English Literature I A Streetcar Named Desire Information on the theme of Violence

Q. “Elysian Fields is a world filled with violence, in which Blanche cannot survive.” In the light of this comment explore Williams’ dramatic presentation of violence in “A Streetcar Named Desire”. In your answer you must consider relevant contextual factors.

THEME OF VIOLENCE

Violence is a motif which is prevalent throughout the text, and although it may not always be manifested in clearly violent actions such as the rape, it is often displayed through more subtle verbal aggression, or spiteful acts. Violence and aggression are usually associated with Stanley, however on occasion the other men in the play do display flashes of behaviour which could be considered aggressive or violent. Violence is most commonly associated with the theme of conflict, whether between Men and Women, Upper and Lower classes, or simply Stanley and Blanche. However, the motif of violence is not confined to the conveyance of this theme, and is occasionally used in other themes including Sex and Desire, and the contrast between Blanche’s pleasant dreams and the harsh, ugly reality.

Page	Character	Quotation	Analysis
116	Stanley: Stella: Stanley:	Catch! What? Meat! [He heaves the package at her...	Stanley’s entrance, although not violent, does involve a relatively aggressive act of ‘heaving’ a bag of meat towards his wife. As soon as he enters the play, Stanleybehaves in an aggressive and ‘rough’ manner. The act of him bringing home the (non-specific) ‘meat’ reflects a primitive ‘hunter/gatherer’ instinct, and identifies Stanley as the rough, dominant male of the play.
125	Stella:	A Master Sergeant in the Engineers’ Corps.	Stella is referring to the uniform Stanley is wearing in the picture that she shows Blanche of him. This association with the military has obvious connotations of war and violence.
128	Stage directions	[STANLEY throws the screen door of the kitchen open and comes in... Animal joy in his being is implicit in all of his movements and attitudes...]	In fact, throughout the play most stage directions associated with Stanley are somewhat violent. Important here is the way in which Stanley does not simply open the door but throws it open. All of his movements seem to exude aggression and power.
131	Stanley:	How about my supper, huh? I’m not going to no Galatoires’ for supper!	The aggressive nature of Stanley’s speech is shown through the use of the rhetorical question about his supper. His simple statement about what he will and will not do asserts his authority, and the exclamatory nature of this sentence (and in fact, most of his speech) suggests a shouting aggression in his manner.
133	Stage directions	[He stalks into the bedroom...]	Stanley does not merely walk, he stalks there, and the aggressive nature in which he does this reflects his generally aggressive nature.
133	Stage directions	[He pulls open the wardrobe trunk standing in the middle of the room and jerks out an armful of dresses]	Again, the violent nature in which he roots through Blanche’s belongings shows not only his utter disregard for her privacy but reflects a simple violence in Stanley. He appears to be unable to do anything delicately, and this base, primitive aggression reinforces his position as the dominant male in the text.
134	Stage directions	[He hurls the furs to the daybed. Then he jerks open a small drawer in the trunk and pulls up a fistful of costume jewellery]
138	Stage directions	[She sprays herself with her atomizer; then playfully sprays him with it. He seizes the atomizer and slams it down on the dresser...]	Stanley violently stops Blanche’s attempts to flirt with him with a display of brute force, which contrasts with her playful nature in this instance.
145	Stella:	[STANLEY gives a loud whack of his hand on her thigh] [sharply] That’s not fun, Stanley. [The men laugh...]	This is the first instance of real physical violence in the play. The fact that Stanleynot only abuses his wife, but in front of his friends demonises him in the eyes of the audience. The men laugh, suggesting that this kind of behaviour is normal and acceptable in their society. Stella’s acceptance of this reflects not only this idea, but also her submissive nature.
151	Stage directions	[STANLEY stalks fiercely through the portieres into the bedroom. He crosses to the small white radio and snatches it off the table. With a shouted oath, he tosses the instrument out of the window.]	After his initial demand for the radio to be switched off is ignored, rather than simply turning it off, Stanley crosses to it and throws it out of the window, clearly damaging it. Stanley’s disregard for even his own possessions reflects the overwhelming nature of violence and his uncontrollable anger.
