A Streetcar Named Desire Notes

Tennessee Williams: Brief Biography

• Born in Columbus, MS, moved to St. Louis, MO as a child.
• Early literary career: Won five dollars at age sixteen for an essay entitled “Can a Good Wife be a Good Sport?”
• Attended the University of Missouri.
  • Frequently entered writing contests.
• Failed military training during junior year.
  • Father pulled him out of college and put him to work in a factory.
• Age twenty-four: Suffered a nervous breakdown, left his job, and returned to college.
  • Studied at Washington University in St. Louis.
  • Graduated from the University of Iowa in 1938.
• Lived in the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1939, writing for the Works Progress Administration.
• Traveled to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter.

Historical Context

• During and immediately after World War II, most of the mainstream American art was patriotic and optimistic.
• Many critics view Brando’s portrayal of Stanley as paving the way for the youth movement and the rock-and-roll culture of the 1950s and 1960s.

Related Literary Works

• The Glass Menagerie (1945) also revolves around tense familial relationships, memories, and dreams.
  • Blanche du Bois shares similarities with Amanda Wingfield (aging Southern belle) and Laura Wingfield (fragile, unstable sister).
• Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman also portrays a family through generations and explores the interaction between dreams and reality.

Key Facts

• Full Title: A Streetcar Named Desire
• When Written: 1946-7
• Where Written: New York, Los Angeles, and New Orleans
• When Published: Broadway premiere December 3, 1947
• Literary Period: Dramatic naturalism
• Genre: Psychological drama
• Setting: New Orleans, LA
• Climax: Stanley’s rape of Blanche at the end of Scene Ten
• Antagonist: Stanley Kowalski

