A Streetcar Named Desire 
(20^TH CENTURY SOCIO-POLITICAL DRAMA)

Title of play: A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)

Date of first stage performance: First performed on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Date of film adaptation: First adapted into film by Warner Brothers in 1951 and directed by Elia Kazan.

Author: Tennessee Williams, born Thomas Lanier III.

Author’s date & place of birth: Born in 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi.   

3 significant details of author’s personal circumstances/times in which play was written:

·         Williams himself was from the South and his Southern accent resulted him to gaining the name Tennessee in college. His Southern origins may have also influenced the fact that A Streetcar Named Desire explores the conflict between the Old South (represented by Blanche Dubois) and the New South (represented by Stanley Kowalski).

·         Williams’ entered the University of Missouri to study journalism; however his father forced him to withdraw from school because Williams had failed a required course. As a result his father made him work at the same shoe company where he himself worked. After three years at the shoe factory, Williams had a minor nervous breakdown so he returned to a college in St. Louis.

·         Tennessee Williams was homosexual. He took inspiration from other gay writers such as Hart Crane, in fact the epigraph to A Streetcar Named Desire is taken from Hart Crane’s poem titled “The Broken Tower”. Thus it can be argued that Williams identified Crane as a homosexual writer trying to find a means of self-expression in a heterosexual world.

Structure of play: Acts/scenes, timescale:

A Streetcar Named Desire is structured into eleven scenes, which trace the development of the relationship between Blanche, Stanley and Stella over the space of a few months. The original stage production placed the two intervals after Scene 4 (after the poker night) and Scene 6 (after Blanche’s date with Mitch). Williams’ dramatic structure also involves a dual movement in time. Whereas the onstage action keeps moving forward until Stanley rapes Blanche, we are also taken backwards in time to Blanche’s primal sexual trauma, the discovery of Allan’s homosexuality and his subsequent suicide. Of course, when Blanche finally describes this event to Mitch, years after it took place, it has entirely changed its ‘meaning’: at the time she was shocked, appalled and disgusted, but now she feels guilt, sorrow and remorse. Significantly the play begins in the spring and ends in the ‘fall’. 

Characterisation:

Main characters in play & very brief summary of

·                     Personality

·                     Role in play

·                     Key quotation (act, scene, line reference)

Blanche DuBois:  

Blanche is an insecure, fragile and aging Southern belle, who has a drinking problem. She is very snobby towards her brother-in-law, Stanley. She often talks about Stanley as if he is inferior to her, for example at one point she says to her sister:

“Oh, I guess he’s just not the type that goes for jasmine perfume, but maybe he’s what we need to mix with our blood now that we’ve lost Belle Reve.”  (Sc. Two, 141).

Stanley Kowalski: 

Stanley is a passionate, brutish working class man who is married to Blanche’s sister, Stella.  He hates Blanches’ snobby attitude and the aristocratic, image of the Old South which she represents. He is Polish and represents the emerging diverse New South and so doesn’t appreciate Blanches’ bigotry towards him, at one point he educates Blanche informing her:

“I am not a Polack. People from Poland are Poles, not Polacks. But what I am is a one hundred percent American, born and raised in the greatest country on earth and proud as hell of it, so don’t ever call me a Polack.”  (Sc. Eight, 197).

Stella Kowalski: 

Stella is Blanche’s younger sister and Stanley’s wife. She is madly in love with her husband and cares deeply about her sister, so she often in the middle of Blanche and Stanley’s antagonism towards each other. She tries to shield her sister from harsh realities. She appears as someone very much in love and has a very passionate relationship with Stanley, something which Blanche does not understand. Stella reveals: “Why, on our wedding night- soon as we came in here- he snatched off one of my slippers and rushed about the place smashing the light-bulbs with it.

Blanche, astonished, replies: “He did- what?”   (Sc. Four, 157)    

Harold “Mitch” Mitchell: Mitch is a kind, sensitive man who lives with his mother. He tries to court Blanche, with a mind to marry her and to introduce a bride to his dying mother; however Blanche toys with his emotions. In scene six, Blanche deceives Mitch about her sordid sexual past. Believing in her sexual inexperience Mitch says:

“I like you to be exactly the way that you are, because in all my- experience- I have never known anyone like you.” (Sc. Six, 176-77)

In response to Mitch’s admission Blanche can’t help but to burst into laughter, making the audience more aware of her shady past.

