A Streetcar Named Desire - Themes

Gender

- Women = passive and financially dependent on men. They're shunned for their sexuality but rely on sex for protection.

- Male ideal is of power and TW didn't fit into this -> Allan is defined by his weakness of sexuality. Although Stan is a villain, he has the joy of life. His forceful dynamic is shown through frequent exclamation marks, bellowing and forceful movements.

- Stanley = primeval protector, who Mitch becomes a weaker version of

- Mitch represents masculinity as a trait of comfort and refuge but still finds power through physical assertion (bragging about weight, etc.)

Class

- Blanche assumes the superiority inherited with her family name. She's astonished that her sister has married someone who lacks refinement and culture as much as Stan

- Blanche is prepared to overlook Mitch's lack of refinement, for he is more sensitive than Stan. however, she occasionally mocks his lack of education by using expressions he doesn't know, such as 'Rosenkavalier' and French on the date

Desire

- desire is connected to death

- desire is connected to fate - 'streetcar', 'we've had this date from the beginning'

- escapist desire

- physical desire is at the heart of Stella and Stanley's relationship

- everything about Blanche revolves around how Blanche is viewed as a sexual object by men - flirts with Stanley, kisses the young collector. She doesn't converse with males without any sexual undertone other than the doctor, because he is first unhuman but then kind, and thus not the tpical male that Blanche comes across.

Power

- "Stanley's assertiveness is dependent on his relationship with Stella and ability to crush opposition" - cruelty to Blanche

- Masculine power

- Power of fate and the past

- The New South gains the Old South's lost power

- Power struggles between classes

- Power of societal pressures on sanity

Illusion

- Stella is under the illusion that her marriage isn't toxic. Everyone describes Stanley as a bull, ape, goat (stubbornness and lustiness), but she compares him to a meek and vulnerable lamb. He does display SOME weaknesses - 'shuddering with sobs' after hitting Stella

- By the end of the play, Blanche can no longer distinguish between fantasy and real-life

- The real world eclipses and shatters Blanche's fantasies

- As Stanley exposes Blanche's past, she sings 'Paper Moon' - a song about a make-believe world that becomes reality through love. However, Blanche's make-believe world doesn't take over reality: her fantasy version of herself crumbles. At the end of the play, Blanche is taken to a mental asylum, permanently removed from reality to her own mind.

- Blanche avoids white light but steps into yellow light

Sexuality

- Critics argue that the bag of meat suggests Stanley's vigorous physicality and primitive nature

- Central drive of masculinity but frowned upon for women

- Key to S&S's relationship

- Men expect women to sleep with them - 'what I've been missing all summer'

- women using their sexuality for protection - 'one leaky roof to another'

- homosexuality

- sexuality is linked to destruction - Allan's homosexuality, epic fornications, Stanley hitting Stella and Steve beating Eunice

Southern belle

- Belle Reve, white woods - heritage and purity

- Dependence is shown by both Blanche and Stella

- The effects of southern belle pressures

- Blanche openly antithetic of Southern belle - yellow light and red satin robe when indoors

Violence

- 'I write out of love for the Old South... I think the war between romanticism and hostility is very sharp there'

- TW was a victim of a brutal father

- Violence seen in 1940s America as a masculine attribute. Violent nature of Stanley is seen in stage directions - fistful, tosses, smashes, booming

- Violence associated with alcohol - before raping Blanche, Stanley was drinking, as he was before beating Stella

- Violence within Stanley and Stella's marriage, which Mitch blames on the notion that poker shouldn't be played in a house with women.

- Blanche and Stella have a different approach to domestic violence, perhaps because Stella accepts the realism that she wholly depends on Stanley

- Noise and reflections during rape

Death

- relationship between desire (Eros) and death (Thanatos) but the 2 are opposites? Blanche can no longer court desire - it's what transported her to this point - and must accept death. She can't stop the streetcar.

- Blanche's ancestors' deaths are the result of 'epic fornications' and Allan's are the result of disapproval of is sexuality

- Visual and auditory reminders of death are in the form of the Mexican woman and the Varsouviana polka

- Death of the Old South, which is replaced by the New South - symbolised by Stanley's rape of Stella

- Desire vs. Cemeteries - romance vs. realism

Old South vs. New South

- Contrast in costumes, names, etc.

- B symbolises the dying Old South, Stanley the New South and rule of the working class

- You feel sorry for B but recognise this is the consequence of her noncey actions - Williams loved the Old South but hated its obsession with money and the hostility it was built upon

- Blanche DuBois, Belle Reve - French heritage

- Rape = the ultimate defeat of the New South over the Old South, further emphasised by Stella's choice to stick with Stanley (New South)

Mental illness

- illusion vs. reality

- Attitudes - Mitch and Stella

- Evidence - polka

- Guilt - Stella's guilt, B's guilt, TW's guilt. Stan's lack of guilt is interesting - not telling Mitch would be on his conscience but he doesn't care about Blanche??????? and he just wants to have sex with Stella when she is upset at her sister being taken to a mental hospital.......

- Mitch's loneliness

- 'It's all in her head'

- Sexual fantasies lead to institutionalisation (Rose and Blanche share this)

- Blanche's dependence on alcohol, Stella and sex/men