fact of  whether she lives or dies. That in and of itself gives her the feeling of power she lives; she can reinvent herself however she sees fit. In this case, she is both the Lady Lazarus and the “Jesus” that revives her. She is her own maker, and the one to undo herself. It brings a little extra weight to the passage I mentioned above; she fears neither God nor the Devil, because they are not the masters of her fate when she ultimately holds the killswitch in her hands.

This one was a little personal for me from my own experiences. The idea that Plath is exercising the power of her own fate drives home the reality of people who have considered something like suicide before. They hold everything in the palm of their hands, whether they choose to go through with it or not The choice will always be theirs, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them. In a way, I think this was Plath’s way to try and help herself feel better about it all. Her marriage wasn’t exactly the best, and her life hadn’t always been peaches. I think this is how she held her own power; she looked at what she could do with her own hands, reminded herself that she still held power somewhere, when everything else seemed to be outside of her control. Maybe that’s what ultimately lead her to try and succeed on her second try. It was about power and control, the two things she never had before.

Moving on, I think it’s time to go back to the original passage. Like I said before, this is Plath showing her own power where she feels none. The image of this Lady Lazarus, rising up out of one of humanity’s biggest atrocities, is practically overflowing with the idea of untamable power. The power to defy death and those around you. The biggest pat to remember, though, is that she doesn’t change. Look at lines 31-34 and you’ll see what I mean:

                These are my hands

                My knees.

                I may be skin and bone,

                Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

                                (Norton Anthology, 1419)

Plath doesn’t come back as a different woman. She doesn’t try to change some aspect in some kind of bid to make herself survive longer this time. Maybe to fare better in the world around her. No, she stays herself. She shows the longevity she has, the unwillingness to change in the face of adversity. She still has control over everything this way, and she doesn’t even want to change herself. She views herself as just right for this powerful narrative. Lady Lazarus is exactly as she should be. More importantly, she doesn’t present herself as a man. She shows her power as a woman, unwilling to bend to what is expected of her. She projects the idea of a strong woman, something to be reckoned with, that not even a man could do better than her. She is rising from the ashes of her relatively shattered life at the hands of her cheating husband, and emerging as this new, powerful being. She is unstoppable in her own mind. He will never have the power over her life that she herself does.

Bringing it all together is the idea that, on a broad spectrum, this is Plath’s statement of her power. She is this Lazarus figure, the only thing that truly holds sway over her life. Her marriage was in shambles at the hands of her cheating husband. She had no power over what was going on around her, she couldn’t change anything that was happening. So this idea of Lady Lazarus, of this all-powerful figure that bowed to no man, to no great threat or even death itself, was like a comfort for her. She even enforced the idea that she was the master of her won fate, ultimately taking her own life in her hands.

When you read the poem with this context in mind, it brings to light a different kind of understanding It brings up feelings of unbridled power, but also something almost melancholy. It’s sad to think that she may have written this as an outlet for the one this she couldn’t deal with: her own life. She had to take solace in the fact that she could end it at any point. She clung to the idea that that was the only control she had over anything. And to think, she ultimately ended up taking her life in the end. In short, Lady Lazarus was a brief explosion of power, of good feelings, for an otherwise downward spiraling woman.

Works Cited

Plath, Sylvia. "Lady Lazarus." 1961. The Norton Anthology: American Literature. Shorter 8th Edition ed. Vol. 2. New York City: Norton, 2013. 1418-1420. Print. 1865 to the Present.

Tennessee WIlliams: A Dissection

>>Tennessee Williams

Something that absolutely delighted me was finding out Tennessee Williams was gay. In all my years reading his plays, I never really got a chance to look at him as a playwright and as a person, so it was pretty great to find this out. Being gay myself, it was nice to have that kind of connection to one of my favorite playwrights. Hearing about his tumultuous and largely unfortunate love life helped hammer home a few things I’ve noticed in his writing; the focus on this idea of disillusionment, the driving force of sex behind several characters across many of his plays, and most notably in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the struggle with homosexuality in the Deep South. I’ll get to a few of those points later, though.

It was also interesting to learn about his sister, Rose. She was schizophrenic and subjected to a lobotomy in 1941 that severely disabled her. She was the only other person besides Williams’ late-life lover Robert Carroll to get anything from his will. Once he made enough money from his work, he had her moved to a private hospice facility, where she was well taken care of. He may have had a largely dysfunctional family, but he cared for Rose very much and made sure she had all she needed. What a kind brother.