152	Stella: Stanley:	You lay your hands on me and I’ll – [She backs out of sight. He advances and disappears. There is the sound of a blow. STELLA cries out...]	In the heat of the moment, Stanleyretaliates at his wife. This reflects the conflict between men and women in the play, and the idea of wife-beating is something that we have almost come to expect from Stanley. However, not only is he violent towards his wife, but his desire to have her back is even more violent. When he cries her name the stage directions give an insight into the power of his desire which foreshadows the turbulent (and inevitably violent) nature of their relationship.
154		[with heaven-splitting violence] STELLL-AHHHHH!
155	Mitch: Mitch:	Ho-ho! There’s nothing to be scared of. They’re crazy about each other ... ...But don’t take it serious.	Mitch’s dismissal of the events reflects the idea that violence is an everyday part of the society in Elysian fields. This also provides more evidence to support the idea that their relationship is so turbulent that violence is inevitable.
163	Blanche:	There’s something downright – bestial – about him!	Blanche describes Stanley as ape-like, commenting on his lack of refinement. She expresses a clear distaste for his lack of chivalry and his violent nature, reflecting the class conflict here.
165	Stella:	[crossing to the door] Eunice seems to be having some trouble with Steve	The domestic incident between Steve and Eunice is evidence for the general relationships between men and women in Elysian fields. Stella’s nonchalance supports the idea that this is not unusual.
179	Mitch:	Just give me a slap whenever I step out of bounds	Despite the fact that this is clearly meant to be interpreted as a joke, it provides an insight into the nature of their relationship as well as the relationships of the other characters in the play. This statement insinuates that violent undertones are evident in all relationships, despite the fact that physical violence is not present her. Interestingly however, this statement indicates an inversion of the power structure which is prevalent within the other relationships due to the fact that Blanche, the woman, holds the power.
185	Stanley:	[mimicking] ‘Washing out some things’? ... [mimicking] ‘Soaking in a hot tub’?	Stanley’s mocking of Blanche in a spiteful and (although not overtly violent) snide manner suggests his contempt for her.
194/5	Stanley:	[he hurls a plate to the floor] That’s how I’ll clear the table! [He seizes her arm.] Don’t ever talk that way to me! ‘Pig – Polack – disgusting – vulgar – greasy!’ – them kind of words have been on your tongue and your sister’s too much around here! ...  Remember what Huey Long said – ‘Every Man is a King!’ And I am the king around here, so don’t forget it! [He hurls a cup and saucer to the floor.] My place is cleared!	We see how Stanley uses physical violence to invoke fear in the women and also to assert himself over them. Throughout the play, this motif is often used in order to convey the continuing conflict between men and women, with the men often employing their physical prowess to overpower or strike fear into the women. Here, Stanley is responding to Stella’s attempt to order him to clear the table with an act of violence which results in her crying weakly.
196	Stanley:	You remember the way that it was? Them nights we had together? God, honey, it’s gonna be sweet when we can make noise in the night the way that we used to and get the coloured lights going...	Stanley reminisces about his and Stella’s sex life when Blanche was not there. The passionate intensity of the sex reflects the motif of violence, because it appears thatStanley fails to be tender even as a lover – the way he has sex is intense and violent, however Stella clearly enjoys this intensity as implied when Stanley later says “how you loved it, having them coloured lights going!”.
197	Stanley:	Sister Blanche, I’ve got a little birthday remembrance for you. ... Ticket! Back to Laurel! On the Greyhound! Tuesday!	Although this action does not involve any physical violence it is clearly spiteful onStanley’s part. He knowingly excites Blanche as the prospect of receiving a gift from him, and then when he gives her it, it is the most unwelcome gift he could have given, thus dashing her feelings of elation in a spiteful manner. This act reflects the conflict between Blanche & Stanley.
207	Blanche: Mitch:	What do you want? [fumbling to embrace her] What I been missing all summer.	Mitch’s intention to rape her followed byStanley’s successful rape of Blanche is the climactic point of this motif. Such a violent and deplorable crime is the epitome of violence in the play and serves to reflect the objectification of women in the society, whilst simultaneously asserting the men’s power over them.
215	Stanley: Stanley:	[softly] Come to think of it – maybe you wouldn’t be bad to – interfere with... ... We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning! [He picks up her inert figure and carries her to the bed]

Key Moment:

I feel that the rape at the end of scene 10 is clearly the key moment for the motif of violence. I think this moment ties together all of the themes that are reflected by the theme of violence, and rape not only incorporates physical but also psychological violence, further accentuating the importance of this moment.

