Analysis of Characters and Plot in A Streetcar Named Desire

Introduction

In this essay I shall deal with the protagonists and their relationships in A Streetcar Named Desire, a drama written by Tennessee Williams, in order to better understand the complexity of gender roles in this period and transition from traditional to modern way of living.

Thomas Lanier Williams, later known as Tennessee Williams, was born in Columbus, Mississippi in 1911. His family was quite unhappy and his parents often fought, mainly because of his father’s drinking and gambling. After his father obtained a job in St. Louis, the whole family moved there. He and his sisters were often teased at school because of their southern accents. It can be very clearly seen in the drama A Streetcar Named Desire that all of these experiences from his real life were poured into his literary work.

Although he first began writing dramas in university, he was not initially successful. After he earned a bachelor degree from the State University of Iowa, he actively began writing and publishing literary works. Some of his successful works were: The Glass Menagerie, You Touched Me!, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, The Rose Tattoo and A Streetcar Named Desire. Not all of his work was equally acclaimed, but he did get recognition for A Streetcar Named Desire in the form of Pulitzer Prize and a film adaptation of the play, directed by Elia Kazan. He passed away in New York City in 1983.

Main Characters

Blanche DuBois

Blanche is a woman in her early thirties, a former schoolteacher, who came to stay with her sister and her husband for the summer. She and her sister Stella both come from a wealthy southern background, and neither is accustomed to live in such a mundane, shabby little apartment that Stella and her husband Stanley live in. she makes a big show out of explaining her sister how she had to leave her teaching position because of her nerves, and displaying her fancy manners and expensive wardrobe as soon as she comes. She creates an aura of mystery and manners around her and acts as if such life was below her.

Soon enough, her façade begins to crumble and little pieces of her past and her true identity begin to appear. It soon becomes evident that, even though she claims she rarely drinks, she is an alcoholic, she managed to lose the family estate, supposedly because she had to pay for all the funerals when her and Stella’s family members dying one by one and she lived in a hotel known to foster people of poor morals called Flamingo. Scene by scene, her act begins to crumble and we learn more and more about her past.

We find out that she had been married at a very tender age of sixteen. She claims she had loved her husband, called Allan Grey, very dearly and still keeps his letters to her. It is later revealed that her husband actually committed suicide after she had confronted him at a party about his homosexuality. One day, she caught him and his lover (whom she thought was just an old friend) and could never forget it or understand it. Being sixteen, in love, and having lived a very sheltered life up to that point, she did not know how to deal with the situation. She felt betrayed, heartbroken and confused. After her husband’s death, she became lost. She started dating, just for the sake of never being alone, but never truly caring for any of the men she was seeing. It can be seen from her wardrobe and jewelry, that she benefited financially from those encounters. Stanley found out and told Mitch and Stella that she actually did not leave her job because of her nerves, but because of having been caught having an affair with a 17-years-old student. She was fired immediately. In fact, she became so notorious in Laurel that she was literally asked to leave the town.

This is where we actually realise that Blanche is not only completely broke and dependant of Stella, but also, has no place to go to. Her only way out of this situation is to marry Mitch. This she attempts to do by not seduce him in a way she seduced her former lovers, to be with them a couple of weeks and leave them. She actually tries to form a deeper relationship with him and spends weeks courting (and being courted) him and playing a grand old-fashioned lady with high morals and upbringing. She also tries to deceive him into thinking she is younger than her actual age. She does this by never seeing him in the daytime, wearing lots of make-up and nice clothes and covering up lamps with paper lanterns to shield her true appearance from the direct light that would expose her true age.

It can really be seen how she was holding onto a thread when Mitch finally leaves her and she realizes that her last hope had vanished and there is truly nothing left for her to do to get out of her situation. After Stanley rapes her, she has a mental breakdown and ends up in an asylum. During the period between the rape and the doctors arriving to take her away, she lives in a fairy-tale world she had created for herself in which she believes that a wealthy former flame of hers will come and take her away.

The true extent of the trauma caused by her husband’s death can be observed in the part of drama where Stella goes into labour and she speaks to Mitch and later Stanley. She hears the music that played in the background when he died and it all ends with a bang.

Stella Kowalski

She is Blanche’s younger sister and Stanley’s wife. In the drama she is presented as meek, fragile, kind and caring. She is deeply concerned for her sister and believes her stories blindly. Despite her pregnancy, she constantly runs errands for Blanche and acts like her maid. She is clearly embarrassed when Blanche points out how poor her and Stanley’s apartment looks. She is not as concerned with her upbringing and pedigree as Blanche is. She lives a simple life.

She loves Stanley with all of her heart, despite him occasionally mistreating her. When he hits her and she and Blanche run away and hide at her neighbour’s apartment, Stella quickly returns. When Blanche asks her how she can live with this animal of a person, she responds with an explanation that he actually has really good prospects and that the future looks very bright for him.

