A Streetcar Named Desire: Encyclopedia - A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire is a play by Tennessee Williams describing a culture clash between Blanche DuBois—a pretentious, fading relic of the Old South—and Stanley Kowalski, a rising member of the industrial, inner-city immigrant class.

Streetcar came shortly after Williams's first big success, The Glass Menagerie of 1945. While Williams kept writing plays and fiction into the 1980s, none of his later works lived up to the critical reputation of his first hits. Williams was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948 for the play.

In 1951 a movie of the play, directed by Elia Kazan won several awards, including an Academy Award for Vivien Leigh as Best Actress in the role of Blanche.

In 1995 it was made into an opera with music by Andre Previn and presented by the San Francisco Opera.

A Streetcar Named Desire - Plot

The play presents Blanche DuBois, a fading Southern belle whose pretensions to virtue and culture only thinly mask her nymphomania and alcoholism. Blanche arrives at the house of her sister Stella Kowalski in the French Quarter of New Orleans, where the seamy, multicultural ambience is a shock to Blanche's nerves. Explaining that her ancestral southern plantation Belle Reeve has been "lost" due to the "epic fornications" of her ancestors, Blanche is welcomed to stay by a trepidatious Stella, who fears the reaction of her husband Stanley. Blanche explains to them how her supervisor told her she could take time off from her job as an English teacher because of her upset nerves.

In contrast to both the self-effacing Stella and the charming refinement of Blanche, Stella's husband, Stanley Kowalski, is a force of nature; primal, rough-hewn, brutish and sensual. He dominates Stella in every way, and she tolerates his offensive crudeness and lack of gentility largely because of her self-deceptive love for him.

The interjection of Blanche upsets her sister and brother-in-law's system of mutual dependence. Stella is swept aside as the magnetic attraction between the oppositely-charged Stanley and Blanche overwhelms the household. Stanley's friend and Blanche's would-be suitor Mitch is similarly trampled along Blanche and Stanley's collision course. Their final, inevitable confrontation results in Blanche's nervous breakdown.

Blanche and Stanley, together with Arthur Miller's Willy Loman, are among the most recognizable characters in American drama.

The reference to the streetcar (tram) called Desire is symbolic, as well as an accurate piece of New Orleans geography. Blanche has to travel on a streetcar named "Desire" to reach Stella's home in Elysian Fields, presenting an abiding theme in the play that desire and death are mutual aspects of the same pathos. Blanche's sorrow is that the pleasure brought from desire is only short-lived and ultimately doomed, much like her streetcar journey.

A Streetcar Named Desire - Themes and Motifs

A Streetcar Named Desire - Illusion versus Reality

A recurring theme found in "A Streetcar Named Desire" is an ever-present conflict between reality and fantasy, actual and ideal. Blanche does not want, "..what's real, but what's magic." This recurring theme is read most strongly in William's characterization of Blanche DuBois and the physical tropes that she employs in her pursuit of what is magical and idealized: the purple shade she employs to cover the harsh white light bulb in the living room, her chronically deceptive recounting of her last years in Belle Reeve, the misleading letters she presumes to write to Shep Huntleigh, and a pronounced excess to alcohol consumption.

Notably, Blanche's deception of others and herself is not characterized by malicious intent, but rather a heart-broken and saddened retreat to a romantic time and happier moments before disaster struck her life when her loved one Allan Gray committed suicide during a Varsouvian Waltz. In many ways, Blanche is understood to be a sympathetic and tragic figure in the play despite her deep character flaws.

A Streetcar Named Desire - Abandonment of Chivalric Codes

In most fairy tale stories, the ailing princess or the damsel in distress is often rescued by a heroic white knight. "A Streetcar Named Desire" is characterized by the conspicious abscence of the male protagonist imbued with heroic qualities. Indeed, the polar opposite of what a literary chivalric hero might be is represented in the leading male character of the play, Stanley Kowalski. Stanley is describe by Blanche as a, "..survivor of the Stone Age." and he is further depicted in this primitive light by numerous traits that he exhibits: uncivilized manners, demanding and forceful behavior, lack of empathy, crass selfishness, and a chauvinistic attitude towards women. The replacement of the heroic white knight by a character such as Stanely Kowalsky furhter heightens William's theme of the demise of the romantic Old South in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Stanley, it should be noted, is not a villain in the literary sense of the word. His actions do not reflect a motivation to actively pursue the destruction of an individual as the primary goal, but rather the callousness and destructiveness of his actions bear a direct result from his incapacity to empathize and his instinctive, primitive desire to own or dominate. Stanley, as a result, is a symbol for the rising new values and attributes of industrial, capitalistic America that has come to replace the chivalric codes of the dashing gentleman caller of the Old South.

A Streetcar Named Desire - Film and Opera adaptations

In 1951, Elia Kazan directed a movie based on the play; see A Streetcar Named Desire (film)

In 1995, the opera, A Streetcar Named Desire composed by André Previn with a libretto by Philip Littell, after the play by Tennessee Williams had its premiere at the San Francisco Opera during the 1998-99 season.

A Streetcar Named Desire - Performances

The first stage version was produced by Irene Mayer Selznick with Marlon Brando starring as Stanley, Jessica Tandy as Blanche, Kim Hunter as Stella, and Karl Malden as Mitch. Brando portrayed Stanley with an overt sexuality that made him, the character of Stanley, and Tennessee Williams into cultural touchstones. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947. Brando's magnetic performance caused audiences to sympathize with Stanley in the opening scenes of the play, effectively implicating them in Stanley's eventual brutality towards Blanche. Tandy's performance won her a Tony Award.

A Streetcar Named Desire - Comparison with other works

Williams' Streetcar explores a similar situation to the works of Chekov, who explored the parallel fall of the upper class in turn of the century Russia. Stanley may represent the proletariat (working class) which desires to overthrow the bourgeoisie.

A Streetcar Named Desire - Streetcar revival in New Orleans

Over 50 years after the play opened, the revival of the streetcar system in New Orleans is credited by many to the worldwide fame gained by the streetcars made by the Perley A. Thomas Car Works, Inc. which were operating on the Desire route in the play, and have been carefully restored and continue to operate there in 2004 (though not on the Desire route.) All streetcars are currently out of service because of Hurricane Katrina [1].

A Streetcar Named Desire - Oh! Streetcar!

The Simpsons parodied the play with a "musical version" in the episode entitled "A Streetcar Named Marge." The musical presented by the characters in the show humorously misses Williams' point entirely, ending with a song featuring the lyrics "You can always depend on the kindness of strangers."

See also

• Streetcar
• Tennessee Williams
• A Streetcar Named Desire has an important role in the Spanish film All About My Mother

Category: American plays

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