Violence is often seen as a result of conflict in the play, and this moment clearly results from all of the conflicts explored throughout the text. Primarily, the conflict between Blanche and Stanley reaches a climax here, when the two are alone. Stanley’s hate for her and Blanche’s dislike for him have reached bursting point and the violent conflict here results in Stanley not only displaying his supremacy over her physically but also sexually. Not only this, but on a wider level, the rape links to the conflict between men and women which is so prevalent in the play. Rape is the ultimate symbol of male dominance over women and as such, Williams uses this event to highlight the differences between the sexes, and the fact that it is later covered up by most of the characters suggests that this is something that a man can get away with in a society such as Elysian Fields. On a wider scale, the rape (andStanley’s ‘victory’ over Blanche) symbolises the differences between the declining Upper class and the rising Lower class. Stanley, portraying the Lower class hordes physically and emotionally beats Blanche here, and this is representative of the way that the Lower class appears to be winning the struggle for dominance in society at the time Williams is writing.

Overall, I feel that the motif of violence is something which is present throughout the play, mainly in Stanley’s manner, and although most obviously conveyed through the three major events of physical violence (Stanley beating Stella, Stanley smashing his plate and Stanley raping Blanche), violence is not restricted to these moments and is also manifested in emotional and psychological violence (mostly on Stanley’s part). Williams uses the motif in order to accentuate his main theme of conflict; between men and women; Stanley and Blanche; and the different classes in his society.

A Streetcar Named Desire Topic Tracking: Violence

Scene 1

Violence 1: The play introduces Stanley and Stella with physicality. He throws a package of meat at her to cook. Instead of handing it to her gently, he throws it at her. This slightly violent exchange is the first vague image of their type of communication.

Violence 2: Blanche tells Stella how hard she worked for Belle Reve before she lost it. She uses violent terms such as "bled," "fought," and "died" as she taunts Stella for not being there. Although not physically violent, this conversation is verbally violent.

Scenes 2 and 3

Violence 3: During the poker game, Stanley slaps Stella on her thigh. He does this not to hurt her, but to convey some sort of affection. Stella does not like it. Again, their communication is physical and somewhat violent through throwing and slapping.

Violence 4: Stanley throws the radio through the window in a violent rage. Stella is angry, they fight, and he hits her. This time, their physical communication is purely violent. He does not beat her much; he hit her once. She leaves the house showing him that she will not tolerate such brutality.

Scenes 4 and 5

Violence 5: Stella tells Blanche about her wedding night with Stanley. He took the heel of her shoe and broke every light in the house in a passionate, violent rage. Stanley's violent side excites Stella and sometimes brings them closer, other times pushes them apart.

Violence 6: Steve and Eunice fight in the upstairs flat and someone is hit. At first we cannot see who the victim is. Their side-plot of perpetual fights and violent arguments parallels Stanley and Stella's world of repeated arguments and occasional violence in the downstairs flat.

Scene 6

Violence 7: Blanche tells Mitch about her husband's violent suicide. He put a gun in his mouth and shot himself. It was a clean death albeit self-inflicted, but still one of violence.

Scenes 7 and 8

Violence 8: At Blanche's birthday dinner, Stanley becomes angry and clears his table by smashing his plate and glass. He yells at the women saying that he is the King and that he will clean the table by smashing everything.

Scenes 9 and 10

Violence 9: In their final stand-off, Blanche grabs a glass bottle, breaks it, and shoves the jagged edge in Stanley's face in order to hurt him. He taunts her. They fight and he picks her up and carries her into the bedroom. She is on the same violent level as he has been for most of the play.

Scene 11

Violence 10: Blanche physically fights to pull away from the Doctor and Nurse who try to take her away. She struggles on the ground and they pin her down. She ultimately gives in as they show her kindness. She realizes she cannot fight with violence.

More

A Streetcar Named Desire Violence in the Play Tennessee Williams reallys shows violence in his play between the relationships with Stanley and Stella, Steve and Eunice, Blanche and all men she encounters.

