Context

Tennessee Williams
● Refer to the ‘Tennessee Williams interviews himself’ at the end of the book
● Refer to the epigraph and its relevance to the play
● Cornelius (father) was a working-class salesman and Edwina Williams (mother) was a
Southern Belle, an educated music teacher (echoed in Stanley and Blanche’s character )
● Cornelius was an alcoholic, and abused his mother - this normalisation of abuse in
Williams’ childhood is reflected through the prevalence of domestic abuse in the romantic
relationships portrayed in the play
● Rose (sister) was mentally unstable, and accused their father of sexually assaulting her -
which led to their mother agreeing to a pre-frontal lobotomy leaving her incapacitated; this
left Williams feeling guilty for the rest of his life - this event is mirrored in Stella’s hesitation
→ willingness to send Blanche to a mental institution after she claims that Stanley has
raped her as she says ‘I could not believe her story and go on living with [him]’
● Tennessee discovered his sexuality in New Orleans (homosexual), reflected in the
characterisation of Allan Grey
○ “My own view is that Williams has ventriloquised and heterosexualised his
own sensibilities into Blanche: this is a fictional variant of a gay man doing the
tense bickering and bantering with a half-naked Stanley and, perhaps, delicately
kissing a young boy on the lips. Only in this context can you understand Stanley’s
puzzled unease and contempt.” (Peter Bradshaw)
● Tennessee had an intense fear of death due to his near-fatal childhood illness and scared
death from cancer (grandmother passed away due to this), which is reflected in Blanche’s
attitudes toward death as she has faced deaths of many family members (‘Belle Reve was
[the Grim Reaper’s] headquarters’)

Socio-political
● Set in the atmosphere aftermath of the civil war between Southern/Northern states
● Northern states held victory, slavery was abolished and great importance was placed on
ancestry and heritage, racism continued to exist still
● The south was alienated from the rest of America and known to be brimming with racism
and poverty, while New Orleans emerged as the champion of diversity with a large influx
of immigrants from Europe and Africa (referred to as the ‘melting pot of culture’)
● “The clock in A Streetcar Named Desire is Stella’s pregnancy… It is no accident that the
day the Kowalski baby - the postwar hybrid of Stanley and Stella - is born is also the day
that the representative of the antebellum South, Blanche, is defeated, raped and
destroyed. Williams casts something of a cold eye on the triumph of a new (postwar)
South peopled by brutish and insensitive Stanley Kowalskis."
● Williams establishes conventional gender stereotypes, yet twists the notions of masculine
and feminine energy using characters. While Stella and Stanley more or less portray the
accepted societal gender roles, Blanche showcases a more masculine energy in her
sexuality and arrogance, while Mitch and Allan Grey are used to showcase sensitivity, a
more “feminine” trait, what is clear throughout the plot is societal gender norms negatively
impact all the main characters in the play driving them towards either death, mental or
moral destruction.
○ ‘As we cannot fully accept or reject Blanche, when she is eliminated we don’t fully
sympathise nor do we rejoice fully’ - there is no real sense of catharsis
 ● Beginning of the 1960s marked the sexual revolution, instigated by the Swinging Sixties
cultural movement, ie. expansion of ‘free love.’ during the revolution, laws criminalising
adultery were contracted, as well as reduction in the scope of statutes criminalising
sodomy while the laws on child sex abuse increased
○ Sexual freedom was viewed as a trend that symbolised the individual rebellion and
autonomy of a woman’s self-sexuality, enabling women to break free from their
traditional gender roles and move away from socially-ingrained, conservative
ideologies, seen both actively and aesthetically.
○ Women portrayed themselves as “sexual beings, with sexual needs as legitimate
as those of men”

Production history
● Commentary on Marlon Brando's portrayal of Stanley: “[Brando's] poses and gestures
copied the confident, coiled, often bare-chested images of American soldiers during the
war... As either a violent soldier or a desperate hedonist, Brando/Kowalski is an empty
shell, held together by kinaesthetic body language learned in the military or in the
consumption of goods. This presence needs constant sensation to starve off depression.”
● In the 1951’s movie adaptation, ending of the play is changed in which Stanley is
punished on-screen as Stella leaves him
● Performance is also given much importance in criticism, Susan Spector, in her essay
“Alternative visions of Blanche DuBois", discusses how Blanche under Kazan's direction
was an image of a redundant dying culture and left audiences accepting Stanley's
aggressions, while Clurman’s Blanche left Blanche as a victim of Stanley's vicious
patriarchy. Spector believed that the script was compliant and left actors and directors with
the power to construct and influence interpretation.

