a streetcar named desire character essay

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Essays on A Streetcar Named Desire

Choosing the right essay topic is crucial for your success in college. Your creativity and personal interests play a significant role in the selection process. This webpage aims to provide you with a variety of A Streetcar Named Desire essay topics to inspire your writing and help you excel in your academic pursuits.

Essay Types and Topics

Argumentative.

The role of gender in A Streetcar Named Desire
The impact of societal norms on the characters' behaviors

Paragraph Example:

In Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, the portrayal of gender dynamics is a central theme that sheds light on the power struggles and societal expectations faced by the characters. This essay aims to explore the significance of gender in the play and its influence on the characters' decisions and relationships.

Through a close examination of the gender dynamics in A Streetcar Named Desire, this essay has highlighted the complexities of societal norms and their impact on individual lives. The characters' struggles serve as a reflection of the broader societal challenges, prompting us to reconsider our perceptions of gender roles and expectations.

Compare and Contrast

The parallels between Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski
The contrasting symbols of light and darkness in the play

Descriptive

The vivid imagery of New Orleans in the play
The sensory experiences portrayed in A Streetcar Named Desire
An argument for Blanche's mental state and its impact on her actions
The case for the significance of the play's setting in shaping the characters
Reimagining a key scene from a different character's perspective
A personal reflection on the themes of illusion and reality in the play

Engagement and Creativity

As you explore these essay topics, remember to engage your critical thinking skills and bring your unique perspective to your writing. A Streetcar Named Desire offers a rich tapestry of themes and characters, providing ample opportunities for creative exploration in your essays.

Educational Value

Each essay type presents a valuable opportunity for you to develop different skills. Argumentative essays can refine your analytical thinking, while descriptive essays can enhance your ability to paint vivid pictures with words. Persuasive essays help you hone your persuasive writing skills, and narrative essays allow you to practice storytelling and narrative techniques.

Reality Versus Illusion in The Streetcar Named Desire

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How Blanche and Stella Rely on Self-delusion in a Streetcar Named Desire

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An Examination of The Character of Blanche in a Streetcar Named Desire

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The Concealed Homosexuality in a Streetcar Named Desire

Oppression, its brutality and its inescapability, is a dominant theme in literature, similar themes in a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams and water by robery lowell, first impression lies: the power and masculinity exuded by stanley kolawski, determining the tragedy potential in a streetcar named desire, how tennessee williams is influenced by the work of chekhov, the use of suspense in a streetcar named desire, a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams: personal identity of blanche, the portrayals of sexuality in cat on a hot tin roof and a streetcar named desire, evaluation of the social class ranking as illustrated in the book, a streetcar named desire, blanche and mitch relationship in a streetcar named desire, female powerlessness in the duchess of malfi and a streetcar named desire, a comparison between the plastic theatre and expressionism in a streetcar named desire, morality and immorality in a streetcar named desire and the picture of dorian gray, oppositions and their purpose in "a streetcar named desire" and "the birthday party", how femininity and masculinity are presented in ariel and a streetcar named desire, tennessee williams’ depiction of blanche as a casualty as illustrated in his play, a streetcar named desire, history defined the themes of a streetcar named desire, comparing social and ethnic tensions in a streetcar named desire and blues for mister charlie, the use of contrast as a literary device at the beginning of a streetcar named desire.

December 3, 1947, Tennessee Williams

Play; Southern Gothic

The French Quarter and Downtown New Orleans

Blanche DuBois, Stella Kowalski, Stanley Kowalski, Harold "Mitch" Mitchell

1. Vlasopolos, A. (1986). Authorizing History: Victimization in" A Streetcar Named Desire". Theatre Journal, 38(3), 322-338. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3208047) 2. Corrigan, M. A. (1976). Realism and Theatricalism in A Streetcar Named Desire. Modern Drama, 19(4), 385-396. (https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/50/article/497088/summary) 3. Quirino, L. (1983). The Cards Indicate a Voyage on'A Streetcar Named Desire'. Contemporary Literary Criticism, 30. (https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CH1100001571&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00913421&p=LitRC&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E8abc495e) 4. Corrigan, M. A. (2019). Realism and Theatricalism in A Streetcar Named Desire. In Essays on Modern American Drama (pp. 27-38). University of Toronto Press. (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.3138/9781487577803-004/html?lang=de) 5. Van Duyvenbode, R. (2001). Darkness Made Visible: Miscegenation, Masquerade and the Signified Racial Other in Tennessee Williams' Baby Doll and A Streetcar Named Desire. Journal of American Studies, 35(2), 203-215. (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-american-studies/article/abs/darkness-made-visible-miscegenation-masquerade-and-the-signified-racial-other-in-tennessee-williams-baby-doll-and-a-streetcar-named-desire/B73C386D2422793FB8DC00E0B79B7331) 6. Cahir, L. C. (1994). The Artful Rerouting of A Streetcar Named Desire. Literature/Film Quarterly, 22(2), 72. (https://www.proquest.com/openview/7040761d75f7fd8f9bf37a2f719a28a4/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=5938) 7. Silvio, J. R. (2002). A Streetcar Named Desire—Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, 30(1), 135-144. (https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/jaap.30.1.135.21985) 8. Griffies, W. S. (2007). A streetcar named desire and tennessee Williams' object‐relational conflicts. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 4(2), 110-127. (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/aps.127) 9. Shackelford, D. (2000). Is There a Gay Man in This Text?: Subverting the Closet in A Streetcar Named Desire. In Literature and Homosexuality (pp. 135-159). Brill. (https://brill.com/display/book/9789004483460/B9789004483460_s010.xml)

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Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire

Analysis of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 13, 2020 • ( 0 )

Tennessee Williams ‘s (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), is generally regarded as his best. Initial reaction was mixed, but there would be little argument now that it is one of the most powerful plays in the modern theater. Like The Glass Menagerie , it concerns, primarily, a man and two women and a “gentleman caller.” As in The Glass Menagerie , one of the women is very much aware of the contrast between the present and her southern-aristocratic past; one woman (Stella) is practical if not always adequately aware, while the other (Blanche) lives partly in a dream world and teeters on the brink of psychosis; the gentleman caller could perhaps save the latter were circumstances somewhat different; and the play’s single set is a slum apartment. It is located in Elysian Fields, a section of the French Quarter of New Orleans. The action takes place in the downstairs two-room apartment rented by the Kowalskis.

a streetcar named desire character essay

Marlon Brando and Kim Hunter in the 1951 adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire

Stella Kowalski relaxes in a shabby armchair in the bedroom of the small apartment. She eats chocolates and reads a movie magazine. Stella’s husband, Stanley Kowalski, enters, carrying a package of meat dripping with blood and yelling for his wife. Stanley tosses the meat to Stella, who catches it in a surprised reaction. Stanley leaves to go bowling with his friends, and Stella decides to tag along. She hurriedly primps in the living room mirror, quickly closes the apartment door behind her, and says hello to Eunice Hubbell and a Negro Woman who are sitting on the landing. As she exits, the two women laugh about Stanley’s lack of manners.

Blanche DuBois enters. She is carrying a small suitcase and a piece of paper. She is a fading Southern belle, whose appearance suggests she is going to a garden party, but her search for her sister, Stella, has landed her in the slums of the French Quarter. Eunice notices the confused Blanche, and she asks whether she is lost. Blanche explains that she was instructed to take a streetcar named Desire to Elysian Fields via a streetcar called Cemetery. Eunice informs her that she is indeed in the right place. Eunice lets her into the Kowalskis’ apartment to wait for Stella while the Negro Woman fetches Stella from the bowling alley. Blanche has arrived unannounced, and she is shocked to discover Stella living in such a dismal place.

Blanche searches for a drink, and Stella enters. The two sisters are ecstatic to be reunited. Blanche speaks excitedly, overwhelming Stella with criticism of the apartment. Stella is speechless and hurt by these remarks, and she notices that Blanche is shaking and anxious. Stella is concerned by her sister’s behavior, and she attempts to calm her nerves by offering her a drink. Blanche urges Stella to explain why she is living in such depressing conditions. Blanche says she has taken a leave of absence from her high school teaching job. She says that she is having a difficult time and needed a break. Blanche mentions the weight Stella has gained, and she compliments her on her appearance; however, Stella knows that her sister is being critical. Blanche demands that Stella stand so she can fully analyze the size of her hips, her less than perfect haircut. She asks Stella about having a maid, but the Kowalskis’ apartment only consists of two rooms. Blanche is horrified by this news. She pours another drink to curb her intolerance of the place. Blanche has been lonely; she feels her sister abandoned her when she left Mississippi and their father died. Blanche admits that she is not well. Stella insists that her sister stay at the apartment, and she directs her to a folding bed. She insists that Stanley will not mind the lack of privacy, as he is Polish. Stella advises her sister that Stanley is unlike the Southern gentlemen they knew back in Laurel, Mississippi. She confesses he is ill mannered, but she is madly in love with him.

Blanche confesses that she has lost Belle Reve, the family plantation. Blanche expresses her resentment of her sister because she was “in bed with [her] Polack” while Blanche scraped and clawed to hold on to Belle Reve. Stella is very upset to know that they have lost their homestead. Blanche bitterly blames the foreclosure on the many deaths in the family. Blanche is plagued with guilt, as well as being hopelessly adrift, and she projects her feelings of loss onto Stella, who runs into the bathroom to escape her sister’s wrath.

