A Streetcar named Desire- Old south versus New America

Contrast of costume

• the contrast of costume between Stanely and Blanche’s social backgrounds is established by Williams from the beginning of the play through the use of costume. Blanche’s arrival at Elysian fields ‘dainty and expensive clothes’ signifies her aristocratic roots, while Stanley’s more practical and rugged attire reflects his working-class ethos, highlighting the clash between the fading Southern gentility and the burgeoning, more raw American identity.

• Commenting on Blanche’s ‘incongrous’ presence at Elysian Fields, Thomas Porter describes Streetcar’s plot [as] an inverted version of the Civil war romance’, where Blanche is cast as the ‘invader’ in an unfamiliar world which resents her and will destroy her

• During the rape scene which forms the dramatic climax of the play, the defeat of the values and culture that Blanche stands for is again symbolically portrayed through costume as Blanche glamorous clothes have been replaced by a ‘soiled and crumpled white satin evening gown’, foreshadowing her final humiliation by Stanley, triumphant in his ‘brilliant pyjama coat.’

The Old South

• Williams had an ambivalent relationship with the old south, exposing the corruption which led to its downfall at the same time as lamenting the disappearance of the civilisation and romantic chivalry that died along with it.

• As an English teacher, Blanche is a staunch defender of ‘art, and poetry, and music’ which she urges Stella to’cling to as [the] flag’ of a more civilised world which is quickly being engulfed by the ‘dark march’ of a philistine modern America.

• When Stanley throws out the radio playing waltz which Blanch and Mitch dance to, nostalgically trying to recapture a lost chivalric world that they both yearn for, his actions embodies the new world’s violent rejection of what it considers irrelevant,’hoity-toity’ snobbery.

• The decline of Blanche during the course of the play mirrors the crisis of the Old South after its defeat in the Civil war.

• Williams conveys how the world of the Old South has become merely a distant dream in modern America, symbolised by the name of the Dubois plantation, ‘Belle Reve.’

• The downfall of the aristocratic Dubois family is reminiscent of an earlier example of southern Gothic literature, Edgar Allan Poe’s The fall of the House of Usher. The image of the grand mansion collapsing over the dead bodies of the last survivors of a once-eminent family destroyed by their own vices has echoes of Blanche’s memories of a place where ‘death was as close to you’. Blanche is haunted by these deaths, and the ghosts of her past take on a physical presence in the Mexican woman selling ‘flores para los muertos’.

• The new society of Elysian fields sees Blanche as ‘unclean’ as a result of her affairs and denies her a place in its world, illustrating that to ride on ‘the streetcar named Desire’ will result in a ‘transfer to […] Cemeteries.’

New America, New Vitality

• Blanche cannot escape death, haunted by the memory of her lost husband which continually revisits her through the polka tune. This motif suggests Blanche is paralysed by the past, and the inability to free herself from the influence of her dead husband has parallels to William Faulkner’s Gothic short story ‘A Rose for Emily’ where a woman keeps the dead corpse of her lover in her bedroom until death.

• In contrast Stanley is predominantly associated with images of life and vitality, suggesting that the future belongs to the new world that he represents. Stanley’s power and vivacity is highlighted as he is described as the ‘gaudy seedbearer.’

• Stanely’s desire to use his power to debase those he resentfully views as belonging to the privileged old world can be seen when he reminds Stella that by marrying her he has ‘pulled her down off [the] columns’ of Belle Reve, forcibly bringing her down to his level.