Category: A Streetcar Named Desire

The notion of gender is fundamental to both the texts of A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. They each centralise female characters who face oppression at the hands of their superior male counterparts as well as the pressures of surrounding society. Despite certain similarities, the unique responses of these characters are contrasting and suggest that gender conflicts can change a person’s outlook on life. Each writer draws heavily upon social contexts and the complex nature of relationships to highlight how female oppression can be presented as a fluctuation; having the power to shift based on individual situation and personal circumstances.

The oppression of females in both texts is portrayed as unpredictable, shifting between implicit and explicit often. It is clear that the male characters in both A Thousand Splendid Suns and A Streetcar Named Desire use the conventions of society to exert their power and dominate those who fall under them, notably the females. Hosseini plays on the stereotypical views and roles of women being subservient and passive as mothers and housewives to highlight the importance of societal perceptions of gender. Jalil is introduced to us in the early phases of the novel and demonstrates his acute sense of self entitlement as he firmly believes he can choose to visit his own daughter on a whim. This non-committal attitude towards family, bonds which are thought to be sacred within culture in Afghanistan, is an example of male power from the outset. It seems as if there is a conflict that comes between the duties of being a strong man and upholding the centuries old tradition of family honour as Mariam is an illegitimate child. The ill treatment that Mariam begins to experience in her premature years is implicitly shown; this gradually shifts in nature to be displayed much more outwardly. Mariam’s mother says herself, ‘like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman’ to draw attention to gender stereotypes through her own experiences with being cast out by Jalil; Nana is a bitter woman who indoctrinates her daughter with the belief that men are superior. It not only reveals the imbalance of power in Afghan society in terms of gender, but also foreshadows Mariam’s fate later in the novel. Williams similarly echoes this and portrays the central female characters as slaves to the standard conventions of society at the time. Stella is an embodiment of these views and demonstrates the fluctuating nature of female oppression through her relationship with Stanley. Women in the Old South were expected to be passive and chaste; Stella’s acceptance of the behaviours Stanley exhibits towards her illustrates this as she tolerates him with little complaint. This can be seen in …… ‘[Stanley gives a loud whack of his hand on her thigh] Sharply: “that’s not fun, Stanley.”’ It can be argued that much of A Streetcar Named Desire seeks to present the idea of female oppression as a physical abuse as well as mental torment. This shifting nature is explored by Koprince who states that ‘Stella, likewise matches the sociological profile of the battered woman; for she is essentially a submissive, self-deprecating wife who tolerates and excuses her husband’s behaviour.’ …….

Both texts feature female characters who respond in different ways to the subjugation they each face at the hands of their oppressors. Laila becomes crafty and uses her wits to make the situation advantageous to her whereas Blanche’s character is presented as having reinvented her identity during madness to cope with trauma. Hosseini differs with Williams in the sense that the reaction does not always have to be negative. Laila arguably undergoes a transformation in character that may not have occurred otherwise. This may have been inspired by Hosseini’s other major work ‘The Kite Runner’ which focused primarily on male relationships in the Afghan community and contrasts to this novel which looks at women’s experiences. The inner strength of a woman staring at the face of oppression can be seen with Laila seeing ‘something behind this young girl’s eyes… something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone’. This simile comparing the steely resolve behind a young girl’s eyes to a harsh mass of rock creates a powerful image in the reader’s mind of the unwieldy force of a female. Laila’s journey of personal development from a child to an independent mother who fends for her children is presented in a positive light by Hosseini which differs to Blanche. Williams crafts the character of Blanche as an extremely unstable woman who suffers greatly following her experiences with men. Her descent into insanity can be interpreted in many ways; critic Lauren Seigle describes these ambiguous presentations as ranging from ‘praising her as a fallen angel victimized by her surroundings to damning her as a deranged harlot’. Williams could have been influenced by femininity and fragility being seen as weak due to America emerging as a dominant world power at the time of writing. …….

Hosseini and Williams were both heavily influenced by the social climate at the time of writing each respective text; A Thousand Splendid Suns and A Streetcar Named Desire both draw upon the contexts of the time they were written to impact the experiences of the characters. Hosseni uses the politically challenged, war torn climate of Afghanistan to emphasise key customs that may have determined the behaviour of significant characters. He may have taken inspiration from the repressive regime in Afghanistan at the time – Taliban rule implementing a male dominated society and a strict following of traditional, oppressive ideas. Rebecca Stuhr states that Hosseini paints a ‘vivid portrait of a country shattered by a series of ideological leaders and wars imposed on it by foreign and internal forces’ to illustrate the damaging effects of a war on its people. Both Mariam and Laila have undoubtedly been altered due to experiences of war, bloodshed and death in their formative years. A Streetcar Named Desire similarly uses the concept of the American Dream that was prevalent during the time of Williams writing the play. It could be said that Stanley personifies the American Dream which contrasts to Blanche who represents the old world where class and race are still significant in society. Hosseini and Williams were both heavily influenced by the social climate at the time of writing each respective text; A Thousand Splendid Suns and A Streetcar Named Desire both draw upon the contexts of the time they were written to impact the experiences of the characters. Hosseni uses the politically challenged, war torn climate of Afghanistan to emphasise key customs that may have determined the behaviour of significant characters. He may have taken inspiration from the repressive regime in Afghanistan at the time – Taliban rule implementing a male dominated society and a strict following of traditional, oppressive ideas. Rebecca Stuhr states that Hosseini paints a ‘vivid portrait of a country shattered by a series of ideological leaders and wars imposed on it by foreign and internal forces’ to illustrate the damaging effects of a war on its people. Both Mariam and Laila have undoubtedly been altered due to experiences of war, bloodshed and death in their formative years. A Streetcar Named Desire similarly uses the concept of the American Dream that was prevalent during the time of Williams writing the play. It could be said that Stanley personifies the American Dream which contrasts to Blanche who represents the old world where class and race are still significant in society. Williams can be seen as part of the ‘Southern Gothic’ movement, characterised by a rich, even grotesque, imagination and an awareness of being part of a decaying culture. The heavy dependence on the shape of society at the time of writing suggests both authors used real life happenings to influence their personal opinions on gender perceptions and develop lead characters that reflect this.

Subsequent to the great depression, America’s economy quickly collapsed and many lives were taken during the time. This led to many individuals being left homeless with little to no money on hand. Today the great depression is remembered as a big mistake and downfall of America which claimed many lives. Many authors have portrayed the events after this moment including Tennessee Williams. Through the play, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Williams shows that all female characters fall prey to society’s expectations that restrict them. The play tells the story of a school teacher Blanche DuBois losing Belle Reeves and moving into New Orleans with her sister, Stella and her husband Stanley. Blanche’s fantasy leads to even greater family tension to Stella and Stanley who already have a strained relationship.. The piece “All About Eve” portrays the same issue of all female characters being victims of social values but in a less direct manner. Although the film shows the same issue, it is not set during/after the times of the great depression. The director Joseph L. Mankiewicz walks the audience through the story of Eve who lives and tells a life of lies to achieve her dreams whilst breaking other characters’ ambitions. Both these texts consist of many similarities and differences on this topic.

The issue of female characters falling victim to social values is illustrated very similarly between both the texts “All About Eve” and “A Streetcar Named Desire”. The play and the film both show this issue with the men being superior and violent to women. The play, “A Streetcar Named Desire” directly shows this issue through Stanley showing violence to Stella and Blanche. We see Blanche turn on the radio to a romantic song for her and Mitch, but Stanley “Stalks fiercely” to the room immediately, grabs “the small white radio” and “snatches it off the table”. Stanley, “with a shouted oath” then goes ahead to “[toss] the instrument out the window”. He then goes further on to “advance” to Stella and in the heat of the moment, Stanley retaliates at his wife. Stella then rushes off and Stanley then screams “STELLL-AHHHHH!” with “heaven-splitting violence”. Firstly Stanley’s disregard for the radio reflects the overwhelming nature of violence and his uncontrollable anger on women after he snatched it from Blanche. Then the abuse to his wife shows the conflict between men and women in the play. Yet not only does he aggressively condemn his wife, he is much more violent in his desire to get her back. When Stanley screams Stella’s name the stage direction gives an insight into the intensity of his desire, which reveals their volatile relationship. In this instance we see both female characters, Blanche and Stella, fall victim to the social values of the times in which men have more control over women and their possessions. The distinct film depicts the topic in a less direct manner, but instead in subtle moments. When Addison finds out about Eve’s lies he forces her to comply with his demands or be exposed as a liar and lose the acting career she desires above all. He physically abuses her to get the truths out of her mouth. In a particular shot we see Addison standing up violating Eve as she lays on the bed frightened. This medium shot symbolises how the man, Addison, has more power then the vulnerable female character Eve. Although Eve is seen as a dark, deception character we still see her fall victim to the same social values as in the text of which men have more power over women.

