KEY QUOTES

‘He tears the paper lantern off’

• Expressionism is key to many of Williams’ plays – so much so that he coined the term ‘plastic theatre’. Plastic theatre plays a crucial role in Streetcar, used to externalise characters’ inner emotions, and intensify psychological threat. One of the central ways that Williams uses expressionism is through props

(Female entrapment/femininity)

• Blanche valorises her appearances, and is attuned to the fact that these looks are fading. She is a character that relied on her body as her only commodity for survival, so maintaining physical beauty is of upmost importance to her. It exposes the insubstantial nature of support and aid for women within such a patriarchally oppressive society, especially as ‘paper’ is such a flimsy material that can be easily torn ​

• Desire to preserve the veneer of respectability and adhere to the strict social concepts of femininity was ingrained within her from society and her upbringing in the Antebellum South​

• Paper lantern could dilute/neuter the metaphorical penetration of rapacious male lust. Mitch was initially presented as a foil to Stanley, however shatters this image in a display of machismo to ‘tear’ the lantern down – exposing his machismo violently by rejecting her construction of a fantasy world. He does not allow her to escape the brutish world of hegemonic masculinity that subordinates women

(Appearance vs reality)

• Blanche’s desire for darkness shows an avoidance of reality, making the light an exposure to her inner turmoil that would not be viewed as socially acceptable for a woman. ​

• This exposure of a woman’s instability links to the mental condition hysteria, which is a disorder of emotional volatility. In the Victorian era, this was used exclusively to describe women​

• The lantern symbolically represents her illusion, and the fact that she wishes to have control over the image of herself that people can view, by physically administering and altering the levels of light in the room. The ‘dim’ room and ‘shadows’ allude to the secrets of her past she wishes to remain hidden​

• She manipulates the reality of her life in an attempt to escape New Orleans - the brutish world of hegemonic masculinity which traps and subordinates women

‘Stanley crosses to the trunk, shoves it roughly open and begins to open compartments’

• Williams’ use of plastic theatre is central to the moment when ‘Stanley crosses to the trunk, shoves it roughly open and begins to open compartments’

• The prop of the trunk becomes an externalised symbol of Blanche’s inner world - where Stanley betrays Blanche's intimacy through this physical intrusion to fulfil his own desires.

• This intrusion is staged with the deliberately aggressive verb choices ‘shoves’, to foreground his predatory masculinity and establish a violent power dynamic

• Critics have argued her trunk is a quintessential feminine space, functioning as a material extension of Blanche’s identity: a repository for her memories, fantasies and self-construction. This rapacious intrusion therefore demonstrates Stanley’s violent masculinist imperatives, acting as a form of symbolic assault - a pre-figuration of his later act of rape in Scene 10

• Through this act, Williams uses plastic theatre to dramatise female entrapment. Blanche’s most private possessions are laid bare under Stanley’s scrutiny, suggesting how women in the play are deniied any true interiority: they are made visible and examinable by a patriarchal gaze. By treating her trunk as something to be ‘shove[d]’ and ‘open[ed’, Stanley effectively commodifies Blanche - reducing her to a passive vessel to contain his own wants

(Old vs New South)

• Displays visually that the past is inexorably yielding to the present, through Blanche as a symbol of the past, being the last remnant of the Old South’s decadence, and Stanley as emblematic of a new mechanistic America. ​

• A Marxist interpretation expresses the socio-economic differences and class struggles of the 1940s - viewing the Stanley-Blanche conflict as a doomed bourgeois attempt to resist working class energy and realism

Flexible set

• Blanche constructs fabrications and illusions to try and shield herself from reality, which is ultimately unsuccessful, and instrumental in precipitating the disintegration of her psyche

• Her desires to find a safe sanctuary in New Orleans are showed cruelly to be unfulfilled through Williams’ use of a flexible set​

• The outside world and street can be viewed at the same time as the interior of the home - meaning that, for Blanche, the Kowalski’s apartment cannot be a self-defined world impermeable to greater reality ​

