The Southern Renaissance
                                                 (1920s-1950s)

Major themes:
    Aristocratic lifestyle on the plantation;
    Importance of tradition, religion and family tie;
    Superiority of the white; Chevalier heritage;
    Nostalgy for the lost prosperity

Major writers:
    William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams, etc.

 

Genre: Tragedy 

Tone: Ironic and sympathetic realism 

Setting: New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1940s 

Structure of the play: Blanche DuBois and  Stanley Kowalski represent two different worlds with sharp contrasts in personalities, ideals, and values. Thus the play is structured on the principle of presenting the two worlds, establishing what each world believes in, and then placing these worlds in a series of direct conflicts until one is destroyed. 

Rising action: Blanche immediately rouses the suspicion of Stanley, who (wrongly) suspects Blanche of swindling Stella out of her inheritance. Blanche grows to despise Stanley when she sees him drunkenly beat her pregnant sister. Stanley permanently despises Blanche after he overhears her trying to convince Stella to leave Stanley because he is common. Already suspicious of Blanche's act of superiority, Stanley researches Blanche's past. He discovers that in Laurel Blanche was known for her sexual promiscuity and for having an affair with a teenage student. He reports his findings to Blanche's suitor, Mitch, dissuading Mitch from marrying Blanche. 

Falling action: Weeks after the rape, Stella secretly prepares for Blanche's departure to an insane asylum. She tells her neighbor Eunice that she simply couldn't believe Blanche's accusation that Stanley raped her. Unaware of reality, Blanche boasts that she is leaving to join a millionaire suitor. When the doctor arrives, Blanche leaves after a minor struggle, and only Stella and Mitch, who sits in the kitchen with Stanley's poker players, seem to express real remorse for her. 

Protagonist: Blanche DuBois   Blanche is a woman of vibrant desire. She seeks intimacy, warms, human contact, and a sense of community, of belonging. The beginning of the play tells us Blanche has not been intimate with Stella for some time. She despises and at the same time greatly desires what Stanley and Stella have together; but she is the intruder and Stanley is determined to get rid of her. Blanche tries to alienate him and Stella; she messes up the pork night, troubles Stanley and his values. Her presence alone is an intrusion into his well-controlled world.   She cares too much about her husband Allan to forgive herself for his death; she cares too much for Belle Reve to leave before death stole it from her; she cares too much about her appearance to be honest with Mitch, and she cares too much about old-fashioned ideals to face harsh reality. 

Themes 

1. Fantasy's Inability to Overcome Reality    

       Although Williams's protagonist in A Streetcar Named Desire is the romantic Blanche DuBois, the play is a work of social realism. Blanche explains to Mitch that lying to herself and to others allows her to make life appear as it should be rather than as it is. Stanley, a practical man firmly grounded in the physical world, disdains Blanche's fabrications and does everything he can to disclose them. The antagonistic relationship between Blanche and Stanley is a struggle between fantasy and reality. It propels the play's plot and creates a great tension. Ultimately, Blanche's attempts to renew her life fail. Though reality triumphs over fantasy in A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams suggests that fantasy is an important and useful tool. At the end of the play, Blanche's retreat into her own private fantasies enables her to partially shield herself from reality's harsh blows.  

2. The Relationship between Sex and Death      

    Blanche's fear of death manifests itself in her fears of aging and of lost beauty. She refuses to tell anyone her true age or to appear in harsh light that will reveal her faded looks. She seems to believe that by continually asserting her sexuality, especially toward men younger than herself, she will be able to avoid death and return to the world of teenage bliss she experienced before her husband's suicide.    However, beginning in Scene One, Williams suggests that Blanche's sexual history is in fact a cause of her downfall. When she first arrives at the Kowalskis', Blanche says she rode a streetcar named Desire, then transferred to a streetcar named Cemeteries, which brought her to a street named Elysian Fields. This journey allegorically represents the trajectory of Blanche's life. The Elysian Fields are the land of the dead in Greek mythology.Blanche's lifelong pursuit of her sexual desires has led to her eviction from Belle Reve, her exclusion from Laurel, and, at the end of the play, her expulsion from society at large. 

3. Dependence on Men      

      A Streetcar Named Desire presents a sharp critique of the way the institutions and attitudes of postwar America placed restrictions on women's lives. Williams uses Blanche's and Stella's dependence on men to expose and critique the treatment of women during the transition from the old to the new South. Both Blanche and Stella see male companions as their only means to achieve happiness, and they depend on men for both their sustenance and their self-image. When Stella chooses to remain with Stanley, she chooses to rely on, love, and believe in a man instead of her sister. For herself, Blanche sees marriage to Mitch as her means of escaping destitution. When Mitch rejects Blanche because of Stanley's gossip about her reputation, Blanche immediately thinks of another man — the millionaire Shep Huntleigh — who might rescue her. Because Blanche cannot see around her dependence on men, she has no realistic conception of how to rescue herself. Blanche does not realize that her dependence on men will lead to her downfall rather than her salvation. By relying on men, Blanche puts her fate in the hands of others.