Stella Kowalski Quotes

He acts like an animal, has an animal's habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There's even something -sub-human -something not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something - ape-like about him, like one of those pictures I've seen in - anthropological studies! Thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is - Stanley Kowalski - survivor of the Stone Age! Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle! And you - you here - waiting for him! Maybe he'll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you! That is, if kisses have been discovered yet! Night falls and the other apes gather! There in the front of the cave, all grunting like him, and swilling and gnawing and hulking! His poker night! - you call it - this party of apes! Somebody growls - some creature snatches at something - the fight is on! God! Maybe we are a long way from beng made in God's image, but Stella - my sister - there has been some progress since then! Such things as art - as poetry and music - such kinds of new light have come into the world since then! In some kinds of people some tendered feelings have had some little beginning! That we have got to make grow! And cling to, and hold as our flag! In this dark march towards what-ever it is we're approaching . . . Don't - don't hang back with the brutes!

Because the night you asked me, the small scar of the quarter moon had healed - the moon was whole again; because life seemed so short; because life stretched out before me like the halls of a nightmare; because I knew exactly what I wanted; because I knew exactly nothing; because I shed my childhood with my clothes - they both had years of wear in them; because your eyes were darker than my father's; because my father said I could do better; because I wanted badly to say no; because Stanly Kowalski shouted "Stella...;" because you were a door I could slam shut; because endings are written before beginnings; because I knew that after twenty years you'd bring the plants inside for winter and make a jungle we'd sleep in naked; because I had free will; because everything is ordained; I said yes.

Não se trata de dizer que Mulheres apaixonadas é neutro em seu tratamento das sexualidades; estranhamente, o romance acaba sendo machista e feminista ao mesmo tempo, e pelos mesmos motivos. Ele desloca o olhar rumo ao corpo masculino, falo incluso, fetichizando-o, isto é, observando-o como uma coisa que possui poderes mágicos, e nem sempre benfazejos, o que me parece uma lição bem apropriada. O que as mulheres de Lawrence sentem diante de coxas e ombros masculinos não me parece, afinal, tão diferente do que Stella sente entre os braços de Stanley Kowalski, ou do que sentimos diante de Marlon Brando na tela. As possibilidades de prazer estão lá, e os riscos também, bem evidentes. Dobrar-me aos poderes mágicos do desejo, porém, parece ser preferível a interditá-lo, reprimi-lo ou rir dele. E a ficção — que, tal qual os objetos de fetiche, tem um estranho poder de simultaneamente conjurar e não conjurar realidades — me parece um espaço adequado para bagunçar as normas e clichês do imaginário sexual.