Characters:
Blanche Dubois- Against
society’s eyes, she is a fallen woman since the start of the play. The family
fortune she used to have is now gone, and it was her fault that her young
husband committed suicide. She is an insecure and dislocated individual, and
tries to hide it behind her bad drinking problem and indiscrete sexual
behavior. She is an aging Southern belle who lives in the state of perpetual
and panic about her fading beauty. She sports a wardrobe of showy but cheap
evening clothes, and Stanley quickly sees through these acts and seeks
information about her past. Blanche depends on male sexual admiration for her
sense of self-esteem, which means that she has often succumbed to passion. By
marrying, Blanche hopes to escape poverty and the bad reputation that haunts
her. As Blanche sees it, Mitch is her only chance for contentment, even though
he is far from her ideal.
Stanley Kowalsi- An
egalitarian hero at the play’s start. He is loyal to his friends and passionate
towards his wife. He possesses an animalistic physical vigor that is evident in
his love of work, of fighting and of sex. His family comes from Poland, and
when he is referred as a “Polack” he expresses his outrage. He represents a new
heterogeneous America to which Blanche doesn’t belong, because she is a relic
from a defunct social hierarchy. He sees himself as a social leveler. His
intense hatred of Blanche is motivated in part by the aristocratic past that
Blanche represents. At the end, his down-to-earth character proves harmfully
crude and brutish. His chief amusements are gambling, bowling, sex, and
drinking, and he lacks ideals and imagination. His disturbing, degenerate
nature, first hinted at when he beats his wife, is fully evident after he rapes
his sister-in-law. Stanley shows no remorse for his brutal actions. The play
ends with an image of Stanley as the ideal family man, comforting his wife as
she holds their newborn child. The wrongfulness of this reputation, given what
we have learned about him in the play, ironically calls into question society’s
decision to ostracize Blanche.
Harold “Mitch”
Mitchel- He is more sensitive than the other poker friends, and this is
because he lives with his dying mother. He is a kind, descent human being who
hopes to marry so that he will have a woman for his dying mother to know. He is
a clumsy, sweaty, and had unrefined interests such as muscle building. He lacks
Blanche’s romantic perspective and spirituality, as well as her understanding
of poetry and literature. Himself and Blanche are drawn together by their
mutual need of companionship and support, and they believe themselves right for
each other. He has experienced the death of a loved one, the same as her, and
the snare in their relationship is sexual. Mitch is a very kind, caring and
loving man.
Stella Kowalski- She
is Blanche’s younger sister, and has a mild disposition that visibly sets her
apart from her more vulgar neighbors. She possesses the same timeworn
aristocratic heritage as Blanche, but she jumped the sinking ship in her late
teens and left Mississippi for New Orleans. Stella married low-class Stanley,
with whom she shares a robust sexual relationship. After her sister’s arrival
she is torn. She stands by Stanley in the confrontation, perhaps because she
gives birth to his child near the play’s end. While she loves and pities
Blanche, she cannot bring herself to believe Blanche’s accusations that Stanley
dislikes Blanche, and she eventually dismisses her sister’s claim that Stanley
raped her. Her denial of reality at the end of the play shows that she has more
in common with her sister than what she actually thinks.
Eunice- She is
Stella’s friend, upstairs neighbor and landlady. Eunice and her husband,
represent the low-class, carnal life that Stella has chosen for herself. Eunice
accepts her husband’s affections despite his physical abuse of her. At the end,
Eunice forbids Stella to question her decision and tells her she has no choice
but to disbelieve Blanche.
Allan Grey- He is
the young man with poetic aspirations whom Blanche fell in love with and
married as a teenager. One afternoon, he was found in bed with an older male.
That evening, Blanche announced her disgust at his homosexuality, and he shot
himself in the head. His death, which marked the end of Blanche´s sexual
innocence, has haunted her ever since. Allan never appears onstage.
