‘A Streetcar Named
Desire.’
Death and Desire.
Williams crafts these themes as
interconnected:
• The themes of death and desire permeate most of the play’s events.
• Through loss, Blanche desires to free herself from the boundaries of her gender
and express her sexuality.
• She is literally and metaphorically on a streetcar named desire heading for the
cemeteries or death.
• Williams entwines images of death and desire throughout the play, suggesting
that those who try to escape the expected gender norms of society are doomed.
• Elysian Fields – the resting place in classical mythology of virtuous heroes. Here
Stanley finds a sanctuary for his desires. It’s a masculine dominion represented
through masculine pursuits, eg, bowling, playing poker and drinking. For him it is
a safe place where he can unapologetically satisfy his desires.
Decay:
• Belle Reve: literally translates to beautiful dream in French,
reminiscent of the day when Louisiana was part of the French
Domain. The name suggests a façade, reflecting the fact Blanche’s
desires and visions for the future are simply beautiful fantasies.
• Blanche herself is a fading Southern Belle and this is often conveyed in
her clothes and attitude. She is out of her time!
• Belle Reve acts as a physical representation of the loss Blanche has
suffered, transforming the plantation into a symbol of death and
decay as it vividly recollects that loss.
• Blanche finds it enormously difficult to speak of the loss of Belle Reve.
Allan’s death:
• Blanche’s late husband is damned because of his unacceptable
homosexuality.
• He never appears in the play but acts as a symbol of Blanche’s traumatic
past.
• Homosexuality was considered at the time to be a degenerate mental
illness. The death of Allan and attitudes to sexuality reveal that the New
South is not progressive but stagnant.
• Blanche’s fate as an outsider is also sealed the moment she enters New
Orleans. Her outsider status leads to her metaphorical and social death
at the end of the play which comes in the form of her removal to a
sanitorium.
A lack of Fulfilment:
• Blanche’s self-worth is entwined with her identity as a Southern Belle: a
woman from a privileged upper-class background. She expects to be treated
with a certain level of formality and this reveals her desire to return to the
past.
• The irony is that, except for Mitch to some degree, the men do not respect her
– this is violently expressed in her rape in the latter stages of the play.
• She also, due to her Southern Belle mentality, is entrapped by negative
attitudes, for example her attitude to Stanley’s ethnicity. Here she exhibits a
form of racism.
• Blanche often attacks Stanley verbally using her upper-class superiority as a
weapon against his lower-class ignorance which has disastrous consequences.
War Zone:
• The Kowalski apartment is a war zone of power. Stanley is broodingly
territorial, and insistently asserts his dominance with violent acts and
words, degrading and dehumanising Blanche by comparing her to a
bird.
• The bathroom becomes Blanche’s only sanctuary – she experiences a
form of hell on earth whilst living in the Kowalski apartment.
• Stanley’s cruel language causes Blanche to descend into a state of
nervous mental chaos and this in term causes her complete breakdown
at the end of the play.
• Blanche is viewed as an enemy by Stanley, one that must be eradicated.
Masculine Desire:
• Stanley is unapologetically sexual.
• He radiates raw, violent and brutish animal magnetism throughout the play.
• Williams uses theatrical techniques to accompany Stanley’s violence – these may
take the form of lighting, clothing, jungle sounds and predatory verbs.
• Mitch also Causes Blanche’s mental deterioration: he is initially presented by
Williams as a false sense of security for Blanche. He is presented as an opposite to
Stanley – a man of softness and manners.
• He, unlike Stanley, dotes on women – leaving the Poker Night early to attend to his
sick mother.
• However, Mitch is ultimately shown to be no different to the other men in the play.
He attempts to force Blanche into the light and tears off her paper lantern. He also
condemns her as “unclean.”