Domestic violence truly stands out in the play becuase most of the violence is at home and between spouses.
In definition it is a patern of abusive behaviour by either partner in a very deep relationship.

Rape and Suicide are also other forms violence in the play Affected Characters
Blanche is affected by violence more than any other character in the play. She is affected by violence when her ex husband kills himself after she tells him she is disgusted of his homosexuality. The suicide of her husband cuases her to change emotionally and mentally.
Blanche's depressing life is crushed after Stanley uses violence to rape her and after that he sends her to an insane asylum. Stella is married to Stanley and is part of a very abusive relationship. This is where most of the domestic violence occurs. Stanley always has to show power over Stella which often leads to violence where Stanley would hit Stella or violently break stuff proving that he is the boss and more powerful than his wife. Stella strongly desires Stanley and lives with not believeing that Stanley raped Blanche for she could not bare to believe it. The violence of Stanley and Blanche affects Stella as she tries to satisfy both her sister's and Stanley's desires. Mitch when Mitch finds out what happened to Blanche at the end of the play he attacks Stanley but eventually ends up on the floor. He is affected because he still had emotional feelings for Blanche, but Stanley took away Blanche to an insane asylum after raping her. The violence caused to Blanche makes Mitch violent with Stanley near the end of the play. Progression
The violence progresses through the play as the women are more and more abused by the men.
Stanley is the main character that progresses the violence. First it starts with yelling and the breaking of objects, but as Stanley continues to feel more and more powerless he evolves his violence to hitting Stella and raping Blanche. Realism The violence portrayed in the play has a sense of realism in the way women are treated and how everyday life was in New Orleans. It was common for domestic violence to occur and men did have alot of authority over women and even the government felt that way as well. The play is a drama and just about every aspect of the play can be believable.
In today's society the violence in the play would not be tolerated from the very beginning and is very inappropriate. Today, when women are hit by thier husbands they go to the police. When the play was written it was common that husbands hit wives and police did not do much about it.
Also it would be very rare that a common citizen would rape ther sister-in-law like Stanley did and felt no regret.
Rape is a very serious crime in our society and should not be appropriate ever. Quotes related to Violence "You can't beat on a woman an' then call' er back! She won't come! And her goin' t' have a baby!... You stinker! You whelp of a Polack, you! I hope they do haul you in and turn the fire hose on you, same as the last time!"(60). Eunice is talking very aggressive to Stanley after he just finished hitting Stella and making her cry. The role of violence relates to this quote because it shows how even Stanley is affected by his own actions. His drinking causes him to weep after he feels sorrow from hitting Stella, but all he does the next day is give her money to show that he still loves her. Women were very easy to please in the past and were often hit. "Tiger-tiger! Drop the bottle top! Drop it! We've had this date with each other from the beginning!"(180) This is just right before Stanley fully rapes Blanche. This quote shows Stanley's true side of violence and animalistic behavior. The role of violence is with Stanley every step of the way. This quote is very important because Stanley acted like it was supposed to happen from the very beginning. This shows how little Stanley thinks of women and his wife. He uses himself to get what he desires even if he has to use violence. 

SURVIVAL OF BLANCHE

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. Blanche, on the other hand, is dishonest but she never lies out of malice. Her cruelty is unintentional; often, she lies in a vain or misguided effort to please. Throughout the play, 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. In Freudian terms, Stanley is pure id, while Blanche represents the super-ego and Stella the ego – but the balancing between the id and super-ego is not found only in Stella's mediation, but in the tension between these forces within Blanche herself. She finds Stanley's primitivism so threatening precisely because it is something she sees, and hides, within 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. Physical desire, and not intellectual or spiritual intimacy, is the heart of Stella's and Stanley's relationship, but Williams makes it clear that this does not make their bond any weaker. Desire is also Blanche's undoing, because she cannot find a healthy way of dealing with her natural urges - she is always either trying to suppress them or pursuing them with abandon.

Loneliness

The companion theme to desire is loneliness, and 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.