The female characters living a life of a ‘fairy tale’ and a ‘fantasy’ to fulfil others desires are another link in the mediums that show feminine characters falling victim to the demands of society. In the play we mainly see this topic through Blanche talking with Mitch. Not only does she lie about her age and her childhood when she first meets Mitch, later in the play she admits that she wants to live a life of “magic”. Blanche talks to Mitch who no longer seeks to impress her as Stanley informed him previously about Blanche’s previous actions. He forces Blanche to confess her lies and let him have a “real good look “ at her. Blanche then confesses that she “doesn’t want realism” but rather she wants “magic”. She admits she “misrepresent things” to people and “[doesn’t] tell the truth”. From this we can tell that Blanche falls victim to social values because she attempts to cover her face and age in darkness so others, in this case Mitch, still like her. Blanche knows that if she exposes her previous actions and her real age no one would like her, as she exceeds the social expectations/values of women. The 1950 film, “All About Eve” shows that women who seek to pursue success and fame at those times are faced with multiple problems. Because of this they turn their life to fantasies by covering themselves to society to meet social expectations. We hear this issue mainly from Margo as she struggles to meet the social expectations. In the film, we see that Margo’s age is evidently deteriorating, and has to wear a mask to cover it up. Margo later admits that her life has always been a “fairy tale” and she feels as if she is playing the final act(her inevitable demise). She later does lose all her fame after Eve replaces her in the play. This is one of the more obvious examples of a female falling target to society’s expectations. During the 1950s society’s expectations for a woman to perform in a theater were that the woman had to be talented, young and beautiful. Although Margo was talented and “so many people [knew her]”, she was getting old and because of that she was also losing her beauty and at the end she ultimately could not be accepted to society’s values.

However, a significant difference between the play and the film is how the topic was portrayed. In the play, “A Streetcar Named Desire” Williams makes it really clear that female characters are victims of social values while the play by Mankiewicz, “All About Eve” only has subtle moments on this issue. The play not only distinctly shows this when Stella gets physically abused from Stanley but also when Blanche gets raped by him. We see this later in the play when Stanley considers to “interfere with” Blanche. Although Williams doesn’t describe the scene, he makes it very clear that Blanche did get raped by Stanley and she fell prey to society’s values of men empowering women. The film, on the other hand, does not make the topic clear. The film firstly did not consist of many examples of females falling prey to society’s values that restrict them, and the only main two were when Eve gets abused by Addison and when Margo tries to live a fairy tale so she can keep performing in the theatre. In addition, both these moments were hard to notice and were very subtle so most people casually watching the movie probably will not notice these social values on women.

Overall the two pieces both show how social expectations characterise female characters. Both the play and the film also have similarities on this topic including the theme of violence(men more powerful than women) and societal expectation of meeting others needs. Although both the play and the film have many similarities in which female characters fall victim to social values, the play shows this and the examples very clearly whereas the film only uses subtle moments to portray this. “All About Eve” and “A Streetcar Named Desire” both show similar society’s expectations of women but both were set at different times and at different events.

Scene 3 establishes Stanley as a villain as it shows his complete aggression and anger when people do things that he doesn’t agree with. During scene 3 we see that all of the men in the play are participating in a poker game, where Stanley seems to get drunk and becomes more aggressive towards Stella and Blanche.

Firstly, in the beginning of the scene Blanche enters the apartment and says, “Please don’t get up” where Stanley responds with, “Nobody’s going to get up so don’t be worried”. This tells us that Stanley has become irritated by Blanche, as he didn’t have to put her down so harshly and could have told her in a more polite manner. This is one of the key moments in the play which leads to what happens at the end of the scene where Stanley eventually hits Stella, as it shows how aggravated Stanley is and how easily it is to get him to this angry state. It also shows that he is hostile and impatient especially when he thinks that Blanche is taking over his territory. This presents him as a villain because it shows us that he has an impatient, dominant and assertive nature.

Following this there are stage directions that mention how Stanley reacts to certain actions, as it shows that he gives a loud whack of his hand on her thigh, which shows either his sexual passion towards her. But could also display his aggressive and cruel way of proving to everyone that Stella is his, especially to Blanche. This shows his hostility and villainous nature as it shows to us that he sees Stella as his property and Blanche’s sudden arrival makes him feel intimidated as she questions and criticizes everything that Stanley does which infuriates him and also makes him think that his property is under threat, which was an important thing for men during the time, which shows that he is intimidated of Blanche’s dominant nature and that throughout the play he is trying to protect his territory from outsiders.

Another way Williams presents this is through the language that Stanley uses to refer to his wife and her sister as he says, “You hens cut out that conversation in there”. The word ‘hens’ could have been chosen by Williams as he has used animal imagery to describe Stanley previously in calling him the rooster. This tells us that he knows that he has a superior status over Blanche and Stella so it gives the right to treat them badly and doesn’t think he’ll receive any backlash from them as they’re intimidated. However, Stella does talk back to him which is unusual for her due to her submissive nature, and she says firmly, “You can’t hear us”, to which he replies, “Well you can hear me and I say hush up!”. This presents him as the villain as it shows how little he respects them and how he struggles with being talked back to, especially in front of his friends. However, the word ‘hush’ could represent a softness that he feels about his wife as he could have easily told her to ‘shut up’ or just ‘be quiet’, which tells us that he may be tough and brutish but he does love his wife.

Further into the chapter his aggressive nature is presented again when Blanche turns on the radio while talking to Mitch, and Stanley stalks fiercely, snatches it off the table and tosses the instrument out of the window. This is the first form of aggressive, physical behavior which he presents in the novel, which in this moment could be interpreted into him marking his territory, as it shows him asking them to turn it off, to him eventually going out of his way to throw it out of the window. This shows his villainous behavior as it tells us that he is forceful and assertive, which unfortunately for Stella, she is forced to put up with it whenever he has a drink, and also that he has no control over his brutish forces which brings him trouble throughout the novel.

Another way Tennessee Williams portrays Stanley as the villain is during the next chapter when Stella is telling him that he is an ‘animal creature’ and demands the other men to go home. This then frustrates Stanley and results with the stage direction of Stanley charges after Stella. This shows that he is extremely angry and ruthless, especially in the scenes where he is drinking, and doesn’t hesitate to do anything bad to Stella in front of his friends as he knows that they won’t tell him to stop and will be unable to stop him. The word ‘charges’ suggests that he is pouncing at her, which could be a word which describes his animalistic nature. This is important as throughout the play Stanley is described with words like this which tells us that he has and will always be like this.

This is extremely important in proving he is the antagonist of the play as it shows us that he doesn’t care what other people will do to stop him because he is seen as a strong, dominant man in a world where women’s feelings weren’t taken into account, which he takes advantage of.

Finally, Stanley snaps and it results in him hitting Stella, there is a sound of a blow, Stella cries out. This shows that Stanley is out of control when he is fixed on a certain thing and that it is hard to get him out of it. After this we see that the men are holding him back, Stanley is forced, prisoned by the two men, into the bedroom. He nearly throws them off. They speak quietly and lovingly to him. By showing him being pinned down by two other men and nearly breaking their grip shows that he is extremely strong and tough which could suggest that Stella was put into a lot of pain. Another way of looking at it is that it is like they are taming a wild animal, due to his aggressive nature and territorial behavior. It also shows that he is ruthless as he wouldn’t just give in to them without putting up a fight, which could suggest to us that his stubbornness is a reason for his downfall. However, the fact that they spoke ‘quietly and lovingly’ could suggest that they don’t see the bad in what happened and they are only pinning him down so he doesn’t lash out at them as well, which shows us that they are also intimidated by Stanley as they don’t want to get in a fight with him.

However, following this we see the sympathetic and caring aspects of his personality where he shows that both Stanley and Stella are dependent on each other, not only for their sexual desires, but also because they genuinely love each other, he breaks into sobs: “‘Steel-ahhhh!”…“I want my baby down here”. This shows us his sensitive side which is only revealed when he is at risk of losing his wife and child. This could be used to show that he could be the villain of the novel, but he is also passionate and loving to his wife, while sober, and is only really like this because Blanche had got into his head, leaving him to believe that he was losing Stella.

In conclusion, Stanley on the whole is portrayed as the main villain of the play, despite the other characters having their own faults and flaws. However, he is the strongest and most dominant character, so it is hard to not see him as the villain. He is an aggressive, easily angered and forceful character who is shown throughout to be a distrustful and controlling character who acts on passion and his own desires, which makes him highly jealous when he thinks that Blanche’s sole purpose to visit Stella was to take her away from him.

In the play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, written by ‘Tennesee Williams’, the erratic protagonist ‘Blanche’ embodies the cultivated ideals of the ‘old world’, juxtaposing the character of ‘Stanley’ whom represents the industrialised ‘new world’ which fundamentally comprises of patriarchal motivations and post-war values. Throughout the play, Blanche is invariably threatened and exploited by Stanley, consequently jeopardizing her aristocratic semblance as an ‘Southern Belle’. Williams successfully illustrates the contrasting attitudes towards the ‘new’ and ‘old’ world through the progressive demise of Blanche’s facade as a result of Stanley’s manipulation of her character.

