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A Streetcar
Named Desire
Summary
Characters
Main
Themes
Relevant Links
Summary
The play takes place right after World War II, in
New Orleans.
The Kowalski apartment is in a poor but charming neighborhood in the
French Quarter. Stella, twenty-five years old and pregnant, lives with her
blue collar husband Stanley Kowalski. It is summertime, and the heat is
oppressive. Blanche Dubois, Stella's older sister, arrives unexpectedly,
carrying all that she owns. Blanch and Stella have a warm reunion, but
Blanch has some bad news: Belle Reve, the family mansion, has been lost.
Blanche stayed behind to care for their dying family while Stella left to
make a new life for herself, and Blanche is resentful. Blanche meets
Stanley for the first time, and immediately she feels uncomfortable. We
learn that Blanche was once married, when she was very young, but the boy
died.
The situation grows more and more tense. Stanley initially distrusts
Blanche, thinking that she's swindled them; the idea is ludicrous, and
eventually Stanley realizes that Blanche is hardly the swindling type. But
the animosity between the two never stops. Blanche takes long baths,
criticizes the squalor of the apartment, and irritates Stanley. Stanley's
roughness bothers Blanche; he makes no effort to be gentle with her. One
night, the night when Stanley hosts a poker game, he gets too drunk and
beats Stella. The women go up to their upstairs neighbors' apartment, but
soon Stella returns to Stanley, the two coupling with an animal-like need.
Blanche is shocked by these events. That night, she also meets Mitch, and
there is an immediate mutual attraction between the two.
The next day, Stanley overhears Blanche saying terrible things about him.
From that time on, he devotes himself fully to her destruction. Blanche
has a shady past in Laurel. In her loneliness, during the last days of
Belle Reve and after the mansion was lost, she turned to strangers for
comfort. Her numerous amorous encounters destroyed her reputation in
Laurel, leading to her loss of her job as a high school English teacher
and her near-expulsion from town.
Tensions build in the apartment throughout the summer. Blanche and Stanley
look on each other as mortal enemies, and Blanche turns increasingly to
alcohol for comfort. Stanley bides his time.
Stanley looks into Blanche's past, and he passes the information on to
Mitch. Although previously it seemed that Blanche might marry Mitch, after
he learns the truth he loses all interest. In autumn, on Blanche's
birthday, Mitch stands her up. Stanley presents Blanche with her gift: bus
tickets back to Laurel. Blanche is overcome by sickness; she cannot return
to Laurel, and Stanley knows it. As Blanche is ill in the bathroom, Stella
fights with Stanley over the cruelty of his act. Mid-fight, she tells him
to take her to the hospital: the baby is coming.
That night, Blanche packs and drinks. Mitch arrives. He confronts her with
the stories of her past, and she tells him, in lurid detail, the truth
about her escapades in Laurel. He approaches her, making advances, wanting
what she has denied him all summer. She asks him to marry her, and when he
doesn't, she kicks him out of the apartment.
Hours later, Stanley comes home. Stella is still in labor, and will be
until morning, so Stanley's getting some sleep. Stanley mercilessly
destroys Blanche's illusions, one by one, and then rapes her.
Weeks later, another poker game is being held at the Kowalski apartment.
Blanche has suffered a mental breakdown. She has told Stella what Stanley
did, but Stella has convinced herself that it can't be true. A doctor and
nurse come and take Blanche away to the asylum. Stella weeps, and Stanley
comforts her. The other men continue their poker game as if nothing has
happened. (Source:
Classicnotes on A Streetcar Named Desire)
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Blanche Dubois: No
longer a young girl in her twenties, Blanche Dubois has suffered through
the deaths of all of her loved ones, save Stella, and the loss of her old
way of life. When Blanche was a teenager, she married a young boy whom she
worshipped; the boy turned out to be depressive and homosexual, and not
long after their marriage he committed suicide. While Stella left Belle
Reve, the Dubois ancestral home, to try and make her own life, Blanche
stayed behind and cared for a generation of dying relatives. She saw the
deaths of the elder generation and the end of the Dubois family fortune.
In her grief, Blanche looked for comfort in amorous encounters with
near-strangers. Eventually, her reputation ruined and her job lost, she
was forced to leave the town of Laurel. She has come to the Kowalski
apartment seeking protection and shelter.
Stella Kowalski: Blanche's younger sister.
About twenty-five years old and pregnant with her first child, Stella has
made a new life for herself in New Orleans. She is madly in love with her
husband Stanley; their relationship is in part founded on the most direct
and primitive kind of desire. She is close to Blanche, but in the end she
will betray her sister horribly by refusing to believe the truth.
Stanley Kowalski: Stella's husband. A man of
solid, blue-color stock, Stanley Kowalski is direct, passionate, and often
violent. He has no patience for Blanche and the illusions she cherishes.
