A Streetcar Named Desire - Comprehensive Notes

Tennessee Williams Biography

• Born in Columbus, MS, moved to St. Louis, MO as a child.
• Early literary career: Won five dollars at sixteen for an essay, “Can a Good Wife be a Good Sport?”
• Attended the University of Missouri; entered writing contests for income.
• Failed military training; father forced him to work in a factory.
• Age 24: Nervous breakdown, left job, returned to college.
• Graduated from the University of Iowa in 1938 after studying at Washington University in St. Louis.
• Lived in the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1939, worked for the Works Progress Administration.
• Later worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood.

Historical Context

• Post-World War II American art:
  • Primarily patriotic and optimistic.
  • Celebrated a robust, victorious nation.
• Stanley Kowalski's portrayal:
  • Dangerous yet seductive.
  • Seen as a precursor to the youth movement and rock-and-roll culture of the 1950s and 1960s.

Related Literary Works

• The Glass Menagerie (1945):
  • Also explores tense familial relationships, memories, and dreams.
  • Blanche DuBois shares traits with:
    • Amanda Wingfield: An aging Southern belle clinging to the past.
    • Laura Wingfield: A fragile, unstable sister.
• Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller):
  • Portrays a family through generations.
  • 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

• Streetcar Named Desire line:
  • Operated in New Orleans from 1920 to 1948.
  • Went through the French Quarter to Desire Street.
• Marlon Brando's performance:
  • In the original 1947 Broadway production shot him to stardom.
  • Cemented Brando’s status as a sex symbol.
• Elia Kazan's direction:
  • Directed both the Broadway production and the 1951 film.
  • Used the Stanislavski method-acting system:
    • Focuses on realism and natural characters instead of melodrama.
    • Actors use memories to give characters real emotions.
• Brando's Stanley:
  • Based on boxer Rocky Graziano.
  • Studied Graziano's movements and mannerisms.
• Kazan's film adaptation:
  • Became a cultural touchstone.
  • Especially Brando’s bellowing of “STELL-LAHHHHH!”
• The Simpsons reference:
  • Episode featured a musical version called "Oh, Streetcar!"
  • Ned Flanders as Stanley sang, “Can’t you hear me yell-a? You’re putting me through hell-a!”

Plot Summary

• Setting: Shabby but rakishly charming New Orleans of the 1940s.

  • Stanley and Stella Kowalski live in the downstairs flat.
  • Flexible set: Audience sees both interior and exterior.

• Blanche DuBois arrives:

  • Sister of Stella.
  • “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!”
  • Fading Southern belle from Laurel, Mississippi.
  • English teacher, delicate and moth-like, dressed in white.
  • Tells Stella that Belle Reve has been lost, and she is on leave 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 sweaty shirts under the bare kitchen light bulb.

• Stella's role:

  • Defined by her role as Stanley’s wife.
  • Relationship is primarily based on sexual chemistry.
  • Ties to New Orleans are emphasized through her pregnancy.
  • She is bringing a new Kowalski, not a DuBois, life into the world.

• Stanley vs. Blanche:

  • Stanley rummages through Blanche’s trunk, suspecting her of cheating Stella out of inheritance.
  • Blanche reveals that the estate was lost due to a foreclosed mortgage, showing Stanley the bank papers to prove it.

• Poker night:

  • Stanley and his friends are in the thick of their drunken poker night when Blanche and Stella return from an evening out.
  • Stanley’s friend Mitch catches Blanche’s eye, and as she asks Stella about him, she maneuvers herself skillfully in the light to be caught half- dressed in silhouette.
  • Blanche and Mitch flirt.
  • Blanche hangs a paper lantern over a bare bulb.
  • Stanley seethes that Blanche is interrupting the poker game.
  • Eventually, Blanche turns on the radio, and Stanley erupts: he storms into the bedroom and tosses the radio out of the window.
  • When Stella intervenes to try and make peace, Stanley hits her.
  • 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.

• The next morning:

  • Stella is calm and radiant, while Blanche is still hysterical.
  • Stella admits that she is “thrilled” by Stanley’s aggression, and that even though Blanche wants her to leave, she’s “not in anything that [she has] a desire to get out of.”
  • Blanche suggests that they contact Shep Huntleigh, a Dallas millionaire, to help them escape.
  • The only thing holding Stella and Stanley together, Blanche says, is the “rattle-trap street-car named Desire.”
  • Stanley, unbeknownst to Stella and Blanche, overhears Blanche criticize Stanley as being coarse and sub- human.
  • Blanche tells Stella, “In this dark march toward whatever it is we’re approaching . . . Don’t––don’t hang back with the brutes!”

• Tension builds:

  • Stanley hints that he knows details about Blanche’s past.
  • Blanche nervously flirts with a Young Man collecting money for the paper, kissing him before Mitch arrives.

• Blanche and Mitch's troubled relationship:

  • Blanche claims exhaustion "which only a neurasthenic personality can know.