Setting:
Symbolism:
Shadows and cries-
When Blanche and Stanley begin to quarrel in Scene 10, various oddly shaped
shadows begin to appear on the wall behind her. Discordant noises and jungle
cries also occur as Blanche begins to descend into madness. All of these
effects combine to dramatize Blanche’s final breakdown and departure from
reality in the face of Stanley’s physical threat. When she loses her sanity in
her final struggle against Stanley. Blanche retreats entirely into her own
world. Whereas she originally colors her perception of reality according to her
wishes, at this point in the pay she ignores reality altogether.
The Varsouviana
Polka- The tune to which Blanche and her young husband, Allan Grey, were
dancing when she last saw him alive. Earlier that day, she had walked in on him
in bed with an older male friend. In the middle of the tune, she told Allan how
she disgusted him, which lead Allan to shoot himself in the head. The polka music plays at various points of
the play, when Blanche is feeling remorse for Allan´s death. The first time we
hear it is in Scene One, when Stanley meets Blanche and asks her about her
husband. Its second appearance occurs when Blanche tells Mitch the story of her
ex husband. From this point on, the pola plays increasingly often, and it
always drives Blanche to distraction. She tells Mitch that it ends only after
she hears the sound of a gunshot in her head.
The polka and the moment it evokes represent Blanche´s loss
of innocence. The suicide of the young husband Blanche loved dearly was the
event that triggered her mental decline. Since then, Blanche hears the
Varsouviana whenever she panic and loses her grip on reality.
“It´s Only A Paper
Moon”- In Scene Seven, Blanche sing this popular ballad while she bathes.
The song’s 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. She believes that her fibbing is only her means of enjoying a
better way of life and is therefore essentially harmless.
As Blanche sits in her tub singing this song, Stanley tells
Stella the details of Blanche’s corrupt past. Williams ironically juxtaposes
Blanche´s fantastical understanding of herself with Stanley’s description of
Blanche´s real nature. In reality, Blanche is a sham who feign propriety and
sexual modesty. Once Mitch learns the truth about Blanche, he can no longer
believe in Blanche’s tricks and lies.
Meat- In the
first scene of the play, Stanley throws a package of meat at his adoring Stella
for her to catch. The action sends Eunice and the Negro woman into peals of
laughter. Presumably, they’ve picked up on the sexual innuendo behind Stanley’s
gesture. In hurling the meat at Stella, Stanley states the sexual
proprietorship he holds over her. Stella’s delight in catching Stanley’s meat
signifies her sexual infatuation with him.
Themes:
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 she fibs because
she refuses to accept the hand fate has dealt her. 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 unravel them. The
antagonistic relationship between Blanche and Stanley is a struggle between
appearances and reality. It propels the play’s plot and creates an overarching
tension. Ultimately, Blanche’s attempts to remake her own and Stella’s
existences—to rejuvenate her life and to save Stella from a life with
Stanley—fail. One of the main ways Williams dramatizes fantasy’s inability to
overcome reality is through an exploration of the boundary between exterior and
interior. The set of the play consists of the two-room Kowalski apartment and
the surrounding street. Williams’s use of a flexible set that allows the street
to be seen at the same time as the interior of the home expresses the notion
that the home is not a domestic sanctuary. The Kowalskis’ apartment cannot be a
self-defined world that is impermeable to greater reality. The characters leave
and enter the apartment throughout the play, often bringing with them the
problems they encounter in the larger environment. For example, Blanche refuses
to leave her prejudices against the working class behind her at the door. The
most notable instance of this effect occurs just before Stanley rapes Blanche,
when the back wall of the apartment becomes transparent to show the struggles
occurring on the street, foreshadowing the violation that is about to take
place in the Kowalskis’ home.
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. Blanche’s insanity emerges as she
retreats fully into herself, leaving the objective world behind in order to
avoid accepting reality. In order to escape fully, however, Blanche must come
to perceive the exterior world as that which she imagines in her head. Thus, objective
reality is not an antidote to Blanche’s fantasy world; rather, Blanche adapts
the exterior world to fit her delusions. In both the physical and the
psychological realms, the boundary between fantasy and reality is permeable.
Blanche’s final, deluded happiness suggests that, to some extent, fantasy is a
vital force at play in every individual’s experience, despite reality’s
inevitable triumph.