Stanley returns home. He shouts to his friends, Steve Hubbell and Mitch (Harold Mitchell), from the stairwell. Blanche speaks to him before he notices her presence. Stanley is cordial to her and asks for Stella, who has locked herself away in the bathroom. He offers Blanche another shot of whiskey, noticing that the bottle has already been sampled. Blanche declines the offer, stating that she rarely drinks. Her obvious dishonesty spurs Stanley to ask some very personal questions regarding her past, namely, about her husband. He sheds his sweaty shirt to find relief in the summer heat and welcomes her to stay with them. Upset by his meddlesome inquiries, Blanche replies that her young husband is dead. She grows nauseous discussing this subject and has to sit down to regain her composure.

Around six o’clock the following evening, Blanche and Stella plan to have dinner out and see a movie while Stanley and his friends have a poker night in the apartment. While Blanche readies herself in the bathroom, Stella tells Stanley that Belle Reve has been lost. She also warns him not to mention that she is pregnant because Blanche is already so unstable. Stanley is most concerned with the loss of the estate. He suspects Blanche sold the plantation and kept all of the profits for herself. Referring to the Napoleonic Code, Stanley wants to know whether he has been swindled. To find proof of the foreclosure he rummages through Blanche’s trunk. Appraising the furs and jewelry she has, he urges Stella to acknowledge that Blanche has deceived her. Stella fears the looming confrontation, so she escapes to the porch.

When Blanche emerges from her hot bath and realizes that Stella is not around, she flirts with Stanley as a means of winning him over; however, he is interested only in the profits from Belle Reve. When Stanley accuses Blanche of selling the plantation and keeping all of the money, she insists that she has never cheated anyone in her life. She says, “I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman’s charm is fifty percent illusion, but when a thing is important, I tell the truth.” Stanley rifles through the trunk again, searching for documents that will prove Blanche is lying. Stanley discovers yellowing letters held together by aging ribbons, and he withholds these visibly precious items until she pulls two manila envelopes from her belongings. Blanche says that his touch has contaminated her cherished love letters. She tells Stanley that this paperwork is all that is left of the plantation, and he continues berating her by demanding to know how she could allow the foreclosure to happen. Blanche recoils with anger and retorts that the plantation has been lost by generations of negligent men who “exchanged the land for their epic fornications.” Stanley intends to have the documents read by a lawyer friend, and Blanche invites him to do so. Now that Stanley has been proved wrong, he justifies his concern with the fact that Stella is pregnant. This is a happy digression for Blanche, who is genuinely excited by this information. When Stella returns, Blanche expresses her joy about the baby. She brags that she handled Stanley and even flirted with him. The two sisters leave as Stanley’s friends arrive for their poker night.

Later that night in the Kowalski apartment, Stanley and his friends are still drinking and playing cards. Stella and Blanche return at 2:30 A.M., and Stanley asks them to visit Eunice until the game is over. When Stella does not comply, Stanley slaps her backside as a means of countering her disobedience in front of his friends. Blanche is intrigued by Mitch, who is uninterested in the poker game because he is worried about his ailing mother. Blanche is immediately attracted to his sensitivity. The two introduce themselves. Mitch offers her a cigarette, showing her the inscription on his cigarette case. She immediately recognizes it as the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Mitch explains the case is from a former girlfriend who died. Mitch’s story of his former lover resonates with Blanche’s own sense of loss of her young husband, Allan Grey. She tells Mitch, “Sorrow makes for sincerity,” and continues, “Show me a person that hasn’t known sorrow and I’ll show you a superficial person.” She asks Mitch to cover the naked lightbulb with a Chinese lantern she recently purchased.

Stanley grows more inebriated and increasingly irritated by the music Blanche is playing. He crosses the room, rips the radio from the wall, and throws it out of the window. He hits Stella when she tries to stop him. Humiliated and stunned, Stella runs into the kitchen area and orders Stanley’s friends to leave. Stanley chases and attacks Stella. Blanche begs Mitch to stop him, and the men restrain Stanley on the sofa. Blanche whisks Stella to Eunice’s apartment upstairs while the men attempt to sober Stanley. After a cold shower, he stumbles out of the bathroom, goes out onto the porch, and yells up to Stella. He continues to shout for Stella, who descends the stairs and returns to him. Stanley falls to his knees, pressing his head against her legs. Kissing passionately, the couple retreat to their bedroom. Blanche runs down after Stella. When she discovers them making love, she is angered by her sister’s weakness. Mitch calls out to Blanche. They share another cigarette. Blanche is thankful for Mitch’s kindness.

Early the next morning, Blanche returns to the Kowalski apartment after spending the night at Eunice and Steve’s apartment. When she realizes Stella is alone, she hugs her with nervous concern. Stella, on the other hand, is cheerful and content. Stella blames liquor and poker for Stanley’s behavior. She explains to her sister that she gets a thrill from her husband’s extreme actions. Blanche is infuriated. She says Stella has married a “madman.” While Blanche devises an escape plan for them, Stella tidies the apartment. Stella says she is happy with Stanley. Blanche is still bewildered by Stella’s cool resignation.

Blanche remembers an old beau, Shep Huntleigh, whom she plans to call on for their escape, but Stella does not want to be rescued. Blanche compares Stanley to an ape. During this conversation, Stanley has returned unnoticed. He has heard everything that has been said. All of Blanche’s persuading has been in vain: When Stella sees Stanley, she runs over and jumps into his arms.

Blanche has been living at the Kowalskis’ apartment for three months. While she finishes writing a letter to Shep about imaginary cocktail parties she has been attending, Stanley enters. He slams drawers and creates noise to express his irritation by Blanche’s presence. To provoke Stanley, she asks him his astrological sign. He remarks that he is a Capricorn (the goat) and Blanche replies she is Virgo, the sign of the virgin. Stanley laughs and asks her about a man by the last name of Shaw who claims to have spent an evening with Blanche at the Flamingo Hotel. Blanche adamantly denies this accusation, but her face registers panic and alarm. Stanley is victorious and exits to go bowling.

Analysis of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie

Blanche becomes hysterical. She asks Stella whether she has heard rumors about her, but Stella gracefully denounces gossip. Blanche confesses that she did not maintain a good reputation when she was losing Belle Reve. She admits her fears of being a “soft” person, of needing people too much, and of her fading beauty. Blanche fears she will not be able to “turn the trick” much longer because she is visibly aging. She also confesses that she lied about her age to Mitch because she wants him to fall in love with her. Blanche has presented an illusion of herself as a prim and proper woman to Mitch. Stella is accustomed to Blanche’s nervous tirades, and she pays little attention to what her sister is actually saying. Stella comforts her by pouring her a drink. A young boy stops by the apartment selling newspapers. On his way out, Blanche calls him back inside and kisses him. Blanche chastises herself for putting “her hands” on the boy. He leaves and Mitch arrives with a bouquet of roses for her.

Later that night, Blanche and Mitch return from a disappointing date. Blanche blames herself for the dull evening. Mitch asks whether he may kiss her good night, and she consents but says their actions can go no further because she is a single woman. Stanley and Stella are not home, so Blanche invites Mitch in for a nightcap. Blanche plays the coquette while Mitch perspires with desire for her. While she searches for a bottle of whiskey, Blanche asks Mitch in French whether he would like to sleep with her. She comments that it is a good thing Mitch does not understand French. She encourages him to take off his coat, but he is embarrassed by his sweatiness. Blanche asserts that he is just a healthy man.

When Mitch suggests that the four of them go out together sometime, Blanche makes it clear that Stanley hates her. She asks whether Stanley has said anything derogatory about her. Mitch replies that he does not understand how Stanley could behave so rudely to her. Blanche says she plans to leave as soon as Stella has the baby.

Mitch asks Blanche her age, and Blanche refuses to answer. He explains that he asks because he has been with his mother talking about her. Blanche presumes Mitch will be very lonely when his mother dies. She explains that she knows this sort of loneliness firsthand because her one true love has passed away. She tells Mitch about Allan’s tenderness and sensitivity and says that she never understood him until she discovered he was having an affair with an older man. Blanche explains that Allan needed her to help him, but she could not see what was happening until it was too late. She confronted him while they were drunk at a dance at Moon Lake Casino. Her words provoked him to run to the edge of the lake and commit suicide. She can still hear the polka music that was playing during the time. Blanche cannot forgive herself for condemning Allan’s desires and pushing him to such drastic measures. She compares her love for Allan to a“blinding light.” Mitch answers that they are both lonely, and they both need someone. The polka tune that continually plays in Blanche’s mind ceases. Mitch and Blanche embrace with thoughts of marriage.

Several weeks later, Stanley arrives home after a day of work to find the apartment decorated for Blanche’s birthday party. He is disgruntled to know that Blanche is taking a hot bath, making the apartment even hotter and increasingly unbearable. Stanley proudly announces to Stella that he has found out the real story behind her sister’s extended visit. She was fired from her teaching job because she had an indecent relationship with a 17-year-old boy and set up residency at the Flamingo Hotel, which she was then forced to leave because of her sexual excesses. She has become the laughingstock of Laurel, Mississippi. Stella is profoundly stunned by this information, and she tries to defend Blanche by explaining the tragic situation with Allan. Stanley informs Stella that he felt it was his duty to warn his friend about Blanche. Blanche calls for a towel and notices a strained expression on Stella’s face, but Stella assures her nothing is wrong. Stella is fraught with worry about what will happen to Blanche now that Mitch is likely to abandon her. Stanley implies that Mitch may not be through with Blanche, but he certainly will not marry her. He remarks that he bought Blanche a bus ticket back to Laurel. Stanley yells for Blanche to get out of the bathroom so that he can use it. Sensing something is wrong, Blanche cautiously enters the room.