Plastic theory
● The use of props, noises and stage directions to show a parallel with the character’s focus
on stage - ‘a non-realist style that exploits Expressionist devices to symbolically represent
the psyche of his protagonists’
● Plastic theatre is used to imply that depictions of reality are chaotically distorted in order to
convey and physically express the characters’ psyche or internal desires. These highlight
the delusion of Blanche's fantasy world and the inevitability and inescapability of her tragic
fate.

Visual and Sound effects link to themes of illusion, appearance vs. reality/ mental deterioration,
trauma and interior vs. exterior
● Varsouviana Polka, followed by the gunshot - “The rapid feverish polka tune, the
"Varsouviana," is heard" - represents Blanche’s losing grasp on reality and illustrates her
psychological decline to a contemporary audience, only diegetic for her and symbolic of
her inability to escape the past.
○ It represents the loss of her innocence, as it is her late husbands’s suicide which
triggered her mental decline. Dramatic irony as it foreshadows her descent into
insanity and shows her unwillingness to move on
● Blue jazz - represents Blanche’s depression, loneliness and desperation for love
○ could perhaps juxtapose the blue piano which represents the vitality of the French
quarter in New Orleans?
 ● Blue piano - symbolises all that Blanche has lost in her life; once Blanche grasps Stella's
dishonesty, the ‘distant piano goes down into a hectic breakdown.’
○ It is reminiscent of the New South’s fixation on crude overpowering desire and
symbolises the callous vitality of the quarter New Orleans → it's always played in
the scenes of great passion and symbolic of the masculine power of the new
America. Blanche is fundamentally incompatible with the ways of the new time
both physically and characteristically
● ‘It’s only a paper moon’ (sings in the bath) - lyrics describe the way love turns the world
into a “phony” fantasy, the speaker in the song says that if both lovers believe in their
imagined reality, then it's no longer “make-believe.” These lyrics sum up Blanche's
approach to life and justifies her delusions

Symbols
● Meat - “red-stained” / “heaves the package at her” - sexual innuendo, and a sign of
primitive masculinity, may be suggestive of Stanley’s physical and sexual power over
Stella. Stella willing catches it which shows her reciprocating, sexual infatuation
● Light (Blanche referred to as ‘moth’) - symbolises raw, unfiltered truth that Blanche
desires to escape, while Stanley embraces.
○ Moths are attracted to the light, but this is also what kills them - symbolic?
○ Shadows/cries - shadows represent illusion and an escape from the light of day.
■ Beginning - Blanche seeks the refuge of shadows and half-light to hide
from the harsh facts of the real world - “I don’t want to be looked at in this
merciless glare!”
■ End: shadows become menacing; when Stanley approaches Blanche to
rape her, his shadows overtake hers on the wall before he physically
overpowers her - “the shadows and lurid reflections move sinously as
flames along the wall spaces" - Rather than representing a longed-for
escape from reality, shadows become a threatening element.
● Paper lantern - temporary disguise, enables her to play the role of a ‘southern belle’ as
she is able to retain her beauty, but the fact that the lantern is ‘paper’ and easily
destructible (and is torn by Mitch) demonstrates her fragility and mental disintegration.
When Mitch tears it off, her illusions are shattered.
○ The ‘lurid nocturnal brilliance’ accentuates the men’s vibrant but menacing natures
and could perhaps refer to the fact that all the men that Blance has met have
irreparably changed the course of her fate
link to themes of illusion, appearance vs. reality, morality, truth, dominance ie. masculinity
vs. femininity/ vulnerability?
● Bathing - symbolises Blanche’s constant need to cleanse herself of impurities and
disappointment, constantly scrubbing and ‘soaking in hot baths’ shows her inherent need
to escape the past → constant washing is reminiscent of Lady Macbeth’s famous
hand-washing scene in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in which the queen tries and fails to
wash the blood from her guilty hands, trying to wash her sins of having an affair with a
17yr old boy?
● Alcohol - portrayal of the intrinsic link between masculinity and violence? Effects of it can
be seen through Stanley’s outbursts
○ Blanche hides her alcoholism, constantly claiming that she rarely drinks while
secretly sneaking frequent shots, and uses drinking as an escape mechanism -
 repeatedly says "No, one’s my limit." - knowing the drinking clashes with her
Southern Belle representation.
○ For both characters (Stanley and Blanche), drinking leads to destructive
behaviour: Stanley commits domestic violence, and Blanche deludes herself. Yet
Stanley is able to rebound from his drunken escapades, whereas alcohol
augments Blanche’s gradual departure from sanity.
● Poker night - masculinity, alternative title, highlights the theme of fate and the
presentation of Blanche’s fate as a ‘game of chance’ link to themes masculinity vs.
femininity, violence, sexual undertones, game of chance/ fate
● Streetcar - “They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and then transfer to one
called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at - Elysian Fields” - Williams called the
streetcar the “ideal metaphor for the human condition → streetcar is on fixed tracks which
may represent that the Blanche’s ending is fated, cannot be changed? Symbolically the
power of desire as the force behind the characters’ actions.
● Setting (confined to a single apartment) - claustrophobic, unsettling, trapped. The setting
of the Kowalski apartment and the street outside is designed and movements between the
two spaces are seamless/fluid, the life of the street seeping into the apartment eg. the
Mexican flower vendor from the streets is a symbol of death adding to Blanche’s mental
breakdown AND the rape that occurs within the apartment as the prostitute and drunkard
on the street argue.
○ This concurrence of events intensifies the audience's sense of the harsh reality of
life in Elysian Fields. The boundaries between the public and private are distorted
here (juxtaposition of interior and exterior), which connects to the larger theme of
society's control on individuality. Lack of boundary dramatises theme of fantasy &
illusion, maintaining a disguise
link to themes of illusion, appearance vs. reality, interior vs. reality, inescapability of the
past, society, reactions of contemporary audience etc.