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, the precursor to
the play, 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
ostracism from Laurel, and, at the end of the play, her expulsion from society
at large. Sex leads to death for others Blanche knows as well. Throughout the
play, Blanche is haunted by the deaths of her ancestors, which she attributes
to their “epic fornications.” Her husband’s suicide results from her
disapproval of his homosexuality. The message is that indulging one’s desire in
the form of unrestrained promiscuity leads to forced departures and unwanted
ends. In Scene Nine, when the Mexican woman appears selling “flowers for the
dead,” Blanche reacts with horror because the woman announces Blanche’s fate.
Her fall into madness can be read as the ending brought about by her dual
flaws—her inability to act appropriately on her desire and her desperate fear
of human mortality. Sex and death are intricately and fatally linked in
Blanche’s experience.
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. Blanche recognizes that Stella could be happier without
her physically abusive husband, Stanley. Yet, the alternative Blanche
proposes—contacting Shep Huntleigh for financial support—still involves
complete dependence on men. When Stella chooses to remain with Stanley, she
chooses to rely on, love, and believe in a man instead of her sister. Williams
does not necessarily criticize Stella—he makes it quite clear that Stanley
represents a much more secure future than Blanche does. For herself, Blanche
sees marriage to Mitch as her means of escaping destitution. Men’s exploitation
of Blanche’s sexuality has left her with a poor reputation. This reputation
makes Blanche an unattractive marriage prospect, but, because she is destitute,
Blanche sees marriage as her only possibility for survival. 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.
Dialogue-
Quotations:
1. They told me to take a street-car
named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and
get off at—Elysian Fields!
Blanche
speaks these words to Eunice and the Negro woman upon arriving at the Kowalski
apartment at the beginning of Scene One. She has just arrived in New Orleans
and is describing her means of transportation to her sister’s apartment. The
place names that Williams uses in A Streetcar Named Desire hold
obvious metaphorical value. Elysian Fields, the Kowalskis’ street, is named for
the land of the dead in Greek mythology. The journey that Blanche describes
making from the train station to the Kowalski apartment is an allegorical
version of her life up to this point in time. Her illicit pursuit of her sexual
“desires” led to her social death and expulsion from her hometown of Laurel,
Mississippi. Landing in a seedy district that is likened to a pagan heaven,
Blanche begins a sort of afterlife, in which she learns and lives the
consequences of her life’s actions.
2. There are thousands of
papers, stretching back over hundreds of years, affecting Belle Reve as, piece
by piece, our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers
exchanged the land for their epic fornications—to put it plainly! . . . The
four-letter word deprived us of our plantation, till finally all that was
left—and Stella can verify that!—was the house itself and about twenty acres of
ground, including a graveyard, to which now all but Stella and I have
retreated.
Blanche gives this
speech to Stanley in Scene Two after he accuses her of having swindled Stella
out of her inheritance. While showing Stanley paperwork proving that she lost
Belle Reve due to foreclosure on its mortgage, Blanche attributes her family’s
decline in fortune to the debauchery of its male members over the generations.
Like Blanche, the DuBois ancestors put airs of gentility and refinement while
secretly pursuing libidinous pleasure.
Blanche’s explanation
situates her as the last in a long line of ancestors who cannot express their
sexual desire in a healthy fashion. Unfortunately, she is forced to deal with
the bankruptcy that is the result of her ancestors’ profligate ways. By running
away to New Orleans and marrying Stanley, Stella removed herself from the elite
social stratum to which her family belonged, thereby abandoning all its
pretensions, codes of behavior, sexual mores, and problems. Blanche resents
Stella’s departure and subsequent happiness. In Blanche’s eyes, Stella
irresponsibly left Blanche alone to deal with their family in its time of
distress.
3. 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.
In Scene Two, Blanche
makes this comment about Stanley to Stella. Blanche’s statement that Stanley is
“not the type that goes for jasmine perfume” is her way of saying that he lacks
the refinement to appreciate fine taste as Blanche can. She suggests that,
under normal circumstances, he would be an inadequate mate for a member of the
DuBois clan because of his inability to appreciate the subtler things in life,
whether material or spiritual, jasmine perfume or poetry.
