70 pages • 2 hours read
Tennessee WilliamsA Streetcar Named Desire
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1947A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Imagination Versus Reality
A Streetcar Named Desire grapples with how an individual experiences reality. One of the main mysteries that become revealed over the course of the play is Blanche’s history. Rather than being on vacation as Blanche claims, she in reality has suffered serious traumas and is fleeing a past of which she is ashamed. However, it does not suffice to say that she lies to the residents of Elysian Fields. Upon arrival, she tells Stella that she was “on the verge of—lunacy, almost” (14) and that she “stayed at Belle Reve and tried to hold it together” (20). She expresses emotional honesty despite excluding the details about her relationships at the Flamingo Hotel and at school.
Williams chose to portray Blanche’s hallucinations on the stage. The audience hears the "Varsouviana" when it plays in Blanche’s head and sees shadows dancing on the wall, even when other characters do not. These visceral moments make reality out of illusion and bring into question what constitutes a “real” experience.
Stella’s portrayal of her relationship with Stanley is constantly in flux. She tells herself and Blanche certain things about her marriage that are inconsistent with Stella’s actions in moments of despair. For example, she declares that she is “not in anything that [she] has a desire to get out of” (74) the day after poker night. The portrait of her the night before, harbored upstairs at Eunice’s flat, paints an entirely different portrait. Her imagination of the relationship is slightly destabilized by the actual circumstances of the relationship.
At one point in the play, Stanley yells, “There isn’t a goddam thing but imagination!” (158). His dialogue holds ironic truth. He is, of course, attempting to tell Blanche that her life is a lie, but decontextualized, the quote seems to suggest that imagination constitutes reality, that all one has is imagination. The play itself is an illustration of this, supplying a three-dimensional portrait of human life drawn from the inextricable materials of imagination and experience.
Forms of Power
Stanley and Blanche exert different types of power. Stanley is able to shape the world around him using relentless force and violence, fueled by intoxication. He throws his dishes on the floor rather than cleaning them up, bellowing: “I am the king around here, so don’t forget it” (131). He beats his pregnant wife and rapes his sister-in-law.
Blanche conjures power through complex dialogue and critical thinking. At the beginning of the play, however, she tries to assert her independence through unsubstantiated claims about Stella’s way of living at Elysian Fields. She soon abandons these criticisms, realizing that Stanley is the root of the problem. Her monologue about Stanley in Scene 4, despite bringing positive change to Stella, gives Stanley fuel to continue hunting her.
During her final argument with Mitch, she offers: “I thanked God for you, because you seemed to be gentle—a cleft in the rock of the world that I could hide in” (147). This is just one example of her speech laced with poetics and subtext. She evokes emotion and commands attention through conversation, which is likely one of the characteristics that makes her so unique to the sensitive Mitch. They both have the capacity to communicate, illustrating the power of language.
It is up for debate whether or not Stanley’s brute power wins at the end of the play. Blanche does get shipped out of Elysian Fields, but her demise at the hands of Stanley has left behind a trail of emotional wreckage. Stella blames herself for her failure to care for her sister, and Mitch has lost the potential love of his life. Even the baby girl will grow up with stories of a phantom aunt. The audience is left to wonder how the quality of the character’s lives may have brightened had Blanche remained and had time and space to heal her traumas.
The Meaning of Desire
The intensity of the play’s scenes is often driven by kinds of desire. The definition of the term is constantly brought into question. Stella desires Stanley in the sense that she enjoys sex and intimacy with him. Stanley desires Stella in the same way, constantly reminding her: “God, honey, it’s gonna be sweet when we can make noise in the night the way that we used to and get the colored lights going with nobody’s sister behind the curtains to hear us” (133). Of course, he does not account for the fact that now, instead of a sister behind the curtains, there will be a baby. This desire they have for each other is driven by memory, or perhaps even nostalgia.
Blanche and Mitch have a desire for each other that is slightly more complex. They rely on each other emotionally because they have shared experiences of, among other things, loneliness and loss. They also, however, experience the playful lust of the other relationships in the play, as when Mitch tells Blanche, “Just give me a slap whenever I step out of bounds” (108).
Blanche and Stella have a desire for the familial ties of their youth, and they desire to care for each other. They have a brief but important conversation during Scene 4. Blanche likens her sister’s marriage to the streetcar. Stella responds, “Haven’t you ever ridden on that street-car?” and Blanche says, “It brought me here.—Where I’m not wanted and where I’m ashamed to be…” (31). Blanche becomes the direct object, driven by her desire to escape her past. She seeks safety through reconnecting with her sister, which is reciprocated by Stella’s hosting Blanche at the apartment indefinitely.
The desire driving all of these relationships remains unfulfilled over the course of the play. The audience must consider whether the quenching of desire would have, ultimately, benefitted the characters or left them underwhelmed, and whether their desires would be fleeting or sustained once realized.
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