Extra Credit

• That Rattle-trap Streetcar Named Desire
  • The Desire streetcar line operated in New Orleans from 1920 to 1948, going through the French Quarter to its final stop on Desire Street.
• The original 1947 Broadway production of Streetcar shot Marlon Brando to stardom.
  • Brando’s performance cemented his status as a sex symbol.
• Elia Kazan directed both the original Broadway production and the 1951 film adaptation.
  • He used the Stanislavski method-acting system.
    • Focuses on realism and natural characters instead of melodrama.
    • Actors use their memories to help give the characters real emotions.
  • Brando based his depiction of Stanley on the boxer Rocky Graziano.
• Kazan’s film has become a cultural touchstone, particularly Brando’s famous bellowing of “STELL-LAHHHHH!”
• Reference in "The Simpsons":
  • A musical version of A Streetcar Named Desire called Oh, Streetcar!
  • Ned Flanders as Stanley gives the famous “STELLA” yell, singing, “Can’t you hear me yell-a? You’re putting me through hell-a!”
• Play Setting:
  • The shabby but charming New Orleans of the 1940s.
  • Stanley and Stella Kowalski live in the downstairs flat of a faded corner building.
  • Williams uses a flexible set so that the audience simultaneously sees the interior and the exterior of the apartment.
• Blanche DuBois:
  • Stella’s sister, arrives and says: “They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and then to transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at––Elysian Fields!”
  • A fading Southern belle from Laurel, Mississippi.
  • An English teacher, delicate and moth-like, dressed in all white.
  • Tells Stella that Belle Reve, the family plantation, has been lost.
  • Claims to have been given a leave of absence from her teaching position due to her nerves.
  • Criticizes Stella’s surroundings and laments Stella’s fall from their elite upbringing.
• Stanley Kowalski:
  • Exudes raw, animal, violent sexuality.
  • Rips off his sweaty shirts under the bare kitchen light bulb.
• Stella Kowalski:
  • Her life has become defined by her role as Stanley’s wife.
    • Relationship is primarily based on sexual chemistry.
  • Ties to New Orleans rather than the lost Belle Reve are further emphasized through her pregnancy.
    • Bringing a new Kowalski, not a DuBois, life into the world.
• Stanley rummages through Blanche’s trunk while she bathes, suspecting her of cheating Stella out of the inheritance.
• Blanche reveals that the estate was lost due to a foreclosed mortgage, showing Stanley the bank papers to prove it.
• Lurid nocturnal brilliance of a drunken poker night.
• Stanley’s friend Mitch catches Blanche’s eye, and she maneuvers herself skillfully in the light.
• Blanche and Mitch flirt.
• Blanche hangs a paper lantern over a bare bulb.
• Stanley storms into the bedroom and tosses the radio out of the window because Blanche turns on the radio disrupting the poker game.
• Stanley hits Stella when she intervenes to try and make peace.
• Blanche and Stella escape upstairs to Eunice’s apartment.
• The other men douse Stanley in the shower, which sobers him up, and he is remorseful.
• Stanley stumbles outside, bellowing upstairs: “STELL-LAHHHHH!”
• Stella slips back downstairs into Stanley’s arms, and Mitch comforts Blanche in her distress.
• Stella admits that she is “thrilled” by Stanley’s aggression.
  • She does not want to leave him.
• Blanche suggests that they contact Shep Huntleigh, a Dallas millionaire, to help them escape.
• Blanche criticizes Stanley as being coarse and sub-human.
  • Stanley overhears these comments.
• Stanley hints that he knows details about Blanche’s past, making Blanche nervous.
• While Blanche waits for Mitch, she fervently flirts with a Young Man and kisses him on the mouth.
• Blanche is exhausted with “the utter exhaustion which only a neurasthenic personality can know” and still nervous from Stanley’s hints.
• Mitch boasts of his athleticism.
• Blanche tells Mitch about her tragic love life.
  • Married an effeminate young man who turned out to be homosexual.
  • Reproached her husband, and he committed suicide.
  • Haunted by his death, which is represented by the background music of the Varsouviana Polka.
• Stanley tells Stella all about Blanche’s history in Laurel, as Blanche sings “Paper Moon” from the bathroom.
  • After losing Belle Reve, Blanche moved to the dubious Hotel Flamingo until getting kicked out for her promiscuous ways.
  • Blanche was fired for having an affair with a seventeen-year-old student.
• Stanley informs Stella that he has also told these stories to Mitch and that he's bought Blanche a one-way bus ticket back to Mississippi.
• Mitch does not show up for Blanche’s birthday dinner.
• Stanley presents Blanche with the bus ticket.
• Stella goes into labor.
• Mitch confronts Blanche.
  • She admits to seeking solace in the comfort of strangers after her husband's suicide.
• Mexican Woman offers “Flores para los muertos.”
• Mitch tries to have sex with Blanche but stops himself.
• She cries “Fire! Fire!” and he stumbles away
• Stanley shatters Blanche’s stories.
  • “You come in here and sprinkle the place with powder and spray perfume and cover the light bulb with a paper lantern, and lo and behold the place has turned into Egypt and you are the Queen of the Nile! Sitting on your throne and swilling down my liquor! I say––Ha!––Ha!”
• Stanley overpowers Blanche and rapes her (offstage).
• Stella and Eunice pack Blanche’s bags.
• Blanche is delusional, believing Shep Huntleigh is coming.
• Blanche has told Stella about the rape, but Stella refuses to believe her.
• Blanche worries about the cleanness of the grapes and speaks of drowning in the sea.
• A Doctor and Matron from the asylum arrive.
• Stanley yanks the paper lantern off the light bulb.
• The Doctor treats Blanche calmly, and she says, “Whoever you are––I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
• Stella breaks down in sobbing, and Stanley comforts her.

