Compare Characters In Plays And Comment On The Techniques Of
Characterization Employed By The Playwright
Prompt #14: “Important characters in plays are multi-dimensional. Discuss to
what extent this statement is true of important characters in plays you have
studied and comment on the techniques of characterization employed by the
playwright.”
Multidimensional characters can also be defined as dynamic or constantly
changing and developing characters. These dynamic characters are not simply
important to a play, but are arguably the most important characters because what
the playwright intends to communicate to his or her audience is communicated
through the changing emotions and behaviors of these characters. Additionally,
playwrights use a variety of techniques to highlight the changes an important
character may go through. The dialogue, staging and stage directions, setting,
music, lighting, and even costumes can all be used to highlight a multifaceted
character’s emotional and physical changes. In A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen,
and A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, the playwrights primarily
use costumes, which parallel the emotional and behavioral changes of important
dynamic characters, and contrast in dialogue to amplify developments and
changes in the characters’ relationships and behavior.
Ibsen’s choice of costume design portrays Nora as a dynamic character in A Doll’s
House. Ibsen changes Nora’s costume to parallel her behavioral and emotional
changes in the play. The “Neapolitan fisher-girl” costume, for example, represents
Nora’s secrets and their restraint on her autonomy (Ibsen 29). Therefore, Nora’s
want to “tear *the masquerade costume+ into a hundred thousand pieces”
represents her will to be rid of her lies and to take off of the mask she puts on for
Helmer (Ibsen 28). The costume facilitates this need throughout the second act of
play. When Nora practices the Tarantella dance, she dances wildly and “her hair
comes down and falls over her shoulders” (Ibsen 47). Wild and free hair has
connotations of independence and liberation. Therefore, the costume begins to
show the audience her will to free herself from the mask she puts on for Helmer.
However, she remains in the dress at this point in the play meaning that she is still
restricted by the disguise she wears for Helmer’s satisfaction. Again, the dress
highlights Nora’s development when it is removed in Act III before Nora gathers
the courage to tell Helmer she must leave him to gain her independence. Nora’s
masquerade ball costume conveys how Nora’s lies and mask of happiness restrain
her freedom and helps to illustrate her eventual escape from them. Therefore, the
costume design amplifies the characteristics that make Nora a dynamic character.
Williams also uses his costume designs to characterize his dynamic characters in A
Streetcar Named Desire. However, rather than connecting a specific costume with
a feeling, he associates a general type of costume with specific emotions and
actions. For example, the lavish costuming of Blanche represents the extent of her
desire for, and delusion of, an extravagant life. As the play opens and Blanche
enters, her appearance is described as “incongruous to *the+ setting” (Williams
15). She is introduced being dressed as if she believes she should be somewhere
and someone else. Furthermore, her beauty from the “white suit with a fluffy
bodice, necklace and earrings of pearl” is described as delicate and sensitive to
light (Williams 15). This description of Blanche suggests that her rich and royal
appearance is purely superficial and does not represent the reality of her life. This
connection between costume design and Blanche’s fabricated reality is continued
throughout the play. Before beginning to flirt with the young paper boy in Scene
Five, Blanche “takes a large, gossamer scarf from the trunk and drapes it about her
shoulders”, and then begins to pretend he is a young Prince and later makes Mitch
bow to her (Williams 84). The playwright, Tennessee Williams, connects Blanche’s
affluent adornment with her delusions of wealth and importance that develop and
grow stronger as the play progresses. In the final scene, Blanche’s illusions blend
almost entirely with her reality as she asks Stella to gather a number of elaborate
accessories, including a cool yellow silk boucle and “a silver and turquoise pin in
the shape of a seahorse”, and dresses herself in a dress and jacket of a color that
Madonna once wore (Williams 132/135).
Williams uses this costume to amplify the absurdity of Blanche’s illusion of
spending her life on the sea with a millionaire. Therefore, Blanche’s costume
choices in A Streetcar Named Desire connect to her developing insanity, which
makes her a complex and dynamic character.
In A Doll’s House, Ibsen also utilizes tension in dialogue, specifically the tension
between Nora’s inward and outward expression of feelings surrounding worth, to
portray Nora as a dynamic character. The playwright first creates a contradiction
between her internal and external feelings, only to eventually change her
apparent expression to match her true feelings. In the first two acts of the play,
Nora’s outward expression of a woman’s worth revolves around being a good wife
and mother by aiming to please Helmer, her husband. However, her inward
feelings portray the opposite. Nora inwardly believes that worth involves being
true to herself. Nora is outwardly submissive to her husband by allowing herself
to be called by possessive pet names, such as his “little spendthrift”, his “squirrel”,
or his “extravagant little person” (Ibsen 2-3). Furthermore, even Nora uses these
labels for herself during the first two acts. These names put Nora in a submissive
position because they define Nora as a possession of Helmer’s. Therefore, when
Nora labels herself a skylark or squirrel, she outwardly submits to the will of her
husband, proving her external idea of worth revolves around his happiness.