Nearly one hour passes. Stella, Stanley, and Blanche are eating dinner. Blanche is trying to ignore the empty chair where Mitch would be sitting. Blanche tries to lighten the mood of the party by telling a joke, but no one finds it funny. Stella says Stanley is “too busy making a pig of himself.” She instructs him to wash up and help her clean the table. Stanley flies into a rage, sweeping the table’s contents to the floor, and declares that he is the king in his home. When Stanley leaves the table and goes out onto the porch, Blanche begs Stella to tell her what is going on. Blanche calls Mitch’s home while Stella chastises her husband for passing rumors to Mitch. Stanley presents the bus ticket to Blanche. She runs into the bedroom crying. Stella yells at Stanley for being so terrible to Blanche. Stanley reminds his wife that she loves his commonness, especially at night in their bedroom. As he shouts for Blanche, Stella doubles over with pain. She is rushed to the hospital.

Later that evening, Blanche sits alone in the darkness of the apartment drinking liquor. Mitch enters wearing his work uniform. Although he is dirty and unshaven, she admits that she is happy to see him, as his presence stops the polka music that otherwise persistently plays in her mind. She searches for more liquor to serve him, but he declines drinking Stanley’s liquor. Mitch inquires why Blanche keeps the apartment so dark and insists on seeing him only at night. He wants to turn on the light, but Blanche begs him to allow the magic (illusions) to continue. When he wrenches the lantern off the lightbulb, Blanche’s aged face is revealed. He proceeds to tell her what he has heard about her promiscuous life in Laurel. Blanche immediately pleads that after Allan and the loss of Belle Reve, she could only find relief from the pain in the arms of strangers. A vendor is heard outside selling flowers for the dead. This sparks Blanche to talk about all of the deaths in her life. She says she was “played out” when she finally landed in New Orleans. She found solace and love with Mitch, believing that she could possibly find happiness and rest. Mitch embraces her, and she pleads for marriage. Mitch says she is unsuitable. He pulls her hair and demands the physical intimacy she has denied him all summer. Blanche orders him to leave, and when he does not, she runs to the window and shouts, “Fire!” This action prompts Mitch to leave.

A few hours later, Blanche is still alone and drinking heavily. She is wearing an old gown and a rhinestone tiara. Stanley enters carrying liquor. He informs Blanche that Stella will not have the baby before the morning, so he has come home. Blanche is nervous about being in the apartment alone with Stanley all night. Stanley laughs at her and questions her attire. Blanche announces that she has received a telegram from Shep Huntleigh, inviting her on a cruise to the Caribbean. Stanley retreats to the bedroom and collects the red silk pajamas he wore on his wedding night. When he returns, Blanche says that Mitch came by begging for forgiveness, but she simply could not forgive his cruelty. Stanley angrily denounces her lies. Blanche rushes to the telephone and pleads with the operator to connect her with Shep Huntleigh. When she puts down the phone, Stanley corners her. Blanche retreats to the bedroom, where she smashes a bottle to use as a weapon against him. Stanley lunges at her, grabs the bottle, and gathers Blanche in his arms. She fights him, but he overpowers her, stating that they have had this date with each other from the moment she arrived.

Several weeks later, Stella cries as she packs Blanche’s belongings. Eunice holds the baby while Stanley and his friends play poker. Stella wonders whether she is doing the right thing in sending her sister to the state institution. Eunice responds that if Stella wants to save her marriage, she must believe that Stanley did not rape her sister. Blanche enters from the bathroom with a “hysterical vivacity.” She asks whether Shep has called while she dresses. The doorbell sounds and a doctor and attendant enter to collect Blanche. Blanche wants to leave the apartment, but she does not want to be seen by Mitch, Stanley, and the other men. When she sees that the man at the door is not Shep, she tries to run back into the apartment. Stanley blocks her way. He cruelly tells her that all she has left in this apartment is the paper lantern hanging over the lightbulb. He tears it down and hands it to her. Blanche screams, and Stella rushes to the porch, where Eunice comforts her. The doctor and attendant wrestle Blanche to the ground to restrain her.

Mitch attacks Stanley, blaming him for Blanche’s condition. The men fight and their friends pull them apart. Blanche is helped to her feet. The doctor helps her to the door and she says that she has “always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Stella is heartbroken by the scene. She sobs while the doctor escorts Blanche out of the apartment. Stanley consoles Stella by fondling her breasts. Steve announces the next round of poker.

When asked about the meaning of A Streetcar Named Desire ,Williams responded, “the ravishment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate, by the savage and brutal forces of modern society” (Haskell, 230). All the characters in Streetcar have been ravished by life to some degree. Although Stanley clearly functions as the most damaging force against Blanche, he, too, has also been forced to grow up too quickly as he spent his youth as a soldier serving in World War II. Reintegration into a mundane, peaceful world does not keep him fulfilled. He is moody and restless, and his animalistic tendencies are challenged by the overly refined Blanche.

Stella is a submissive character, placed in the middle of a war between gentrified society, represented by Blanche, and the rugged, practical world of the working class personified by Stanley. In war there are the victors and the vanquished. Blanche ultimately suffers the most damaging defeat, being institutionalized, while Stanley continues to brutalize his way through life.

In the opening scene of the play, Stanley appears carrying a package of bloody meat, which immediately establishes his primitive nature. In stark contrast, Blanche enters the scene wearing white. Williams compares her to a moth, symbolically stressing her fragility, purity, and virtue. Her pristine attire serves as an effective camouflage for her sordid past. As Chance Wayne (in Sweet Bird of Youth), Sebastian Venable (in Suddenly Last Summer), and Lot (in Kingdom of Earth, or the Seven Descents of Myrtle) do, by wearing white, Blanche uses her clothing to disguise her “degenerate” selfperception. Her name, which is French, literally means “white of the woods.” Out of her unlucky and desperate wilderness, Blanche enters the Kowalski apartment a transformed, mothlike creature of nature, recast as a virginal character. Although she has been a prostitute, Blanche prefers to believe in her renewed chasteness. She lives in a world of illusion and believes that her sexual encounters with strangers never constituted love; therefore, she never forfeited any aspect of her true self.

As has Karen Stone in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone , Blanche has an aversion to being viewed in bright light that will reveal her true age. As early as the first scene, she asks Stella to turn off the overhead light. Blanche is most comfortable in the warm glow of a lamp that allows her to play the part of the innocent coquette completely. She lies about her age when she courts Mitch and avoids spending time with him in daylight. When Mitch returns in the final meeting with her, he insists on tearing the lantern off the overhead light so that he may finally have a good look at her. When Blanche asks why he wants the glare of bright light, he says he is just being realistic. Blanche replies:

I don’t want realism. I want—magic! . . . Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth. And if that’s a sin, then let me be damned for it! Don’t turn the light on!

Of course, Stanley has informed him that she has been lying about everything. However, her mothlike, youthful facade is not just used to fool Mitch; it is an integral part of who she is. Blanche wishes she could actually be what she pretends to be. She resigns from reality because it has been too harsh. The “magic” in which she chooses to dwell is her only means of survival, as her suffering has been so great. She fears that looking her age will further discredit her in a world that has already discarded her.

Blanche also drinks heavily, while pretending to adhere to a Southern gender code that restricts well-bred women from drinking in company or in public. This is another aspect of playing the innocent coquette. Late in the play, Mitch informs Blanche that Stanley has talked about how much of his liquor she has consumed, and she realizes that her subterfuge has failed.

Although it is a means of comfort and relief, alcohol has long been a source of shame and regret for Blanche. She particularly regrets her drunken criticism of Allan because she did not mean the words that drove him to take his own life. Leonard Berkman suggests:

It is not the existence of Allan’s homosexuality that signals the failure of Blanche’s marriage; it is, rather, that Blanche must uncover this information by accident, that Blanche is incapable of responding compassionately to this information, that in short there never existed a marriage between them in which Allan could come to her in full trust and explicit needs. (“The Tragic Downfall of Blanche DuBois,” 2)

Blanche responded to Allan’s sexuality with a sense of wounded pride, and as Brick in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF does to his friend Skipper, she spends the rest of her life regretting that she did not love and accept him. Blanche responded too harshly. She loved Allan and truly believed in their marriage; however, she lived in a romantic world of delusion until she witnessed a real moment when Allan was having sex with another man, which completely shattered the illusion. As Blanche explains to Mitch:

[Allan] was in the quicksand clutching at me— but I wasn’t holding him out, I was slipping in with him! I didn’t know that. I didn’t know anything except I loved him unendurably but without being able to help him or help myself.

In this instance, it was Blanche who was cruelly responsible for the ravishment (or abuse) of one that was “tender, sensitive, and delicate.”

Allan Grey’s suicide scene is reminiscent of the final scene in The Seagull by Anton Chekhov. When Konstantin can no longer endure his life and the knowledge that he must live without the love he desires, he is drawn to the lake (like a seagull) and shoots himself. Konstantin and Allan are tragically similar characters, who are gravely misunderstood by those around them. Williams was enamored of Chekhov’s characters, finding them dynamically flawed and powerfully present. Chekhov’s dramaturgical influence is inherent in Streetcar , as the psychological reality of the characters creates the dramatic tension and fuels the action to an unavoidable conclusion.

Blanche tells the story of her homosexual husband to Mitch, who could very easily assume that Blanche and Allan’s marriage was never consummated. Even through her tragically truthful tales Blanche continues to create the illusion that she is prim and virginal. This makes the news of her promiscuous past more shocking and insulting to Mitch, who has respected her wish to abstain from sexual intimacy. Blanche presents the person she would like to be: naive, proper, and respectable. Blanche has found an Allan substitute in Mitch. She longs to have an opportunity to re-create that marriage and have a second chance to make up for her cruel past actions. Mitch is the answer as his sensitivity stops the haunting polka music in her mind (i.e., the painful memories of Allan’s death).