Major Characters

• Blanche DuBois
  • Stella’s older sister, about thirty years old, was a high school English teacher in Laurel, Mississippi until recently forced to leave her position.
  • Nervous and appears constantly on edge, as though any slight disturbance could shatter her sanity.
  • As a young woman, she married a man she later discovered to be homosexual, and who committed suicide after that discovery.
  • When Blanche arrives at the Kowalskis’ apartment, she is at the end of her rope: she has spiraled into a pattern of notorious promiscuity and alcoholism, and she has lost Belle Reve, the family plantation, due to a string of mortgages.
  • Clings desperately to the trappings of her fading Southern belle self: “Her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light. There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth.”
  • Loves Stella and tries to get her sister to escape New Orleans.
  • Repulsed by Stanley, yet finds herself almost hypnotically attracted by his physical power, like a moth to the flame.
• Stanley Kowalski
  • Stella’s husband, is full of raw strength, ferocity, violent masculinity, and animal magnetism.
  • Wears lurid colors and parades his physicality, stripping off sweaty shirts and smashing objects throughout the play
  • His extreme virility is a direct contrast to Blanche’s homosexual husband who committed suicide.
  • Loves Stella––she is the soft, feminine foil to his violent ways.
    • Their physical relationship creates a deep bond between them.
  • Drawn to Blanche, and in the play’s climax, he rapes her while Stella is in the hospital having the baby.
• Stella Kowalski
  • Blanche DuBois’s younger sister and Stanley Kowalski’s wife.
  • Emotional center of the play.
  • Calm, reasonable foil to Blanche’s frenetic hysteria, and she is the soothing, feminine voice that counteracts Stanley’s violence.
  • Loves Blanche and is hurt when Blanche is hurt, and although she is wistful, Stella has no desire to return to her past: she has chosen her present circumstances willingly, and she has made her life in New Orleans with Stanley.
  • Stella’s pregnancy underscores her commitment to her Kowalski future, not her DuBois past.
  • Stanley dominates Stella: she is drawn into the magnetic pull of his powerful physical presence.
  • Stella is the victim of domestic violence, but in the play, her decision to return to Stanley even after he hits her is not judged as definitively right or wrong.
• Harold Mitchell (Mitch)
  • The “gentleman” of Stanley’s poker- playing friends. Much more genteel and mannered than the animalistic Stanley, though still a man with physical desires.
  • He and Blanche develop a relationship, but Blanche pretends to be much more naïve and innocent than she actually is, and Mitch is ultimately driven away when he learns of her sordid recent past.

Minor Characters

• Eunice – Steve’s wife and the Kowalskis’ upstairs neighbor. Vivacious, earthy, and practical.
• Steve – Eunice’s husband and the Kowalskis’ upstairs neighbor.
• Pablo – Another one of Stanley’s poker-playing friends.
• Negro Woman – A neighbor who is chatting with Eunice when Blanche arrives at Elysian Fields for the first time.
• Doctor – A doctor from the mental asylum who comes to take Blanche away.
• Matron – A nurse from the mental asylum where Blanche is sent at the end of the play.
• Young Man – A collector of subscriptions for the newspaper whom Blanche seduces.
• Mexican Woman – A street vendor who comes to the apartment to sell “Flores para los muertos,” frightening Blanche.

Themes

• Sexual Desire
  • The power of sexual desire is the engine propelling A Streetcar Named Desire: all of the characters are driven by “that rattle-trap street-car” in various ways.
  • Much of Blanche’s conception of how she operates in the world relies on her perception of herself as an object of male sexual desire. Her interactions with men always begin with flirtation.
  • Stella’s desire for Stanley pulls her away from Belle Reve and her past.
  • Even though Stanley is violent to Stella, their sexual dynamic keeps them together.
  • Stanley’s sexuality and his masculinity are extremely interconnected: he radiates a raw, violent, brute animal magnetism.
  • Stanley’s sexuality asserts itself violently over both Stella and Blanche.
  • Throughout the play, sexual desire is linked to destruction.
• Fantasy and Delusion
  • In Scene One, Blanche takes a streetcar named Desire through Cemeteries to reach Elysian Fields, where Stella and Stanley live. Though the place names are real, the journey allegorically foreshadows Blanche’s mental descent throughout the play.
  • Blanche’s desires have led her down paths of sexual promiscuity and alcoholism, and by coming to stay with the Kowalskis, she has reached the end of the line.
  • Tension between fantasy and reality centers on Blanche’s relationship with both other characters and the world around her.
  • Blanche doesn’t want realism––she wants magic––but magic must yield to the light of day.
  • At the end of the play, Blanche is taken to a mental asylum, permanently removed from reality to her own mind.
• Interior and Exterior Appearance
  • As the play progresses, the split between Blanche’s fantasy world and reality becomes sharper and clearer to every character in the play except Blanche, for whom the interior and exterior worlds become increasingly blurred.
  • Social and class distinctions also point to the tension between interior and exterior.
  • Williams uses music to play with the boundary between the interior and the exterior.
• Masculinity and Physicality
  • Masculinity is linked to the idea of a brute, aggressive, animal force as well as carnal lust.
  • Stanley asserts his masculinity physically as well as psychologically.
  • Stanley represents the powerfully attractive but powerfully frightening threat of masculinity, whereas Mitch represents masculinity as a trait of comfort and refuge.
• Femininity and Dependence
  • Blanche and Stella demonstrate two different types of femininity in the play, yet both find themselves dependent on men.
  • Both Blanche and Stella define themselves in terms of the men in their lives, and they see relationships with men as the only avenue for happiness and fulfillment.
  • Stanley dominates Stella: she is drawn into the magnetic pull of his powerful physical presence.
  • Even though Stanley hits her, she is not in something she wants to get out of, as she explains to Blanche.