He is a controlling and domineering man; he demands subservience from his
wife and feels that his authority is threatened by Blanche's arrival. He
proves that he can be cold and calculating; in the end, he moves
mercilessly to ensure Blanche's destruction.
Harold "Mitch" Mitchell: One of Stanley's
friends. Mitch is as tough and "unrefined" as Stanley. He is an imposing
physical specimen, massively built and powerful, but he is also a deeply
sensitive and compassionate man. His mother is dying, and this impending
loss affects him profoundly. He is attracted to Blanche from the start,
and Blanche hopes that he will ask her to marry him. In the end, these
hopes are dashed by Stanley's interference.
Eunice Hubbel: The owner of the apartment
building, and Steve's wife. She is generally helpful, giving Stella and
Blanche shelter after Stanley beats Stella. In the end, she advises Stella
that in spite of Blanche's tragedy, life has to go on. In effect, she is
advising Stella not to look too hard for the truth.
Steve Hubbel: Eunices's husband. Owner of the
apartment building. One of the poker players. Steve has the finally line
of the play. As Blanche is carted off to the asylum, he coldly deals
another hand.
Pablo Gonzales: One of the poker players. He
punctuates the poker games with dashes of Spanish.
Negro Woman: The Negro Woman seems to be one
of the non-naturalistic characters; it seems that the actor playing this
role is in fact playing a number of different Negro women, all minor
characters. Emphasizing the non-naturalistic aspect of the character, in
the original production of Streetcar, the "Negro Woman" was played by a
male actor.
A Strange Man (The Doctor): The Doctor
arrives at the end to bring Blanche on her "vacation." After the Nurse has
pinned her, the Doctor succeeds in calming Blanche. She latches onto him,
depending, now and always, "on the kindness of strangers."
A Strange Woman (The Nurse): The Nurse is a
brutal and impersonal character, institutional and severe in an almost
stylized fashion. She wrestles Blanche to the ground.
A Young Collector: The Young Collector comes
to collect money for the paper. Blanche throws herself at him shamelessly.
A Mexican Woman: Sells flowers for the dead.
She sells these flowers during the powerful scene when Blanche recounts
her fall(s) from grace.
(Source:
Classicnotes on A Streetcar Named Desire)
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Main Themes
Fantasy/Illusion: Blanche
dwells in illusion; fantasy is her primary means of self-defense. Her
deceits do not carry any trace of malice; rather, they come from her
weakness and inability to confront the truth head-on. She tells things not
as they are, but as they ought to be. For her, fantasy has a liberating
magic that protects her from the tragedies she has had to endure.
Unfortunately, this defense is frail and will be shattered by Stanley. In
the end, Stanley and Stella will also resort to a kind of illusion: Stella
will force herself to believe that Blanche's accusations against Stanley
are false.
The Old South and the New South: Stella and
Blanche come from a world that is rapidly dying. Belle Reve, their
family's ancestral plantation, has been lost. The two sisters,
symbolically, are the last living members of their family. Stella will
mingle her blood with a man of blue-collar stock, and Blanche will enter
the world of madness. Stanley represents the new order of the South:
chivalry is dead, replaced by a "rat race," to which Stanley makes several
proud illusions.
Cruelty: The only unforgivable crime,
according to Blanche, is deliberate cruelty. This sin is Stanley's
specialty. His final assault against Blanche is a merciless attack against
an already-beaten foe. On the other hand, though Blanche is dishonest, she
never lies out of malice. Her cruelty is unintentional; often, she lies in
a vain effort to plays. Throughout Streetcar, we see the full range of
cruelty, from Blanche's well-intentioned deceits to Stella self-deceiving
treachery to Stanley's deliberate and unchecked malice. In Williams'
plays, there are many ways to hurt someone. And some are worse than
others.
The Primitive and the Primal: Blanche often
speaks of Stanley as ape-like and primitive. Stanley represents a very
unrefined manhood, a romantic idea of man untouched by civilization and
its effeminizing influences. His appeal is clear: Stella cannot resist
him, and even Blanche, though repulsed, is on some level drawn to him.
Stanley's unrefined nature also includes a terrifying amorality. The
service of his desire is central to who he is; he has no qualms about
driving his sister-in-law to madness, or raping her.
Desire: Closely related to the theme above,
desire is the central theme of the play. Blanche seeks to deny it,
although we learn later in the play that desire is one of her driving
motivations; her desires have caused her to be driven out of town. Desire,
and not intellectual or spiritual intimacy, is the heart of Stella's and
Stanley's relationship. Desire is Blanche's undoing, because she cannot
find a healthy way of dealing with it: she is always either trying to
suppress it or pursuing it with abandon.
Loneliness: The companion theme to desire;
between these two extremes, Blanche is lost. She desperately seeks
companionship and protection in the arms of strangers. And she has never
recovered from her tragic and consuming love for her first husband.
Blanche is in need of a defender. But in New Orleans, she will find
instead the predatory and merciless Stanley.
Related Page for this work in
Fu-Jen English Department IACD:
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