Throughout the play, Blanche frequently takes long hot baths in the sweltering heat of a New Orleans summer. This symbolic act of baptism absolves her of her past sins and cleanses her body in preparation for her husband-to-be. She repeatedly purifies her body in water, and in her mind, by each ritual bathing, she creates more distance from the sullied strangers she encountered at the Flamingo Hotel in Laurel. In moments of desperation and self-doubt, Blanche bathes. This repeated action greatly annoys Stanley.

Stanley and Blanche are archenemies because they possess antithetical personalities, and each lays claim to Stella. Whereas Stanley respects complete honesty, Blanche delights in experiencing the world through rose-colored glasses. She spends much of her time rejecting the harshness of life, and Stanley is always there to make her acknowledge the truth. Blanche enjoys the protocol of the Old South; she is nostalgic about the tradition of Southern life, whereas Stanley hates sentimentality. In his production notebook, Elia Kazan writes of Blanche:

Her problem has to do with her tradition. Her notion of what a woman should be. She is stuck with this “ideal.” It is her. It is her ego. Unless she lives by it, she cannot live; in fact her whole life has been for nothing. (Kazan, 22)

Blanche defines her existence according to the traditions of the Old South. She is completely immersed in that world, whereas Stanley symbolizes the new or modern world that is obliterating that former way of living.

Early in the play these two characters clash over the subject of Belle Reve. It is Blanche’s lost, beautiful dream, rich with family heritage and pride; Stanley is interested only in the property’s material or monetary real estate value. He is happy in the loud, harsh, and dirty world of the Vieux Carré of New Orleans, whereas Blanche prefers finer accommodations, the bucolic setting of hundreds of acres of land and large white pillars on a grand veranda that provide lounging quarters out of the midday sun. Some critics see Blanche as Williams’s most representative character, as she has lost the stability of her ancestral home and is now in exile.

According to Kazan, Blanche’s emotional decline begins when she is stripped of her plantation:

The things about the “tradition” in the nineteenth century was that it worked then. It made a woman feel important with her own secure positions and functions, her own special worth. It also made a woman at that time one with her society. But today the tradition is an anachronism which simply does not function. It does not work. So while Blanche must believe it because it makes her special, because it makes her sticking by Belle Reve an act of heroism, rather than an absurd romanticism, still it does not work. . . . She’s a misfit, a liar, her “airs” alienate people, she must act superior to them which alienates them further. (Kazan, 22)

Blanche is one of Williams’s “lost souls,” those characters who are caught between an old and a new world. As are Amanda Wingfield (in The Glass Menagerie ) and Alma Winemiller (in Summer and Smoke ), who also delight in tradition, Blanche is lost in a modern, industrial society because in it she does not have a special position simply by virtue of being a Southern woman. Belle Reve is her identification or authentication as a person, and without it, she does not possess a self and therefore must rely on others to supply stability, security, and substance. Blanche only realizes that she is responsible for her own financial and social status when it is too late. Her “airs” are her tragic flaw in this new world, Stanley’s world, a world that has been changed through hardship and struggles associated with industry, war, and economic depression. Blanche becomes “a last dying relic . . . now adrift in our unfriendly day” (Miller, 23). Although this situation may make her more pitiable, it does not make her less offensive to her peers.

Blanche’s very vocal disapproval of Stanley serves to isolate her from Stella, the one sympathetic person in her life. Her critical opinion of the dismal apartment and of Stanley’s brutish demeanor creates a chasm in the sisters’ relationship, and her chances of familial bonding are sacrificed. Blanche demonstrates her racial prejudices when she calls Stanley a “Polack,” and her gradual, yet persistent provocations lead to her ultimate violation. This act of rape wounds Blanche to a point of no return. The culmination of Stanley’s victory over Blanche occurs when Stella refuses to believe that her sister has been assaulted. Stella sides with her husband as Blanche’s past and world of illusions (or dishonesty) serve to silence her in her most desperate moment.

Williams’s ability to “capture something of the complexity of the novel within the dramatic form, especially in the area of character probity and psychology” (Adler, 9), has set Streetcar apart and is the reason it merits its status not only as a modern classic, but s a watershed moment in U.S. theater history. Essentially, Williams created a new genre in the modern theater: a heightened naturalism that allows dreams (or nightmares) to coexist with reality.

DuBois, Blanche

Described in the opening scene as “mothlike,” Blanche is an aging Southern belle. She is refined, delicate, and steeped in the traditions of Southern gentry. She first appears wearing white, symbolizing her feigned purity and virtuous nature. Blanche is one of Williams’s dreamers, forfeiting reality for a magical or romantic approach to life. She is not concerned with truth, but rather “what ought to be the truth.”

When she was a young woman, Blanche married her true love, Allan Grey. He was tender and sensitive, different from the other men in her life. Although he was not “the least bit effeminate looking,” she learned of his homosexuality when she entered a room uninvited and found Allan having sex with an older male friend. Later that night, the three of them attended a dance at Moon Lake Casino. During this evening of heavy drinking, Blanche confronted Allan about his sexuality while a polka played and lovers danced around them. Devastated by Blanche’s disgust toward him, Allan ran off the dance floor. He found refuge at the edge of the nearby lake, where he shot himself. Blanche is forever haunted by the guilt she feels over Allan’s suicide. She cannot move beyond the loss of her husband, and in moments of desperation she still hears the polka waltz in her mind. She drinks whiskey to cope with her self-reproach, but the cruelty she displayed toward Allan forever torments her.

Blanche’s life continues on a downward spiral with the deaths of several other family members. She is obligated to nurse them, witnessing the slow, torturous deterioration of life. Blanche is forced to earn her living as a high school English teacher because her ancestral home, Belle Reve (which means “beautiful dream” in French), in Laurel, Mississippi, is in danger of foreclosure. Severely lonely and desperate, she finds consolation in the embrace of strange men. When she is fired from her teaching position because of a “morally unfit” liaison with a 17-year-old boy, her reputation is completely ruined. Belle Reve is foreclosed and she is forced to live in a seedy hotel called the Flamingo. Because of her practice of entertaining men at the Flamingo, she is eventually forced to leave that establishment as well.

Destitute and homeless, Blanche travels to New Orleans, taking a “streetcar named Desire” to the slums of Elysian Fields, where her sister, Stella Kowalski, lives with her brutish husband, Stanley Kowalski. She arrives unannounced at the crampedtwo-room apartment. She immediately rejects Stanley because of his unrefined behavior and crude, straightforward response to life. Her worst opinions of Stanley are justified when she witnesses the beatings Stella suffers at the hands of her husband. Blanche believes that “a woman’s charm is fifty percent illusion,” and she clashes with Stanley, who is determined to catch Blanche in all of her lies. Her facade quickly positions her as Stanley’s prime enemy. He is sickened by her exaggerations and false prudishness. Despite her past, Blanche remains married to the ideals of purity, creating the illusion of what she “ought to be.”

Stanley triumphs over her when he finds out about her promiscuous past in Laurel. He destroys her only chance of comfort by relating her sordid past to Mitch (Harold Mitchell), her only and final marriage prospect. Stanley then rapes Blanche, presuming that she has had so many sexual encounters that one more will make no difference. After this act, a deed that Stella refuses to acknowledge, Blanche is wounded once and for all. She loses her grip on reality and finds consolation in a type of magical world that will not allow her to hurt anymore. This world places her at the mercy of “the kindness of strangers.” The strange men in her life are replaced by the medical staff of a mental institution.

Hubbell, Eunice

Eunice is the wife of Steve Hubbell. She and Steve are the upstairs neighbors of Stanley and Stella Kowalski. As do Stanley and Stella, Eunice and Steve have a volatile marital relationship. In many ways, the older couple (Eunice and Steve) mirror Stanley and Stella and offer a vision of what the young couple will be in the future. Eunice is a confidante to Stella, and Eunice eases the younger woman’s transition into a life of denial and compromise. When Stella’s sister, Blanche DuBois, accuses Stanley of rape, Eunice instructs Stella to disavow Blanche’s claims for the sake of her marriage, her child, and her own sanity.

Hubbell, Steve

Steve is the husband of Eunice Hubbell. He and Eunice are the upstairs neighbors of Stanley and Stella Kowalski. As do Stanley and Stella, Eunice and Steve have a volatile marital relationship. In many ways, the older couple (Eunice and Steve) mirror Stanley and Stella and offer a vision of what the young couple will be in the future.

Kowalski, Stanley

He is a strong, brutish man of Polish descent. Stanley is a former soldier, who fought during World War II and who now lives in the mundane world of factory work. He is cruelly honest. His pastimes include bowling, drinking, playing poker with his friends and having sex with his wife, Stella Kowalski. Stanley enjoys the comforts of Stella’s love. Although he is unrefined, loud, and quick-tempered, he possesses a simplicity which makes him desirable to Stella. There is also an animal attraction between Stanley and Stella, and their relationship is based not on communication but on physical attraction. In the stage directions of Streetcar , Williams describes him as a “gaudy seed bearer [who] sizes women up at a glance.”

Stanley revels in the fact that Stella is from an old aristocratic Southern family and that she has rejected upper-crust society to live with him in a tenement house in the slums of New Orleans. Stanley functions with very basic objectives. He is strongwilled and responds to adversity with violence.

