Tuesday 24th work

Up-hill

-landscape is a metaphor for a spiritual journey -

Rossetti uses landscape in a similar way
- 'The road" is symbolic of a life's path.
- ' up hill' - struggle and suffering
- ' night/dark' are a metaphor for darkness/ doubt
- ' inn' place of refuge from doubts and insecurities
- 'other wayfarers' - people who have already made the journey
- 'that door' - the division between living and the dead.

Power and control

- coverging - lowering own language to fit into a friendship group
- diverging - raise language - authority/ disapproval


Mock essay

Explore the ways Rossetti presents attitudes towards death in this poem and others you have studied.

1) shut out  - "the door was shut' - keeping her away from her place of happiness - imaginatio, place of comfort/ gates to heaven.
2) 'echo' - "watch the slow door That opening, letting in, lets out no more"- barrier to other world(heaven)

Tennessee Williams was born on the 26^th march 1911 in Columbus,  and died on the 25^th February in New York.

His mother and father were Edwina and Cornelius Coffin Williams.

He was an American playwright and author.

A Street Car Named Desire was released in 1947.

Most of Williams’ work was adapted for the cinema, he also wrote short stories, essays, poetry and memoirs.

4 Years before his death, he was added to the American Theatre Hall of Fame

Key quotes for Blanche - 

Is there something wrong with me? - worried for herself 

That's for me, I'm sure. - making herself seem bigger than she is 

I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is 50% illusion. - sarcasm 

Key Quotes for Stanley - 

 [pushes her back down roughly] Just keep your seat, I'm not so sure.  -(talking to blanche)

I never met a dame yet that didn't know if she was good-looking or not without being told - criticising women

Key quotes for Stella-

You think you're going bowling now? - to stanley

stella - He smashed all the lightbulbs with the heel of my slipper. 

(blanche)  And you let him? Didn't run, didn't scream?

stella - Actually, I was sorta thrilled by it. 

Post war context

1941, Williams wrote
' I think there is going to be a vast hunger for life after all this death - and

Human emotion 

• grief - "hid their faces" - personification of the sun and moon 
• regretful - "fallen peter weeping bitterly"
• insecurity - "am i a stone" - interrogative - insecure  - ontological(am,be, to be)
• no emotion
• lonely - "yet give not o'er"  - self absorbed, detachment, distance

Characters in Street Car Named Desire

• characters are not real people 
• characters are literally device

-  blanche as a character is a device used by Tennessee Williams to explore the inner conflicts and sense of futility, for the Southern Belle world of his childhood, exemplified for him in the way his mother often behaved and expected her children to behave. 

Useful phrases 

• character is used to...
• illustrate
• connotate 
• reflect
• prompt us to 
• exemplify
• explore 
• 
  

Tennessee Williams - A Street Car Named Desire

- Post WW2  American Play write
- from the south (southern gentility)
- Born in Mississippi
- Alcoholic Travelling Salesmen father ( Cornelius Coffin Williams) and Southern Belle mother
 - Interested in emotional truth
- Gay (from a very conservative background)
- His sister Rose was treated for mental illness and was given a lobotomy in her 30's
- His family moved to st.louis when he was 8

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John Lahr 'Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the flesh'

3 Things I learnt from the extract

- Close relationship with his sister
- Didn't really have any fond memories
- Seems as if he didn't like change
- Cats are symbolic for brutality

In the round tower at Jhansi 

Context 

- Indian mutany - British were violently overthrown by the indian sepoys( a type of soldier)

- Captain Skene and his family were murdered but in Rossetti's version, they take their own lives.

 Why does she alter the story in the way she does?

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key points 

- Indian Empire - Queen's crown and jewel 

- Indians held against their will( mutany) 

- Unravelled the British Empire( lost stability)

- Poets want to mark the key moments in historical events.

- Taking a wild location gives leeway for more emotion

- Round tower symbolises entrapment