• Incomplete nature of the set exemplifies further how Blanche is unable to meet her desires and use this new home to shelter her from her past and psychological turmoil – that just as the boundary between interior and exterior is blurred within the set, Blanche’s boundaries between fantasy and reality are similarly permeable 

Movement between the two spaces are seamless, with the life of the street seeping into the apartment, for example whilst the rape occurs inside, a prostitute and drunkard on the street outside argue. This concurrence of events intensifies the audience’s sense of the harsh reality of life in Elysian fields. The boundaries between the public and the private are distorted here, which connects to the larger theme of society’s control on individuality

(Thematic link)
Williams creates the play A Streetcar Named Desire to be a tragedy of unfulfilled desire – exposing the dangers of desire that undermines the idealistic view that we may have of characters with strong desire​

‘Lurid nocturnal brilliance’ ‘Van Gogh Billiard parlour at night’

• Expressionism is key to many of Williams’ plays – so much so that he coined the term ‘plastic theatre’. Plastic theatre plays a crucial role in Streetcar, used to externalise characters’ inner emotions, and intensify psychological threat. One of the central ways that Williams uses expressionism is through costume.  

• The description of the poker players at the start of scene 3 suggests that Stanley’s ebullient masculinity is not unique, he is representative of a type

• This use of plastic theatre is evident within Poker Night, where his raw colour palette and emphasis on the ‘bold primary colours’ of the men’s clothing echoes their ‘physical manhood’ and coarse, direct nature. The uncomfortably distasteful colours of ‘blood red’ ‘green’ and ‘dark yellow’ clash and compete (in the same way that the men do) to construct an intense atmosphere.

• This scene also bears an intertextual reference to the impressionist piece ‘A Billiard Parlour At Night’. Van Gogh used colour in this painting to express the ‘terrible passions of humanity’, so it seems logical to assume that Williams also uses plastic theatre to explore this theme. The use of exaggerated and expressionistic colours establishes a sickening or distorted undertone to the scene, emblematic of the moral corruption of the men within it. This unease is heightened through the ‘lurid nocturnal brilliance’ of the room, where ‘lurid’ denotes violent, graphic or sexual subject matter that is reflective of their hegemonic masculinity. This exclusively male poker game acts as the epitome of masculinity within the play.   

• Scene 11 acts as an echoing of Scene 3, where the atmosphere is ‘now the same raw, lurid one of the disastrous Poker Night.’ The emphasis on ‘raw’ suggests animalistic and primal connotations to imply that the force of hegemonic masculinity within the play remains unchallenged and undefeated, even by the final scene. Scene 11 (similarly to scene 3) also acts as a visual representation of this gendered spacing, as the men ‘sit around the table in the kitchen’ and the women are in the bedroom. this spatial positioning symbolically enacts the strict divisions and gender expectations perpetuated by 1940s society (link to WWII how women were forced back into domestic roles post-war)
  ​

Red satin wrapper

• Plastic theatre plays a crucial role in Streetcar, used to externalise characters’ inner emotions, and intensify psychological threat.

• Blanche feels the need to try and exert her own sexual desires as an attempt to seize control in the only way available to her as a woman in a world where female agency is constantly undermined. ​

• Red is the colour of love, passion, sexuality, so Blanche uses this colour imagery to construct herself as alluring, or an object of the sexualised male gaze

• Her seduction of the Young Man embodied masculine energy, establishing her dominance over him through the assertion ‘I would like to keep you.’ The possessive verb ‘keep’ commodifies the Young Man, acting as a subversion of 1940s gender norms, in which women were typically objectified. Audiences of the time would have found this disturbing​

• However, there are double standards in the ways in which society perceived Blanche’s sexual assertions and Stanley’s – as whilst the characterisation of Blanche as being a nymphomaniac was abhorrent and horrifying, Stanley’s act of rape in scene 10 was met with reported cheers from initial audiences.​