When his sister-in-law, Blanche DuBois, moves in, Stanley feels threatened by her presence and her rejection of his way of life. He does not like to share what is his: his wife, his liquor, and his apartment. When he finds out that the DuBois plantation, Belle Reve, has been foreclosed, he immediately demands proof that Blanche did not sell it and keep the money. Stanley expects to share any profits, as he is Stella’s husband. Stella and Blanche are personally devastated by the loss of their ancestral home; Stanley is only concerned with the practical, monetary side of the situation. He has no way of comprehending the emotional loss of such a thing. In addition, Blanche’s large personality leaves little room for him to be the center of attention. The two engage in a power struggle that draws out the worst in Stanley’s personality. The tension created by Blanche’s presence provokes Stanley to beat Stella and to seek a way to ruin his sister-in-law.

He triumphs over Blanche after searching for the truth of her disreputable past. When he has gathered this ammunition, he informs Blanche’s only marriage prospect, Mitch (Harold Mitchell)of her sordid past. By this he is able to pierce the virginal facade that Blanche has used to manipulate and control. Stella defends her sister by explaining that she has had a tragic past and she is weak, but Stanley is interested only in survival of the fittest. He rapes Blanche and denies that he did to Stella. This is Stanley’s ultimate triumph. In the end, Blanche is taken to a mental institution while Stanley comforts his wife by fondling her breasts.

Kowalski, Stella

She is the wife of Stanley Kowalski and the sister of Blanche DuBois. Stella is a member of a very refined and dignified Southern family, who has chosen to cast off her social status in exchange for marriage to Stanley, a vulgar and often brutal simpleton. She is caught in the war between Stanley and Blanche, whose constant bickering and fighting leads to Stanley’s sexually assaulting Blanche. Stella refuses to believe that her husband would rape her sister. After her accusations of rape, Stella commits Blanche to a mental institution. As does her sister, Stella glosses over harsh reality to live in the world of illusions to cope with Stanley’s abhorrent behavior.

Mitchell, Harold (Mitch)

A middle-aged man whose dedication to his ailing mother leaves him lonely and troubled. Mitch falls in love with Blanche Dubois, a refined, yet fading Southern belle. They engage in a respectable courtship, and Blanche insists on delaying sexual relations until they are married. When Stanley Kowalski informs Mitch of Blanche’s sordid past as a prostitute, he is shocked and offended that she has made him wait for sexual intimacy.

FURTHER READING Adler, Thomas P. A Streetcar Named Desire: The Moth and The Lantern. Boston: Twayne, 1990. Berkman, Leonard. “The Tragic Downfall of Blanche DuBois,” Modern Drama 10, no. 2 (December 1967): 249–257. Kazan, Elia. “Notebook for A Streetcar Named Desire,” in Twentieth Century Interpretations of A Streetcar Named Desire: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Jordan Y. Miller. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice- Hall, 1971, pp. 21–26. Shaw, Irwin. “Masterpiece,” in Twentieth Century Interpretations of A Streetcar Named Desire: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Jordan Y. Miller. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971, pp. 45–47. Sova, Dawn B. Forbidden Films: Censorship Histories of 125 Motion Pictures. New York: Facts On File, 2001.

A Streetcar Named Desire

Introduction to a streetcar named desire, summary of a streetcar named desire, major themes in a streetcar named desire, major characters a streetcar named desire, writing style of a streetcar named desire, analysis of the literary devices in a streetcar named desire, related posts:, post navigation.

A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee williams, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

The play is set in the shabby but rakishly charming New Orleans of the 1940s. Stanley and Stella Kowalski live in the downstairs flat of a faded corner building. Williams uses a flexible set so that the audience simultaneously sees the interior and the exterior of the apartment.

Blanche DuBois , Stella’s sister, arrives: “They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and then to transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at––Elysian Fields!” Blanche is a fading Southern belle from Laurel, Mississippi. An English teacher (though hardly a schoolmarm), dressed in all white, she is delicate and moth-like. Blanche tells Stella that Belle Reve, the family plantation, has been lost, and that she has been given a leave of absence from her teaching position due to her nerves. Blanche criticizes Stella’s surroundings and laments Stella’s fall from their elite upbringing.

In contrast to Stella’s self-effacing, deferential nature and Blanche’s pretentious, refined airs, Stella’s husband Stanley Kowalski exudes raw, animal, violent sexuality. While Blanche flutters in semi-darkness, soaks in the bath, and surrounds herself in silky clothes and costume jewels, Stanley rips off his sweaty shirts under the bare kitchen light bulb. Though Stella still cares for her sister, her life has become defined by her role as Stanley’s wife: their relationship is primarily based on sexual chemistry. Stella’s ties to New Orleans rather than the lost Belle Reve are further emphasized through her pregnancy: she is bringing a new Kowalski, not a DuBois, life into the world.

While Blanche is bathing, Stanley rummages through her trunk, suspecting Blanche of having sold Belle Reve and cheated Stella – and thereby himself – out of the inheritance. Blanche reveals that the estate was lost due to a foreclosed mortgage, showing Stanley the bank papers to prove it”

Later that night, in the “lurid nocturnal brilliance, the raw colors of childhood’s spectrum” of the kitchen, Stanley and his friends are still in the thick of their drunken poker night when Blanche and Stella return from an evening out. Stanley’s friend Mitch catches Blanche’s eye, and as she asks Stella about him, she maneuvers herself skillfully in the light to be caught half-dressed in silhouette.

Blanche and Mitch flirt. Blanche hangs a paper lantern over a bare bulb. Stanley seethes that Blanche is interrupting the poker game. Eventually, Blanche turns on the radio, and Stanley erupts: he storms into the bedroom and tosses the radio out of the window. When Stella intervenes to try and make peace, Stanley hits her. Blanche and Stella escape upstairs to Eunice’s apartment. The other men douse Stanley in the shower, which sobers him up, and he is remorseful. Stanley stumbles outside, bellowing upstairs: “STELL-LAHHHHH!” Stella slips back downstairs into Stanley’s arms, and Mitch comforts Blanche in her distress.

The next morning, Stella is calm and radiant, while Blanche is still hysterical. Stella admits that she is “thrilled” by Stanley’s aggression, and that even though Blanche wants her to leave, she’s “not in anything that [she has] a desire to get out of.” Blanche suggests that they contact Shep Huntleigh, a Dallas millionaire, to help them escape. The only thing holding Stella and Stanley together, Blanche says, is the “rattle-trap street-car named Desire.” Stanley, unbeknownst to Stella and Blanche, overhears Blanche criticize Stanley as being coarse and sub-human. Blanche tells Stella, “In this dark march toward whatever it is we’re approaching . . . Don’t––don’t hang back with the brutes!”

Later, Stanley lets drop a few hints that he knows some repugnant details about Blanche’s past, and Blanche is nervous, but the tension does not crack just yet. While Blanche is in the apartment for Mitch to pick her up for a date, a Young Man comes to collect money for the paper. Blanche fervently flirts with him and kisses him on the mouth before Mitch arrives.

When Blanche and Mitch return from their date, she is exhausted with “the utter exhaustion which only a neurasthenic personality can know” and still nervous from Stanley’s hints. Blanche is still playing at being a naïve Southern belle who still blushes at a kiss. Mitch boasts of his strapping manliness, but by speaking quantitatively about his athleticism rather than stripping his sweaty shirt and baring his torso.

Blanche melodramatically tells Mitch about her tragic love life: when she was sixteen, she married an effeminate young man who turned out to be homosexual. Blanche reproached her husband while they were dancing the Varsouviana Polka , and her husband committed suicide. Blanche is still haunted by his death (and the play will become increasingly haunted with the background music of the polka).

About a month later, Blanche is offstage soaking in the bath while Stella prepares Blanche’s birthday dinner. Stanley tells Stella all about Blanche’s sordid history in Laurel, as Blanche sings “Paper Moon” from the bathroom (“It’s a Barnum and Bailey world / Just as phony as it can be / But it wouldn’t be make-believe / If you believed in me!”). After losing Belle Reve, Blanche moved to the dubious Hotel Flamingo until getting kicked out for her promiscuous ways. Blanche is not taking a leave from her school due to her nerves: she has been fired for having an affair with a seventeen-year-old student. Stella, rushing to defend Blanche, is horrified, and she is equally horrified when Stanley tells her that he has also told these stories to Mitch . Stanley informs Stella that he’s bought Blanche a one-way bus ticket back to Mississippi.

Mitch does not show up for Blanche ’s birthday dinner. Blanche senses that something is wrong. Stanley and Stella are tense. Blanche tries to telephone Mitch but doesn’t get through; Stanley, Stella, and the audience know what Mitch knows, though Blanche does not. Stanley presents Blanche with the bus ticket. As we hear the faint strains of the polka, Blanche rushes out of the room. Stanley and Stella nearly begin a huge fight, but Stella goes into labor.

Later that evening, Blanche is alone in the apartment and drunk ; the Varsouviana is playing in her mind. Mitch , also drunk, arrives and confronts Blanche. She admits that Stanley’s stories are true – that after her husband’s suicide, she had sought solace in the comfort of strangers. A Mexican Woman comes to the door and offers “Flores para los muertos.” Mitch tries to have sex with Blanche but without agreeing to marry her, though he then stops himself. She cries “Fire! Fire!” and he stumbles away.

It’s several hours later the same night, and Blanche has been drinking steadily since Mitch left. Stanley comes home from the hospital to get some rest before the baby comes. Blanche has put on an absurd white evening gown and a rhinestone tiara. Blanche makes up a story about Shep Huntleigh sending her a telegram from Dallas, and then tells Stanley that Mitch came back on his knees with roses to beg for forgiveness. Stanley shatters her stories, saying, “You come in here and sprinkle the place with powder and spray perfume and cover the light bulb with a paper lantern , and lo and behold the place has turned into Egypt and you are the Queen of the Nile! Sitting on your throne and swilling down my liquor! I say––Ha!––Ha!” He bursts out of the bathroom in his brilliant silk pajamas, and advances on Blanche. She attempts to resist him, but Stanley overpowers her with physical force: “Tiger––tiger! Drop the bottle top! Drop it! We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning!” She sinks down, and he carries her limp body to the bed; the swelling music indicates that he rapes her (offstage).