Desire vs Cemeteries / Romance vs Realism

The fundamental tension of the play is this play between the romantic and the realistic, played out in parallel in the pairing of lust and death. Blanche takes the streetcars named Desire and Cemeteries, and like the French's "la petite mort," those cars and the themes they symbolize run together to Blanche's final destination. This dichotomy is present in nearly every element of the play, from the paired characterizations of Blanche the romantic and Stanley the realist, to how all of Blanche's previous sexual encounters are tangled up with death, to the actual names of the streetcars.

romantic Blanche DuBois, the play is a work of social realism. Blanche explains to Mitch that she fibs because she refuses to accept the hand fate has dealt her. Lying to herself and to others allows her to make life appear as it should be rather than as it is. Stanley, a practical man firmly grounded in the physical world, disdains Blanche’s fabrications and does everything he can to unravel them. The antagonistic relationship between Blanche and Stanley is a struggle between appearances and reality. It propels the play’s plot and creates an overarching tension. Ultimately, Blanche’s attempts to remake her own and Stella’s existences—to rejuvenate her life and to save Stella from a life with Stanley—fail.

One of the main ways Williams dramatizes fantasy’s inability to overcome reality is through an exploration of the boundary between exterior and interior. The set of the play consists of the two-room Kowalski apartment and the surrounding street. Williams’s use of a flexible set that allows the street to be seen at the same time as the interior of the home expresses the notion that the home is not a domestic sanctuary. The Kowalskis’ apartment cannot be a self-defined world that is impermeable to greater reality. The characters leave and enter the apartment throughout the play, often bringing with them the problems they encounter in the larger environment. For example, Blanche refuses to leave her prejudices against the working class behind her at the door. The most notable instance of this effect occurs just before Stanley rapes Blanche, when the back wall of the apartment becomes transparent to show the struggles occurring on the street, foreshadowing the violation that is about to take place in the Kowalskis’ home.

Though reality triumphs over fantasy in A Streetcar Named Desire,Williams suggests that fantasy is an important and useful tool. At the end of the play, Blanche’s retreat into her own private fantasies enables her to partially shield herself from reality’s harsh blows. Blanche’s insanity emerges as she retreats fully into herself, leaving the objective world behind in order to avoid accepting reality. In order to escape fully, however, Blanche must come to perceive the exterior world as that which she imagines in her head. Thus, objective reality is not an antidote to Blanche’s fantasy world; rather, Blanche adapts the exterior world to fit her delusions. In both the physical and the psychological realms, the boundary between fantasy and reality is permeable. Blanche’s final, deluded happiness suggests that, to some extent, fantasy is a vital force at play in every individual’s experience, despite reality’s inevitable triumph.

The Relationship between Sex and Death

Blanche’s fear of death manifests itself in her fears of aging and of lost beauty. She refuses to tell anyone her true age or to appear in harsh light that will reveal her faded looks. She seems to believe that by continually asserting her sexuality, especially toward men younger than herself, she will be able to avoid death and return to the world of teenage bliss she experienced before her husband’s suicide.

However, beginning in Scene One, Williams suggests that Blanche’s sexual history is in fact a cause of her downfall. When she first arrives at the Kowalskis’, Blanche says she rode a streetcar named Desire, then transferred to a streetcar named Cemeteries, which brought her to a street named Elysian Fields. This journey, the precursor to the play, allegorically represents the trajectory of Blanche’s life. The Elysian Fields are the land of the dead in Greek mythology. Blanche’s lifelong pursuit of her sexual desires has led to her eviction from Belle Reve, her ostracism from Laurel, and, at the end of the play, her expulsion from society at large.

Sex leads to death for others Blanche knows as well. Throughout the play, Blanche is haunted by the deaths of her ancestors, which she attributes to their “epic fornications.” Her husband’s suicide results from her disapproval of his homosexuality. The message is that indulging one’s desire in the form of unrestrained promiscuity leads to forced departures and unwanted ends. In Scene Nine, when the Mexican woman appears selling “flowers for the dead,” Blanche reacts with horror because the woman announces Blanche’s fate. Her fall into madness can be read as the ending brought about by her dual flaws—her inability to act appropriately on her desire and her desperate fear of human mortality. Sex and death are intricately and fatally linked in Blanche’s experience.