• Repetition and permeation of ‘red’ imagery throughout the key moments of the play (e.g. ‘red-stained package’ in the opening scene, ‘red-and-white check’ at the Poker Night). ‘Red’ as inextricably linked to the male characters, and may therefore come to symbolise the pervasion of hegemonic masculinity in 1940s society, and the tragic double standards on female purity - as whilst red is the colour of love, it simultaneously denotes anger, blood and violence. This could act as a warning to foreshadow that love, intrinsically linked to desire and human sexuality, will precipitate her downfall and tragic ostracization from society. This undermines Blanche’s idealistic pursuit of romance – highlighting the evasive nature of desire and the disparity between her dreams and reality

‘You’re not clean enough to bring in a house with my mother’

• Streetcar is a play in which there is not a single male character to whom we can look for a truly positive embodiment of masculinity.

• Stanley and Mitch both ‘roughly dressed in denim work clothes’, emblematic of a new social order and emergence of the American Dream utopia post-war - championing men in their return to the world of ‘work’. Same clothing constructs the men as a hypermasculine collective - where their synchronicity in clothing symbolises the homogenised expectations for masculinity in post-war 1940s. (WWII galvanised sense of American heroism, spotlight shone upon working class men, bearers of american spirit - twisted notions of masculinity and femininity)
  However, whilst this hegemonic masculinity is the most prevalent form of masculinity presented, the presentation of men is not monolithic - in Mitch resides the only possibility in the play for masculinity that does not fall into the stereotypes of either suffering homosexuality (Allan) or brutal heterosexuality (Stanley), yet Mitch cannot break through the sexual code upheld and policed by Stanley

• Mitch is initially presented as a foil to Stanley, characterised by gentlemanly traits, such as carrying 'roses', where 'roses' bear traditional associations of romance and chivalry. For Blanche, Mitch appears to be the closest she can find to the archetypal courtesy of the Southern Gentleman. Superficially, Mitch represents hope - that not all men from his background need be uncultured or bestial. However, this image is cruelly shattered through Mitch's assertion than blanche is 'not clean enough' for him. Such objectification of Blanche's body as an impure or inadequate commodity for mitch ultimately exposes his damaging beliefs on female sexual purity and gendered double standards. By initially presenting his character to be morally 'superior', Williams tragically illustrates the depth to which misogyny pervades a 1940s American society.

• Blanche could explore the racists trope of the Southern Belle, an inversion of white female chastity. This figure of the ‘white’, refined female beauty from the old plantations of the South was still a familiar image in the 1940s, a woman who’s threatened chastity was used as a justifying symbol for racial oppression. Blanche’s rape by the ‘ape-like’ Stanley therefore seems to reinforce the upper-class’ xenophobic trope of the foreign as sub-human. Stanley’s stage directions also align with this animalistic lexicon, where Williams states ‘animal joy in his being is implicit in his every movement.’ This imbues foreign characters with predatory desires thought to endanger female purity. However, Blanche entirely fails to exhibit the Belle’s central quality of chastity. This is a revealing inversion of her status, which works to show the cruel hypocrisy of the society for whom the Belle was their paragon of virtue. Williams uses the plastic theatre device of costume to showcase this, as over the course of the play, the colour imagery associated with Blanche changes, opening with a lexis of ‘whiteness’, but concluding in the final scene as she embodies a ‘tragic radiance in her red satin robe.’ Red is the colour of love, passion and sexuality, utilised by Blanche to construct herself as alluring, or an object of the male gaze. This is perhaps emblematic of her moral transgression and past sexual encounters, including her seduction of the Young Man, which embodied a masculine energy that audiences of the time would have been disturbed by. This grotesque parody of desire and romance adheres to Southern gothic conventions, exposing the darker side of human nature and criticising idealised portrayals of the South. Williams therefore uses this ‘red robe’ as exposure to the ‘fornications’ Blanche attempted to conceal throughout, where the final stripping away of her fragile ‘white’ imagery symbolises the destruction of her illusion of purity. Blanche’s desire to preserve a veneer of respectability becomes microcosmic for the façade used to hide the exploitation and moral squalor upon which the South was predicated. The chastity of the Southern Belle as an image of the honour and virtue of the South hid the facts of racial oppression and assault upon the enslaved.