Firstly, Williams presents the antiquated morality of the ‘old world’ to be an elaborate pretence which Blanche maintains throughout ‘A Streetcar Named Desire.’ In Scene Two, ‘Stella’ informs her husband Stanley ‘Stan- we’ve lost Belle Reve’ and the palatial childhood dwelling of the sisters Blanche and Stella symbolises to the audience an indication of their aristocratic heritage, and therefore when Blanche forewarns Stella that they have ‘lost’ their plantation, it alludes to the corresponding eradication of the ‘old world’ which Blanche and Stella were previously associated with. Furthermore, ‘Belle Reve’ is a French pseudo, translating to ‘beautiful dream’ which encapsulates the notion that the distinguished ‘old world’ is simply Blanche’s idealistic evasion and ceases to exist in the mid twentieth century industrialized reality. Moreover, the use of ‘Plastic Theatre’ throughout Scene Two depicts to the audience the increasing fabrication of Blanche’s aristocratic reputation that embodies the ‘old world’. At the opening of the scene, the stage directions read ‘…leaving the door open on the perpetual ‘blue piano’ around the corner’. The motif of the ‘blue piano’ arises throughout the play, and signifies the intensifying of Blanche’s conflicting emotions due to her romanticised fantasy of the ‘old world’ which Stanley progressively deconstructs. As the music is described to be ‘around the corner’ this successfully foreshadows to the audience that Blanche’s illusions are temporary and that the diverse and modern ‘new world’ is inevitable to American society. Plastic Theatre is furthermore implemented throughout the play in order to exemplify Blanche’s deceptions , and in the penultimate scene of the play where Blanche is climatically raped by Stanley, William’s stage directions describe the walls of the New Orleans flat to ‘have become transparent’, accordingly reflecting the harsh actuality of the heterogeneous ‘new world’ invading Blanche’s fantasy of the preservation of the refined ‘old world’ where she is temporarily conserved from reality. Lastly, Williams applies the ‘Unity of Place’ into ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ in order to accentuate the illusionary world in which Blanche dwells in, and the subsequent vulnerability of her mentality. As the majority of the play is set in Stella and Stanley’s New Orleans flat, an element of claustrophobia is implemented into the tense atmosphere, and thus reflects the burdens that Blanche endured from other characters, namely Stanley, in an attempt to disintegrate her archaic illusions of the ‘old world’. In conclusion, Williams presents the ‘old world’ to be an illusion constructed by Blanche in Scene Two, and utilises Plastic Theatre and the Unity of Time in order to reinforce this to the audience throughout the play.

Additionally, Williams reflects attitudes towards the surreptitious negative implications that the prosperous ‘new world’ has on characters in the play and consequently 1940s American society. The ‘new world’ in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, where hostility and both sexual and physical violence established the masculine sphere, is represented through the primitive character of ‘Stanley’, and Williams explores the patriarchal domination that the ‘new world’ elicits Stanley to assert over the female characters in the play, explicitly Stella and Blanche, and the negative repercussions of his actions. In Scene Two, when Stella and Stanley are disputing the loss of ‘Belle Reve’, Stanley tells Stella ‘… and when you’re swindled under the Napoleonic Code I’m swindled too.’ Stanley’s references to the ‘Napoleonic Code’ enables him to add a legal dimension to the justification of his misogynistic beliefs of entitlement towards Stella’s inheritance of ‘Belle Reve’, as Stanley evidently concludes that Stella’s subservience is expected in financial affairs. Through Stanley’s mentioning of the ‘Napoleonic Code’ his persistent ignorance is reflected to the audience, as he is immediately dismissive that due to ‘Belle Reve’ being located in Mississippi, the plantation consequently would not be exposed to New Orleans jurisdiction, thus demonstrating that Stanley manipulates all situations to exert his superiority over Stella, in order to establish the male-centric society that was instituted in 1940s America. Furthermore, the stage directions in Scene Two of the play evidence the patriarchal ‘new world.’ Williams directs that ‘[Stella] jumps up and kisses [ Stanley] which he accepts with lordly composure’ and the authoritative connotations of ‘lordly’ highlight to the audience the disparity of power within Stella and Stanley’s relationship as Stella’s expected submissiveness to her husband is acknowledged. However a strong sense of irony is instilled by Williams describing Stanley’s composure as ‘lordly’, as his relationship with Stella is the only element in his life which Stanley has the capability to control, and otherwise is gratified with the monotonous routine of sex and poker games, thus contrasting the typical connotations of ‘lordly’. Stanley’s patriarchally driven aggressiveness is furthermore apparent throughout the rest of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and is demonstrated through his brutal rape of Blanche in the penultimate scene. William’s stage directions read ‘[Stanley] picks up her inert figure and carries her to bed’ and Stanley’s ultimate superiority over Blanche through the implied sexual assault signifies his patriarchal triumphance, as he is ultimately able to exhibit complete control over Blanche, whom throughout the play has violated the stereotypical gender roles that women in the ‘new world’ were expected to adhere to. Stanley’s rape of Blanche thus evokes empathy for for character and evades Stanley’s pragmatic qualities that were manifested by Stanley in earlier scenes of the play, and consequently the implied utopian perception of the ‘new world’ is eradicated from ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, thus reflecting pessimistic attitudes towards the world and values that Stanley constitutes. In conclusion, Williams presents negative aspects towards the ‘new world’ through the corrupt ideals and principles of Stanley.

In conclusion, Williams successfully demonstrates apposing attitudes towards the ‘new world’ and the ‘old world’, through the characters of Blanche and Stanley. William’s depicts the illusionary aspect of the ‘Old South’ through the gradual deterioration of Blanche’s mentality, thus alluding to the profitable ‘new world’ heavily influencing American society in the 1940s. However, Williams alludes to the potential dangers of the ‘new world’ through Stanley’s patriarchal aggressiveness in both physical and sexual aspects towards both Blanche and Stella, thus implying to the audience that perspectives towards neither the ‘new world’ or the ‘old world’ are comprehensively favourable.

In both ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, the characters’ existence is influenced by the idea of the American dream. An idea that was seen by capitalist America was that you must ruthlessly work to achieve your highest aspirations, and could be recognized by others through wealth and social class. With the ending of World War Two, the American public now felt they were in the perfect place to achieve their ‘American Dream’. Stanley’s attitude is shown to support this as he attempts to provide for Stella and his unborn child. Holden, however, is shown to reject the reality of the ‘American Dream’, despite being granted it through birth as he feels guilty for how he is treated and the advantages he receives due to his privilege. This suggests contemporary attitudes of the late 1940s revolve around the ‘American Dream’, and the influence this has on individuals’ goals to achieve success, this must contrast with those who have achieved the ‘American Dream’ through their level of social standing and have yet not recognized their accomplishment.

A key construct of the ‘American Dream’ is the opportunity for success, this can be illustrated through Stanley as he manifests traditional gender roles present in the 1940’s which suggests that all men are born equally with an equal opportunity to succeed; Elaine Tyler May called this “domestic containment”. Despite being abusive to Stella sporadically, Stanley appears to take a large fulfillment in exposing Blanche’s “magic” to Stella. This adjective implies Stanley is determined to manipulate Stella to see Blanche’s delusions the same way he does, however, it can be interpreted as “Two people fighting over Stella” (William Delaney) as Stanley is using the power of his gender to manipulate Stella into a “narcotized tranquility”. As Stanley demands respect from Blanche, Stanley presents to the reader that a significant part of his success is the respect he receives from others. Stanley feels Blanche sees herself as more successful than him, he believes “some give themselves credit for more than they’ve got”. This could now be seen as Stanley having an inflated sense of his importance, fuelled by his dislike of Blanche’s morals however, in the 1950’s this could be seen as Blanche being unable to be as successful as Stanley, a man, due to traditional gender roles. Stanley’s attitude can be shown to be acceptable in the media of 1953, six years after the play had opened, as advertisements such as Alcoa Aluminium’s ‘HyTop twist-off bottle cap’ which promoted a picture of a woman coupled with the tag line “you mean a woman can open it?”. As the declarative noun “woman” is shown to be the subject of the tagline, this shows the American media’s recognition that traditional gender roles are supported by consumers enough to affect how they spend their gains whilst attempting to achieve their ‘American Dream’. Stanley, in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, is presented as wishing to appear powerful in his expression of traditional gender roles, but that power is presented as “destructive”, and calls into question whether it is necessary to put someone in a “narcotized tranquility” to achieve Stanley’s desire of a powerful ‘American Dream’. Needs a link to Holden throughout.

The character’s existence is influenced by the ‘American Dream’, as Stella is shown to be determined to stay in her marriage “under colored lights”, appearing to be madly in love with Stanley to the extent that she is “sorrowful” to lose Blanche, but the dependency that Stanley provides is enough to have Stella have “no choice” but to not believe Blanche. This is comparable to Holden, whose psychological issues and “crazy” actions are brought about by social issues from the ‘American Dream’ yet, he is “sure somebody’s cover [him] up as soon as [he] landed” if he was to commit “suicide”. American Sociologist David Riesman1 observed the importance of peer-group expectations, calling this new society ‘other-directed,’ maintaining the idea that such societies lead to conformity. Marriage and homeownership rates greatly increased during the 1950s, as many Americans were eager to pursue the ‘American dream,’ aided by suburbanization which is the reality that Stella wishes to pursue despite her belief that “New Orleans isn’t like others”. These high expectations derived from the ‘American Dream’ however, can lead to disappointment as “he who expects nothing…shall never be disappointed”(Alexander Pope, 1727), suggesting Holden’s view of “phony” America shows his immaturity, as he expects complete transparency in adult life. Holden is said to be “the ultimately alienated teenager”(Jennifer Schuessler, 2009)3 yet little sympathy is now given to the “rich kid”, inferring that if you have achieved the ‘American Dream’ all previous empathy from others is gone as the ‘American Dream’ should be emotionally fulfilling enough.

