“A Streetcar Named Desire” is written by Tennessee Williams and first presented in Broadway Theatre in December 1947. The play is focused on the tense relationship between two sisters, where one is a spoiled young woman who is driven by her desires, and another is desperately in love with her loser-husband. It is clear that the author is sympathetic to both his protagonists; however, some judgment can also be noticed during the play. For example, Blanche’s monolog in the end, after the rape scene, leaves the audience with nothing but compassion for her life.
The play successfully represents different variations of the genre of Realism. Events happen to real people and in real-time with a minimum of imaginary elements. However, to show the complexity of Blanche’s mental disability, specific elements are used, such as strange sounds that she hears when she is alone, shadows on the walls, or voices and echoes (Rea 198). These things are not objective, but they are somewhat used to engage the audience into thinking that Blanche is going through some psychological phase in her life. Moreover, it can also belong to the genre of South Gothic, since all the unnatural even that Blanche experiences are the elements of horror classification. Furthermore, it perfectly represents the elements of Family Drama (Rea 198). The relationship between two sisters, Stella and Blanche, husband and wife, Stella and Stanley, and sister and brother-in-law, Blanche and Stanly, are presented with all their complexity and problems. Therefore, the play “A Street Car Named Desire” belongs to Realism, South Gothic, and Family Drama genre.
The name of the play is making one feel confused. Firstly, Blanche came to Stella and Stanley’s place by taking a streetcar named “Desire.” The connection is quite obvious – the events took place after Blanche came to them by “Desire.” However, the deeper analysis would reveal a much bigger metaphor – Blanche had to leave her hometown because of her promiscuous lifestyle; thus, she literally came there because of her desires.
The event in the play takes place in New Orleans in the 1940s. It is essential to note that it is a Southern city; therefore, the influence of the culture is quite significant. The Southern literature of that period has its canons, such as the problem of racism (Rea 188). In the play, this issue is represented through the relationship between Blanche and her brother-in-law, Stanley, who is an immigrant. Rea writes, “The feud between Stanley and Blanche has stoked a debate about race in the play”(188). From the beginning, Blanche’s opinion is connected to Stanley’s background. She tries to convince her sister about only is not a good husband only based on the information that he is an immigrant. Moreover, they represent two different classes – the first-class and the working class. Raising the problem of this issue is typical not only for Southern literature but for others as well.
The location where the action happens successfully reflects the spirit of the play. From Rea’s point of view, “the audience gets a behind-the-scenes look at what it might be like for a family to live day in, day out near the French Quarter” (189). The author does not bother with showing the typical lifestyle of New Orleans citizens; however, it is an essential part of Stella and Stanley’s lives. However, if it were adequately presented in the play, it would distract the audience from the main topic, which is the family relationship between the main characters. In this case, the city is an essential background to interconnect Stanly with his characteristics and to show the parallel with his behavior. Blanche’s background also matters in this play, and it is the prejudice that creates a problematic relationship with her brother-in-law. In this case, Stella is a bridge between these two worlds and a middle person for the audience, since the conflict exists between her sister and her husband, the spectators pay attention to her reaction as someone linked to them both.
Literary work needs to present the cultural identity to the audience since it can help the spectator to relate or understand better the crisis the main characters are going through. Rea also specks about the southern identity in the play: “Williams amasses an oeuvre that urges the audience to view the South through the widest possible lens, to glimpse the whole region as connected to many other places, places both near and far. From this distance, the U.S. South in Williams sits at the crossroads of the world” (191). In the play, Stanley identifies himself as an American, and he is proud of it. He is pleased that he belongs to the society and he is loyal to it as well. Moreover, he is a man of the working class, which he points out throughout the story.
The composition of the play “A Streetcar Named Desire” is built according to the rules of classic tragedy. Corrigan says, “In “A Streetcar Named Desire” Williams is in control of his symbolic devices. They enable the audience not only to understand the emotional penumbra surrounding the events and characters but also to view the world from the limited and distorted perspective of Blanche” (par. 1) In this manner, the viewers can understand the motives which drive the woman and lead her to make the decisions. The writer attempts to show a broad spectrum of one person’s emotions through limited space and time. Moreover, the structure of the play allows the audience to see the interaction of the motions that the characters show during their dialogs.
Such a technique helps Williams to achieve the maximum response from the public. People not only feel empathy for the complicated relationships between Stanley, Stella, and Blanche but also can see the development of it and the reason for its complexity. The purpose of the author’s implementation of broad symbolism into the play was not to show three people’s lives, but rather to describe the collective behavior. Here Blanche represents not one type of girl with typical qualities but instead many qualities of similar examples. The same technique is used for Stella and Stanley. As a married couple, their relationship was collected from many other people with typical problems and associations.
