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The themes of Tennessee Williams's Streetcar Named Desire follow Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind: the emotional struggle for supremacy between two characters who symbolize historical forces, between fantasy and reality, between the Old South and a New South, between civilized restraint and primitive desire, between traditionalism and defiance. The New Orleans is one of powerful contrasts: old French architecture and the new rhythms of jazz; a kind of Old World refinement mixed with the grit of poverty and modern life; decay and corruption alongside the regenerative powers of desire and procreation. The city is eternally in a state of convulsion, a mix of the modern world and New Orleans' confused history; in the American imagination, New Orleans is also associated with desire and the most direct kind of sexuality. From the beginning, the three main characters of Streetcar are in a state of tension. Williams establishes that the apartment is small and confining, the weather is hot and oppressive, and the characters have good reason to come into conflict. The South, old and new, is an important theme of the play.
Blanche and her sister come from a dying world. The life and pretensions of their world are becoming a thing of memory: to drive home the point, the family mansion is called "Belle Reve, " or Beautiful Dream. The old life may have been something beautiful, but it is gone forever. Yet Blanche clings to pretensions of aristocracy. She is now as poor as Stanley and Stella, but she cannot help but look down on the humble Kowalski apartment. Stanley tells her that she " ll probably see him as "the unrefined type. " The differences between them, however, are more complex and volatile than a matter of refinement.
He takes the point of view that no matter how structured or 'civilized's octet is all people will rely on their natural animal instincts, such as dominance and deception, to get themselves out of trouble at some stage in life, even if they don't realize it. William's has created three main characters of society, they are, Blanche Dubious, Stella and Stanley Kowalski. Each of these characters is equally as civilized as one another, yet their acts of savagery are all on different levels. Throughout the play Williams symbolically relates these three characters to animals, 'savages, ' by the use of their attitudes, beliefs, appearances and desires. Desire is central to the play. Blanche is unable to come to terms with the force of her own desire.
She is clearly repelled and fascinated by Stanley at the same time. And though she stayed behind and took care of the family while Stella ran off to find a new life, Blanche is both angry and jealous of Stella's choice: she seems a bit fixated on the idea of Stella sleeping with her "Polack. " Stella has chosen a life built around her powerful sexual relationship with Stanley. Blanche is both repulsed by and jealous of the choice. Stanley, on the other hand, is a creature comfortable with desire and satisfying his physical needs. Sex is part of what makes him tick.
His appraisal of women is frank and straightforward, and he makes no pretenses of being sexually self-controlled. The play is haunted by mortality. Desire and death and loneliness are played off against each other again and again. The setting is one of decay; the dying Old South and the dying DuBois family make for a macabre and unsettling background.
Blanche's first monologue is a rather graphic description of tending to the terminally ill. There is also the specter of Blanche's husband, who died when they were both very young; indeed, Blanch still refers to him as a "boy. " Williams is fond of symbols, and his plays are full of symbols that resonate with his central themes. To get to the "Elysian Fields, " where Stella and Stanley live, Blanche had to take "a streetcar named Desire" and then a "streetcar named Cemeteries. " The symbolic names echo the themes of desire and mortality. Another symbol is the meat: Stanley enters carrying a package of bloody meat, like a hunter coming home from a day of work. Stanley is a superb specimen of primitive, unthinking, brutal man. The meat-tossing episode is seen as humorous by Eunice and the Negro Woman, who infer a sexual innuendo from the incident.
Apparently, it is obvious to the neighbors that the sexual bond between Stanley and Stella is intense. The most obvious example of a savage in the play is Stanley Kowalski. He is a large well-toned, territorial male with simple beliefs and a short temper. He does not have many manners and does not care what people think of him. He seems very simple but there I much more to him. He feels threatened by Blanche because she moves in on his territory and wants Stella to leave him.
At first, Stanley acts physically dominant over both Blanche and Stella; by rifling through Blanches possessions (act 1 scene 3 pg. 124), quoting to Stella and Blanche that every man is a king (act scene 8 pg. 197 - 198), throwing the radio out the window in a drunken frenzy and actually striking his pregnant wife (Stella) (act 1 scene 3 pg. 152 - 155). However, towards the end of the play, Stanley realizes his power over Blanche and he acts a lot wiser, but still with the same intentions. He dresses smarter, talks to her nicely, but mockingly, and finally rapes her just to prove his status and to fulfill his desire (act 1, scene 10, pg. 215). In the powerful scene where Stanley looses total control of his actions and strikes the person who he has sworn to protect, love and to hold. William's shows Stanley's lack of control and hatred to a new threat in his life, Blanche. What makes this scene so important to the topic is the way that the three characters react once the party has broken up.