Yet the second half of
Blanche’s comment acknowledges that the DuBois clan can no longer afford
luxuries or delude themselves with ideas of social grandeur. Since financially
Blanche and Stella no longer belong to the Southern elite, Blanche recognizes
that Stella’s child unavoidably will lack the monetary and social privilege
that she and Stella enjoyed. The genteel South in which Blanche grew up is a
thing of the past, and immigrants like Stanley, whom Blanche sees as crude, are
rising in social status. Like Stanley, Stella’s child may lack an appreciation
for perfume and other fineries, but Stanley will likely imbue him with the survival
skills that Blanche lacks. The fact that Blanche’s lack of survival skills
ultimately causes her downfall underscores the new importance such skills hold.
4. 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.
Blanche makes
derogatory and ignorant remarks about Stanley’s Polish ethnicity throughout the
play, implying that it makes him stupid and coarse. In Scene Eight, Stanley
finally snaps and speaks these words, correcting Blanche’s many
misapprehensions and forcefully exposing her as an uninformed bigot. His
declaration of being a proud American carries great thematic weight, for Stanley
does indeed represent the new American society, which is composed of upwardly
mobile immigrants. Blanche is a relic in the new America. The Southern landed
aristocracy from which she assumes her sense of superiority no longer has a
viable presence in the American economy, so Blanche is disenfranchised
monetarily and socially.
5. Whoever you are—I have
always depended on the kindness of strangers.
These words, which
Blanche speaks to the doctor in Scene Eleven, form Blanche’s final statement in
the play. She perceives the doctor as the gentleman rescuer for whom she has
been waiting since arriving in New Orleans. Blanche’s final comment is ironic
for two reasons. First, the doctor is not the chivalric Shep Huntleigh type of
gentleman Blanche thinks he is. Second, Blanche’s dependence “on the kindness
of strangers” rather than on herself is the reason why she has not fared well
in life. In truth, strangers have been kind only in exchange for sex.
Otherwise, strangers like Stanley, Mitch, and the people of Laurel have denied
Blanche the sympathy she deserves. Blanche’s final remark indicates her total
detachment from reality and her decision to see life only as she wishes to
perceive it.
Structure:
Tennessee Williams divides A
Streetcar Named Desire into eleven scenes each one leading naturally to a
climax, either a dramatic gesture (in Scene 1 Blanche sinks back, her head in
her arms, to be sick) or a punch line (Blanche again, in Scene 3, ‘I need
kindness now’, or in Scene 6, ‘Sometimes —. there’s God — so quickly!’). The
effect is a sense of conclusion, as if a mini- playlet has drawn to a
close.
The action of the play covers a
period of some five months. The first six scenes stretch over the first few
days of Blanche’s visit in May, but Scene 7 moves abruptly to mid September
when Scenes 7 to 10 take place within one day. The last scene follows
a few weeks later.
As such the first group of
scenes sets the stage for the calamities that will take place in the second
group, and the last scene, which takes place some weeks later, shows the
outcome of these events. There is a clear chronological progression of events
between the three groups of scenes with each group having a noticeably
different mood, almost as if the play were split into three acts.
Dramatic tension is heightened
early in the second group of scenes when Stanley denounces Blanche
while she, blissfully unaware, is singing contrapuntally off-stage in the
bathroom. In Scene 8 the mounting tension culminates in Stanley’s cruel
birthday present of a bus ticket back to Laurel. In Scene 9 the first of
the symbolic - one might say Expressionist - figures appears, the Mexican
seller of flowers for the dead, followed by Mitch’s attempt at raping Blanche.
The readers or audience may have guessed what will follow in the next scene. Scene
10 starts amiably enough, with Stanley even offering to ‘bury the
hatchet’, but soon the tone of the conversation, and the mood of the set,
changes. As Stanley strips off Blanche’s pretensions, menacing shapes
appear on the walls of the apartment and the street outside is filled with
violence. The climax is now inevitable, foreshadowed by Blanche’s terror. The
condensed period of time in this ‘Act’ creates the impression of Blanche
hurtling irrevocably to her doom.