Dependence on Men

A Streetcar Named Desirepresents a sharp critique of the way the institutions and attitudes of postwar America placed restrictions on women’s lives. Williams uses Blanche’s and Stella’s dependence on men to expose and critique the treatment of women during the transition from the old to the new South. Both Blanche and Stella see male companions as their only means to achieve happiness, and they depend on men for both their sustenance and their self-image. Blanche recognizes that Stella could be happier without her physically abusive husband, Stanley. Yet, the alternative Blanche proposes—contacting Shep Huntleigh for financial support—still involves complete dependence on men. When Stella chooses to remain with Stanley, she chooses to rely on, love, and believe in a man instead of her sister. Williams does not necessarily criticize Stella—he makes it quite clear that Stanley represents a much more secure future than Blanche does.

For herself, Blanche sees marriage to Mitch as her means of escaping destitution. Men’s exploitation of Blanche’s sexuality has left her with a poor reputation. This reputation makes Blanche an unattractive marriage prospect, but, because she is destitute, Blanche sees marriage as her only possibility for survival. When Mitch rejects Blanche because of Stanley’s gossip about her reputation, Blanche immediately thinks of another man—the millionaire Shep Huntleigh—who might rescue her. Because Blanche cannot see around her dependence on men, she has no realistic conception of how to rescue herself. Blanche does not realize that her dependence on men will lead to her downfall rather than her salvation. By relying on men, Blanche puts her fate in the hands of others.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Light

Throughout the play, Blanche avoids appearing in direct, bright light, especially in front of her suitor, Mitch. She also refuses to reveal her age, and it is clear that she avoids light in order to prevent him from seeing the reality of her fading beauty. In general, light also symbolizes the reality of Blanche’s past. She is haunted by the ghosts of what she has lost—her first love, her purpose in life, her dignity, and the genteel society (real or imagined) of her ancestors.

Blanche covers the exposed lightbulb in the Kowalski apartment with a Chinese paper lantern, and she refuses to go on dates with Mitch during the daytime or to well-lit locations. Mitch points out Blanche’s avoidance of light in Scene Nine, when he confronts her with the stories Stanley has told him of her past. Mitch then forces Blanche to stand under the direct light. When he tells her that he doesn’t mind her age, just her deceitfulness, Blanche responds by saying that she doesn’t mean any harm. She believes that magic, rather than reality, represents life as it ought to be. Blanche’s inability to tolerate light means that her grasp on reality is also nearing its end.

In Scene Six, Blanche tells Mitch that being in love with her husband, Allan Grey, was like having the world revealed in bright, vivid light. Since Allan’s suicide, Blanche says, the bright light has been missing. Through all of Blanche’s inconsequential sexual affairs with other men, she has experienced only dim light. Bright light, therefore, represents Blanche’s youthful sexual innocence, while poor light represents her sexual maturity and disillusionment.

Bathing

Throughout A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche bathes herself. Her sexual experiences have made her a hysterical woman, but these baths, as she says, calm her nerves. In light of her efforts to forget and shed her illicit past in the new community of New Orleans, these baths represent her efforts to cleanse herself of her odious history. Yet, just as she cannot erase the past, her bathing is never done. Stanley also turns to water to undo a misdeed when he showers after beating Stella. The shower serves to soothe his violent temper; afterward, he leaves the bathroom feeling remorseful and calls out longingly for his wife.

Drunkenness

Both Stanley and Blanche drink excessively at various points during the play. Stanley’s drinking is social: he drinks with his friends at the bar, during their poker games, and to celebrate the birth of his child. Blanche’s drinking, on the other hand, is anti-social, and she tries to keep it a secret. She drinks on the sly in order to withdraw from harsh reality. A state of drunken stupor enables her to take a flight of imagination, such as concocting a getaway with Shep Huntleigh. For both characters, drinking leads to destructive behavior: Stanley commits domestic violence, and Blanche deludes herself. Yet Stanley is able to rebound from his drunken escapades, whereas alcohol augments Blanche’s gradual departure from sanity.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Shadows and Cries

As Blanche and Stanley begin to quarrel in Scene Ten, various oddly shaped shadows begin to appear on the wall behind her. Discordant noises and jungle cries also occur as Blanche begins to descend into madness. All of these effects combine to dramatize Blanche’s final breakdown and departure from reality in the face of Stanley’s physical threat. When she loses her sanity in her final struggle against Stanley, Blanche retreats entirely into her own world. Whereas she originally colors her perception of reality according to her wishes, at this point in the play she ignores reality altogether.