Sociolect

• Both Stanley and Blanche could be considered victims of a gender normative 1940s America, as they are strongly conditioned to their respective gender identities - exemplified most evidently through their use of language

• The two protagonists both manipulate and are manipulated by language in this paradoxical situation, in order to perform and assert their perceived feminine and masculine identities

• Blanche identifies either artfully or genuinely (we are never quite sure) with a fading genteel aristocracy and Southern Belle archetype. This is symbolic of her Bourgeois upbringing, and showcases her desire to live within the past. By surrounding herself constantly with symbols of her past, she tries to counteract the influence of her present ​

• She does so through the use of ornate language, employing elaborate vocabulary such as ‘epic fornications’, where a simpler word like ‘sex’ would suffice. ​(Her character is self-consciously theatrical, and through her exaggerated language, embodies an almost parodic version of the Southern Belle)

• Her ‘tribute from an admirer’ evokes a bygone era of gallantry and wooing in the upper echelons of society. Here, Blanche is reproducing language from a sociolect which is no longer around her, but she wishes to be identified with​. Not only does Blanche’s language associate her with her class, but also with her gender. According to Lakoff, the formality of Blanche’s speech, for example ‘if you’ll excuse me’ reflects traditional expectations of female speech being more polite or correct. This politeness of female language is thought to reflect social power differences, and women's subordinate status as ornamental or decorative. (therefore williams could be using blanche’s theatrical and almost parodic embodiment of this southern belle archetype to critique the reductive notions of gendered and class boundaries in the 1940s)

• Her polite rhetoric stands in stark contrast to Stanley’s vigorous command of profanities and obscene expressions – showcasing his aggressive bravado. ​

• He is from a lower social class, and that is evident in his grammar and dialogue – typically working class speech had associations with masculinity. ​

• His lower-class, non-standard linguistics ‘naw she’s gettin’ a drink’ reinforce his social identity as the alpha male. The economy of language, and short, monosyllabic diction of Stanley’s speech explores not only his blunt character, but also a social class without the decadence and education of the wealthy

• The theme of (xxx) is most explicitly analysed through Blanche’s degradation of language as an external marker of her internal state. (begins with ornate language, linguistic courtesy, last remnant of the Old South). However, Williams constructs Blanche’s language to deteriorate throughout the play, not only mirroring the defeat of the Old South, but also (theme x). She is stripped of her sanity and linguistic power …. Blanche’s diction in the final scene of the play is fragmented and broken, where the high frequency of punctuation in ‘I don’t know you - I want to be - left alone - please!’ works in opposition to the logic of syntax - exploring a linguistic breakdown in clarity. Exclamative used ‘please!’ conveys a lack of control over her strong emotions - contrast her earlier fluency of language, ‘if you’ll excuse me’. (link to Lakoff - blanche has lost the two aspects of her identity that she holds most dearly: her class and her femininity) [contrasts Stanley’s language in the final scene, which exudes confidence and control. Use of frequent imperatives such as ‘hold this’ or ‘quit that’ to show his decisiveness]

Varsouviana Polka

• Plastic theatre plays a crucial role in Streetcar, used to externalise characters’ inner emotions, and intensify psychological threat.