Moving on to the research and reading. One of the most interesting topics I turned up was the criticism of Williams’ constant use of sexual undertones in his plays. It was a theme I didn’t realize connected all of them until I really looked at it. In  A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche is depicted as demure yet sexually open, if for the right man. In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the fact that Maggie and Brick haven’t slept together in quite a long time is an underlying plot. You can also add in the homosexual undertones with Brick and Skipper, something that wasn’t really seen a lot at the time. It’s a little less obvious but still there in  The Glass Menagerie, manifested in the fact that Amanda keeps trying to set her daughter up with gentleman callers. It shows her innate drive to push her daughter towards marriage and eventual children, because in a way she’s trying to live vicariously through her daughter, controlling her every action as she sees fit. And what better way to show overwhelming control than over a person’s romantic and sexual lives?

Coming back to Streetcar, there’s a very strong case to be made for this subject between Blanche and Mitch. “Mitch’s ‘love’ for Blanche is subverted through her attempts to fornicate her.” (Panda, 2). Blanche is used to it from her experiences with the soldiers in the army camp, but as soon as Mitch rolls around, it seems more fitting for her to withhold herself to a certain degree. This fits more into the demure display we would expect, and what’s become typical of Tennessee. Many attribute his closeness with his mother to this writing dichotomy that seems to be present in every one of his works. It’s especially true here. He tries to strike that perfect balance between innocence and sexuality with Blanche, something ideal. Which leans me to my second point on this subject; He always seems to be chasing this ideal, this perfect vision of just about everything he can get his hands on. When you look at where Blanche and Stella came from, Belle Reve, its’ especially true. Belle Reve is portrayed as this wonderful place, where they had the perfect upbringing, as opposed to New Orleans, which only proves to turn Blanche away Her ideals are very much in line with Williams’, and it almost feels like sometimes he’s trying to project that want for perfection through her.

“I thought you would never come back to this horrible place! … I meant to be nice about it and say- Oh, what a convenient location and such- Ha-a-ha!” (Norton Anthology, 1119)

She’s clearly displeased with the entire thing. It’s nothing compared to Belle Reve. But Stella thinks it’s perfect. This is the second side of the Williams coin; as much as he strives for that perfect ideal, he also loathes the places he came from. He found solace in New Orleans, in the way it stood out so differently from everything he had grown up with Stella and Blanche are two sides of Williams that he tries to keep in harmony through the play. It’s a kind of self-expression, veiled cleverly into a play we can all relate to in some ways. We all want the perfect place to lay our heads without sacrificing everything we love and hold dear to us. Blanche and Stella are the epitome of that idea.

Moving on, we have one of my personal favorite passages and one of my personal favorite theories- That Blanche was based off of Williams’ beloved sister, Rose. If you recall, I mentioned in the very beginning that Rose was schizophrenic, and had several disturbing episodes before her lobotomy. Schizophrenia commonly involves auditory hallucinations, something we see quite a bit with Blanche. Her ears are always ringing with the sounds of the gunshot that killed her beloved poet. She hears inhuman voices calling out and taunting her whenever her emotions crash in one way or another. Towards the very end when the doctor and the Matron come to get her, the exchange goes as follows

                MATRON: Now, Blanche!

                ECHOES [rising and falling]: Now, Blanche- Now, Blanche- Now, Blanche!

                                (Norton Anthology, 1175)

This sounds a lot like a schizophrenic episode, doesn’t it? And this isn’t the first time we’ve heard the echoes, They also appear in Scene Ten; “The night is filled with inhuman voices like cries of the jungle, The shadows and lurid reflections move sinuously s flames along the wall spaces.” (Norton Anthology, 1170). This is also hallmark of a schizophrenic episode. Blanche becomes panicked and frantic, wanting to get away from Stanley any way she can. She even breaks a bottle to try and fend him off.

When you add in the ending, it all makes more sense. Blanche is suddenly very calm with the idea of leaving with the doctor and the matron. Where she was once combative and frightened, she now has a sudden sense of peace. As she leaves with serenity, Stella is left broken in her wake. This seems to me like a strong metaphor for Rose’s lobotomy. When it happened, her schizophrenia was tempered, her personality calmed at the expense of her mind. When Stella mourns, so does Williams. He mourns for her and what should have been a better life for her. There was nothing that could be done, but that doesn’t make the fact any easier to swallow. Stanley is unsupportive in the worst kind of way, almost patronizing as he tries to calm Stella. Williams’ family didn’t care much for Rose after she was hospitalized, and it seemed like Tennessee was the only one that remembered her, as shown by the way he took care of her through the rest of his life, even as she outlived him. And so with that, I can say, with confidence, that Blanche is at least partially based on Rose as well as Williams himself, and the ending of Streetcar was Williams’ way of coping with the lobotomy and subsequent “loss” of his sister Rose. Just as Stella lose Blanche in the end. 

Works Cited

Holder, Rebecca. "Making the Lie True: Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Truth as a Performance." Southern Quarterly, 1 Jan. 2016. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.

Holder, Rebecca. "Making the Lie True: Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Truth as a Performance." Southern Quarterly, 1 Jan. 2016. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.

"Tennessee Williams." Poetry Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2017

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