The Varsouviana Polka

The Varsouviana is the polka tune to which Blanche and her young husband, Allen Grey, were dancing when she last saw him alive. Earlier that day, she had walked in on him in bed with an older male friend. The three of them then went out dancing together, pretending that nothing had happened. In the middle of the Varsouviana, Blanche turned to Allen and told him that he “disgusted” her. He ran away and shot himself in the head.

The polka music plays at various points in A Streetcar Named Desire,when Blanche is feeling remorse for Allen’s death. The first time we hear it is in Scene One, when Stanley meets Blanche and asks her about her husband. Its second appearance occurs when Blanche tells Mitch the story of Allen Grey. From this point on, the polka plays increasingly often, and it always drives Blanche to distraction. She tells Mitch that it ends only after she hears the sound of a gunshot in her head.

The polka and the moment it evokes represent Blanche’s loss of innocence. The suicide of the young husband Blanche loved dearly was the event that triggered her mental decline. Since then, Blanche hears the Varsouviana whenever she panics and loses her grip on reality.

“It’s Only a Paper Moon”

In Scene Seven, Blanche sings this popular ballad while she bathes. The song’s lyrics describe the way love turns the world into a “phony” fantasy. The speaker in the song says that if both lovers believe in their imagined reality, then it’s no longer “make-believe.” These lyrics sum up Blanche’s approach to life. She believes that her fibbing is only her means of enjoying a better way of life and is therefore essentially harmless.

As Blanche sits in the tub singing “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” Stanley tells Stella the details of Blanche’s sexually corrupt past. Williams ironically juxtaposes Blanche’s fantastical understanding of herself with Stanley’s description of Blanche’s real nature. In reality, Blanche is a sham who feigns propriety and sexual modesty. Once Mitch learns the truth about Blanche, he can no longer believe in Blanche’s tricks and lies.

Meat

In Scene One, Stanley throws a package of meat at his adoring Stella for her to catch. The action sends Eunice and the Negro woman into peals of laughter. Presumably, they’ve picked up on the sexual innuendo behind Stanley’s gesture. In hurling the meat at Stella, Stanley states the sexual proprietorship he holds over her. Stella’s delight in catching Stanley’s meat signifies her sexual infatuation with him.

Context

Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams III in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1911. His friends began calling him Tennessee in college, in honor of his Southern accent and his father’s home state. Williams’s father, C.C. Williams, was a traveling salesman and a heavy drinker. Williams’s mother, Edwina, was a Mississippi clergyman’s daughter prone to hysterical attacks. Until Williams was seven, he, his parents, his older sister, Rose, and his younger brother, Dakin, lived with Edwina’s parents in Mississippi.

In 1918, the Williams family moved to St. Louis, marking the start of the family’s deterioration. C.C.’s drinking increased, the family moved sixteen times in ten years, and the young Williams, always shy and fragile, was ostracized and taunted at school. During these years, he and Rose became extremely close. Edwina and Williams’s maternal grandparents also offered the emotional support he required throughout his childhood. Williams loathed his father but grew to appreciate him somewhat after deciding in therapy as an adult that his father had given him his tough survival instinct.

After being bedridden for two years as a child due to severe illness, Williams grew into a withdrawn, effeminate adolescent whose chief solace was writing. At sixteen, Williams won a prize in a national competition that asked for essays answering the question “Can a good wife be a good sport?” His answer was published in Smart Setmagazine. The following year, he published a horror story in a magazine called Weird Tales, and the year after that he entered the University of Missouri to study journalism. While in college, he wrote his first plays, which were influenced by members of the southern literary renaissance such as Robert Penn Warren, William Faulkner, Allen Tate, and Thomas Wolfe. Before Williams could receive his degree, however, his father forced him to withdraw from school. Outraged because Williams had failed a required ROTC program course, C.C. Williams made his son go to work at the same shoe company where he himself worked.

