Playwright/Stage Direction:
Streetcar has extremely specific stage directions, leaving little room for the director of the play to expand and interpret Tennessee William’s vision for the play. In comparison, Heidi and Hedda both have far less stage direction and italicized descriptions of the character’s physical features and mental state. Instead, Wendy Wasserstein and Henrik Ibsen rely on indirect characterization in their plays to convey the overall purpose and theme.
Themes:
Streetcar – A prevalent theme in a Streetcar is defining yourself, which is similar to the theme of Heidi. Blanche is trying to artificially portray herself as an aristocratic high-class individual, something that she’s not. Likewise, Heidi is trying to find out who she is and her experiences in High School and College, specifically though her interaction with Scoop, help her define herself. However, the themes differ as Blanche is fabricating who she is while Heidi is genuinely trying to define herself.
Motif (Music):
Music is a motif in both Streetcar and Hedda. In Streetcar, it helps convey the mood of the scene, thereby impacting setting to a great extent. It is also used in combination with other literary elements to achieve a particular outcome; for example, its use with tone helps in foreshadowing events in the book. To a brief degree, we see a similar impact in Hedda when she plays the piano, as this also impacts tone and can be used to foreshadow events.
Protagonists:
The protagonists in Heidi, Streetcar, and Hedda are all females. This is important because an important trait of the plays is women’s’ role, which is portrayed by the protagonists’ struggles in society to gain a greater, more dominant role in society.
Motif (Conveying Power/Masculinity):
In Streetcar, Stanley is the man of the house, and we as the audience experience this display of masculinity the most when he plays poker with his friends at home. During these evenings, he tells Blanche and Stella where to sit and how soft they should whisper, essentially controlling them. Similarly, Hedda uses pistols to display her masculinity as most women would not possess pistols, let alone amuse herself and practice firing them as Hedda does throughout the play. Motifs are used in Heidi as well to convey this concept of masculinity and power, such as the burning of lingerie as it is a female article of clothing and it’s being destroyed. Although in Heidi this is not necessarily a motif as it is not a recurring element, it should still be taken into account that Wasserstein attempts to convey the idea of women attempting to be more masculine.
Setting:
Hedda and Streetcar take place in virtually the same location throughout the entire play. On the other hand, the setting in Heidi changes almost each scene. This is important, as the purpose of Heidi is to convey how she is trying to find herself and her change in persona over the course of her late teens till her career as an art history professor at Columbia. Therefore, the transitory setting is critical to understanding the purpose of Heidi, while it is not a significant literary element in Hedda or Streetcar.