The illustration of Trauma Theory and stigmatization has recently been the center of academic discussions as well as theatre productions. Trauma holds a central role in Sydney’s Theatre Company “A Streetcar Named Desire”. One of the reasons why the play has a poignant and affecting stimulus is because, through creative vision, performance and stage directions it illustrates what most productions find extremely difficult to achieve, that being what experiencing trauma must be like. Through the embodiment of the effects of trauma it also engages and enslaves the audience to the unravelling of the theatrical plot, thus luring them deeper into the action taking place on stage. The notion that the play’s central tragic figure Blanche Dubois has endured Trauma is supported by observations made from the original play as well as performances, academic, phycological and critical analysis. Given that the theory of Trauma was not fully developed at the time that the play was written – the term gained official recognition in 1980 – trauma was not fully investigated and anatomised in the original play. The 2009 production of the play directed by liv Ullman and starring Cate Blanchett as Blanche Dubois, brings a contemporary, modern feel to the original text as it boldly addresses the question of Trauma in relation to the main heroine. My purpose in writing this essay is the attempt to analyse and assess the ways in which the play has engaged with the theory of Trauma as well as the validity of claims suggesting that trauma should not be the main focus of “streetcar”. I will also be examining theatre and performance in relation to trauma and in particular I will attempt to evaluate the extent to which Cate Blanchett’s Blanche Dubois has enriched conversations and debates around the theory of trauma.

A central theme in the Sydney based production is the constant, monotonous and reclusive essence of trauma. Academic Judith Herman declares that “traumatic events shatter the construction of self that is formed and sustained in relation to others. They undermine the belief systems that give meaning to human experience. They violate the victim’s faith in a natural or divine order and cast the victim into a state of existential crisis.” (1) In his university thesis, Patrick Duggan introduces the idea that Herman’s claims contribute to the argument that theatre is one of the most successful means of exhibiting trauma. “This striking echo of Herman’s assertion that traumatic events “shatter the construction of self”(1) is particularly interesting as it allows us to begin to plot the line between performance and trauma: both share a destabilising power so it would seem that theatre, more than any other art form, is perfectly placed to attempt a dialogue with, if not a representation of, trauma.”(2) Blanche Dubois exhibits characteristics of post-traumatic stress throughout the play. In a Harvard University-based academic investigation, it is stated that: “Critical analysis about the wounded-self and trauma within the play have enhanced character subtext. By acting and reacting in a way consistent with trauma theory and post-traumatic stress disorder, Blanche’s voice and circumstance resound in the theatre of trauma studies.” (13) Indeed, she displays extreme reactions to stimuli from her environment coupled with unexplainable bursts of anger and anxiety. The sense of entrapment that she experiences results to tantrums and panic attacks. Further indications of trauma can be traced through examining Blanche’s fragility and sensitive reflexes, heightened when exposed to irritation. In order for trauma to be fully understood by the audience, the performance has to be dynamic and forceful, establishing a strong connection between the audience – almost of an experiential nature – and all that is happening on stage. With the above in mind, proximity between the audience and performers is of paramount importance in achieving said “experiential connection”. However, despite Cate Blanchett’s outstanding performance, the open space of the Sydney Theatre did not allow the sense of intimacy to be projected to the audience. Several critics pointed out on how the intensity of the performance was lost in the large auditorium. “The Sydney Theatre is rather large, and I doubt, for instance, that anyone sitting at the back of the stalls, or the back of the circle, could have even made out the features on the faces of the actors. But not only that, the room is so big that I think some of the intensity gets lost as it radiates out into the auditorium.” (3) The impersonal nature of the space might have alienated the audience from the main heroine’s subtle movements and gestures, which were used to illustrate the effects of post-traumatic stress. However, the depiction of trauma is not only achieved by the actor’s performances but also through stage directions.

As traumatic events surpass the symbolic, language, however powerful, language and movement are not enough to evoke a sense of what the agony of experiencing past trauma is actually like, especially when explored in a spacious, open environment. In “Streetcar”, director Liv Ullman took advantage of the use of lighting, as well as music and sound in order to trigger “memory” to the audience, of events never experienced by them but by the character of Blanche. According to stage directions, often times when the audience is focused on Blanche, especially her appearance, the lights go dim, signifying Blanche’s denial to fully see herself, as strong light might reveal to her the signs of aging. She does not want to acknowledge those signs, as they trigger memories of her past that are connected to fear of loneliness, which she considers to be related to older age and fear of losing loved ones. Because of Blanche’s inability to face trauma, she results to escaping it by drifting in to an illusionary world, in denial and avoidance of her traumatic past. This theme of illusion versus reality in relation to trauma, is illustrated in the text and through the use of lighting on stage. “I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action”(4), Blanche states. In many ways, the naked bulb represents the bare truth. Truth is terrifying to Blanche, as it forces her to acknowledge her past and traumas. Exposure to the naked reality, requires Blanche to look deep within herself. Her avoidance to do so, hints to the existence of past traumas, too painful to be relived. Another devise that is used to evoke trauma is sound. Because Blanche’s husband’s suicide takes place during a dance of polka, that particular sound is carved into her brain as an intense reminder of the event. The music plays in the performance during times when Blanche is unwillingly reminded of the suicide of a man she loved dearly. Even though she unconsciously links the music to the tragic event, the audience gains deeper comprehension of her endured trauma, through the sound being played.

This particular production of “A Streetcar named Desire” takes upon itself to deeply analyse the traumatic experiences that are motivating Blanche throughout the play. Scolar and dramaturg, Dr Tiffany Ana Lopez has stated in one of her interviews that: “Theatre is a very active and provocative realm for talking about stories of trauma”. She attributes that significance to the fact that theatre can provide the audience with an explanation, “a narrative anchor”.(5) This statement may very well serve as an explanation for the dilemma that Blanche Dubois is as a character. The Sydney Theatre Company production, provides the audience with “a framework of the story”. (5) The traumas that have been hinted on in the original play, are given significance and weight through both Ullman’s director’s vision and Cate Blanchett’s creative approach to the character. “By proxy the actors are taking us out of the shadows of things that are silent and have no testimony. They are giving testimony; they are giving witness.”(5) This viewpoint on the character of Blanche in relation to her past traumas is particularly intriguing as it places Blanche at the center of the production. In most theatre productions of the Tennessee Williams play, especially following Marlon Brando’s overpowering, strong performance in the cinematic adaption of the play directed by Elia Kazan, Stanley is portrayed as a protagonist along with Blanche. However, Blanchett’s Blanche sees Stanley as someone who epitomizes the cruelty that she despises in men, based on her past experiences. In many ways, Stanley as a character facilitates the manifestations of Blanche’s traumas and assists the unraveling of the plot through triggering her past memories. This removes the main focus from his character ark, which ultimately leads to a better understanding of Blanche and her internal struggle with Trauma.

An intriguing element of analysing “Streetcar” is the diversity and range of opinion on the character of Blanche. Peggy Phelan, in her introspection on Trauma, indicates that trauma occurs from human birth, thus surpassing a definite depiction. (6) The author hints to the readers the possibility that trauma is ever so prominent in every person’s life, given that human existence is so closely linked to trauma when considering the circumstances of birth. In many ways, Phelan’s assertion is closely linked with the Lacanian assumption; that normalcy is a human construction, an illusion and in fact neurosis is a characteristic of every human being. Therefore, his claim leads to the conclusion that trauma can be attributed to everyone. With these two assertions in mind, one might discredit the theory that trauma is primarily what drove Blanche to her downfall. This claim poses a question as to whether her reactions towards her experiences are hyperbolic compared to the level of tragedy she is faced with. It also gives way for other opinions on the heroine’s mental health, however misguided. Attitudes and opinions that have been shaped by the critic’s perception of her gender. Especially by earlier critics, Blanche’s uniqueness and complexity have been hugely undermined, resulting into a male fabricated analysis of the heroine which can be considered not only downgrading but also extremely sexist and offensive. In his writings about Tennessee William’s heroines, academic Robert Emmet Jones who referred to women “such as Blanche” as “too weak, passive and neurotic to be tragic”.(7) He also touches on Blanches sexuality by stating that the result of her being sent to a mental institution by the end of the play is due to her sexually overactive and hysterical tantrums, typical to his notion of a “woman”. In complete contrast to Jone’s assertions comes a contemporary review of the 2009 production by Jonathan Kalb. In his commentry on the play, he states: “Blanchett restores terror to the play by performing Blanche’s final downfall as if it were a tragic choice, not the conquest of a helpless victim. Her fall seems inevitable yet chosen, like those Greek heroes Nietzsche describes who yowl a defiant ‘yes’ in the face of the power that crushes them.”(11) His views are echoed by critic Ben Brantley, who declares: “What Ms. Blanchett brings to the character is life itself, a primal survival instinct that keeps her on her feet long after she has been buffeted by blows that would level a heavyweight boxer.”(12) Indeed, what the audience can take from Blanchett’s portrayal of Blanche is a woman who is not overcome by weakness and fragility, but rather a tragic figure, traumatised beyond the comprehension of anyone around her. Traumatised not only through past tragedies but also throughout the play itself. Notably the rape scene, which when presented on stage by a female director, “reads as an act of courage.” What has long been misunderstood as “madness” by audiences and several analysists of the play, manifests itself as a protective shield from trauma in Blanchett’s performance. “Madness for her is clearly just another sanctuary to hole up in while the world figures out how to accommodate its misfits.” (11)

Overall, the assertion that elements of Trauma theory are deeply rooted in the play “A Streetcar Named Desire” gains credibility and recognition through the contemporary 2009 Sydney Theatre Company Production. The misunderstood tragic Tennessee Williams heroine, Blanche Dubois has been reinstated, under the direction of Liv Ullman and the performance of Cate Blanchett as a character faced with post-traumatic stress disorder. By implementing Trauma Theory as an analytical tool through which to rediscover the character of Blanche, deeper understanding of both Trauma Theory and Theatre in relation to phycological manifestations can be gained.