After three years at the shoe factory, Williams had a minor nervous breakdown. He then returned to college, this time at Washington University in St. Louis. While he was studying there, a St. Louis theater group produced two of his plays, The Fugitive Kind andCandles to the Sun. Further personal problems led Williams to drop out of Washington University and enroll in the University of Iowa. While he was in Iowa, Rose, who had begun suffering from mental illness later in life, underwent a prefrontal lobotomy (an intensive brain surgery). The event greatly upset Williams, and it left his sister institutionalized for the rest of her life. Despite this trauma, Williams finally managed to graduate in 1938.

In the years following his graduation, Williams lived a bohemian life, working menial jobs and wandering from city to city. He continued to work on drama, however, receiving a Rockefeller grant and studying playwriting at the New School in New York. His literary influences were evolving to include the playwright Anton Chekhov and Williams’s lifelong hero, the poet Hart Crane. He officially changed his name to Tennessee Williams upon the publication of his short story “The Field of Blue Children” in 1939. During the early years of World War II, Williams worked in Hollywood as a scriptwriter and also prepared material for what would become The Glass Menagerie.

In 1944, The Glass Menagerie opened in New York and won the prestigious New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, catapulting Williams into the upper echelon of American playwrights. A Streetcar Named Desire premiered three years later at the Barrymore Theater in New York City. The play, set in contemporary times, describes the decline and fall of a fading Southern belle named Blanche DuBois. A Streetcar Named Desire cemented Williams’s reputation, garnering another Drama Critics’ Circle Award and also a Pulitzer Prize. Williams went on to win another Drama Critics’ Circle Award and Pulitzer for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955.

Much of the pathos found in Williams’s drama was mined from the playwright’s own life. Alcoholism, depression, thwarted desire, loneliness, and insanity were all part of Williams’s world. His experience as a known homosexual in an era unfriendly to homosexuality also informed his work. Williams’s most memorable characters, many of them female, contain recognizable elements of their author, Edwina, and Rose. His vulgar, irresponsible male characters, such as Stanley Kowalski, were likely modeled on Williams’s own father and other males who tormented Williams during his childhood.

Williams’s early plays also connected with the new American taste for realism that emerged following the Depression and World War II. The characters in A Streetcar Named Desire are trying to rebuild their lives in postwar America: Stanley and Mitch served in the military, while Blanche had affairs with young soldiers based near her home.

Williams set his plays in the South, but the compelling manner in which he rendered his themes made them universal, winning him an international audience and worldwide acclaim. However, most critics agree that the quality of Williams’s work diminished as he grew older. He suffered a long period of depression following the death of his longtime partner, Frank Merlo, in 1963. His popularity during these years also declined due to changed interests in the theater world. During the radical 1960s and 1970s, nostalgia no longer drew crowds, and Williams’s explorations of sexual mores came across as tired and old-fashioned.

Williams died in 1983 when he choked on a medicine-bottle cap in an alcohol-related incident at the Elysée Hotel in New York City. He was one month short of his seventy-second birthday. In his long career he wrote twenty-five full-length plays (five made into movies), five screenplays, over seventy one-act plays, hundreds of short stories, two novels, poetry, and a memoir. The mark he left on the tradition of realism in American drama is indelible.

A Note on the Epigraph

The epigraph to A Streecar Named Desire is taken from a Hart Crane poem titled “The Broken Tower.” Crane was one of Williams’s icons. Williams’s use of this quotation is apt, as Crane himself often employed epigraphs from his own icons, including Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, and Blake. Williams felt a personal affinity with Crane, who, like himself, had a bitter relationship with his parents and suffered from bouts of violent alcoholism. Most important, Williams identified with Crane as a homosexual writer trying to find a means of self-expression in a heterosexual world. Unlike Williams, Crane succumbed to his demons, drowning himself in 1932 at the age of thirty-three.

Williams was influenced by Crane’s imagery and by his unusual attention to metaphor. The epigraph’s description of love as only an “instant” and as a force that precipitates “each desperate choice” brings to mind Williams’s character Blanche DuBois. Crane’s speaker’s line, “I know not whither [love’s voice is] hurled,” also suggests Blanche. With increasing desperation, Blanche “hurls” her continually denied love out into the world, only to have that love revisit her in the form of suffering.