Blanche is in her usual state of panic; Stella has retreated to up-stairs while Stanley stumbles around calling out 'Steeelllaaa' in a drunken sweaty animal like manner. Surprisingly Stella answers to her 'mate's' calls and embraces him, they then exchange words of compassion and kiss, Stanley then picks her up and carries her off to his den to make-love, which is Stanley's way of saying sorry. Stanley has to be the domineering figure in his relationships we see it not only with Stella and Blanche, but with his friends as well. He is a leader and does not like it when someone tries to complicate his role.
William's uses a different type of savagery in Blanche's character. Blanche is more deceptive and exaggerated than Stanley is, he tries to hide her age, from others, by constant bathing and dim lighting, and from herself, by drinking and lying. Through out the whole play she is trying to hide here real identity, the actual animal instincts that are inside her. She hides these with perfume, wearing fancy clothes, even by putting a lampshade to hide the actual light. She also attempts to steal Stella away from Stanley by relating him to an animal. This is best represented when Blanche says; "He acts like an animal, has animals habits!
Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There's even something - sub-human - something Not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something - ape-like about him, like one of those pictures I've seen in anthropological studies! Thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is - Stanley Kowalski survivor of the Stone Age! The stereotypical male within society is represented through the protagonist of Stanley. One particular feature related to his position is his absolute control.
This almost anomalistic notion of a dominant male is hinted at as soon as the play begins, when Stanley is referred to as bestial His overall presidency and power are made clear from beginning in the stage directions. [She cries out in protest Her husband and his companion have already started back around he corner. ] Stanley does not take notice of his wifes concern, but instead continues on his original course, asserting his own destiny, without any thought to the effect it may have on those around him. This taking blood at any cost to those around him is foreshadowed in scene one, with the packet of met which he forces upon his wife. It is through actions such as these that Stanley asserts power, symbolic of the male dominance throughout patriarchal society. He also gains a sense of self-importance from this position.
It is said that he accepts his wifes affections with lordly composure This is again hinted to in Stanley's dialogue. His statement that: - Be comfortable is my motto is almost contradictory, considering that the character does all he can to put the other characters out of their way, throughout the play. It is through dialogue such as this that audiences are alerted to the fact that Stanley intrinsically fails to consider the implications his own needs and wants have on other people. Instead he is the one in control, the only person invested with power and subsequent command, therefore the only one taken into consideration.
A final show of authority is his over powering presence within the poker games. Here he makes powerful statements, passing judgments on the symbolic game, and asserting dominance. Nothing belongs on a poker table but cards, chips, and whisky. It is he who sets such rules, allowing no other comment or opinion. Therefore, it is through using techniques such as dialogue, stage directions, foreshadow, and character, that Tennessee Williams foregrounds society's attitudes to masculinity within the text. Just as a character is provided to represent the stereotypical male, one is also provided as a representation of femininity.
Stella fulfils society's preconceptions of femininity perfectly, though from todays perspective they may be considered as misconceptions. Her character is absolutely passive and has a largely domestic role. From her first appearance in the play, she is found in doors, and remains in this setting for a good deal of the play. She is also dis empowered through the language of other characters.
She is rarely called by her name, and is instead referred to as honey, baby, or sweetie This lack of individual identity is one of the hallmarks of feminine power play within contemporary society. Women were degraded to mere tags, and never allowed their own personage. Stella is often marginalized physically through various incarnations of male violence. In scene eight, Stanley responds to Stella's request to clear the table in the following way. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams brings to light many of the truths as to society's attitudes towards men and women.
A range of dramatic techniques, such as dialogue, stage directions, gaps and silences, setting, catalogue, foreshadow, symbolism, irony, and character, are employed in order to shape understandings of gender stereotypes. The playwright explores both male and female stereotypes as well as society's reaction to those who challenge these preconceptions, or indeed misconceptions as the case may be. By representing these truths to the masses which view this striking play, Tennessee Williams poses a question to society, as to whether or not these representations are accurate. May audiences only hope to respond to this question in the next century. In her first encounter with Stanley, her sisters macho hunk of a husband, Blanche uses sexuality as her weapon.