The particular production of “Streetcar”, which has been the focus of this essay, shatters a problematic framework of “Insanity and “Madness” through which Blanche is constantly viewed. The debunking of such fabrications was aided by the use of various studies as well as critical analysis and cross examining of opposing viewpoints. The lack of recognition from the general public and society of some people’s struggle to come to terms with their trauma, is echoed in the naivety with which Blanche’s tragedy is often viewed. Theatre holds a significant role in conveying these manifestations of traumatising experiences which are often overlooked when examining a character’s ark. It can be concluded that Sydney Theatre Company rose to the task of engaging the audience with the complex theory of Trauma, challenging preexisting assumptions and using performance as a means to portray and represent post-traumatic stress while delving into the phycological state of a character whose mental health has been widely debated and discussed by audiences, critics and analysists. The performance challenges those debates while in the process assisting audiences in gaining a deeper understanding of the main character of “A Streetcar Named Desire” as well as the notion of Trauma and how it can be represented on stage.

The play pertains to the shift that has manipulated the balance of power witnessed just after the two World Wars. Power in the context of gender struggle is a controversial debate that acquires more than an argumentative approach. Many historians that foresee the gruesome actions and reaction of the Second World War envisage the gender struggle as one of the cold reaction, the world could ever see.

However, the reason I have referred to it as ‘cold’ is that it has come out of the worst psychological horrors, stemming from the warfare. This, we can claim is the reason for why such balance of gender power has shaped the American society towards a recurring hysterical innovation. To which this innovation has produced strong and weak gender identities, roles, and authorities which has sprung from the class wars – depicted in Tennessee William’s play “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

This research paper does not discuss the class wars or the cultural legacy arriving from it, instead it argues upon the general nature of authority given to both genders by the creator. To make the case understandable, the two female characters ‘Blanche’ and ‘Stella’ will be analysed under the shadow of some non-negotiable altruistic coalitions among which on the fore will remain their tendencies on ‘dependence’, ‘freedom’, and ‘sexual appeals’ to and for their male counterparts.

This observation is not merely the central idea of the play, but is an enhancement to the basic personality trait that goes along with the horrifying aftermath of the warfare, conducted in the name of class differences.

So, class difference, being a profound feature of the two wars, will not be discussed. What is discussed is the gender contrasting struggle that not only emerges from being differentiated into male and female according to physical appearances, but also according to role, psyche, and spiritual calling which James (122) claims to be related to “the natural mandated sexual relationship between male and female which in terms of legal provision ought to be legitimate only under one social arrangement, marriage between one male and one female.” (Emphasis added)

The play revolves around Blanche, Stella, and Stanley and illustrates how Blanche becomes an uninvited visitor to Stella (her sister) and Stanley (brother-in-law). Blanche, though fallen from social status that a marriage proposes, and has also “lost her family, her ancestral home, and her reputation” (Tischler 42) still admires an elegant taste of high lifestyle, which she expected to see in Stella. Her hopes phased out when she saw Stella living in a dark two-room apartment.

The conflicting nature of Blanche and Stella

Despite the fact Blanche and Stella are sisters, stemming from the same house; they end up in diversified directions. For Blanche, being a school teacher does not limit her to acquire an ordinary thought about the opposite gender. She does not confine herself like her sister to a particular gender norm pertaining to a husband raising family.

Instead she possesses an elite school of thought in everyday chores of life and when visits Stella, it dawn upon her the class difference with which Stella feels pride living with her husband Stanley, a low paid Polish who is a sergeant in an engineering firm , to whose child she is pregnant with. Both have their own ways of reacting towards love and exoticism.

Stella’s love for Stanley requires emotional attachment and dependency devoid of any violence, whereas Blanche’s love is based entirely on infatuation, as Blanche’s dependency is not focussed on Stanley like her sister, but is more oriented towards the opposite sex. Blanche is concerned over men and such a precise description of violence in Blanche’s personality is what makes her unique and attractive to men.

The music in the play best describes the romantic waves which go on throughout the drama. Reconciling every character through the gender identification and distinguishing between obsession and redemption is what Stella’s and Blanche’s life revolves around. Each character is a response to the psychological obsession somehow connected to represent gender superiority which is evident from the conflicting debates that always go on in between Stanley and Blanche.

These conflicts portray the true character of Blanche’s and Stanley’s obsession, who despite being so much contradictory does not present a mundane gesture of gender appeal. Bloom (26) points out “Blanche’s obsessive nature revealed in her bathing as a psychological gesture of guilt, which becomes one of the play’s recurrent symbols, along with the piano, locomotives, cats, telephones, and drink.”

In love, Blanche is liberal in nature whereas Stella is conservative and wants to see her man (Stanley) to be only hers. On the contrary, Blanche has a ‘carte blanche’ sort of attitude towards men and she feels comfortable giving a leeway to every man she knows, to understand her better. This feminine nature is much alike Stanley’s masculinity, who does not want to see a woman succumb to such mind-set, because as a man he believes freedom is reserved by nature for man only.

Dependency on their male counterparts

Scene two portrays Stanley’s bold confessions of admiration which lures Blanche when she hear “I never met a woman that didn’t know if she was good looking or not without being told, and some of them give themselves credit for more than they’ve got.” (Williams 25) This elaborates two contrasting natural paradigms that are depicted openly in the play.

On one hand Stanley is of an independent nature, dabbling around every woman, getting involved in whatever comes his way. Stanley knows how to play tricks on the women and how to make them feel good and allured.

This makes him contended and relaxed and whenever he is cheerful, he booze down alcohol. On the other, Blanche, a liberal woman always making attempts to swallow the truth presumed by her that she is open hearted and independent, albeit she is not. Her dependency on men is elaborated by the weaknesses she possesses on part of taking interest and always getting involved in an affair. Thus, she depends upon men emotionally and boozes up whenever her inner psychological strength peters out.

Despite disliking Stanley, Blanche likes to be praised by the opposite gender which itself is a proof of how she envisages men. Appreciation is her weakness, more than Stella and is what makes her hapless and dependant on whichever men she meets. On the contrary, Stella is only dependant upon Stanley and accepts even his rude attitude wholeheartedly. This satisfies her as a woman, and to which she takes as a valuable obsession.

On the other hand, such an attitude of Stella is desirable by Stanley and it is this nature of femininity which he intends to seek in Blanche. Unfortunately to Stanley’s discomfort, this personality trait is not confided within Blanche, because she has made this feminist perspective her strength.

Perception differences

The non-realistic view of Blanche versus the realist perspective of Stanley is connected by an intermediary view of Stella based entirely on morality. An imaginative hallucinatory construction is what made Blanche washed over with paranoia in the end and is the main cause of her downfall.

When she realized she has been raped, her unconscious and the ‘elite’ aura to which she takes pride in hiding her fears, could not manage her to escape. Not only does she forgive herself for the reason she knew within to opine sex without compassion is something she could not allow and that she has been raped for sex without compassion, something she can’t manage either to escape or accept.

Differences in their perceptions show off through various interesting reactions to incidents. With the rape of Blanche, it is Stanley who gets guilty conscious to the extent where he remains unwilling to carry the burden of guilt down with him and calls upon a mental institution for Blanche.

This is another approach, Stanley would have not commenced were he been able to tell truth to Stella about her sister in law. But since he is too vulnerable to defend or offend his position, he feels it better to hand over Blanche to the institute rather than declare and admit the truth to his wife. Truth, misbegotten by guilt and mistrust is what Stanley deep within believes.

Gender Stereotypical Differences

Despite all those differences that lay ahead every scene including that of the rape and violence, the stereotypical ones succeed. That is to say that stereotype characters are what confessed and nevertheless followed by the society. Therefore, there is nothing wrong to portray a particular stereotypical trait that in the case of Blanche is evident how she loses her grip over her imagined fantasy world.

If she were been connected somehow to reality, the situation would not have been that much deteriorating. For Stella and Stanley, everything goes perfect in the sense they never underwent into emotional turmoil like Blanche. Never had they envisaged something extraordinarily imaginary helped them to escape from the realities of life.

In this gender struggle, clichéd traits triumph over the manifested ones, for the reason stereotypes are easier to accept as they are mundane to the societal norms. Just in the case of Stella, who was once married and her husband died for the homosexuality he possessed was never accepted by the society. To make things worse, Stella was never able to get through her husband’s homosexual nature and to arouse feelings for her.

Thus woman is defeated by man in nature not because of her dependency trait on men, but because of she is depended more upon her inner self, her emotions, and the quest for maintaining a series of illusions the way she wants the world to be. Bloom (56) mentions this point as “Blanche is both a representative and a victim of a tradition that taught her that attractiveness, virtue, and gentility led automatically to happiness.”

Conclusion: Who wins out?

William’s play is not merely a manifestation of desire intending to demonstrate a struggle of hope and despair, but is a paradigm of what men and women actually want from the opposite gender? It is more than a sexual conflict that causes one gender to struggle against the norms that which it is associated with in an attempt either to proof for its stereotyped image or defend against it.

Gender struggle for Stella was the usual reproductive phenomenon, indicating her desire as a symbol of love to be sexual intimacy, acquired in the form of pregnancy. This way she won. For Stanley it was the usual sex drive encountered by lust fulfilled by the sexual intercourse in the form of oppression ‘rape’. He demanded to quest his sexual intimacy of Blanche, but never proposed marriage. While she was heavily drunk, he raped and won.

Whereas, for Blanche, it was not something fulfilled because she set her own standards of evaluation that did not surpassed her and add up to the repercussion of the misery of her incident. It was this misery that did not let her grasp the truth that she has been raped by Stanley, all at once.