• The recurring motif of paralinguistics through the use of the Varsouviana polka is inextricably linked to the suicide of Allan Grey, and Blanche’s psychological turmoil. The use of plastic theatre symbolizes Allan’s omnipresence in her life – and just as the narrative of the play cannot progress without interjections of the polka tune, Blanche’s life cannot continue without the psychological burden of his death revisiting her​. The effect of this tune playing more frequently as the play progresses acts as an external marker of Blanche’s internal state - symbolising her growing insatiability and loss of touch with reality. This is marked by Williams’ shift from non-diegetic to diegetic music (‘It’s that music again’), rendering audiences unsure as to what is happening in real life and what is happening inside Blanche’s mind. Therefore, this manipulation of diegetic and non-diegetic music may also reflect how the boundary between fantasy and reality has become similarly blurred​

• Situational irony that an upbeat polka inextricably linked to the harrowing suicide of Blanche’s former lover. This stark juxtaposition establishes a jarring and uncomfortable undertone to the play, almost mimicking of the psychosis that blanche endures

• Hearing sounds and noises in one’s mind is also a key feature of many mental illnesses and disorders, helping further to construct the image of Blanche being in a state of madness or hysteria. Hysteria was a mental illness prevalent in the Victorian era, an illness believed exclusively to afflict women – so 1940s audiences might be familiar with the disorder being diagnosed in emotional females, such as Blanche, and therefore be more attuned to her psychological deterioration

‘Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes (stage direction)

‘One hundred percent American, born and raised in the greatest country on Earth and proud as hell of it’

• (embed into paragraph about racist trope of the southern belle)

• Many of Stanley’s stage directions use an animalistic lexicon to imply his primal masculine sexuality and force 

• In the New South, masculinity is a key component of the American social landscape. Stanley is the embodiment of the archetypal machismo and capitalist greed which permeates this landscape - declaring himself to be ‘one hundred percent American, born and raised in the greatest country on Earth’. He is an emblem of a newly emerging America, and the American Dream utopia - where modern ideologies post-war enable his upwards social mobility and champion his masculinist imperatives, placing no value on Blanche’s Old Southern values

• For Marxists. the American Dream is simply a vehicle for fuelling the destructive rhetoric of capitalism. They argue that capitalism, rather than aiding the working class, only serves to exploit it

• Williams constructs a play that depicts societal changes in America, and how post-war, the past is inexorably yielding to the present. This is symbolised mostly through the disintegration of the Antebellum South and the abolition of slavery - of which the civil war was instrumental in its downfall

Mitch quotes

• sociolect - ‘sittin’ down th’owing corn’ ‘ain’t you’

• varsouviana polka - (B) ‘That - music again’ (M) ‘What music?’

• feminine qualities - ‘sonnet inscription’ ‘carries roses’

• illusion vs reality - ‘(M) ‘No, just realistic’ (B) ‘I don’t want realism’

‘Stanley gives a loud whack of his hand on her thigh’

• proleptically underlining the notion that the sexualised male gaze drives their relationship. 

• harsh onomatopoeic verb ‘whack’, and pornification of her ‘thigh’ gives an insight into the objectification of women in the masculine space of 1940s America.  

• this is the reason Stanley feels he can so easily exert his power over her, because female submission is the norm in the way this society works. If a woman refuses this, she becomes ostracized  

‘He heaves the package at her’ ‘red stained’

• this is symbolical of the sexual power Stanley (and men like him in society) hold over women, establishing a sense of dominance through primal masculinity or animalistic qualities.  

• ‘red stained’ denotes blood and gore, foreshadowing his danger and ability to cause harm, particularly in a sexual manner, as red is also the colour of passion.  

• whilst the fact that the package contains meat could be a phallic reference, it could also reference the idiom ‘bringing home the bacon’ to show from the offset the power Stanley hold in this relationship not only sexually but also financially. Post war, a sense of American heroism emerged, pushing women like Stella back into domestic household roles, and this could be a comment on that 

• A Marxist interpretation expresses the socio-economic difficulties and class struggles of the 1940s - viewing the Stanley-Blanche conflict as a doomed bourgeois attempt to resist working class energy and realism

Marxist interpretation

• A Marxist interpretation expresses the socio-economic conditions and class struggles of 1940s America - perhaps viewing the Blanche-Stanley conflict as a domed bourgeois attempt to resist working-class energy and realism

