A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire- Tennessee Williams

 

 

Context:
-During the end of WW2, when this play was being written, many writers were writing about man's capacity for evil.
-Stanley represents the American Dream that all men are born equal and can succeed equally, whilst Blanche represents the old world, where class and race are still important issues.
-Women in the Old South were expected to be passive and chaste.

Brief synopsis:

Set in the 1940s, Blanche DuBois, a Southern Belle, depends on the kindness of strangers and is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude, brutish husband Stanley. Eventually their violent collision course causes Blanche's fragile sense of identity to crumble, threatening to destroy her sanity and her one chance at happiness.

Form and Structure:

-Unconventional episodic structure which allows desire to be fulfilled and then destroyed shortly after. Each scene becomes progressively more dangerous for Blanche, although she is arguably the instigator of most of these liaisons.

-Short scenes rather than longer acts create a pulsing rhythm. This follows the conventions of cinematic technique. The short scenes reflect the rapid shift in focus from one moment to the next, from one character to the next. The other descriptions in the text such as stage directions at the beginning of the play are reminiscent of the panoramic scope of a camera, gradually introducing each aspect of the set and characters.

-There is a rhythm of conflict and reconciliation throughout the play: Stanley and Stella row, then make up, Steve and Eunice follow the same pattern.

Main Characters:

Blanche Dubois-

Blanche is a loquacious and fragile woman around the age of thirty. 'She is daintily dressed in a white suit and fluffy bodice' 'Her delicate beauty must avoid strong light. There is some uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth.'

Stella Kowalski-

Blanche's sister and the wife of Stanley. 'A gentle young woman, about twenty five, of a background obviously quite different from her husband's'

Stanley Kowalski-

Stanley represents the American Dream and is the epitome of vital force. He wishes to destroy Blanche's social pretensions, and goes about this by being heartlessly cruel and eventually raping her. 'about twenty eight or thirty years old, roughly dressed in blue denim work clothes.'

Harold 'Mitch' Mitchell-

Stanley's friend who Blanche takes a shining to. He is clumsy, sweaty, and has unrefined interests in muscle building, he is much more sensitive then Stanley, perhaps because he lives with his mother who is slowly dying.

Eunice-

Stella’s friend, upstairs neighbour, and landlady. Eunice and her husband, Steve, represent the low-class, carnal life that Stella has chosen for herself. Like Stella, Eunice accepts her husband’s affections despite his physical abuse of her.

Allan Grey-

A young man with poetic aspirations who Blanche fell in love with and married as a teenager. One afternoon, Blanche discovered him in bed with another male friend. That evening at a ball, Blanche announced her disgust at his homosexuality, and he ran outside and shot himself in the head.

Themes:

• Fantasy's inability to overcome reality. The play is a work of social realism. Blanche meticulously avoids harsh light in order to avoid the reality of her faded appearance. Stanley crushes this illusion and does all he can to unravel Blanche's secrets. Although reality triumphs over illusion in this instance, William suggests that illusion is important. Even in Blanche's insanity, another sense of desire exists.
• The relationship between sex and death. Blanche's fear of death manifests itself in her fear of aging and losing beauty. She continues to assert her sexuality, and to very young men, to avoid death and return to the teenage bliss she lived in before the death of her husband. Blanche's journey from riding a Streetcar named Desire, then transferring to a Streetcar named Cemeteries, which brought her to a street named Elysian Fields. This journey foreshadows the trajectory of Blanche’s life. Blanche’s lifelong pursuit of her sexual desires has led to her loss of Belle Reve, her ostracism from Laurel, and, at the end of the play, her expulsion from society at large.
• Dependence on men. Both Stella and Blanche see the attainment of male companions to be the only chance of happiness. Ultimately Stanley maintains his life ('I am the king around here')whereas Blanche is shunned from society.
• The American dream vs. The Old South.

Motifs and symbols:

• Light and colour. Blanche emphasises her own fear of the light over and over again. 'Her delicate beauty must avoid strong light'. She enters at dusk, and is not seen outside, in the play, again. She 'cant stand a naked light bulb' so buys a paper shade. Her cry when Mitch switches the light on towards the end of the play, after he has learnt the truth about her, all show her fear of being seen clearly. Clear light is the antithesis of the fantasy world Blanche works so hard to maintain. She tells Stella 'daylight never exposed so total a ruin'. In contrast, Stella and Stanley have the 'coloured lights', symbolic of their sex life, the part of their marriage which gives them vibrancy and keeps them together. This juxtaposition with the dimness of light Blanche lives in perhaps explains why Stella chooses not to believe her sister's story at the end of the play. Blanche's white suit she wears upon her arrival marks her as an outsider, but also represents her attempts to keep her reputation clean, covering that she has been 'not so awf'ly good lately'. In scene 5, Blanche's spilling of cola on her skirt and later her crumpled, soiled clothes are suggestive of her humiliation and defeat.
• Sound. The music heard in the background of the play mirrors the action of the play. There are two type of background music: the 'blues piano' which is heard by both the characters and the audience, and Blanche's internal Varsouviana Polka. The blues piano is the sound of New Orleans, a cultural and social melting pot, whereas the Varsouviana Polka is the measured sound of the old fashioned world of Belle Reve. The piano is once described as 'going into a hectic breakdown', foreshadowing Blanche at the end of the play. The polka was the music playing during the scene when Allen Gray shot himself. It represents Blanche's grief and guilt over his death. Stanley has a much more straightforward, powerful sound associated with him. The nearby trains which hide his approach so that he can overhear Stella and Blanche's conversation about him, recur when he is threatening rape, and the blues piano crescendos into 'the roar of an approaching locomotive' His sound is masculine, mechanical and very different from Blanche's.
• Games, pastimes and actions. Blanche's feeble aristocracy is in sharp contrast with Stanley's vitality. This vitality is symbolised by the very male pastimes which he enjoys, such as bowling, and all-male poker games, with the men wearing 'course and direct' primary colours, all of them at the 'peak of their physical manhood'. Mitch states 'Poker should not be played in a house with women'. Yet Blanche constantly bathes herself as she says it calms her nerves. These baths are an attempt to cleanse her of her history. The fact that it is impossible for Blanche to be cleansed, shown by her repeated bathing. However, when Stanley has a shower after hitting Stella, he is thrown into remorse.
• 'Its Only A Paper Moon'. Blanche sings this to herself in the bath. The lyrics describe how love becomes a 'phony' fantasy. As Blanche is 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.

Links to Struggle for Identity:

• Class Struggle
• Sexual Struggle
• Social Struggle
• Gender Struggle