In this case, Darwin’s sexual selection reveals two forms of mating behaviour (Buss 3), one that is evident in the usual commitment such as marriage. The other that is seen in preferred selection and does not take the form of any suggested or committed relationship. The former and the later were the illustrations in William’s play.

Winning and losing became a concern for gender because both husband and wife somehow managed to go through their dubious relationship, despite being aware of what happened to Blanche. So, unconsciously they forget each other and in order to make things work Stanley sends Blanche to the psychiatric hospital, as if she been a scapegoat.

Works Cited

Bloom Herald. Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. New York: Chelsea House: 1988.

Buss M. David. The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating. New York. Basic Books: 1994.

James, Davison Hunter. Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. New York: Basic Books: 1991.

Tischler, M. Nancy. Student Companion to Tennessee Williams. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press: 2000.

Williams Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. Heinemann Inspiring Generations: 1995.

Overview

This is a novel on two sisters and their love lives. Blanche, a school teacher from Laurel, Mississippi arrives to stay with her sister, Stella in New Orleans who is married to Stanley. She has lost her family fortune and estate due to a mortgage foreclosure. She is highly critical and snobbish when she regards the cramped up apartment that her sister and her husband lives in.

She is also critical of the fact that it is in a noisy, working class neighborhood although she does not have enough money for a hotel. Her condescending manner causes her to have conflict with Stanley. Later, during a poker game when Blanche starts flirting with his friend called Mitch; Stanley gets violent and even beats his wife when she defends her sister.

Blanche dislikes Stanley and advises her sister to leave him. Unfortunately Stanley overhears the conversation and tells her he knows of her Sordid past. Stanley tells Mitch of the immoral life Blanche has lived. He reveals that Blanche had not been given leave from teaching due to her bad nerves as earlier stated but that she had been fired as she had been having an affair with a teenage student.

After losing the family home, she had stayed in dirt cheap hotel where she had been evicted due to her numerous sexual liaisons. On her birthday, Mitch does not come after learning of her past. He later tells her he can never marry her due to her past. Mitch pays for her transport ticket back to Mississippi. Stella gives birth and when Mitch arrives home he finds Blanche very drunk. They start fighting and he eventually rapes her.

Blanche’s mind cannot deal with her desperate state of affairs and she eventually goes mad. She is taken to an insane asylum. Stella cries as her sister leaves while Stanley comforts her. She does not believe her husband raped her sister.

Blanche’s Snobbery

Blanche is fascinated with beautiful clothes, make-up, money and beautiful surroundings which she lets her sister and her husband know. She is an aging woman who is concerned with her fading beauty. She wears her showy but cheap evening clothes to attract men however she conceals her age. When she arrives in Stella’s neighborhood she asks her how she could have stooped so low to live in such poor conditions.

She further makes disparaging comments about her husband who has come from a lower class and is of polish descent. Her patronizing and condescending attitude and snobbery however are not real. They are a cover-up of the problems that she is going through in her own life. It is a mask to hide the hideousness of the world she lives in (Paller, 1987, pg148)

She wants to erase her past, she tells her sister, “Here I am, all freshly bathed and scented, and feeling like a brand new human being!” (Williams,1980, 37). She chooses to wear a lot of white clothes yet they symbolize purity and innocence which is not true of her (Sontag, 2010, pg 6). She portrays that she is a woman of dignity yet it is a lie. When Stanley offers her a drink of whiskey she tells him she does not drink much.

She is hurting and lonely, desiring a fulfilling relationship with a man. She is an individual who refuses to deal with the reality of her own state of affairs (Skiba, 2008, pg11). She is not real. The reality is too harsh for her mind to absorb it.

She cannot even afford to stay in a hotel and lost the family home yet she criticizes where her sister lives with her husband. She eats their food, sleeps on their furniture and gets drunk on their liquor (Welch, 2009). She desires to portray a perfect picture to people especially to men as she hopes to win their love.

She lies to Mitch about who she is until Mitch finds out the truth and is disgusted. She tells Mitch, “I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!” (Williams, 1980, 117).

Stanley is able to see through her fake snobbery and acknowledge that she is a woman with a lot of emotional and social problems. She does not like the light which is symbolic of her pretense life. She tells her sister, “But don’t you look at me, Stella, no, no, no, not till later, not till I’ve bathed and rested! And turn that over-light off! Turn that off! I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare!” (Williams, 1980, pg18-19).

She lives in a world of fantasy and when Mitch rejects her and Stanley rapes her, her mind is taken over completely by her fantasies. She has delusions that her former lover, Shep Huntleigh, who is rich, will come and rescue her from her realities (Walker, 2010).

Works Cited

Paller, Michael. “A Room which is not empty: A Streetcar called Desire and the question of Homophorbia”. A Streetcar called Desire. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publications. 1987.

Skiba, Melanie. The Character of Blanche Dubois in “A Streetcar Called Desire”. Germany: GRIN Verlag oHG. 2008. Print.

Sontag, Ilona. Illusion and Reality in A Streetcar called Desire. Germany: GRIN Verlag oHG. 2010. Print.

Walker, Justine. Sexuality, Fantasy, and a Streetcar Named Desire. Web.

Welch, Camille-Yvette. “World War II, Sex, and Displacement in A Streetcar Named Desire”. Critical Insights, 1(2009) : 23-40.

Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. New York: Signet Printing, 1980. Print.

Despite of her degenerate personality, dissolute desires, frivolous fantasies and her misdoings, Stanley Kowalski does not have the right to show disrespect towards Blanche DuBois simply because of their differences in terms of cultural background, and to set up her ultimate downfall.

A streetcar named desire might have never taken us to the capturing experience of watching several people’s lives and their final tragedy if there has not been the so-called Southern Gothic Movement. Or, should I say better, there would have not been any Southern Gothic Movement if the famous streetcar had not started its route?

The movement began its pace in the southern part of the US in 1930ies and can be traced to 1950ies when it begins to cease. The very movement brings back the fleur of the England of the XVIII century, to “Southern-Gothic imp of Poe-etic perverse” (Simon 83) with all its ideas of Gothic culture and the features that are due only to the gothic genre, very sharp and gloomy, the idea of a human life inevitably ending in death dominating. (Smith 63)

The pessimistic spirit aside, the new genre gave the writers the opportunity to explore the secrets of life in the calm and reserved way that the slow XVIII century had brought.

That was what A Streetcar Named Desire and the rest of the wonderful literature novelties appeared. Carrying the spirit of hopes fallen and the people broken down by the hand of doom, they showed that there could be things that even the weaker people had to face and that there was practically nothing to be afraid of now, in the stagnate times.

Tennessee Williams was one of those to explore the new vision of the world with the great care and with the hope that people will finally be in time for their streetcar to take them to the place unknown. His works are shot through with the feeling that the world is shattering to pieces, but those survived could see the better place.

So Tennessee writes, and he writes a lot. And with the sincerity of a man who has learned to tell the truth from a lie, he shares his knowledge and his idea as long as he can. Of course, you might say that, being dead for a long time, he cannot share any idea with us. Bu he can. These are his stories that do. Take a streetcar to 1930.

Being a woman is a tough luck, and being a pretty woman is a constant torment. Tennessee explains it just fine in his play. He makes it clear that she is always facing a danger of a shame and a danger of getting subdued by her husband.

These are quite the same things, in fact. In the first case, it is the society that teases the woman, in the second one the tormentor is her husband. That is the fate of the third class, the people who are both blessed and cursed. A woman must get married and o raise children, which goes without discussions, and everything that does not fit the settled standard is considered a shame, weirdness or an obscenity.

It has taken an entire lifetime to change at least something about the widespread opinion, but even now a woman who does not follow the established scheme is someone to point fingers at. Just imagine what I could be in 1930ies! And God forbid a woman to get pregnant before getting married – the crowd will stone her down. “William is careful to distinguish the underlying reasons for their behavior (101)”, Blackwell claims. It becomes clear as Tennessee depicts Stella and her attitude towards her husband and the household chores.

Stella herself is a live predicament of those women “who have subordinated themselves to a domineering and often inferior person to attain reality and meaning through communication with another person” (102). The fate of women being lower next to the superiority of a man is what all Stanley’s idea of a woman is. This can be clearly traced as he speaks both to Blanche and to Stella:

Blanche. Keep your hands off me, Stella. What is the

matter with you? Why do you look at me with that pitying look?

Stanley (bawling): QUIET IN THERE! – We’ve got a noisy woman on the place.

The cultural problem that the reader faces here is the problem of the notorious American dream – broken, forgotten and forsaken.

Yet, with this behavior Blanche expresses a certain class-consciousness. Equality, which is implied in the American dream, does not exist for her. She acts predominant towards the whole neighborhood that Stella and Stanley live in. (Schweke 8)

Tennessee showed the world he was living in with the utter sincerity and without any mercy neither towards the people he was displaying, nor for himself, for he was a part of that cruel world as well, he was living in that time, he was the time himself, judging these people and crying with them. They were his concern and his pain to bear.

Blanche DuBios is everything that Tennessee felt was wrong and right about the women of the 30ies. The former Southern belle as she was, used to be married to a homosexual who had committed a suicide as she found out the whole truth about his sexual orientation, she is a person for the people of the small town to feel sorry for and to tell fruitful gossip about.

However, the strength that she showed as she paid no attention to those malevolent ideas disappeared as she had to face the hard truth. It was far easier for her to lie behind the bars of her idealistic illusions than to admit that the world has some initial cruelty and misery in it. She seems a half of what it takes to be a woman, with all her spiritual strength she cannot see the truth. Does it blind her? Can she realise that a man cannot live a make-believe? I’m afraid she cannot.