Symbols

• The Streetcar
  • The play’s title refers not only to a real streetcar line in New Orleans but also symbolically to the power of desire as the driving force behind the characters’ actions.
  • Desire is a controlling force: when it takes over, characters must submit to its power, and they are carried along to the end of the line.
• Varsouviana Polka
  • Blanche associates the polka with her young husband’s suicide.
  • The music plays when Blanche is reminded of her husband in specific or when she is particularly disturbed by the past in general.
• Bathing
  • Blanche takes frequent baths throughout the play to “soothe her nerves. ”
  • Bathing is an escape from the sweaty apartment; Blanche retreats to the water to attempt to cleanse herself and forget reality.
• Paper Lantern and Paper Moon
  • The paper lantern over the light bulb represents Blanche’s attempt to mask both her sordid past and her present appearance.
  • A paper world cloaking reality also appears in the song “Paper Moon.”
• Alcohol and Drunkenness
  • Both Stanley and Blanche drink frequently throughout the play.
  • When Stanley gets drunk, his masculinity becomes exaggerated: he grows increasingly physical, violent, and brutal.
  • Blanche uses drinking as an escape mechanism.
• Shadows
  • Shadows represent the dream-world and the escape from the light of day.
  • At the end of the play, shadows become menacing to Blanche. Rather than representing a longed-for escape from reality, shadows become a threatening element.