However, whenever Nora yields to Helmer, there are undertones of sarcasm
within the dialogue portrayed both by the stage directions and the writing. When
Nora first calls herself Helmer’s skylark and squirrel, she does so while “smiling
quietly and happily”, as if she aims to manipulate him with her words (Ibsen 4).
This example of irony mixed with manipulation illustrates the contradiction
between what Nora outwardly expresses and what she internally believes.
Nora’s sarcasm is also present directly in her dialogue with Helmer. In the
conclusion of the first act, Nora asks Helmer to “take *her+ in hand and decide”
how she should attend the masquerade ball (Ibsen 25). The sarcasm she speaks
these lines with is evident when she utilizes hyperboles to appeal to Helmer’s ego,
such as telling him “no one has such good taste” and that she “can’t get along a bit
without” his help (Ibsen 25). Therefore, Nora’s exaggerated submission to Helmer
suggests a dichotomy between her internal ideas of worth and her actions. Yet, as
the play develops, Nora’s actions begin to match her interpretation of value. She
begins to overtly become a subject of her life, rather than the subject of her
husband’s. In the final pages of Act III, Nora discards the view she externally
portrayed in the first acts of A Doll’s House by explicitly rejecting Helmer’s
assertion that “before all else, *she is] a wife and a mother” (Ibsen 66). She
explains to Helmer that she believes that “before all else *she+ is a reasonable
human being… [who] must think over things for [herself] and get to understand
them” (Ibsen 66). This rejection of blind obedience and assertion of autonomy
supports the claim that Nora’s outward expression developed over the course of
the final act to match her opinion of worthiness. Because Nora’s expression of
merit changed over the course of the play, she is considered a dynamic, or
multifaceted character. Therefore, Ibsen’s use of dialogue in A Doll’s House is
instrumental in portraying Nora as an important and multidimensional character.
Tennessee Williams also uses tension in dialogue within his play, A Streetcar
Named Desire, to portray his significant characters as multidimensional.
However, rather than creating tension by using contradiction to develop a single
character’s dialogue, Williams creates tension by contrasting the dialogue of
Stanley and Blanche. This distinction between the two characters, and the way
they communicate in the play, causes behavioral changes suggesting that
dialogue is responsible for dynamic transformations in the characters’ actions.
Blanche’s speech is educated and full of literary illusions. She uses a reference to
the gothic poet Edgar Allen Poe to describe her sister’s life and situation by calling
her neighborhood “the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir” (Williams 20). This
complexity present in Blanche’s dialogue portrays her as a representation of the
old, aristocratic South. In contrast with Blanche’s more sophisticated way of
speaking, Stanley uses simple societal based metaphors and commonplace clichés
in his dialogue.
Rather than using a literary based metaphor for Blanche, Stanley uses one based
on politics. Stanley describes her fame in Laurel “as if she *were+ the President of
the United States, only she is not respected by any party” (Williams 99).
Additionally, the clichés Stanley uses in his speech, such as “no, siree, bob”, “boy,
oh, boy”, or “the jig was all up” portrays Stanley as the down-to-earth
representation of the New South (Williams 100-lOl). The contrast between the
dialogue of the two characters and the connection it has with the social group
they identify with highlights their dynamic characteristics by emphasizing
Blanche’s attempt and ultimate failure to integrate herself into the less
aristocratic and educated New Orleans. Therefore, the playwright’s effort to
contrast the dialogues of Blanche and Stanley facilitates Blanche’s representation
as a multifaceted and changing character in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Analyzing how a playwright portrays his or her dynamic characters gives insight
into what the playwright intends to say through their development. For example,
Henrik Ibsen uses a single costume to connect the audience with Nora’s
progression into an autonomous woman in order to focus the audience’s attention
on a single facet of Nora’s life and desires, while Williams uses many costumes
with varying degrees of lavishness, to highlight the degree to which Blanche
blends reality with fantasy. Furthermore, Ibsen uses tension in dialogue of a single
character to keep the audience’s focus on Nora, while Williams contrasts the
speech of two characters to highlight the contrast between two different social
worlds, the new and old South. Therefore, the most important characters in a play
are always multidimensional characters because most of a playwright’s
commentary is included in the development of these characters and analyzing the
techniques a playwright employs to distinguish a dynamic character helps to
convey meaning.
Bibliography
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Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. Print.
Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. New York: Signet, 1975.
Print.