A Streetcar Named Desire (Themes)

Themes

A Streetcar Named Desire opens with the arrival of Blanche DuBois, a Southern belle who has lost her inheritance, at the New Orleans home of her sister Stella and Stella’s husband Stanley. A conflict arises between Stanley and Blanche, and after several secrets about her past have been revealed, Stanley rapes Blanche while his wife is in the hospital giving birth. Stella, refusing to believe Blanche’s accusations, gives consent for the increasingly hysterical Blanche to be placed in a mental hospital.

Class Conflict

A major theme explored symbolically in Streetcar is the decline of the aristocratic family traditionally associated with the American South. These families had lost their historical importance as the agricultural base of the Southern states were unable to compete with the new industrialization. A labor shortage of agricultural workers developed in the South during the First World War because so many of the area’s men had to be employed either in the military or in defense-based industries. Many landowners, faced with large areas of land and no one to work on it, moved to urban areas. With the increasing industrialization which followed in the 1920s through the 1940s, the structure of the work force changed further: more women, immigrants, and black laborers entered the workforce and a growing urban middle class was created. Women gained the right to vote in 1920 and the old Southern tradition of an agrarian family aristocracy ruled by men began to come to an end.

In the context of this economic and cultural environment, Blanche represents the female aristocratic tradition of the Old South. Belle Reve, her family home, is typical of the plantations that were being sold off as the aristocracy bowed out to the new urbanization. Blanche’s ultimate fate can be interpreted as the destruction of the Old South by the new, industrial America, represented by an immigrant to the U.S., Stanley Kowalski. Referring to his courtship of Stella, Stanley revealingly observes that, “When we first met, me and you, you thought I was common. How right you was, baby. I was common as dirt. You showed me the snapshot of the place with the columns [Belle Reve]. I pulled you down off them columns and how you loved it.” By the end of the play, Stanley’s aggression has triumphed over Blanche’s inherited family superiority. As she departs for the mental hospital, her old-fashioned manners are still apparent when she says to the men, “Please don’t get up.” Their politeness in rising is a small gesture, however, considering their role in Blanche’s destruction and in the fall of the Old South itself.

Sex Roles

Some of Blanche’s difficulties can be traced to the narrow roles open to females during this period. Although she is an educated woman who has worked as a teacher, Blanche is nonetheless constrained by the expectations of Southern society. She knows that she needs men to lean on and to protect her, and she continues to depend on them throughout the play, right up to her conversation with the doctor from the mental hospital, where she remarks, “Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” She has clearly known sexual freedom in the past, but understands that sexual freedom does not fit the pattern of chaste behavior to which a Southern woman would be expected to conform. Her fear of rejection is realized when Mitch learns of her love affairs back home. By rejecting Blanche and claiming that she is not the ideal woman he naively thought she was, Mitch draws attention to the discrepancy between how women really behaved and what type of behavior was publicly expected of them by society at large.

Violence and Cruelty

Violence in this play is fraught with sexual passion. Trying to convince Blanche of her love for Stanley despite his occasional brutality, Stella explains, “But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark — that sort of make everything else seem — unimportant.” Eunice and Steve Hubbell’s relationship also has this element of violence, and there is the unnerving suggestion that violence is more common and more willingly accepted by the female partner in a marriage than one would like to believe.

Blanche translates Stella’s comment into the context of sexual passion, claiming that, “What you are talking about is brutal desire — just — Desire! — the name of that rattle-trap street-car that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another.” Stella asks,“Haven’t you ever ridden on that street-car?” and Blanche responds, “It brought me here. — Where I’m not wanted and where I’m ashamed to be.” It appears that the connection in Blanche’s past between violence and desire in some way contributes to the events within the time scale of the play. This is not to excuse Stanley’s later act of violence or to suggest that Blanche brings it on herself — rather, Williams is demonstrating how a cycle of violence, combined with passion and desire, is hard to break.

Madness

Considering how Tennessee Williams’ sister Rose was the recipient of a lobotomy, the theme of madness running through Streetcar in the form of Blanche’s neurosis and self-delusion may reveal some of the playwright’s fears about the instability of his own mental life. His lingering regrets and guilt about Rose’s treatment may also be seen in Stella’s anguished cry as Blanche is taken away: “What have I done to my sister? Oh, God, what have I done to my sister?”