In “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Stanley’s character is prominently shown as a one-dimensional egotistical brute. His actions and reactions throughout the play make the audience see Stanley’s character as this because he is selfish, disrespectful, impatient, rude, controlling, rough, and dangerous. Stanley won’t take orders from anyone and wants to be in control of everything around him. He does not want anyone giving him orders, and he feels no need to change himself and will not let anyone tell him otherwise. However, two moments in the play specifically allow the audience to see Stanley’s character take on a greater complexity than the one-dimensional egotistical brute. He breaks away from this title in these scenes and reveals another side to him, which is uncharacteristic of Stanley.
One scene that reveals complexity to Stanley’s character is when Stella leaves their house after Stanley beats her. He had invited his friends over that night to play poker and got drunk. At this point, his impatience had increased and he became more controlling. Therefore, when Mitch had annoyed him by turning on the radio, he decided to throw the radio out the window. Stella told his friends to leave the house then if they knew what was best for them, and that was when Stanley began to beat her. The men pried him off of her and Stella left to Eunice’s place. Stanley yelled for Stella at the top of his lungs and says he wants his baby back. This still reveals the one-dimensional character of Stanley because he does not care that it is early in the morning and people may be asleep. He does not care that Eunice is telling him to go away and just keeps on screaming for her. However, when Stella comes down the stairs, Stanley is not mad at the sight of her, but is sincere, which is uncharacteristic of his brute nature. He kneels to her presence and then holds onto her. The audience can discover at this moment that he truly is not as stern as he portrays. He reveals here that he is vulnerable to the notion of not being with Stella. He cares so deeply for Stella and shows that he does not want to be away from her. This allows the audience to see that this character does have a heart. Before this scene, Stanley’s genuine and caring side is not truly prevailed, and at this scene it is. Also, by him also taking care of the broken radio the day after, he reveals that he knows he did something wrong. By getting the radio fixed, he admits his wrongdoing with how he reacted at the poker party and shows that he feels responsible to fix his mistakes to regain Stella’s love and trust for him.
The second moment in the play that opens up an alternate view of Stanley is when he returns back from fixing the radio and he decides to overhear Blanche and Stella’s conversation. By how the play portrays Stanley as being loud and intrusive on others without warning, it is quite surprising to see that Stanley does not just barge into the room without any disregard of intruding their conversation or not. He decides to stop before the entrance of his place and overhear what Stella and Blanche are talking about. He overhears Blanche ongoing insults of Stanley’s characteristics out loud to Stella. At this point, the audience would suspect that Stanley would make a big scene where he starts yelling at Blanche that she knew nothing about him and would then take the opportunity to say everything on his mind about her, but he does not. All he does is just overhears them until a train passes outside their place, which he uses the loud noise of the train to disguise that he was right there in front of his place. He does not even mention that he had overheard them, but just switches the subject as he enters in. He only keeps his anger inside rather than showing his anger right out forth like he usually does. Also, the audience would not think that Blanche’s comments would affect Stanley because he has had a low opinion of Blanche from the start, but yet he remembers the title that Blanche had referred him as, which was “common" (1568). He shows that this comment bothered him because he mentions the comment later on in the play. Therefore, this moment in the play reveals that Stanley is truly not as hard headed as he conveys at the start of the play and is affected by what even Blanche says about him. Also this scene opens the play to a character that may realize that he needs to change his rude habits for the one he loves to make her happy.
Stanley’s actions in the play have dominantly given Stanley a personality that is controlling, rude, and vulgar. However, Stanley prevails in these two scenes other aspects to his character, which reveal to us a softer side to Stanley, which is quite unusual for Stanley’s character. These scenes allow Stanley’s character to have more depth and allow the audience to not see Stanley plainly as the brute in this play.
Great implications and obserations from the reading. I like how you took to instances from the play that presented Stanley as a "softer" man, and explicated them in depth.
ReplyDeleteI agree that although Stanley is generally portrayed as a "macho" man, he is "sensative" too. When Blanche called Stanley a "common," he did not burst out of madness, but instead kept silence, as if what Blanche had said was true and Stanley knew so.
We, indeed, see how in love Stanley is with Stella. From having yelled and hit Stella, very manly and controlling of Stanley, to kneeling down for her, very "humiliating" and accepting of the fault, shows Stanley's character as more than just a brute, but a loving and sentimental man.