Disciplinary Power And Characters’ Tragedies:A Foucauldian Study Of A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams,as one of the most distinguished and prolific playwrights in the 20th century,was awarded Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and New York Drama Critics Circle Awards several times,whose works have exerted far-reaching influence on world literature.As a playwright from the south,Tennessee Williams made full use of the materials from Southern life and endeavored to expose the dark sides and sensitive problems of modern society.In his work A Streetcar Named Desire,institutionalization and discipline have permeated the entire society and people are enclosed in a net woven by different disciplinary forces,presenting the awkward situation and people’s inevitable falling into the abyss of depression.Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power,this thesis attempts to reveal the power relations knitted in the society,and explore characters’ fate under the hidden running disciplinary power shown in the work,and further probe into the significance of characters’ struggles.The thesis includes five parts.Chapter one offers a brief review of Tennessee Williams’ life and literary achievements,the play analyzed,and then presents the literature review of the drama and the framework of the thesis.In the second chapter,based on the text and the background in then society,the establishment of disciplinary power will be analyzed through focusing on the patriarchal conventions as the foundation of power relation and ethical codes as another support to disciplinary power.Chapter three comes to the maintenance of disciplinary power.It first devotes to the oppression exerted on different objects in various aspects,including sexual relations,women bodies and women’s subordinated moral codes.Also,management of disciplinary techniques is used.Hierarchical observation from all kinds of supervising structures together with normalizing judgment on aspects disaccord to social norms will be two main control techniques to strengthen power’s domination of people.The forth chapter deals with characters’ resistance against discipline and their subsequent fate in the power-filled society,together with the underlying significance of characters’ failed attempts.The last chapter is the conclusion of this thesis.As disciplinary power permeates the whole society,all people,regardless of their genders,races,age and classes,are subject to the pervasive power.Characters’ fate in the work exactly hints author’s concern about human’s existence dilemma under disciplinary power.The break-in from angle of discipline to find the invisible but ubiquitous and omniscient power relations,the establishment and maintenance of power,together with characters’ resistance in interpersonal relations,can be enlightenment in interpreting power distribution in modern world.