4. Dramaturgy & language: choose a two page extract and comment on the choice of language and dramatic effects:

Act, Scene & page number: (Sc. Two, 134-135)

In this scene Stanley suspects that Blanche has cheated his wife (and thus him) out of her share of their family home, Belle Reve, and so insists on raking through Blanche’s trunk looking for evidence. As he rummages through Blanche’s faded finery all he finds are fake imitations of jewels and furs. The language Stanley uses is mocking and aggressive, he sneers to Stella “What is this sister of yours, a deep- sea diver who brings up sunken treasures? Or is she the champion safe cracker of all time?” (sc. 2, 134) Furthermore, Williams’ stage directions are rich with implied violence, which creates a tense, barely restrained violent atmosphere, as Stanley; “pulls open” the trunk, “jerks out her dresses” and “hurls” her furs about before he “kicks” it shut. Later he “seizes” her perfume bottle and “slams it down” before “shov[ing]” the trunk “roughly open” again, and when he finds her cache of love letters from her dead husband he “snatches them open” and “rips off the ribbon” which binds them. It can be argued that, just as Belle Reve comes to symbolises Blanche’s lost identity as a Southern Belle, Blanche’s trunk full of tatty costumes and cheap fakes symbolizes both her tragic past and also her current fantasy existence. 

The scene can also be seen as a struggle between Stanley and Blanche for physical space and emotional territory. When Blanche discovers Stanley’s invasion of her privacy she is horrified. She says: “Now that you touched them I’ll burn them! ...I hurt [Allan] the way that you would like to hurt me, but you can’t!” (Sc. 2, 139) Blanche’s language suggests that Stanley’s violent actions both contaminate her past and her future. As Stanley’s invasion of Blanche’s trunk can be said to prefigure the rape of his sister- in- law, her accusation can be seen as a foreshadowing of his later destruction of her social and sexual identity.

5.  Socio-political Themes: 2 quotations to illustrate each (with Act, Scene, page number)

1. Education: There is a sense of working class culture and a preference of physical work over intellectual pursuits. As a teacher Blanche is the only character in the play which shows some form of experience with institutional education, whereas the male characters like Mitch seem uneducated.    

Blanche: “‘And if God choose,

I shall but love thee better- after death!’

Why, that’s from my favourite sonnet by Mrs Browning!”  

Mitch: You know it?

Blanche: Certainly I do!” (Sc. Three, 149)

2. Class/Race: Mainly indicated by language; Blanche’s upper- class, values related to ‘Old South’ are contrasted with the setting and people of the emerging ‘New South’. Blanche appears to uphold the values of the Old South; creating for herself an image of a demure and sexually innocent lady, however her lies catch up with her in the end:

Mitch to Blanche: “God! That pitch about your ideals being so old-fashioned and all that malarkey that you’ve dished out all summer. Oh, I knew you weren’t sixteen any more. But I was fool enough to believe you were straight.” (Sc. Nine 204)

Blanche: “Legacies! Huh…And other things such as blood-stained pillow- slips- ‘Her linen needs changing’- ‘Yes mother. But couldn’t we get a coloured girl to do it?’ No, we couldn’t of course. Everything’s gone but the-“ (Sc. Nine, 206).

3. Gender: There is a critique of women’s dependence of men in the post- war era. Both Blanche and Stella are forced to depend upon men; Stella depends on her husband Stanley for happiness and Blanche depends on various men financially. In the play she tries to depend on Mitch for financial security and respectability. Blanche’s final words serve as a critique on the treatment of women during the transition from the old to the new South, she says to the male doctor:

“Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” (Sc. Eleven, 225)

Stanley to Stella: “Lie Number One: All this squeamishness she puts on! You should just know the line she’s been feeding to Mitch. He thought she had never been more than kissed by a fellow! But sister Blanche is no lily! Ha- ha! Some lily she is!” (Sc. Seven, 186).

4. Power: Stanley uses his physical power to dominate the women in his life, he often acts very animalistic- which excites Stella but makes Blanche frightened of him. When he rapes Blanche he uses his power and physical strength as a tool to dominate her in the worst possible way, driving her to insanity.