The only thing she does is merely living and speculating and acting. Acting us her life, after all, and she turns her life into a performance hall for her to take the leading part in. It is hard to say if she really acts or lives artificially, but whatever she does, she does in a half. It’s like a rag doll that cannot sit and stand.

Stella Kowalski is something completely different, but she is cast of the same mould. There is no other way it could have been, for they both belong to the same epoch and the same voices speak to them. Belonging to different layers of society creates an illusion of two completely different people, but like all illusions, it dissolves as you take a look at the problem from another angle.

Her younger sister, her flesh and blood, literally, is a striking contrast to the soft and artistic lady. With a background being different and a bit more prosaic, she seems to stand on her feet better than the artistic sister, but, since she has always been used to the ideas implemented to her by the society she was living in, the society of farmland and rural life, she was too hasty to marry for good.

Her husband dominating her and regarding her in the rudest way, she got desperate and segregated in her own world of chores and housekeeping. The life she was living has broken er, too, and she turned into a wreck of a person, just like her sister has.

Despite the difference in the character and the destiny, the women depicted in the play are both desperate and broken. They have left their hopes long forgotten, and their lives are doomed to be senseless and full of misery.

However, they are facing it courageously. They are trying to get hold of the situation, and this struggle destructs them step by step.

The next idea that comes in question about A Streetcar Named Desire is the long-run conflict between the Old and the New South.

What made the Old South were the agriculture and the plantations that helped the country to develop. As the Civil War ended, the South, the agriculture laid at rest and the technological progress creeping into its body, has started to become foreign to people who have known it since the day they were born.

It was a clash of cultures that made the Old South, used to be prolific and prosperous, look so miserable and poor at the beginning of the new era. Tennessee managed to show it with the best of his talent, reprinting the spirit of the dying dreams in his play. It was the conflict of the dream that had died unborn.

Promising a new, better life and a new wonderful world, the new ideas led the South to the state of poverty and misery at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is important to admit, however, that during the Great Depression times all the US were suffering on and the same problem, but the northern states managed to recover much faster, due to their technical development and that they were prepared for the new way of living much better than their southern counterparts.

In fact, the self-contained and self-sufficient South is an epitome of patriarchal society (Fang 103)

That is also the clue to the characters of the play. Blanche, a woman of a noble Southern descent, is certainly the one who is supposed to be always prosperous, she is not used to a busy lifestyle of the North and she cannot think of something that does not fit er ideas of being a lady. She is so – so unaware of what a life in the New South might mean.

Blanche shows her courage by stepping into the new environment and begins her adventures in the new world full of evils and danger. However, her ignorance of the complexity of the reality in the New South, she fails to foresee the force that shatters her dream and finally destroys her. (Yuehua 88)

This is also the conflict of perceptions that takes the lead characters of the play so far from what can be called a life. The characters of the play have absolutely different world pictures, and that complicates things in the worst way. The opposition of what Blanche expects a life to be, the ideas of Stella and her own misconceptions about living a life, and of what a real life is, stir a tragedy within the play.

The characters are doomed to make the mistakes that will ruin their lives, and they are actually aware of the fact that they are doing them, but they cannot think of another way to act, and that is where the key to all their miseries is.

The constant constraint that the play sets is due to the conflicts that arise between Blanche and Stanley. The problem is the culture clash, and thus the problem is unceasing. The quarrels between the two characters are basically the quarrels between the two different societies, two different universes that can never meet.

Every single topic that Blanche touches upon is a subject of Stanley’s mocking remarks. Starting from their short talk on the alcohol: “Blanche: No, I – rarely touch it.” Stanley Kowalski: “Some people rarely touch it, but it touches them often,” to something more meaningful and serious. But whenever they talk, they would always get it to debates that grow into a big conflict. It is either that Blanche does not hesitates to answer Stanley when he starts grumbling about something, or the clash of their cultures, but whenever some of them starts talking, the other contradicts.

Stanley: I have a lawyer acquaintance who will study these out.

Blanche: Present them to him with a box of aspirin tablets.

Blanche’s refined manners, her lady-like lifestyle and her attractiveness mixed with boldness make it unbearable for Stanley to listen to her wits without answering in turn. It is clear and obvious that the worlds that they live in cannot coexist side by side – they will explode because of their unlikeness.

Stanley. If didn’t know that you was my wife’s sister I’d get ideas

about you!

Blanche. Such as what?

Stanley. Don’t play so dumb. You know what!

Those people are getting on each other’s nerves, and they cannot be accustomed to living together. That is where the conflict of the contraries clashes.

Stanley. Where are the papers?

Blanche. Papers?

Stanley. Papers! That stuff people write on.

As you read the play, you can hear something rattling. These are the dreams getting shattered, the dreams of Blanche and Stella, and of thousands of people like them, from all layers of society and of any descent. Those dreams born on the day the people were given the hope are the reminiscence of the past days of a stable and calm life, when people knew there was someone they could rely on.

With the state of affairs that came in 30ies, people no longer had a sufficient backup. Neither had Blanche, or Stella. The author plays with the names of the characters, Blanche for “white” and Stella for “star”, knowing that there would be no wishing stars for them, and that the white color as the symbol for purity and dreams coming true has been soiled so bad that nothing pure has been left:

Blanche DuBois, being French by extraction, tells Mitch that her last name “means wood and Blanche means white, so the two together mean white woods”. She even goes on and compares it to an orchard in the spring. (Sontag 5)

The “neurotic and wistful Blanche DuBois” (Kuhn 241) is broken as she can be, living desolated in the new world.

One more idea of making the incompatible things meet touches upon the relationships between the leads.

A brute that Stanley Kowalski is, he brings the dreams of Blanche down without even thinking what harm and pain that may cause her. He acts the way he is used to, the way his culture makes him to, and though with Stella it is rather easy, since she is used to his domination, it is harder with Stella. She does not want to believe him, but the stone cold facts make her subdue, and she gets broken. Stanley acts as a barbarian, crushing people’s lives and tearing their dreams apart just for his own fun and satisfaction.

Stanley has brought the harsh light of reality onto all of Blanche’s carefully crafted illusions. He realizes Mitch cannot marry Blanche now. He plans to force Blanch out of his home in a humiliating way, by degrading her. (Vaughn 81)

That is something that even he can hardly do anything about. It is in his blood. And it is the environment which he lives in that has made him act like that. He is used to give commands and orders, for women to follow:

Blanche. Poker is fascinating. Could I kibitz?

Stanley. You could not. Why don’t you women go up and sit with

Eunice?

However, the fact that it was the society that made him be what he was does not make his fault lesser. He is a beast, as far from being a human as possible, with base instincts controlling him.

Stanley: What do you think you are? A pair of queens? Remember what Huey Long said – “Every Man is a King!” And I am around here, so don’t forget it! [He hurls a cup and a saucer to the floor] My place is cleared! You want me to clear your places?

As the twisted truth that he took for granted was turned into ashes, used to expressing his grief with his anger, Stanley treats the wife and her sister in the most cruel and mischievous way.

“Garbage is being collected” and “someone is cleaning the front of a store with a hose”, what shows the great symbolism of the play. Directly after the rape, dirt and garbage is removed. In connection to the scene before, one can come to think that this already gives a hint to Blanche’s leaving, because this also suggests the interpretation that Blanche is seen as dirt or garbage by people she lives with. (Hurst 5)

The conflict between the two, Stanley and Blanche, is literally tearing the play apart. Totally incompatible with Blanche, Stanley destroys her world deliberately, to keep safe his one.

Next to her awful husband, there is Stella Kowalski. She is devoted to her husband like a dog, literally, not because he is superior, but because it is in her nature to play the part of a slave. Her mild and kind ways are not much of a virtue, but the result of her primitiveness and her physical passions dominating over the spiritual ones. She is a mate, not a woman in the very sense of the word. Craving for the physical relationship and indulging into the life which is deprived of any sense but is merely existence.

Stella Kowalski, in A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), is superior in background and personal endowments to her mate, but she subordinates herself to his way of life because they have a satisfying sexual relationship. (Blackwell 10)

Finally, there is one more character to discuss. It is Eunice, a woman who lives next door to the family of Kowalski. This is the woman who Blanche runs for protection from Stanley to. Eunice has witnessed a lot of frightful scenes from the Kowalski family life, but she does not want to intrude, thinking it is not her business.

The very indifference and not only the unwillingness, but the impossibility of doing anything good to protect people from injustice, cruelty and violence have been depicted in this woman. In fact, the author emphasizes that there is no place for women in the New South but the place of a servant to a man.

Women are annoyance, but are needed in life to fulfill the needs of food preparation and sex. (Walker 13)

The conflict between Stanley and Blanche does not seem to end somewhere. It takes both characters to the place where their cultures clash in an ever-lasting conflict. In spite of the fact that people are supposed to search for compromises, Stanley and Blanche will never reach the one, for they are way too different. With all the respect to the cultures that they represent, they will never be able to understand each other. And there is hardly anyone’s fault about it.

The dreamy world of Blanche that is being broken by the rude grasp of Stanley’s hands is far too fragile to stand the harsh reality. Meanwhile, Staley will never be able to see the world the way that Blanche does – this is where his poor imagination comes to an end. The tragedy of the two worlds that will never meet is what Tennessee speaks about, and he speaks more than convincing.

Reference List

Blackwell, Louise. (1970) Tennessee Williams and the Predicament of Women. South Atlantic Bulletin. Vol. 35. No.2. Print.