• Marxist criticism emphasises the power dynamics at play in the relationships between characters. Stanley’s dominance over Stella and Blanche reflects the socio-economic realities of the time, where the working class is gaining power at the expense of the fading aristocracy. Blanche’s attempts to maintain her genteel façade ultimate precipitation her tragic ostracization from society, as she cannot adapt to the harsh realities represented by Stanley. This struggle illustrates the idea that the old social order is being replaced by a newly emerging, more aggressive working class

• Blanche’s romanticised notions of the past and her reliance on illusion (‘I don’t want realism… I want magic’) are challenged by Stanley’s brutal realism and pragmatism. This ideological conflict is not just personal, but reflects the larger societal changes occurring in America

• For Marxists, the American Dream is simply a vehicle for fuelling the destructive rhetoric of capitalism. They argue that capitalism, rather than aiding the working class, only serves to exploit it

Blanche’s incongruence ‘white’

• Expressionism is key to many of Williams’ plays – so much so that he coined the term ‘plastic theatre’. One of the central ways that Williams uses expressionism is through costume, which is manipulated to expose the contrast between various characters.  

• Williams utilises the plastic theatre device of Blanche’s clothing as an externalisation of her psychological state throughout the play, showcasing her ‘incongruence’ within New Orleans. The vivid colour imagery and repetition of the ‘brown river’, ‘tender blue’, ‘turquoise’ and ‘brown fingers’ of city in the opening stage directions present intermingling and multiculturality. By constructing an opening that appeals to the audience’s senses, Williams submerges viewers into the sense of togetherness within the city. The plastic theatre technique to dress Blanche in full ‘white’ (alongside the nominal determinism of ‘Blanche’ as white) thus creates a stark juxtaposition to this dynamic and multicultural environment. Blanche’s costume therefore acts as a visual marker of her social and ideological incompatibility, or ‘incongruence’. This halts the flow of the opening, acting as a microcosm for the way in which she will attempt to halt the progression of social class in New Orleans. A Marxist interpretation of this expresses the socio-economic difficulties and class struggles of the 1940s - viewing the incongruity between Blanche and New Orleans as a doomed bourgeois attempt to resist working class energy and realism.

• This ethnic contrast between Blanche’s lexis of whiteness and the inherently multicultural ‘brown’ population of New Orleans could also be used by Williams to explore the racist trope of the Southern Belle, an inversion of white female chastity. This figure of the ‘white’, refined female beauty from the old plantations of the South was still a familiar image in the 1940s, a woman who’s threatened chastity was used as a justifying symbol for racial oppression. Blanche’s rape by the ‘ape-like’ Stanley therefore seems to reinforce the upper-class’ xenophobic trope of the foreign as sub-human. Stanley’s stage directions also align with this animalistic lexicon, where Williams states ‘animal joy is implicit in his every movement.’ This imbues foreign characters with predatory desires thought to endanger female purity. However, Blanche entirely fails to exhibit the Belle’s central quality of chastity. This is a revealing inversion of her status, which works to show the cruel hypocrisy of the society for whom the Belle was their paragon of virtue. Williams uses the plastic theatre device of costume to showcase this, as over the course of the play, the colour imagery associated with Blanche changes, opening with a lexis of ‘whiteness’, but concluding in the final scene as she embodies a ‘tragic radiance in her red satin robe.’ Red is the colour of love, passion and sexuality, utilised by Blanche to construct herself as alluring, or an object of the male gaze. This is perhaps emblematic of her moral transgression and past sexual encounters, including her seduction of the Young Man, which embodied a masculine energy that audiences of the time would have been disturbed by. This grotesque parody of desire and romance adheres to Southern gothic conventions, exposing the darker side of human nature and criticising idealised portrayals of the South. Williams therefore uses this ‘red robe’ as exposure to the ‘fornications’ Blanche attempted to conceal throughout, where the final stripping away of her fragile ‘white’ imagery symbolises the destruction of her illusion of purity. Blanche’s desire to preserve a veneer of respectability becomes microcosmic for the façade used to hide the exploitation and moral squalor upon which the South was predicated. The chastity of the Southern Belle as an image of the honour and virtue of the South hid the facts of racial oppression and assault upon the enslaved.