Weeks later, Stella and Eunice are packing Blanche’s bags while the men play poker in the kitchen and Blanche takes a bath . They have made arrangements for Blanche to go to a mental asylum, but Blanche believes Shep Huntleigh is coming at last to take her away. Blanche has apparently told Stella about the rape, but Stella refuses to believe her. When Blanche emerges from the bath, she is delusional, worrying about the cleanness of the grapes and speaking of drowning in the sea. A Doctor and Matron from the asylum arrive, and Blanche sweeps through the poker players to the door. When she realizes that this is not Shep Huntleigh come to take her away, she initially resists, darting back into the house like a frightened animal, but she cannot hide from the Matron’s advances. Stanley yanks the paper lantern off the light bulb. The Matron catches Blanche and drags her out. The Doctor treats her more calmly, calling her by name, and Blanche is mollified, grasping at her final shreds of dignity: “Whoever you are––I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” The Doctor leads her offstage. Stella, holding her baby in her arms, breaks down in “luxurious sobbing,” and Stanley comforts her with loving caresses.

A Streetcar Named Desire: Character & Key Quotes: Steve

A streetcar named desire: character & key quotes: steve, character overview: steve.

Steve is a minor character in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”, he is the husband of Stella’s close friend, Eunice.
Steve is part of the working class, much like Stanley Kowalski and is generally portrayed as an easy-going, good-natured character.
Steve enjoys the camaraderie of the local men, gambling and drinking with them, showing his social and outgoing nature.

Steve’s Role in the Play

Although not pivotal, Steve plays a consistent and supportive role throughout the play.
Steve’s character reveals the typical male stereotype of the period: machismo and male dominance .
His relationship with Eunice is a parallel to that of Stanley and Stella, showing similar dynamics of power imbalance and domestic disputes .

Key Quotes Related to Steve

“You’re all married to weepin’ women” - Steve . This quote highlights the strain in relationships among the characters and contributes to the underlying theme of gender disparity .
“Why, Eunice, I want my lovin’” - Steve . This statement denotes his desire for physical intimacy, despite their usual disagreements.

Unpacking Steve’s Character Via His Relationship with Eunice

Steve’s interaction with Eunice provides key insights into their relationship, it is often volatile but they are bound by a sense of loyalty and periodic affection.
Steve is often apologetic after fights with Eunice, suggesting perhaps the regret, or recognition of the cycle of abuse within their relationship.

Literary Devices in the Context of Steve

Foreshadowing : Steve’s turbulent relationship with Eunice ominously foreshadows the escalating violence in Stanley and Stella’s relationship.
Setting : The poker game setting where Steve often appears is used by Williams to explore themes like masculinity , power and competition among the men.
Contrast : Steve’s character serves as a contrast to Blanche’s former life and demonstrates the harsh reality of Stella’s new lower-social status.

This analysis provides key insights to understand Steve’s character and his contributions to larger thematic discussions within the play.

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A STREET CAR NAMED DESIRE: CHARACTER ANALYSIS OF STANLEY KOWALSKI

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This essay explores how Tennessee Williams has portrayed the upper class and lower class in his play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ (written in 1947), with Blanche representing the old Southern upper class and Stanley representing the developing lower classes. The essay is linked to Part 3 of the English HL course. By using evidence and quotes from the play, this essay explores the different features of each class and the differences between both, as well as the reason why William’s has portrayed them in such a way. This has been done to convey that both sides have flaws and ultimately, it is pride and unwillingness to compromise that will lead to a hostile situation and result in one victor rather than both sides being satisfied. Moreover, through depicting them as such, the writer has convinced the audience that both sides are flawed but a power struggle is not a suitable solution. The essay concludes that Williams has portrayed the lower classes as stronger because after the American Revolution and the influences of the Second World War, the upper classes were deteriorating and the lower classes were rising up against them. The victor was ultimately Stanley, and the lower class.

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It’s almost cliché to say that Blanche is a living figure of division. The basic dichotomy between her lofty aspirations and debasing bodily drives finds its expression in heavily polarized spaces and bodily movements, as well as verbal sparring scenes and actual physical duels in both film and play. In Elia Kazan’s adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s 1947 play however, shots and camera angles seem to particularly frame Blanche’s character as a highly vulnerable creature. She’s often shown in high angle shots and close-ups revealing the wear and tear of the various masks she puts on. Blanche is also often filmed in two-shots, with someone else looking down on her, and these two-shots very much resemble disturbing pas de deux between an eager female and an unreliable male. As Tennessee Williams writes in his Cat on a Hot Tin Roof “Notes for the Designer,” The designer should take as many pains to give the actors room to move about freely (to show their restlessness, their passion for

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A kind of strangeness: MTC’s ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’

Nikki Shiels in 'A Streetcar Named Desire'. Photographs by Pia Johnson

There is one luminous moment in Nikki Shiels characterisation of Blanche DuBois in Anne-Louise Sarks’ production of A Streetcar Named Desire . She sits on the toilet bowl, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and her lit birthday cake in the other, and blows on the candles, not to extinguish them but to make the lights dance and delight. It’s a moment that has an inventive relation to Tennessee Williams’ most famous play, and it justifies for once this production’s use of the revolve.

It’s also close to the heart of the Shiels Blanche, but it is, alas, a bit of an isolated felicity. Nikki Shiels is one of the finest actors we have, with a tingling sensitivity to the nuances and cadences of any role, someone who is watchful of excess and gimmickry. And this moment is a triumph. However, much of Sarks’ production will confound expectation and can seem to have a contrary relationship to any received view of the play worth naming. And it is weird that this production, so expensive and painstaking and elaborate, should hit Melbourne, via its major theatre company, at almost the same moment as Kat Stewart and David Whiteley are playing Martha and George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? across town in a production that can bear comparison with the finest the world has seen, including the Burton/Taylor film.

Don’t get me wrong. Shiels is a tremendous actor full of zest and music, and possessing a hair-trigger capacity to create drama. She is far and away the best thing about Sarks’ Streetcar and this performance is bound to grow in terms of range and depth. But it is, to say the least, challenging, and this Streetcar as a whole makes you wonder at what kind of grasp we have on the most classic modern theatre we have inherited.

And speaking of films as a definitive yardstick, there’s the 1951 film by Elia Kazan, with Marlon Brando just 26 years old when he re-invented modern acting. He created the role of Stanley Kowalski on stage in 1947 when he was 23. His original stage Blanche was the great Canadian actor Jessica Tandy, who had to wait 40-odd years for her international fame to extend beyond theatre circles in the form of Bruce Beresford’s Driving Miss Daisy . In any case, the legend about the original film of Streetcar is that the brutalism and power of Brando’s Stanley hurled Vivien Leigh into a performance way beyond the idealisation her husband Laurence Olivier had allowed her in the role in London, so that she was provoked into a piece of savage, confrontational acting that matched Brando blow for blow, brood for brood, and created a combustible chemistry not seen before.

This production comes nowhere near it. The character who resulted in the singlet being renamed “the wife-beater” is a problem for semi-contemporary productions of the play. Of the two most notable Australians in the role who have come this critic’s way, Joel Edgerton in the 2009 Liv Ullmann/Cate Blanchett Streetcar was an expert Stanley in a minor key, and something similar is true of Nathaniel Dean’s Stanley in Kate Cherry’s 2014 production for Black Swan in Perth – the most powerful and consistent production the Australian stage has seen this century.

But that barbaric yawp of “Stella!”, and the booming power and virility of Brando’s sheer masculinist charisma, gives a lot of people the creeps these days. The brute beauty of it, the sheerness of the authoritarianism, is something we back right away from. Nobody is liable to quail here at Mark Leonard Winter’s Stanley, which manages to be a bit effete while also being energetically and excitedly violent. And he sounds almost parodically Southern – it’s a bit odd how much the Southern accents are laid on with a trowel. In the Kazan film, everyone apart from Vivien Leigh speaks in rough and ready standard American. And Winter’s Stanley pales compared to Michelle Lim Davidson’s Stella, who has a breadth of emotional honesty, a sort of embracing passion that jolts the production into a reality that most of the cast nibble around.

It’s Nikki Shiels’ passion play, but its natural tempo and disturbing play of delusions and desolations barely raise their heads. Think of what you remember of this hauntingly great play, with its physical spectacles and its spectral intimations of madness and doom. Blanche, the elder sister of the bawled-at Stella, comes to stay with her. She has been muttering elliptically of her geographical destination in Elysian Fields (the front of the tram in the film says “Desire”), and is full – it’s clear from early on – of the rhetorical fantasies of an unreachable refinement that carry with them the scars of the remembrance of a world of encounters, which, bit by bit, are revealed to have been sordid and exploitative: young men dead, the arms of the emblem where she plied her trade like the limbs of the tarantula.

We know instinctively, and then with a series of thuds like the knocking on a coffin – with Stanley remorseless in his pursuit of what might lie behind Blanche’s semblance of airs and graces – that Blanche has sucked deep on the degradations that life has given her like a destiny and a doom. And it is a brilliant dramatic manoeuvre to have Blanche share the lived-in space, common bathroom and adjoining bedroom of this young married couple who are about to have a baby. It works brilliantly (or it should) to mire Blanche’s tragedy in a world of degradation.

