A Streetcar Named Desire By Tennessee Williams

The play A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, is a play about a woman named Blanche Dubois who goes to live with her sister after she loses her home in Mississippi. Between the hardships of her previous life and the way she is treated now, she is not in a good way by the time the play ends. She basically has a mental breakdown. There are three stages of Blanche’s mental state. She lives in a fantasy, Mitch rejecting her, and Stanley raping her, Blanche is mentally unstable by the end of this ply.

Established as one of the most prolific playwrights of the 20th century, Tennessee Williams used his writing as a form of therapy. The author came from a troubled background consisting of alcoholism, mental breakdowns, and general unhappiness; Williams exploited these unfortunate events and allowed them to motivate his literature. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois’ struggles represent the reality of people’s lives, “an enduring concern of [Williams’] throughout his writing career (Henthorne 1). Blanche captures our focus with her seemingly sincere and fragile nature, but it is later revealed that this is just an illusion within her own mind. She resides in a world of fantasy to shield herself against the harsh threats of reality and her own fears. Blanche’s main objective in the play is to keep herself from falling apart in a world of cruelty through alcoholism and illusion. Through the characterization of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams depicts the coping mechanism of fantasy and its detrimental repercussions by exploring the specific experiences that eventually impede her happiness.

To live in a world of illusion is to live a life of lies.Sometimes people try to escape reality, whether to avoid truths or to avoid their past. A Streetcar named Desire by Tennessee Williams introduces Blanche Dubois as the main protagonist and potential victim of the story. In the story, Blanche leaves her home in “Belle Reve” because it has been destroyed and takes a streetcar to to get to her sister’s (Stella’s) residence. She believes that she will find a new life as well as comfort and acceptance at her sister’s side. Unfortunately she is very wrong about it, in fact, it is the complete opposite. Blanche’s past life was very shameful for her and so in order to forget the tormenting truth, she resorts to living a fantasy life of her own, which causes problems for her later on (self-destruction).

In this play Blanche has a praxis: She must get a companion to share her life with who can provide her with shelter, food, and financial support and that’s what makes the whole story happen. This praxis is created when two things happen: First, Blanche finding out that the man she married was having an affair with another man and he decided to shoot himself after she confronted him, and second, the loss of her house in Mississippi. These two things create her need of a shelter, financial support and food therefore she decides to stay with her sister Stella.

“A Streetcar Named Desire” is not only considered to be the best play written by Tennessee Williams but is also arguably one the greatest plays ever written. The play has a very Shakespearean sensibility with a southern twist while also having an original complexity woven throughout the entire body that became unique as William’s signature artistry. The most important attributes of the play is the construction and motivation of the characters, the juxtaposition of illusion and reality, as well as the relationship between the dialogue and stage directions. The play’s characters are ultimately defined and driven by their gender identity and sexuality, hence the title “A Streetcar Named Desire”. This is evident in the number of

In Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Stella and Stanley Kowalski live in the heart of poor, urban New Orleans in a one-story flat very different from the prestigious home Stella came from. This prestige is alive and well inside Stella’s lady-like sister, Blanche Du Bois. Over the course of Blanche’s life, she has experienced many tragedies that deeply affected her, such as the death of her gay husband, the downward spiral in her mental health that followed, and most recently the loss of her wealth and therefore social status. She constructs a proverbial lampshade to mask her pain and to control the last part of her world that she is able to, the image she projects into the world for herself and others to see. The

A Streetcar Named Desire was written by Tennessee Williams in the late 1940s. The play takes place in New Orleans, Louisiana. A Streetcar Named Desire is a tragedy about a Mississippi school teacher, Blanche DuBois, who travels to New Orleans to visit her sister and brother-in-law, Stella and Stanley Kowalski. Throughout this play, Williams displays the destruction of Blanche DuBois’ life by alcoholism, her lust for young boys, and Stanley Kowalski. In this play there are distinct differences between Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski’s lifestyles, backgrounds, and personalities. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams portrays two completely opposite ways of life within the characters of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. The backgrounds of these two characters play a crucial part in the understanding of the meaning behind this play. Once it is understood where Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski come from, it is much easier to understand the reasoning behind certain events that happen in A Streetcar Named Desire.

In the opening two scenes of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ by Tennessee Williams, the audience has its first and generally most important impressions formulated on characters, the plot and the mood and tone of the play overall.