Quotes

• Scene 1 Quotes
  • Blanche DuBois: “They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields!”
    • Shows Blanche gives the literal directions through New Orleans, since these are the names of the streetcars that she would have used to travel to the actual neighborhood and the allegorical journey that Blanche has taken throughout her life that has led her to this spot.
  • Blanche DuBois: “Stella, oh, Stella, Stella! Stella for Star!”
    • Shows how Blanche wants to live in a world of fantasy, not reality.
  • Blanche DuBois: “Sit there and stare at me, thinking I let the place go? I let the place go? Where were you! In bed with your–Polack!”
    • Blanche lashes out against Stella for choosing to leave the family estate of Belle Reve for a lower-class lifestyle because Blanche cannot face her own guilt over letting Belle Reve collapse into both social and financial ruin.
  • Narration: “Since earliest manhood the center of [Stanley’s] life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence, dependently, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens.”
    • Stanley’s power, especially his sexual power, is described as animal behavior, emphasizing his raw physicality and brute force.
• Scene 2 Quotes
  • Stanley Kowalski: “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.”
    • Stanley asserts his sexual power by refusing to play Blanche’s game to cut straight through her coy banter.
  • Stanley Kowalski: “Now let’s cut the re-bop!”
    • Stanley forcing the conversation into his own idiom where he demands that they speak plainly.
  • Blanche DuBois: “After all, a woman’s charm is fifty percent illusion.”
    • Stanley has declared his impatience with Blanche’s coy maneuvers and indirect flirtations, so Blanche changes tactics and acts as though she is being open with Stanley.
  • Blanche DuBois: “Oh, I guess he’s just not the type that goes for jasmine perfume, but maybe he’s what we need to mix with our blood now that we’ve lost Belle Reve.”
    • Blanche suggests that even though she and Stella come from a higher class than Stanley, sometimes people like Stanley can help balance them out and ground them in real life.
  • Narration: “Red-hot!”
    • This phrase the acceleration of the sexual tension between Stanley and Blanche.
• Scene 3 Quotes
  • Narration: “The kitchen now suggests that sort of lurid nocturnal brilliance, the raw colors of childhood’s spectrum.”
    • Shows the contrast between vivid New Orleans and decaying Belle Reve.
  • Blanche DuBois: “I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.”
    • Blanche puts up a paper lantern to cover the harsh light of the naked light bulb and claims that she has no stomach for rudeness or incivility.
  • Stanley Kowalski: “STELL-LAHHHHH!”
    • Stanley’s shout comes as a distinct contrast to Blanche’s repetition of Stella’s name and Stanley’s roar drowns the meaning of Stella’s name, and the shout becomes a mating cry
• Scene 4 Quotes
  • Stella Kowalski: “There are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark–that sort of make everything else seem–unimportant.”
    • Though Stella recognizes that Stanley’s aggression is wrong, she is also thrilled and aroused by his bestial nature.
  • Blanche DuBois: “What you are talking about is brutal desire–just–Desire!–the name of that rattle-trap street- car that bangs through the Quarter.”
    • The streetcar named Desire is both the name of a streetcar in New Orleans and a metaphor for the powerful and often dangerous emotion that propels the characters in the play.
  • Blanche DuBois: “Don’t–don’t hang back with the brutes!”
    • Blanche tells Stella that Stanley is an uncivilized animal, and that when Stella associates herself with him, she is turning her back on the world of culture and art that they came from.
  • Blanche DuBois: “Young man! Young, young, young man! Has anyone ever told you that you look like a young Prince out of the Arabian Nights?”
    • Blanche calls him a prince from the Arabian Nights, Blanche sweeps the boy into her world of fantasy and illusion in the context of her flirtation with the newspaper boy.
  • Blanche DuBois: “Sometimes–there’s God–so quickly!”
    • Mitch to signal a crack in her façade, showing a moment of genuine relief that someone is there to pay attention to her and to give her comfort and acceptance.
  • Blanche DuBois: “It’s only a paper moon, Just as phony as it can be–But it wouldn’t be make-believe If you believed in me!”
    • The song becomes a symbol for the delusion that Blanche attempts to live in, rather than facing reality.
• Scene 9 Quotes
  • Harold Mitchell (Mitch): “I told you already I don’t want none of his liquor and I mean it. You ought to lay off his liquor. He says you’ve been lapping it up all summer like a wild-cat!”
    • Mitch’s use of the term “wildcat” for Blanche foreshadows Stanley’s outcry later in the play, when Stanley calls Blanche a “tiger” just before raping her.
  • Blanche DuBois: “I don’t want realism. I want magic!”
    • She pretends to be making a melodramatic joke in the moment, but her outcry portrays Blanche’s fear of reality and the make-believe world she clings to more and more desperately as the play proceeds.
• Scene 10 Quotes
  • Stanley Kowalski: “Tiger–tiger! Drop the bottle-top! Drop it! We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning!”
    • Stanley aggressively attacks Blanche, insisting that their carnal lusts have both led them to sleep with each other and casts their encounter as fate, the necessary end to the primal struggle of their opposing forces.
• Scene 11 Quotes
  • Blanche DuBois: “Please don’t get up. I’m only passing through.”
    • Blanche reveals her assumption that since she is such a dignified lady, and since they are all refined gentlemen, they would automatically stand up out of respect when they see her.
  • Stanley Kowalski: “You left nothing here but spilt talcum and old empty perfume bottles–unless it’s the paper lantern you want to take with you. You want the lantern?”
    • Stanley strips off Blanche’s final delusions and fantasy life.
    • Blanche DuBois: “Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
    • Stanley and Stella have committed her to a mental institution, and Blanche’s final line in the play demonstrates that she has fully descended into madness.