Streetcar contexts

The Deep South pre-Civil War

Southern states of America e.g. Louisiana, Mississippi depended on slavery for plantation agriculture pre-Civil War. The War was between the North Union States who were against slavery and the Southern Confederate States for slavery. Slavery was considered evil in the North; the Southern States saw it as essential for their agriculture in order to maintain their wealth

The decline of the Old South

After the South was defeated by the North it suffered economically. Southerners believed that it was dying and changing like the rest of America which made them fearful. Bitterness remained after the War to make the South isolated from the rest of the nation and was viewed as a land of racial prejudice. The decaying grand society gave the South a romantic appeal for playwrights.

Post-War America

there was a mood of triumphant power in the new post-war America in which Truman stated after the atomic bomb on Hiroshima that the enemy could expect ‘a rain of ruin’ if they did not surrender (so the apartment could be a microcosm of the wider zeitgeist of 20th century American political idealogies)

Southern Belle

an ideal representing a young, unmarried daughter of a plantation owner from the upper socio-economic class of the Deep South in the pre Civil War period. They married to become ladies of society and were expected to be beautiful, chaste yet flirtatious.

Changing roles of women post Second World War

In the mid-20th century, women experienced some independence in the workplace during the second World War - men’s authority under threat as they did not have complete control over their wives as they had done before the war