     In Tennessee William’s masterful play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the reader meets a middle – aged woman by the name of Blanche DuBois. Blanche lives in her own faerie tale world, one of a young, beautiful debutante, surrounded by admirers, and loved by all whom she encounters. In reality, Blanche is an aging woman who cannot cope with the actualities of life. She makes up wild stories, and when Stanley Kowalski, her brother – in – law, rapes her, the realities of life cause her to drift into absolute lunacy.

In the play “A streetcar Named Desire” it centers on a women named Blanche Dubois. She travels from the railroad in New Orleans to a street formally known as Elysian Fields, where she meets her pregnant sister Stella and her husband Stanly Kowalski. Having lost her homestead, husband and fortification, Blanche turns to her only close relative for support. Reaching middle age, Blanche emotionally is unhinged and is in financial crises with the loss of her southern bell life. After explaining the bad news of the loss of Belle Reve, the family mansion. Stanly quickly accuses Blanche of cheating Stella’s share of the family’s land/profits; intern starts a conflict with her. To Blanche it was clear that her sister was happy with Stanly, but notices how abusive and ape like he can be. Although Stella and Stanly fight, their physical relationship is strong. Therefore Blanche takes it up on herself to break the two up in fear of her sister’s wellbeing, the attempts only enrage Stanly further. He latter deeply investigates Blanche’s past and discovered that she has been living off the road and has had an affair with a 17-year-old student that attended the same school she worked. Using this newfound knowledge Stanly quickly alters the playing field and slowly reviles Blanches flaws and un-southern bell actions, which leads blanche into a dismay between her imaginary life and reality. Flustered and unstable, Blanche is abused physically and mentally by Stanly, he confronts

A Streetcar Named Desire is a book that occurs in the 1960s, New Orleans where an agrarian southern culture meets the new industrialized southern culture. Different people have different view on slavery. They begin to grow and divide into two separate cultures: Old Agrarian South and New Industrialized South.

The character of Blanche Dubois in the play A Streetcar Named Desire is depicted as a victim of her traditional southern upbringing, she struggles to find her place in society where the values of a Southern Belle are no longer relevant nor exist. Blanche Dubois is portrayed as the weaker sex, who is then over powered by Stanley Kowalski, her sister’s working class husband. Blanche Dubois shows a great psychological instability when she is unable to live up to the expectations of a classic and proper Southern Belle. This psychological instability ultimately leads to her to have a metal breakdown, the play ends with Blanche being committed to a mental institution.

Stella values love the most and Blanche, that is her runner up. They two want to be loves so desperately because that is what the “southern belle” does. The two also cherish their wealth or what wealth they did have even though it is more apparent with Blanche. There are parts of Street Car where Stanly open Blanches trunk and finds all of these nice furs and a “solid gold” dress and he asks why Stella doesn’t have any of those things. Blanche always has to look her best no matter what the occasion. They both are in love with the idea of being in love. Blanche is jealous because Stella has a man and she doesn’t and she is older. They need someone to love them to feel complete. Blanche needs it even more considering her late husband was gay and she feels like she wasn’t good enough and that turned him. Blanche and Stella do have some similarities with their values, which makes since because they are both sisters. Some do become stronger throughout the play like Stella’s lust for pleasure and that alone is what keeps hers and Stanley’s relationship

As Ruby Cohn calls it in his essay “The Garrulous Grotesque of Tennessee Williams”, A Streetcar Named Desire is “a poignant portrait of a Southern gentlewoman who is extinct in the modern world” (46). The protagonist of the play is Blanche duBois, a fading Southern belle, who comes to New Orleans to live with her sister Stella and her husband Stanley Kowalski. This

A Streetcar named Desire was written by Tennessee Williams, during the restless years following World War II. The play was based on the life of a woman named Blanche Dubois. Blanche was a fragile and neurotic woman, desperate for a place to call her own. She had been exiled from her hometown Laurel, Mississippi after seducing a seventeen year old boy. After this incident, she decided to move to New Orleans with her sister Stella. She claimed she had to move, in result of a series of financial calamities which have recently claimed the family plantation, Belle Reve. Her sisters husband, Stanley Kowalski is very suspicious seeing that Blanche seems like an ambitious woman. Therefore, he decides to investigate her. He wanted to make sure