Linked idea chains

• Opening stage directions
  Blanche’s incongruence (could this link to Marxism?)
  Racist trope of the Southern Belle
  Stanley’s animalistic stage directions

• Poker Night colour palette
  Van Gogh, lurid nocturnal brilliance
  Exclusively male event
  Presentation of masculinity, is this monolithic, denim work clothes
  Mitch
  No escape from brutish world of hegemonic masculinity, tears down paper lantern and rejects fantasy world
  Flexible set

• Stanley as wearing brighter clothes, greater synonymity with the vibrant New Orleans
  Bold primary colours at Poker Night
  Denim work clothes
  
  

Male oppression/insecurities

• Whilst women were the primary victims of gendered societal subordination, Williams explores how his male characters are  products of a society that reproduces strongly conditioned gender identities – perpetuating cycles of generations trapped into upholding the archetypal roles of men in the 1940s. Allan Grey was the main victim of the enforced male identity, driven to suicide as society gave no place for an effeminate homosexual whose ‘softness and tenderness wasn’t like a man’s.’

• However, through his use of plastic theatre and costume, Williams also interrogates the issue of gender identities within his other male characters.

• (Plastic theatre) In the opening scene. Williams choses to construct both Stanley and Mitch ‘roughly dressed in denim work clothes.’ Their ‘work clothes’ become emblematic of a new social order and mechanistic America, where post-war, men returned into the world of work, galvanising a sense of American heroism and the America dream utopia. The effect of dressing the two characters in the same clothing upon the audience’s first meeting with them expresses the men as a hypermasculine collective - where the synchronicity in clothing symbolises the homogenised expectations for masculinity in post-war 1940s. This tension in adhering to the archetypal male identity is explored most potently in the character of Mitch

• (Alternative paragraph)
  Whilst women are the primary victims of gendered societal subordination, williams also explores his male characters to be victims of a society that reproduces strongly conditioned gender identities - perpetuating cycles of generations trapped into upholding the archetypal role of a man in the 1940s. Williams explores this again through the clothing of his male characters, choosing to introduce both Stanley and Mitch in the opening scene ‘roughly dressed in denim work clothes.’ The effect of dressing them in the same clothes expresses the two men as a hypermasculine collective - where the synchronicity in their clothing explores homogenised expectations of masculinity in the 1940s. Their ‘work’ clothes become emblematic of a new social order and emergence of the american dream utopia, championing working class men in returning to the world of manual labour post-war. Stanley is emblematic of this archetypal machismo and capitalist greed - where modern ideologies post war and the American Dream utopia championed his masculinist imperatives and upwards social mobility. However, a Marxist interpretation would proleptically stress the disillusionment of these beliefs, viewing the American Dream as merely a vehicle for fuelling the destructive rhetoric of capitalism - that rather than aiding the working class, it only serves to exploit it. Stanley, therefore, is arguably presented as a victim of both the enforced male identity and his working class status.
  The 'denim work clothes’ of Stanley and Mitch may also serve as contrast to highlight how Blanche is ultimately unable to assimilate into this newly emerging, mechanistic America. Her costume throughout acts as a visual marker of social and ideological incompatibility, or ‘incongruence’, from the opening scene to the closing one. The excessively gaudy ‘red satin robe’ reflects her theatrical, almost parodic embodiment of the Southern Belle archetype that cannot survive in the pragmatic post-war world of the 1940s

  
  

Conventions of tragedy

• A Streetcar Named Desire is a tragic play in which Williams encapsulates the tensions that pervaded the post-war era, and internalises them into a domestic setting. By constructing his play through elements of tragedy, Williams outlines the violent nature of the decline of the Old South after the civil war