And this is highlighted by the camaraderie of Stanley and his card-playing mates, who need to have a high-octane good humour. Of the friends, Mitch, the staid guy who lives with his ailing mother and who demands to see Blanche in a strong light, has in his mumbling way the voice of plain respectability. Steve Mouzakis gets nowhere near the character played so credibly by Karl Malden in the film. When he lifts her up, it is a gesture of love, eccentric and in no way erotic, and he should certainly not be rubbing his hand along her arse.

But this is a production that attempts to give the broad and brash and vulgar its grit and galivanting rhetoric of feeling.

There has been talk in newspaper interviews about the admittedly surprising fact (it continues to surprise long after you’ve heard it and put it aside) that Blanche is referred to in the text as being 30 years old. Of course, it’s worth bearing in mind that Vivien Leigh, born in 1913, was 37 when she played Blanche (and actors characteristically play younger than they are). Sigrid Thornton, who was 55 when she played the role, came across as a Blanche in her 30s.

One of several extraordinary things about Shiels’ Blanche is that she plays her as if she were 25 (how old is Shiels?), and the upshot of this is a bit bizarre. She is insouciant, she is strident and loud and zigzaggingly bright. She is off on a frolic of her own, and there is a comic tinkle and a self-conscious voluptuousness to the way she conceives of the role that is in defiance of the received wisdom of the world as it is manifested by dramatic tradition. The upshot is that Shiels’ Blanche comes across as not remotely mad, whereas the beat of madness is like the drums of death in Tennessee Williams’ text in every other performance encountered.

Sarks seems to want to present us with a world of prejudice that has no place for a piquant free spirit who has slept around and plied her erotic gambits, and therefore locks her up out of nothing but a shallow abusive cruelty. Sarks uses a lot of throbbing and banging music, just as she uses a lot of portentous stuff about the neighbour in the upstairs flat, Eunice, played by Katherine Tonkin. This use of a sort of constantly modified revolve is efficient in shifting the angles of Stanley and Stella’s house, but the effect is of a somewhat low-rent realism, with friends who don’t seem to know each other too well and a sense of casual space sharing and lots of divesting of garments. Lots of shifts and singlets coming off without much sense of erotic revelation.

And if Blanche is not mad – not fatally and perpetually round the twist – the play risks becoming an exercise in fiddle-de-dee jokiness.

When Blanchett played Blanche in Liv Ullmann’s Sydney Theatre Company production (subsequently seen at BAM in New York in 2009), she did so like a fleet of differently deranged battleships. Who could forget the Sydney first night, where Blanche’s madness seemed at once structural and like an anthology of different delusions, with such sweep and contradiction that you felt bewildered by what was represented with such self-conscious overwrought grandeur? There was no doubt that you were in the presence of one of the greatest actors, but although there was tragedy there was no coherence: it was all like a female Lear in a histrionic hovel, enunciating the different and variegated areas of a world that jumped from one delusion to another.

Much more dramatically potent and demanding was Kate Cherry’s production with Sigrid Thornton at Black Swan. Thornton’s Blanche had exactly the right balance of forlornness and brightness, amid a vibrant use of symbolism. The flores para los muertos were sung in haunting Spanish, the dash of colour of the flowers like a token or a talisman in a vertical line on a dark-lit stage, and the production as a whole had a beauty as well as a scathing graduated quality. Thornton’s besotted lyricism and her heartbreaking coolness had, with Cherry’s help, a superb sense of dramatic scale, which showed a steadily focused sense of the drama rather than the Blanchett need to demonstrate a flotilla of dramatic hypotheses. Characteristic of this was the 15-year-old message boy played by Callum Fletcher; so beautiful, and such a cadenced and subtle touch in this powerfully accelerated sense of why the lights go out or sparkle like terrors in the night for Thornton’s Blanche. The messenger is a droopily characterised grown man, Stephen Lopez, in the new production – no harbinger of the sweet birds of youth as the boy was.

Perhaps Sarks will find plaudits for dislocating and re-examining a dramatic masterpiece so familiar that it can be lost by the accretion of preconceptions, but you have your doubts. This is an expensive-looking production, with those angled revolve shots, but it seems constantly to be situated at the rough edge of a domestically violent world that is too superficial and raucous for anything like the critique or the understanding that should precede it.

It may be part of the cunning and wisdom of Sarks to have deconstructed and reconfigured Streetcar . It is certainly a radically different play, with its sexed-up on-the-go Blanche. But she is not wrong to invest in the high and mighty dramatic talent of Nikki Shiels. Somehow the dash and rigour of Tennessee’s vision survives any level of dramatic perverseness, and Shiels could play Blanche as a male sex worker and get away with it.

It’s a bit of a sorrow, though, for those of us who encountered the ravaged glamour of Vivien Leigh’s Blanche as a film, and Cate Blanchett on stage, and then the beautifully modulated Sigrid Thornton, to have a zany, ditzy, smart-as-a-tack Blanche from Nikki Shiels. If it seems counterintuitive to us diehards, it’s also an example of how much the player is the thing when you wish to re-shape the production of a play.

Peter Hall, the man who started the Royal Shakespeare Company, used to say that a fat fraction of theatre was the casting. It’s hard not to wish that Sarks had put together an ensemble to equal the inspired casting of Shiels, but there’s no doubting the fact that this is not a palimpsest of former glories.

Still, “the kindness of strangers” has always seemed one of the most tragic lines in modern drama, and the way the doctor puts out his arm, like any suitor, is one of the saddest gestures of a play harrowed with sadness. There are other brightnesses and lightnesses, but you won’t find that pity and terror here.

Peter Craven is a literary and culture critic.

Don’t get me wrong. Shiels is a tremendous actor full of zest and music, and possessing a hair-trigger capacity to create drama. She is far...

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A Streetcar Named Desire thesis essay

Death, sexuality, delusion and societal expectations create a dynamic rife with tension and power transfers in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Tennessee Williams' play tells the story of Blanche DuBois, an intelligent, fragile woman who moves in with her sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski after being expelled from her own community. Due to Williams' literary expertise and the bulk of existing scholarship the play inspired, it would be an excellent subject for a thesis in English or theater.

A Streetcar Named Desire

By tennessee williams, a streetcar named desire quotes and analysis.

I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action. (p. 60) Blanche

This line clearly sets up the key theme of illusion vs reality. Blanche takes the naked truth - the stark bare lightbulb, the rude remark - and dresses it up prettily to make everyone happier and everything easier. That she speaks of talk and action as analogous to a lightbulb shows that she considers the remedy for uncouth behavior and appearance to be a paper lantern, an external cover, rather than a change from within.

Poker should not be played in a house with women. (p. 63 & 65) Mitch

During Stanley's tantrum at the poker game, Mitch twice remarks that women and poker are a bad mix. This characterizes Mitch as someone who believes women are soft and gentle and should be protected from the roughness of poker. But it also shows that he doesn't blame the individual - Stanley - for his actions, but instead blames the poker game, as though the testosterone stirred up were unavoidable and necessary.

I'm not in anything I want to get out of. (p. 74) Stella

This moment represents a major blow to Blanche's world view. Up till now, she was unable to imagine that her sister could be happy with the small flat and the brutish husband. But Stella finally drives home the point that she is not looking for an escape. It crumbles Blanche to learn that this way of life is embraced by someone she loves and respects.

But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark - that sort of make everything else seem - unimportant. (p. 81) Stella

Stella is explaining her overwhelming love for Stanley in terms of physical passion. Blanche correctly sums this up as "desire," just like "that rattle-trap street-car that bangs through the Quarter." Blanche can recognize desire, but she tries to pretend she can't, and refuses to get on board. She cannot experience desire separately from shame. Stella's contentment with her relationship is completely foreign to Blanche.

I never was hard or self-sufficient enough. When people are soft - soft people have got to shimmer and glow - they've got ot put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and put a - paper lantern over th elight... It isn't enough to be soft. You've got to be soft and attractive . And I - I'm fading now! I don't know how much longer I can turn the trick. (p. 92) Blanche

Blanche explains her difficulties in life through a philosophy that pairs softness with attractiveness. She paints herself as floating, without agency or will, just a victim of the demands that the soft be attractive. But the truth is that the abuse of life has forced Blanche to harden up. She resists any hardness, preferring the ephemeral freeness of her youth, and actively undermines any walls and strength that have built up inside her. Her use of the phrase "turn the trick" is also noteworthy, as that is an old idiom for prostitution. Women in Blanche's world view must sell themselves, and when they are no longer a sellable commodity then they are in a desperate situation indeed.

And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that's stronger than this--kitchen--candle. (p. 115) Blanche

Blanche is telling Mitch the sad details of her marriage to Allan. She loved him truly, despite her disgust at his homosexuality, and something broke inside her when he died. She ties this loss to the theme of light. Blanche hides from bright lights because they expose the truth, but she also avoids them because there is no longer any light inside her to match.

I don't want realism. I want magic! (p. 145) Blanche

This is Blanche's battle cry. It doesn't matter whether the magic is real. It doesn't even matter whether Blanche herself believes it. What's important for Blanche is that she always have the option of the fantasy - that she can believe in and hope for something prettier and lovelier and kinder than the real world. She is a self-aware Don Quixote, forcing the world to be as beautiful as she imagines it.

Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable. It is the one unforgivable thing in my opinion and it is the one thing of which I have never, never been guilty. (p. 152) Blanche

Blanche may be deluded about a lot of things, but she is lucid and strong on this point. She lies and cheats and steals, but never to hurt anyone. She wishes only to preserve an illusion. And a fundamental component of her illusion is that she must believe the best of anyone she loves, and believe them incapable of cruelty. She is, unfortunately, unable to make this dream a reality.