Furthermore, the author pays much attention to such details as colors on the walls and the costumes. Corrigan points out that: “Williams uses costuming, props, and lighting to convey the emotional strength of his characters and to reinforce the dichotomy between Blanche and Stanley” (par. 3). The decorations are also essential in order to send the right message to the public. The gloomy, dark, and somewhat depressive colors are supposed to affect viewers to feel the tension between protagonists. The main focus must be on how complicated and miserable their lives were since none of them knew how to manage their lives. Blanche was mentally unstable, Stella was only seeking the protection of a stronger character, and Stanley was using Stella’s weaknesses to be self-assertive.
Williams’s symbolism of Blanche’s obsession with darker shades of lights presents the metaphor of her problems. Corrigan says: “Blanche’s dislike of bright lights is a matter of vanity: dimness hides the signs of aging” (par. 8). It means that Blanche prefers dark shades, and she does not like a bright light in the room. This is the metaphor for bright lights as purity and dim lights as sin. Since the wickedness is what has brought Blanche to New Orleans, her personality is shown through disliking daylight and bright colors. The audience can also notice it when she says monologs and different figures appear in the shades. This represents her fears, but most importantly, her immoral behavior.
In addition to the colors, the writers also effectively implemented the use of space as a method to represent the personalities of the main characters and their associations. Fleche writes that: “Tennessee Williams exploits the expressionistic uses of space in the drama, attempting to represent desire from the outside, that is, in its formal challenge to realistic stability and closure, and its risk exposure” (par. 1). All the scenes happen in the small apartment where Stella and Stanley live, or on the porch outside. The problems caused by Blanche’s desires are reflected through the outside, it includes people whom he interacts with apart from Stella and Stanley, for example, a young boy she kissed. The stability of other aspects of all their lives is shown through the inside decoration. Moreover, the period in the play is over five months, and during that time, the situations that the characters experience outside are not mentioned even once. This technique effectively makes the three of them the center of the audience’s attention.
Williams tries to keep the viewers interested throughout the play to achieve a better emotional response. Fleche says: “The surprising thing about this play is that the allegorical reading also seems to be the most “realistic” one, the reading that imposes a unity of language and experience to make structural sense of the play, that is, to make its events organic, natural, inevitable” (par. 2). The lines that Blanche uses to speak about the reasons that drew her from the hometown to her sister’s apartment are full of metaphors and ironic allegories. Moreover, Stanley uses jokes that could be interpreted both literally and metaphorically, which allows the spectators to see the hidden sense in the play. It also creates a hidden meaning to the play that cannot be interpreted literally but rather metaphorically.
It is also quite interesting to observe the way that the writer uses realistic methods to curve the reality that characters live in. Fleche points out that, “The expressionistic techniques of the latter half of the play abstract the individual from the milieu, and emotion begins to dominate the representation of events” (par. 5). At first, when Blanche arrives at Stella and Stanley’s place, she seems to be nothing more but a spoiled girl who does not accept poverty but even despises it. The attention of the audience is focused on the problem of communication of Blanche with her sister and brother-in-law. However, when the play continues, the viewers notice that the reasons for her behavior are more complicated than they seemed in the beginning. Moreover, the spectators start to feel compassion for her as she tells monologs about her inability to control her desires. Williams effectively manipulates the public’s response making it more emotional as the play goes on. Since the second half of the play, it is no longer the real-life interpretation of the events described in the play, but instead the sympathy to the characters and the situation that happened to them.
Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” is one of the most successful theatrical compositions that describe the complexity of a personality that is driven by desires and vanity. The problems of racism, immigrants, relationship raised in the play allow one to notice its reflection in the everyday life of the 20th century. The characters in the play are the representation of collective types of people rather than one person. The complete attention to the little details, such as colors on the walls, costumes, the well-organized game of lights and shades in the decoration, makes the play complex and keeps the audience intense until the end. The dialogs and monologs of the characters are full of allegories, which manipulate the audience to make it sympathize or feel angry about things that the author points out. Therefore, it can be concluded that “A Streetcar Named Desire” is not only a story of the relationship between sisters, husband, and brother-in-law, but also guidance to the complexity of one’s mind.
Works Cited
Rea, Robert. “Tennessee Williams’s Streetcar Named Desire: A Global Perspective.” South: A Scholarly Journal, vol. 49, no. 2, 2017, p. 187+. Gale Literature Resource Center. Web.
Fleche, Anne. “The Space of Madness and Desire: Tennessee Williams and Streetcar.” Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Jeffrey W. Hunter and Deborah A. Schmitt, vol. 111, Gale, 1999. Gale Literature Resource Center. Web.
Corrigan, M. A. Realism and Theatricalism in A Streetcar Named Desire. Modern Drama, 19(4), 385–396.1976. doi:10.3138/md.19.4.385