Tennessee Williams’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire, illustrates the struggle of power between economic classes and the changes taking place in America at that time, regarding social status. The constant tension between Blanche and Stanley represents the conflict between social classes, and the clash of...
Achieved status, Bourgeoisie, Class consciousness, Karl Marx, Marxism, Masculinity and Physicality, Max Weber, Means of production, Middle class, Petite bourgeoisie
In Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the nature of theatricality, “magic,” and “realism,” all stem from the tragic character, Blanche DuBois. Blanche is both a theatricalizing and self-theatricalizing woman. She lies to herself as well as to others in order to recreate the...
A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois, Characters in plays, Fantasy, Reality, Reality vs Illusion, Sexual Desire, Stanley Kowalski, Stella Kowalski, Tennessee Williams
“A picture is worth a thousand words.” This timeless saying embodies the ability of imagery to convey multiple messages and themes in an overarching structure. Through detailed nuance, the playwright Tennessee Williams utilizes the imagery found in his characters’ actions and settings to surpass the...
When looking at A Streetcar Named Desire – a tragedy, after all – it is traditionally required that there should be a selected antagonist, a ‘villain’ so to speak. Stanley Kowalski, you could argue, is that ‘villain’. It is evident that throughout the play he...
A Streetcar Named Desire, Abuse, Audience, Audience theory, Blanche DuBois, Deep South, Domestic violence, Dominance and submission, Marlon Brando, Masculinity and Physicality
Throughout scenes 1 and 2 of A Streetcar Named Desire, playwright Tennessee Williams presents Stanley as extremely powerful and authoritative through the use of dialogue as well as stage directions. The audience immediately learns how strong Stanley is in a physical sense; however, we soon...
“A Streetcar Named Desire” is a story of damaged people. Blanche DuBois, a repressed and sexually warped Southern belle, seeks either atonement or reassurance; she wants someone to help lift the burden of her guilt for her twisted sexuality. Meanwhile, Stanley Kowalski, a horrifyingly abusive...
A Streetcar Named Desire, Abuse, Blanche DuBois, Characters in plays, Domestic violence, Drama film characters, Fictional French-Americans, Marlon Brando, Stanley Kowalski, Stella Kowalski
In both Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar named Desire and Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, there is extensive concern for how masculinity and femininity are portrayed. Both texts present archetypical interpretations of gender as well as juxtaposing figures that undermine these stereotypes, either actively or passively. One such...
By the time she speaks her famous closing line about depending on the kindness of strangers, it has become apparent that the ability of Blanche DuBois to survive in a world of men—and not just animalistic throwbacks like Stanley Kowalski, either, but men of all...
A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois, Characters in plays, Kindness, Marlon Brando, Reality vs Illusion, Sexual Desire, Stanley Kowalski, Stella Kowalski, The Distant Future
In the 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, the relationship between Blanche and Mitch is a key subplot in the tale of Blanche’s descent into madness and isolation. Whilst Williams initially presents Mitch as the answer to all Blanche’s problems and as...
In Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, despite Blanche Dubois’ desire to start fresh in New Orleans, her condescending nature, inability to act appropriately on her desires, and denial of reality all lead to her downfall. Blanche believes that her upper class roots put her...
A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois, Characters in plays, Dames Blanches, Elysian Fields, Elysium, Reality vs Illusion, Sexual Desire, Stanley Kowalski, Stella Kowalski
Throughout A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche is caught between the contradictions of her own character and the society surrounding her. She persistently fights to conceal the truth of her personality and past, failing to comprehend the changing conditions of post-WWII, post-New Deal America. In the...
Blanche DuBois, Electric Light, Incandescent light bulb, Lauren Reed, Lighting, Reality vs Illusion, Sexual Desire, The Old South and the New South, The Play
Power is the underlying current that runs through both Webster’s ‘The Duchess of Malfi’, a 17th century revenge tragedy, and Williams’ ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, a 20th Century modern domestic tragedy. Both plays offer stark representations of power’s tendency to corrupt, a corruption that often...
Since the focal theme of “A Streetcar Named Desire” is that of integration and adaptation, the relationship between Blanche and Stella is important and its function evident: Williams establishes a contrast between them. For example, when Stella says, in Scene One, that ‘the best I...
The tragedy in A Streetcar Named Desire can be interpreted through the medium of not just watching it, but reading it. Williams achieves this through the use of stage directions written in poetic prose, which create imagery with likeness to a novel. Arguably, the most...