• Tragic heroine Blanche. Williams departs slightly from the Aristotelian model of tragedy and relocates to a modern tragedy in that Blanche is neither of royal birth nor exponentially high-brow. However, she still poses to be of an elevated status in contrast to the more working-class setting of New Orleans. These redolences of Aristotelian or Shakespearean tragic convention continue to be found in Blanche’s characterisation as a traditional tragic heroine

• Arguably Blanche’s hamartia lies in her uncontrollable urge for desire, but also her deception in concealing this - as allegorically symbolised by the light

• While Blanche’s hamartia does undoubtedly precipitate her tragic fall, Williams also uses the tragic convention of fate to explore this. Traditionally originating from Greek tragedy, hubristic tragedies attribute fate as the reason for the tragic hero’s downfall. (Located in the societal circumstances that Blanche finds herself in. Set in the aftermath of the American Civil War which culminated in the abolition of the slave trade and disintegration of the antebellum south. Blanche is the last remnant of the old south’s decadence, and therefore her downfall can be seen as fated given that she represents a figure in society who has no place anymore

• Eponymous symbol of the Streetcar as fate - inevitability of fall, streetcar is stuck to the tracks, and these tracks are (xxx) - as Stanley himself points out her ‘journey is mapped out for her’ - lack of control. Blanche’s journey on the Streetcar is an allegorical representation of the trajectory of her life

• Blanche’s ultimate innocence is even more striking when it is appreciated that upon her introduction to the play she has, to an extent, already endured total tragedy - she confesses that her perception of the world has been reduced from a ‘blinding light’ to a ‘dim candle.’ Within the scope of the play, we do not see Blanche fall from a great height, as is characteristic of a tragic heroine, because she has already fallen. from the play’s initiation she is already too damaged to ever possess any chance of avoiding her fate

Alternative readings into Blanche

• Tragic victim or corrupted hero?
  Is she at fault for her inability to process reality - she is privileged, deceptive, arrogant and arguably racist (name-calling of Stanley and seduction of the Young Man), or is she innocent - the victim of mental instability, grief and psychological trauma.

Context

• With a large influx of immigrants from Europe and Africa, New Orleans became a melting pot of culture. This influx was spurred by the shift to an industrial economy, with multiple factories being set up to replace the old agrarian community. In tandem with this, the working class emerged

• WWII galvanised a sense of American heroism, based on overcoming the Great Depression and defeating the Nazis. A national spotlight was shone on working-class men like Stanley, who had survived the war, rejoined the peacetime workforce and were now seen as bearers of American hard-working spirit

• During WWII, the percentage of women in the national workforce rose from 27% to 37%. After the war ended, they were pushed back into traditional domestic roles. Williams’ post-war New Orleans, therefore, is a space where traditional gender roles had been shaken up and conservative Southern ideals of old money and aristocratic heritage had been displaced in favour of the new working class ethic. Williams establishes conventional gender stereotypes and yet twists the notions of masculinity and femininity through his characters (Blanche masculine sexual energy, Mitch/Allan sensitivity)

• Popular amongst audiences who felt that the crude realism of the play was admirable - addressing taboo themes of female sexuality, class tensions and homosexuality

Williams quotes

• ‘The destructive power of society on the sensitive, non-conformist individual’

Marriage

• Marriage is shown to be a key driving force in a New Southern society in America - importance of marriage for survival and stability both mentally and physically

• Blanche views stella’s marriage to stanley negatively - deems herself and stella as socially superior ‘ape-like’, his barbaric lower status as shown through his movements ‘shoves’ and less-standard linguistics

• stella, everything else seems ‘unimportant’ when with stanley - sexually charged relationship

• blnache’s past marriage to allan grey (homosexuality was considered as a crime in society, Williams himself as homosexual and experienced this condemnation). Likewise, the sexual immorality that Blanche embodies is also seen as inherently wrong at the time - Blanche as corrupted by her past marriage, resorted to an illusional state

• her hopes to ‘charm’ the male characters

• Stanley tears apart her relationship with Mitch - representation of the New South tr