Their verbal sparring has an erotic undertone, and it is surprising but significant that Blanche understands immediately the expression shack up, from Stanley's army past. In a fine interpretation, Iain Glen brings not only muscularity but also sensitivity to Stanley, and there is desperate humor on Blanche part as she attempts to explain the loss of the sisters property to a man who believes in Huey Long and the Napoleonic Code (that which belongs to the wife belongs to the husband also. ) She is so coquettish in this scene that Stanley is led to remark, If I didnt know that you was my wifes sister Id get ideas about you. By juxtaposing two irreconcilable positions, ambiguity is produced in the judgement of the main characters, most notably Stanley Kowalski and 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. As the play proceeds, Blanche copes by dissimulating the problem - full Elysian Fields for "a moonlight swim at the old rock quarry." Her feelings against Stanley galvanize when she sees him strike his pregnant wife in a fit of drunken rage; Stanley's feelings for her similarly harden when he overhears her belittle him as Neolithic and brutish. Blanche's imposition, her airs, and her distortions of reality infuriate Stanley, and he begins to chip away at her veneer of armor. Williams, who was an overt homosexual in a time unreceptive to such concepts, implies that Blanche, like himself, is society's scapegoat; yet despite her neuroses, she is not a "bad per - son " perhaps "no crazier than the average asshole out walking' around on the streets, " as Mc Murphy of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest proclaims. Alas, her doomed, dandy personality is no match for the destructive, dissolute Stanley, who represents the raw animal, the prevailing dog in a dog - eat - dog world, the "one hundred percent American." As Blanche admits to Stanley and later to her fiance Mitch, "a woman's charm is fifty percent illusion" (41), and this woman has "old - fashioned ideals" (91): she doesn't "tell the truth, [she] tell[s] what ought to be truth" (117), and prefers fantasy and shadows to the light of reality. Stanley, as her foil, is a no - nonsense, cut - to - the - chase kind of guy; he expects persons to "[l]ay... [their] cards on the table" (40), as if life itself was a game of seven card stud.
He is amused by "Hollywood glamour stuff" (41), that is, the genteel lawn culture of French chitchat, social compliments, and humoring a fool and fraud like Blanche. Thus, in one sense Blanche and her brother - in - law are trying to do outdo each other in competing for Stella; each would like to pull her beyond the reach of the other. But there is something more elemental in their opposition. They are incompatible forces, and harmony is no more than an evanescent regard for family.
And yet there is a precarious sexual tension they sleep separated by but portieres and the mutual comprehension of the other's weakness: just as Stanley recognizes the dependence ("on the kindness of strangers" [ 142 ]) in Blanche, Blanche "ha[s] an idea [Stella] doesn't understand you [Stanley] as well as I [Blanche] do. " Thus culminates, amid "hot trumpets and drums, " the "date" (130) (rape) to which Blanche's pomp and circumstance ineluctably give rise. Indeed, in both origin and occupation, Stanley is new blood to Blanche and Stella's blue blood. He stands on no ceremony; it is nothing for him to crush the outmoded sense of entitlement and superiority that Blanche personifies. That Williams has him trounce a lonely and widowed gadfly - gadabout, illustrates the new rules of ruthlessness and perhaps soullessness. And yet Blanche, having watched her family estate slip through her fingers, fails to see the decadence of her patrician Belle Reve existence; Social Darwinism has replaced gentility, and this "old maid schoolteacher" is really an alcoholic, nymphomaniac, parasitical casualty of the changeover.
She puts on the airs of a belle who has never known indignity, but Stanley sees through her. As Eunice says, "Life has got to go on. No matter what happens, you " ve got to keep on going" (133). Worked Cite: Jonathan Rick May 28, 2000 Traditionalism versus Defiance in a Streetcar Named Desire About A Streetcar Named Desire: Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire and Other Plays. Ed.
E. Martin Browne. New York: Penguin, 1959. Beaty, Jerome et al. (eds. ) The Norton Introduction to Literature. Shorter 8 th Edition. (2002). New York: W.
W. Norton & Company.
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Research essay sample on Streetcar Named Desire Three Main Characters