Despite her being very caring and gentle, a very primal instinct of her is shown when she sleeps with Stanley, despite him hitting her earlier that day. It is also evident in their later conversation when he reminds her of how much fun they had before Blanche came and how they had to keep their voices down because she can hear everything from their bedroom. It is implied that she ran away and married him because of the primal instinct of lust. This attitude of hers can be seen in her saying: “But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark - that sort of make everything else seem - unimportant.”

I believe this could be seen from the evolutionary point of view and the survival of the fittest. Stella’s and Blanche’s kind are nearly in extinction. This can be seen from their entire family dying in a very short period. Blanche does not know how to cope with the new world, and she is represented as being completely lost in the world. However, Stella followed her instincts and chose the strongest, fittest male she could find. Stanley, despite being a brute, is the man of the new world and he can make his way around. He is her way out and the way of survival.

Despite him being violent, she does not believe her sister when she accuses him of rape. She claims that if she believed her, she could never stay with him, and she could not cope with that idea. So she decided to live in denial and put her sister in an asylum.

Stanley Kowalski

He is Stella’s husband. He works as a salesman and is the only one of his friends that has any prospects of advancing in life. His ancestors are Polish and he is a representation of a new kind of people, the advanced specie that is taking over America and pushing out the old specie of Americans that Stella and Blanche belong to. He believes himself to be a true American: “I am not a Polack. People from Poland are Poles, not Polacks. But what I am is a one hundred percent American born and raised in the greatest country on earth and proud as hell of it, so don't ever call me a Polack.”

He is brutal and honest and without any manners. He could not care less for what people (especially Blanche) think of him as long as he gets his way in life. He does his best to discredit Blanche, and sees right through her little charade. His true colors are seen when he beats his pregnant wife and rapes her sister, all the while believing he was somehow entitled to do that and not wrong in any way. Harold “Mitch” Mitchell

Mitch is Stanley’s friend and co-worker. He begins to court Blanche and sees her as a saviour as much as she sees him as one. He lives with a dying mother, who raised him well, and he has better manners then the rest of his company, but she is concerned who will take care of him and spend time with him after she dies. So he tries to find himself a wife. Despite himself and Blanche being very different, they manage to bond over their sad love stories and the fact that they are both alone in the world. It seems apparent that they will marry, until the moment Stanley tells Mitch about Blanche’s past and he not only breaks up with her, but also tries to forcefully take advantage of her. However, when she is taken away by the doctors, he is the only one of the men to show any emotion towards the poor creature.

Relationships

It is very difficult to describe all the complex relationships between the characters in this play. Some were already touched upon in the description of the characters, but some require further explanation. To begin with, Stella and Blanche have a loving, sisterly relationship and they both care for each other. It is evident that Blanche somewhat takes advantage of her sister, but despite all that, she still wants what is best for her. This is seen from her asking for Stella’s explanation how she could return to Stanley after he hit her and explaining what a brutal man he really seems. Stella, on the other hand is having a hard time believing that her sister might be a prostitute and that her whole story of why she came to visit them is made up.

The relationship of Stella and Stanley is mostly already explained. They are mad for each other, but their relationship seems based on sex and primal instincts. They are expecting a child together, and Stanley seems to be very happy about it because he has proven himself to be a fertile alpha-male. She depends on him both financially and emotionally. Without him, she would most likely be just as lost in this world as her sister is.

Stanley and Blanche have a very strained and odd relationship. Although they initially flirt, most likely because she no longer knows how to address men, other than flirting with them, it soon becomes evident that they cannot stand each other. She constantly implies that he is hardly more than an animal, and he cannot stand her pretending to be a great lady and mocking him. She tries to show her sister what kind of a man he really is, but Blanche is too in love to realize this. He, on the other hand, goes above and beyond to discredit her and manages to find out her dirty secrets and tells everything to both Stella and Mitch, destroying Blanche’s opportunity to make something of her life after all.

Blanche’s and Mitch’s relationship is based on need. They both desperately need salvation and they only have each other to do that. He needs her because he does not want to be left alone in the world when his mother passes away, and she needs him because she no longer has any place to go to. They cannot truly understand each other, because of their different upbringing and background and this is seen after their first date during which they barely spoke because they simply did not know what to talk about. When he breaks up with her, she is left devastated without any prospects of a normal future left, while he still might find somebody to his liking to spend his life with.

Conclusion

In this drama, Williams has masterfully managed to represent the difficulty of women and their role during this period. Not many of them had any opportunity in life, other than get married and bare children. They were still expected to view men as their saviours, despite their flaws and had no way of fending for themselves without being ostracised by the society. Men, on the other hand were allowed to get away with just about anything and could so whatever they wanted in terms of carrier and life choices.

The appearance of a “new sort” of an American is represented in the form of Stanley Kowalski, a descendant of immigrants, and they are seen as the future of America. As we can see today, the USA does seem to prospect and progress because of being a melting pot of many different traditions and nations and their adapting to this new way of life and furthering the entire country, which the “old Americans” could never do because they can no longer adapt, unless they merge with the immigrants.