Names
Stella ‘for Star’ - represents Blanche’s ideal
Blanche DuBois - ‘white woods’, white symbolises purity and innocence
‘Belle Reve’ - translates to beautiful dream, symbolic of blanche’s illusory existence.
● Existed in the south but has lost its glamour, and disintegrated into oblivion,
perhaps mirroring Blanche’s fading beauty?
● Stanley comments ‘I took you [Stella] of those columns… and you enjoyed it’
‘Elysian Field’ - paradise in Greek mythology

General opinions
INTRODUCTION:
In ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, first produced and published in 1947, Williams presents …
through his experimental use of …

● Paragraph on stage directions/ plastic theatre ie. use of light and music
ILLUSION:
On closure examination, an analysis of Stella illustrates an entirely different aspect to fantasy and
delusion. Her denial of the toxicity of a marriage - a toxicity which takes the form of Stanley's
physical abuse in Scene 3, as well as psychological manipulation by turning against her sister -
acts as the play’s most significant indirect delusion. Williams creates Stella as ignorant to the
reality of her marriage in order to expose women's dependence on man for survival, for a form of
shelter and financial support, in 1940s America highlighting the inevitability of female entrapment.
Link to themes of illusion, appearance vs. reality, relationships, women in society, delusion

SEXUALITY/ GENDER:
Stella’s sexuality is approved because ‘she is not lustful instigator but the passive respondent’
(Nina Leibman) which contrasts Blanche’s outward flirting and need for constant male attention.
Blanche becomes a social outcast because she refuses to conform to conventional moral values.
In cruelly unveiling the truth about her scandalous past, Stanley strips her of her psychological,
sexual and cultural identity, which he is unable to do for Stella who is more submissive and
passive in her ways.
Link to themes of sexuality, femininity (ie. women in society - double standards), masculinity

STANLEY AND BLANCHE:

Kirsch sees Williams's view of Stanley and Blanche as ambivalent. He views them "locked in a
deadly sex battle" but as a "solid match" for one another. Stanley is portrayed to feel almost
threatened by Blanche’s influence as his marriage is disestablished by her arrival. Arguably, she
appears to be an obstacle in the sexual aspect of their marriage, which Stanley reverses by
physically dominating her. Moreover, he he is shown to be enraged and threatened by the old
fashioned Southern values Blanche embodies, Stanley is obstinate - albeit unconsciously at first -
to destroy the threat she poses to his brave new world
Link to themes of Old South vs. New South, industrialization, sexuality/lust, masculinity vs.
femininity, influence of a patriarchal society - morality?

A Nietzschean interpretation is based on the idea that there is a struggle existing in the best
tragic works between the Apollonian, our higher functions - reason, imagination, and so on… and
the Dionysian, our search for pleasure. Blanche and Stanley show how these two impulses can
be dysfunctional when taken to an extreme: Blanche is the Apollonian who exists only in illusion
and Stanley is the destructive Dionysian who gives in entirely to his base instincts. This by
extension furthers the intrinsic link between death and desire. Link to sexuality, desire, death, fate

STANLEY ie. male representation

[Stanley] is the embodiment of animal force, of brute life unconcerned and even consciously
scornful of every value that does not come within the scope of such life. He resents being called a
Polack, and he quotes Huey Long, who assured him that “every man is a king.” He screams that
he is a hundred percent American, and breaks dishes and mistreats his women to prove it. He is
all muscle, lumpish sensuality, and crude energy, given support by a society that hardly demands
more of him. He is the unwitting antichrist of our time, the little man who will break the back of
every effort to create a more comprehensive world in which thought and conscience, a broader
humanity are expected to evolve from the old Adam. His mentality provides the soil for fascism,
viewed not as a political movement but as a state of being. (Harold Culman)
Link to themes of masculinity, women in society, relationships, Old South vs. New South