Stanley’s physical power is shown through stage directions, when he assaults Blanche: [He springs towards her, overturning the table…]

Stanley: “We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning” (Sc. Ten, 215).

Critical comments/reviews – 3 quotations (author, publication, date, page no.)

“Tennessee Williams's play is so inexhaustible that it is always worth seeing. With Rachel Weisz playing Blanche DuBois there is also no doubt this production will be a popular success. Yet, for all the evening's merits, the perfectionist in me questions Rob Ashford's production, which is often stronger on externals than the drama's inner core. […] It certainly looks handsome. As you enter the theatre you are instantly struck by Christopher Oram's evocation of New Orleans, with its spiral staircase and ornamented balconies extending right round the theatre. […]Weisz…is almost too beautiful, so that Blanche's sensitivity about her age seems misplaced. The sinuous drawl of the American south also sometimes eludes her. But what Weisz brings to the role is a quality of desperate solitude touched with grace. - July 2009, Donmar Warehouse in London. Michael Billington, Guardian.
“What Ms. Blanchett brings to the character is life itself, a primal survival instinct that keeps her on her feet long after she has been buffeted by blows that would level a heavyweight boxer. […]Except, I might add, audiences, who are likely to find themselves identifying with disturbing closeness with a character who has often before seemed too exotic, too anachronistic, too fey to remind you of anyone you knew personally. Ms. Blanchett’s Blanche is always on the verge of falling apart, yet she keeps summoning the strength to wrestle with a world that insists on pushing her away. Blanche’s burden, in existential terms, becomes ours. And a most particular idiosyncratic creature acquires the universality that is the stuff of tragedy.” - 2009 BAM Harvey Theatre. Ben Brantley, The New York Times.
“This delicately pitched revival of Tennessee Williams's great play is crammed into the centre of the stage, with the audience up close and personal so that you can never doubt the lack of privacy in the tiny New Orleans apartment where the broken Blanche DuBois comes to stay with her sister, Stella, and Stella's Polish-American husband, Stanley. The battle between Blanche and Stanley over living space is a microcosm of the greater battle that the two wage over Stella and for control of the future – a future that doesn't have room for both of them.”-  At the Octagon, Bolton 2010. Lyn Gardner, The Guardian.

3 Other plays of the period (19..s) with very brief summary of plot

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949): Written by renowned American dramatist, Arthur Miller, the play tells the story of family man, Willy Loman. Loman is an unsuccessful, middle-aged American salesman stuck in a dead end job which he doesn’t like and which he gets no appreciation for, but he sticks with his job in the hopes of attaining the ‘American Dream’.

The play displays the displays the subtle realism which became a hallmark of American drama in the 1940s and 50s. It also balances nuanced characterization with a concern for the social environment, which was why the play received great critical acclaim and success.   

Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh (1946): Tragedy by American dramatist Eugene O'Neill. Structured into four acts, the play was written in 1939, and tells the story of a ragged collection of alcoholics in a rundown New York tavern-hotel run by Harry Hope. The saloon regulars numb themselves with whiskey and make grandiose plans, but they do nothing. They await the arrival of big-spending Theodore Hickman ("Hickey"), who forces his cronies to pursue their much-discussed plans, hoping that real failure will make them face reality. Hickey finally confesses that he killed his long-suffering wife just hours before he arrived at Harry's, and he turns himself in to the police. The others slip back into an alcoholic haze, clinging to their dreams once more.

The play displays an uneasy mix of expressionism and realism; it exposes the human need for illusion and hope as antidotes to the natural condition of despair.

August Wilson’s Fences (1986): Fences is mix of drama and comedy that emphasizes the tribulations and confusions people were going through, during the changing early sixties. This two-act play follows the story of Troy Maxson, a former star of the Negro baseball leagues who now works as a garbage man in 1957 Pittsburgh. Excluded as a Negro from the major leagues during his prime, Troy's bitterness takes its toll on his relationships with both his wife and son who now wants his own chance to play.

August Wilson is the most influential and successful African American playwright writing today. He is the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences, The Piano Lesson, King Hedley II, Ma Rainy's Black Bottom, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Seven Guitars, Two Trains Running, Jitney and Radio Golf. Consequently, his plays have been produced all over the world.