Fang, Wei. (2008) Blanche’s Destruction: Feminist Analysis on A Streetcar Named Deisre. Canadian Social Science. Vol. 4. No 3. Print.

Hurst, Valerie. (2009) Tenessee Wlliams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” – Contrasting the Play with the Movie from 1951 directed by Elia Kazan. Germany: Druck und Bildung: Books on Demand GmbH. 2009. Print.

Kuhn, Annette and Radstone, Susannah (1994). Leigh, Vivien. The Women’s Companion to International Film. California: University of California Press.

Schweke, Jessica. (2007) The Reception of the American Dream in Tennessee Williams’ Play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. Stuttgart: Green Verlag.

Simon, John. (1992) From Loesser to Lasers. New York Magazine. 27 Apr. 25 (17). NY: New York Media, LLC.

Smith, Andrew. (2007) Gothic Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Print.

Sontag, Ilona. (2009) Reality and Illusion in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”. Germany: Druck und Bildung: Books on Demand GmbH. Print.

Vaughn, Sally R. (2005) Gender Politics and Isolation in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire. Denton, Texas. Print.

Walker, Christine. (2005) The Alienation and Estrangement of the Female Characters in the Plays of Tennessee Williams. California. 2005. Print.

Yuehua, Guo. (2007) An Analysis of the Conflicts in Thunderstorm and A Streetcar Named Desire. Canadian Social Science. Vol. 3. No. 3. June. Print.

Introduction

Tennessee Williams establishes the interrelationship of Blanche Dubois and Stella Kowalski flawlessly as polar opposites. While it can be assumed that Stella and Blanche share certain similar character features, which are common for their gender, they come from completely different walks of life, have been born and raised in completely different environment and disposed to strikingly different factors and obstacles. As a result, the two women are the exact opposite of each other.

Thesis statement:

Blanche Dubois and Stella Kowalski have fewer similarities than differences in terms of character, e.g. they both depend on their sexuality and depend on men around them, but the two women differ in their attitude towards reality, their ability to adjust to circumstances, their capacity to remain strong, and Tennessee Williams’ play, simply illustrates these features.

Similarities: Body

Blanche and Stella are less similar than most we know. Blanche and Stella mainly share emotions such as sexual needs and urges, as well as their attraction to men.

It would be wrong to assume that Stella and Blanche have no common points of contact; however, when it comes to defining the latter, one must admit that they are mostly restricted to the area of physiology. Indeed, as women, Stella and Blanche have similar urges that are predisposed by their biological nature. Consequently, some of their behavioural specifics stem from the fact of their being women. The aspects of sexuality, as well as Blanche and Stella’s gender roles, are strongly dependent on their gender, which the play shows clearly.

Both women often yield to sexual temptations and enjoy their sexuality, though Blanche is forced to change her attitude towards physical pleasures.

There is no need to stress that both Blanche and Stella are yearning for physical pleasures and do not conceal the fact that they need physical contact with men. However, differences crawl even in this aspect of the characters’ lives. Stella being more stable and preferring long-term relationships to something more flighty, Blanche seems very light-headed to say the least. Her constant change of life partners in search for the one who will appreciate her is truly heartbreaking: “Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable” (Tennessee 175).

It seems that Blanche, unlike Stella, is looking for something more than just physical pleasure – she is in an unceasing search for safety and love instead of violence and lust, which she hopes to find in the arms of her next partner: “Physical beauty is passing – a transitory possession – but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart – I have all these things – aren’t taken away but grow!”(Tennessee 156).

Blanche and Stella have been dependant on men around them, e.g. Blanche strives for men’s attention (her husband, students, suitors) and Stella continues rather complicated relationship based on sexual chemistry

As it follows from Blanche and Stella’s background described above, they are used to depend on men in equal proportions, although the given dependency manifests itself in different ways in the two women. Unlike Blanche, though, Stella clearly strives for something more than being noticed and appreciated solely for her beauty.

Having defined her goal in life as a wife and a mother, Stella wants to be appreciated for what she gives to people. As a result, Stella tends to build long-term relationships with people rather than vanish without a trace after striking them with her beauty, as Blanche prefers to.

The given strategy makes Stella’s life much more predictable than Blanche’s one and, thus, less exciting in Blanche’s opinion. However, Stella definitely prefers being more confident about her relationships with the rest of the world in general and men in particular. In other words, Stella already knows what she needs and, more importantly, she knows how she can pay for what she wants, i.e., getting into a relationship that she can enjoy: “I know I fib a good deal” (Tennessee 41).

However, she also claims to be pure in that she has never betrayed her husband: “After all, a woman’s charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth, and this is the truth: I haven’t cheated my sister or you or anyone else as long as I have lived” (Tennessee 41). Meanwhile, Blanche is in perpetual search for a big romantic feeling that she has never experienced yet which she hopes to experience someday, unable to understand that she also has to give something in return.

Differences: Mental Strength

As it has been stressed above, the two women are strikingly different; apart from gender, they have little to no features in common, and it shows incredibly in the setting of the suburbs of a small town, with people like Stanley Kowalski and at the time like the mid-forties.

Blanche is mentally weak and incapable of properly addressing issues, while Stella manages to remain strong and make sound judgments about major decisions

On the one hand, Stella seems much less driven and self-assured than Blanche; coming from a much more humble background and leading the life in which the is given the role of a humble wife of Stanley Kowalski and the keeper of the house, she might be considered the weak type.

Stella clearly has less room to evolve as a person and as an individual, with her husband taking the leading part and being the key decision-maker in the family. However, when it comes to comparing the two women, one must admit that Stella is much more down-to-earth and, therefore, more objective in her judgments than romantic and dreamy Blanche: “I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! […]. And it that’s sinful, then let me be damned for it” (Tennessee 144).

A mentally stronger person, Stella is capable of surviving in the world that she and her husband live in – and, more to the point, sacrificing the truth to preserve that world, even at the cost of Blanche’s sanity: “I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley” (Tennessee 165).

Stella is able to live her life and develop proper relationships with the community she lives in, though she has problems with her husband, whereas Blanche is unable to adjust to changing circumstances and chooses to flee rather than try to fix everything

Apart from having a clear idea about her life purpose, though the latter might seem rather simplistic, Stella is also very down-to-the-ground, which helps her survive in a much harsher environment than Blanche is used to live in. The objective approach helps Stella put up with her husband’s violence and ignorance.

With a specific idea of her purpose in life and the feeling that she is working on fulfilling that purpose, Stella can deal with the harsh environment and even find the ways to enjoy her life, while Blanche is clearly shocked by the new rules and new lifestyle.

Blanche tries to change the world around her instead of getting used to it, which begs the question whether she is as meek as she seems to be. After all, taking actions is what a strong person would do. Therefore, it is rather Blanche’s naivety and straightforwardness together with the inability to keep her thoughts to herself that gets her in trouble.

Stella is always critical and realistic while Blanche lives in the world of her illusions

When comparing Stella to Blanche, one might think of a much more simple and unsophisticated character – and, in a way, such manner of describing Stella will be correct. Stella is simpler, since she leads a much simpler and less glamorous life, which is focused on her husband and the ways to keep him satisfied.

Nevertheless, as it has been stressed above, Stella appears to be more cunning and faking than Blanche. The latter obviously wears her heart on her sleeve, stating whatever she thinks is right – and inevitably getting hurt by crude Stanley, who wants to see women subdued to him: “There he is –Stanley Kowalski – survivor of the stone age! Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle! And you – you here – waiting for him!” (Tennessee 83).

Stella, on the contrary, uses a much more sophisticated strategy, which allows her to both abstain from conflicting with her husband and retain her point of view: “Don’t be such an idiot, Stanley!” (Tennessee 34).

Ironically enough, Stella does not need the latter, being up to her nose in the household issues; however, such attitude helps her retain her sanity within the coarse environment. Stella can also be considered much more critical than Blanche. The latter is incredibly romantic, while Stella always keeps her feet on the ground.

Blanche covers her negative and harmful thoughts by attempting to act politely while Stella shows her true welcoming and she is really innocent

As it has been made clear above, it would be wrong to consider Blanche a weak person in the full meaning of the word. She is not weak by default; much like Stella, she has a lot of strength that comes from within, i.e., from her vision of the world and concept of herself: “He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl” (Tennessee 114).

The fact that Blanche is not going to survive in the new environment becomes obvious when she fails to find a common language with the new people surrounding her. By far the most striking example of Blanche’s failure is every single scene of her talking to Stanley, whose rude and straightforward speech appears the exact opposite of Blanche’s careful tiptoeing around her opponent: “You’re simple, straightforward and honest, a little bit on the primitive side, I should think” (Tennessee 39).

Therefore, Blanche’s weakness as the key difference from Stella comes from Blanche’s unwillingness to learn and to part with her illusions; after seeing how low people can fall and how mundane and meagre their lives can get, she refuses to accept the new style of life and, therefore, becomes highly vulnerable to the objective reality, which Stella has grown immune to long before.

Conclusion

Blanche Dubois and Stella Kowalski have some minor similarities as they both depend on their sexuality and men around them but they are eventually completely different since Stella is strong and able to address issues while Blanche is mentally weak and lives in the world of her illusions. Weirdly enough, Stella, the woman who has been living her entire life in the suburbs, seems to know more about life and its merciless rules more than Blanche, the woman of the fashion and the city elite.

Works Cited

Tennessee, Williams. A Streetcar Named Desire. New York, NY: New Directions Publishing Corporation. 2004. Web.