A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois, Cultural Conflicts, Domestic tragedy, Domestic violence, Drama, Poetics, Stanley Kowalski, Stella Kowalski, The Old South and the New South
The postmodernist writers emerged after the Second World War, and their fierce critiques of human nature showed a race that was vile and heinous at best, with Tennessee Williams’s depiction being no different. In his play A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams explores the gruesome nature...
The climax of Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire occurs in “Scene Ten,” when Stanley ultimately rapes Blanche, his sister-in-law. Many audiences and readers have debated whether or not this act was premeditated or done impulsively, as to some the play is laden with evidence...
Through a focus upon gender, both Elia Kazan’s film of Tennessee Williams’ original play, A Streetcar Named Desire (Warner Bros, 1951) and Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (Vintage, 1986) effectively manage to mirror the concerns of both time and place. Despite differing contextual influences,...
Tennessee Williams uses a variety of techniques to produce a strong sense of dramatic tension throughout A Streetcar Named Desire, as he mainly focuses on the interactions between characters to create an edgy mood. For example, Williams’ presentation of Blanche suggests she is actually the...
A Streetcar Named Desire is at its surface, an undoubtedly heterosexual play. Allan Grey, its unseen gay character, makes homosexuality a seemingly marginal topic within the play. But a deeper reading of the text suggests the opposite. Tennessee Williams uses heterosexual characters as surrogates to...
The theme of contrast is key to A Streetcar Named Desire as it is so obviously displayed in every aspect of the play. Most importantly, Blanche is in a stark contrast with Stanley – a contrast which ends up being very problematic – and there...
A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois, Characters in plays, English-language films, Holger Ernst, Reality vs Illusion, Southern United States, Stanley Kowalski, Stella Kowalski, Tennessee Williams
Loneliness and isolation are themes explored in various differing ways throughout Tennessee William’s play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ (1947) and Colm Toibin’s novel ‘Brooklyn’ (2009), mainly through the way their protagonists are presented and developed. In ‘Brooklyn’ and ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, loneliness is caused...
A Streetcar Named Desire and Blues for Mister Charlie are both concerned to a large extent with tensions between different ethnic groups and, since in both plays the ethnicity of each group defines its social position, different social groups as well. The two plays are...
In both the play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and the novel ‘Mrs Dalloway,’ the protagonists are primarily isolated within society by the consequences of their pasts. While Williams and Woolf use the past to evoke both nostalgia for a better time and regret over the...
The brutality and inescapability of oppression is a dominant theme in literature as it is a key theme presented in A Streetcar Named Desire. Williams calls for the reform of social constructs such as patriarchy in this play and brings to light modes of oppression...
Abuse, Build-up of violence, Crescendo of violence, Domestic violence, Inescapability of oppression, Light modes of oppression, Male dominance, Norm, Oppression, Patriarchy
“A Streetcar Named Desire” is the famous story of Blanche du Bois and Stanley Kowalski’s passionate power struggle; written by Tennessee Williams in 1947, the Play is set in New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 1940s. To judge what extent Stanley is a villain it...
A Streetcar Named Desire, Abuse, Audience, Blanche DuBois, Domestic violence, Marlon Brando, Masculinity and Physicality, Stanley Kowalski, Stella Kowalski, The Play
“Blanche is a victim of the fact that she is a female.” With reference to the dramatic methods used in the play, and relevant controversial information, show to what extent you agree with this statement. The play “A Streetcar Named Desire” written by Tennessee Williams...
A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois, Characters in plays, Domestic violence, Drama film characters, English-language films, Female, Femininity and Dependence, Fictional French-Americans, Gender
Class differences lie behind conflict in the play. Through close analysis of the dramatic methods used in the play, and drawing upon relevant external information on social class in the southern states of America, show to what extent you agree with the statement above. Throughout...
Blanche DuBois, Bourgeoisie, Class consciousness, Cultural Conflicts, Marxism, Middle class, Petite bourgeoisie, Proletariat, Social class, Social classes
The endings of A Street Car Named Desire in the movie and in the play by Tennessee Williams are very different. Initially, they both follow the same storyline, which follows Stella’s struggles between choosing Blanche or Stanley. Near the end, Kazan changes the turning point...
Williams and Yates have set their works in the American, post-World War II, conformist society, they illustrate the terrible effects of this society on women through the genre of modern tragedy. A Streetcar Named Desire is set in 1947, in the atypical American setting of...
20th century, Abortion, American Revolutionary War, Conformity, Cultural Conflicts, Female, Femininity and Dependence, Gender, Gender identity, Gender role
Blanche in “A Streetcar Named Desire” is a character who will throughout the duration of the play invoke all sorts of contrasting, even opposite emotions. To analyze one’s emotions is no easy task, and to do so most effectively one must break the play into...
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