The Varsouviana Polka

The Varsouviana is the polka tune to which Blanche and her young husband, Allen Grey, were dancing when she last saw him alive. Earlier that day, she had walked in on him in bed with an older male friend. The three of them then went out dancing together, pretending that nothing had happened. In the middle of the Varsouviana, Blanche turned to Allen and told him that he “disgusted” her. He ran away and shot himself in the head.

The polka music plays at various points in A Streetcar Named Desire, when Blanche is feeling remorse for Allen’s death. The first time we hear it is in Scene One, when Stanley meets Blanche and asks her about her husband. Its second appearance occurs when Blanche tells Mitch the story of Allen Grey. From this point on, the polka plays increasingly often, and it always drives Blanche to distraction. She tells Mitch that it ends only after she hears the sound of a gunshot in her head.

The polka and the moment it evokes represent Blanche’s loss of innocence. The suicide of the young husband Blanche loved dearly was the event that triggered her mental decline. Since then, Blanche hears the Varsouviana whenever she panics and loses her grip on reality.

“It’s Only a Paper Moon”

In Scene Seven, Blanche sings this popular ballad while she bathes. The song’s lyrics describe the way love turns the world into a “phony” fantasy. The speaker in the song says that if both lovers believe in their imagined reality, then it’s no longer “make-believe.” These lyrics sum up Blanche’s approach to life. She believes that her fibbing is only her means of enjoying a better way of life and is therefore essentially harmless.

As Blanche sits in the tub singing “It’s Only a Paper Moon, ” Stanley tells Stella the details of Blanche’s sexually corrupt past. Williams ironically juxtaposes Blanche’s fantastical understanding of herself with Stanley’s description of Blanche’s real nature. In reality, Blanche is a sham who feigns propriety and sexual modesty. Once Mitch learns the truth about Blanche, he can no longer believe in Blanche’s tricks and lies.

Meat

In Scene One, Stanley throws a package of meat at his adoring Stella for her to catch. The action sends Eunice and the Negro woman into peals of laughter. Presumably, they’ve picked up on the sexual innuendo behind Stanley’s gesture. In hurling the meat at Stella, Stanley states the sexual proprietorship he holds over her. Stella’s delight in catching Stanley’s meat signifies her sexual infatuation with him.

24 G.Anzaldua Towards a New Consciousness. Key themes

The Chicana/o realities she represents are the result both of various encounters in her own life as well as the experiences of others that she has gathered into herself.Anzaldú a theorizes the Chicana identity conflict within a feminist, personal, collective, cultural and racial context. Because of multicultural and multiracial influences, the new mestiza expresses herself with behaviors, words, and attitudes that are sometimes contradictory. She learns to tolerate the fact that her racial and cultural identity is not clear to Anglo-Americans or Mexicans, and she adapts her behavior to eachsituation. In other words, “she learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be Mexican from an Anglo point of view”

Through her image of the “new mestiza”, Anzaldú a encourages Chicanas to break alienating dichotomies of thought. According to critic Marí a C. Gonzá lez “for Anzaldú a dual thinking has split the individual into an unhealthy creature. This dualism has continued to reproduce itself to become the dominant system of thought” (1996: 29). To resist the dual thinking of Western culture, Anzaldú a suggests that we must first unlearn “the puta/virgen dichotomy”. Rejecting the Virgin/whore construct means annulling sexist prejudices that classify women according to their sexual and social behavior. To start dissolving this dichotomy the “new mestiza” has to break the patriarchal socially-established roles and behaviors believed to be correct for their gender. According to Anzaldú a then, “La mestiza constantly has to shift out of habitual formations”

In addition, the “new mestiza” is a powerful image of the Chicana’s appropriation of her independence. Her potent self-definition begins after she has faced and tolerated the conflicts generated by her hybrid identity. According to Rebolledo, “Anzaldú a also clearly defined the historical oppression that made women feel they couldn’t cross the borders, and the empowerment that occurred when they realized that it was their choice” In the 2^nd she analyzes and accepts her rebelliousness, criticizing the influence of the Anglo-Saxon patriarchal culture while claiming her indigenous identity because it is “a new political stance as a fully racialized feminist Chicana”

In the fifth essay, “How to tame a wild tongue”, Anzaldú a powerfully revises and interprets the multilingual Chicana identity; she describes her linguistic experience as a Chicana woman living in Texas, while she rejects the self-marginalization practiced by many Chicanas and resists the social contempt aroused by her use of both Spanish and English. Anzaldú a advocates for a variety of Chicana languages while she vindicates

Chicano Spanish as a language that synthesizes both the Spanish and the AngloAmerican influences, enabling the development of new terms in both.

During the journey, Anzaldú a revisions and reinvents the past as a lesbian Chicana feminist through the different modes in which this past manifests itself. These modes include mythology, historical facts, language, and the Aztec cultural heritage. Anzaldú a articulates this cultural recapitulation, and as a result her identity as a changing subject becomes more evident.

In this same essay, in the section “Somos una gente” the “new mestiza” observes the

Anglo-American white society from her cultural, racial, and gendered perspective. From the empowered position that the “new mestiza” has achieved, Anzaldú a addresses the mestiza’s collective needs, verbalizing their vindications. She asks nothing less than that white North Americans pay attention to such claims: “We need you to accept the fact that Chicanos are different, to acknowledge your rejection and negotiation of us. We need you to own the fact that you looked upon us as less than human, that you stole our lands, our personhood, our self-respect” (1987: 85). This is another step in the transformation towards a mestiza consciousness, the moment of collective selfacknowledgement before the Anglo-Saxon, North American society

25. The idea of entropy in modern culture. Th.Pynchon Entropy.