We've had this date with each other from the beginning. (p. 162) Stanley

This is Stanley's implicating moment. In a fundamental way, Blanche and Stanley have always been the only ones who knew what was going on. Blanche knows what part of her story is illusion, and Stanley sees through it all. The conflict of that dynamic was destined, according to Stanley, to come to a head in the bedroom. But this statement also turns Blanche's rape into a premeditated act, turning Blanche for once into as much a victim as she has long painted herself to be.

I couldn't believe her story and go on living with Stanley. (p. 165) Stella

Stella is the interesting character in the final scene. She has resolved an unresolveable conflict in her soul in the only way possible. Her sister says that Stanley raped her. Stella's only options, therefore, are to either believe Blanche - and leave Stanley - or to consider Blanche's story a lie or a delusion. Even though Stella knows deep down that Blanche was telling at least a partial truth, she must now follow her sister's example and embrace illusion over reality, in order to continue living the life she had before Blanche ever came to New Orleans.

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A Streetcar Named Desire Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for A Streetcar Named Desire is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

What is the significance of the hand mirror Blanche looks into in this scene? What does she confront through this action?

I see no evidence of a hand mirror in Scene V. Please provide the text in question.

The difference between Blanche and Stanley’s social background is shown through their way of speaking. What are some quotes from scene 2 to support the following statements

STANLEY: What's all this monkey doings?

Blanche explains that she knows she fibs a lot, because "after all, a woman's charm is fifty percent illusion"

You can clearly see the difference in diction.

strange man

re you referring to Streetcar Named Desire?

Study Guide for A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire study guide contains a biography of Tennessee Williams, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

About A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire Summary
Character List

Essays for A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Chekhov's Influence on the Work of Tennessee Williams
Morality and Immorality (The Picture of Dorian Gray and A Streetcar Named Desire)
Traditionalism versus Defiance in a Streetcar Named Desire
Comparing Social and Ethnic Tensions in A Streetcar Named Desire and Blues for Mister Charlie
The Wolf's Jaws: Brutality and Abandonment in A Streetcare Named Desire

Lesson Plan for A Streetcar Named Desire

About the Author
Study Objectives
Introduction to A Streetcar Named Desire
Relationship to Other Books
Notes to the Teacher

Wikipedia Entries for A Streetcar Named Desire

Introduction

July 20 – 26, 2024 | No. 509

Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a nuanced departure from the blueprint created by Elia Kazan’s classic film. By Alison Croggon .

Mtc revives the devastating power of a streetcar named desire.

Nikki Shiels plays Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire

In the popular imagination, Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire is almost inseparable from Elia Kazan’s classic film. Made four years after Kazan’s famous Broadway premiere, it featured a scandalously shirtless young Marlon Brando as the working-class Stanley Kowalski and Vivien Leigh as a fragile, mentally disordered Blanche DuBois. They are both searing, definitive performances that have dominated interpretations of the play ever since.

Anne-Louise Sarks’ remarkable production at Melbourne Theatre Company aims to drag the play out from under this monumental shadow. From the moment the curtain rises, we understand that we are in a different universe from the sensual “raffish charm” of Kazan’s New Orleans. The set is a double-storey apartment on a revolve that starkly exposes its poverty. Like the production itself, Mel Page’s design strips away the romanticism and nostalgia that sometimes clogged Williams’ lesser plays and reveals the steely lyricism beneath.

Sarks emphasises the heightened present of theatre – an emphasis common to many theatre-makers who emerged in the early 2000s, such as Benedict Andrews or Sarks’ fellow Hayloft Project founder, Simon Stone. “Our production is set in New Orleans in 1947 – and at the same time, it is set in the theatre,” she notes in the program. “We are in communion with the past, and at the same time we are sitting together as an audience in 2024, breathing with the actors, experiencing this classic play in the context of our lives. The real and the theatrical, 1947 and 2024 – all are present.”

Part of this present, of course, is the vastly changed public attitude towards gendered violence. For his time, Williams was uniquely attuned to the realities of violence against women, and it is a central theme of all his great plays. In a moving encomium after his death in 1983, the radical feminist Andrea Dworkin paid tribute to how he revealed the circumstances of women’s lives as “unbearable”. “It is painful even to remember them because their insides were so exposed,” she wrote. “For Williams, women were the human protagonists … The father, the elder, the patriarch, wounds them and to the degree they want love, they have no chance.”

This sense of the unbearable is the motif of this acutely intelligent production, which appears to have ignored all Williams’ stage directions – wisely, in my opinion – in favour of finding the depths in his dialogue and action. Its lucidity makes the play crueller, the violence more shocking. The fact that at the centre of this play is a rape is often glossed over: the discourse around Blanche’s “desire” for Stanley softens the violence of this act with an implied consent. Here the rape and violence register without any such cushioning. Blanche’s contempt towards Stanley hides no desire, only disgust and growing fear. Rather than watching the final crumbling of a fey, mentally ill woman, as with the harrowing fragility of Leigh, we witness the unbearable process of a woman – actually two women, as Stella is also a victim – being broken in a patriarchal vice.

Notably, Blanche is not portrayed as crazy, as women who step outside patriarchal norms are too often framed. She is merely desperate. She is charming, manipulative and funny and shamelessly employs all her wiles in a final attempt to make a life for herself from the bad cards she has played so badly. When this Blanche breaks a bottle and brandishes its shards in the face of her aggressor, you know she is fighting to the end.

Despite the violence done to her, both onstage and recalled, it’s not easy to place Blanche as an unambiguous victim. She herself is a sexual predator. She turns up at her sister’s house without notice because, as is discovered later, she groomed one of her English students and was summarily sacked. Onstage, she briefly seduces a boy soliciting subscriptions for the local paper. As is also clear, this behaviour is a result of trauma, but the moral balance of this production doesn’t let her off the hook.

Nikki Shiels is absolutely magnetic in the lead role. She gives us a performance of a performance: her Blanche is never not pretending. “Yes, yes, magic!” she tells the hapless Mitch (Steve Mouzakis), her ill-fated suitor. “I try to give that to people! I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth. I tell what ought be truth.” Shiels is intimately attuned to the musicality of Williams’ dialogue – perhaps the most lasting impression of the whole show is her voice, which she employs in all its expressive registers. It’s worth seeing for this song of a performance alone.

Mark Leonard Winter likewise brings us a different Stanley. He’s boorish and pathetic, childishly dependent on Stella (Michelle Lim Davidson) – which partly accounts for his abuse of her. The scene in which he beats her is horribly real, largely because we see that it emerges from weakness and not strength.

Perhaps the line that most informs this interpretation comes from Williams’ introduction of Stanley – “He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images flashing in his mind and determining the way he smiles at them.” He’s a man who must see women as lesser lest his masculinity shatter, a man hiding his sense of class inferiority under a thin veil of swagger. As a despised immigrant, Stanley’s maleness is his only power in a world that deems him – like Blanche does – to be little more than an animal. It’s the only power he has over Blanche, who mercilessly lays into him with all her class privilege, and in the end it’s what he uses to break her.

Interestingly, the relationship that emerges as central to the play is not between Stanley and Blanche but that of the two sisters, who are bound together by historical traumas and, despite all their differences, a real and abiding love. A Streetcar Named Desire becomes centrally a power struggle between Stanley and Blanche for Stella. Lim Davidson’s performance is deeply painful: we sense that she is perfectly aware of Blanche’s deceptions and manipulations but supports them anyway, that her willingness to bend to her whims comes from a fathomless compassion. When she realises what she has done, her loss, and defeat, is equal to Blanche’s. Likewise, we are aware that Stanley has won nothing.

Shiels and her fellow cast members give the play a rich surface sparkle, uncovering an often surprising humour that hides organically in the text and that adds to the production’s sense of transparency. This gives the dialogue dimension and variousness, and a concomitant depth. It makes the moments of violence viscerally shocking: they completely silence the audience. I’m not sure anyone drew breath.

This range of expression also permits the moments of histrionic extremity that are so central to Williams’ work and that are so hard to realise onstage. He knew, I’m sure, that real life has a habit of being way more melodramatic than is tasteful in art. Underneath the apparent lightness is a growing keening, extremities of grief and unresolved pain. At the end of the play, when Blanche emerges from her delusions and realises what is being done to her, she flies into a desperate panic. Then, slowly, she puts herself back together again in a painful attempt to regain some dignity, and finally leaves the stage. It is, as it ought to be, wholly devastating.

The telling thing is that this production goes like a train: from the moment it began, I was completely immersed and two-and-a-half hours passed in a flash. It refreshed my admiration of the play: without the glaze of romanticism, what we see is its merciless and efficient machinery, how precisely Williams orchestrates the febrile emotions at work in his characters. In a profound sense, we understand why this play will never not be relevant.

A Streetcar Named Desire runs at the Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne, until August 17.

VISUAL ART Lesley Dumbrell: Thrum

Art Gallery of New South Wales , Gadigal Country/Sydney, until October 13

LITERATURE Liminal Festival

The Wheeler Centre , Naarm/Melbourne, August 2-4

EXHIBITION Duty of Care: Part One

Institute of Modern Art , Meanjin/Brisbane, until September 22

CULTURE BLEACH* Festival

Venues in and around Yugambeh Country/Gold Coast , August 1-11

MULTIMEDIA Material Practices: Howard Taylor’s Journal

Art Gallery of Western Australia , Whadjuk Noongar Country/Perth, until September 15

LAST CHANCE

MUSIC Leaps and Bounds

Venues throughout Naarm/Melbourne , until July 28

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 24, 2024 as "A cleft in the rock".

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