A Streetcar Named Desire - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire is based in post-World War II New Orleans, specifically the French Quarter, where a mixed ethnic and the social working-class group attempt to live in close proximity to each other without coming to blows. It is a noisy, sometimes violent, and always busy neighborhood that opens up to Blanche Dubois at the opening of the play. Blanche is a retiring former Southern Belle now attempting to pick up the pieces of her shattered life and shattered psyche to make a new start. She arrives at her sister’s tiny apartment, consisting only of two rooms separated by a flimsy curtain, explaining how she has been given a lengthy leave of absence from her teaching position in Laurel, Mississippi in an effort to provide her with the time she needs to restore her nerves. From here, Blanche only becomes more complicated, complicating the lives of her sister and Stanley Kowalski, her sister’s husband, as she attempts to secure a small, quiet place on earth to call her own.

From this mystifying opening, the play begins to illustrate how the two women and the man interact as they attempt to find a peaceful means of co-existence. This is made exceedingly difficult as Blanche cannot accept or understand how Stella might possibly be happy in such surroundings and married to such a ‘common’ brute man. Shortly after her arrival, she is attempting to encourage Stella to run away with her to somewhere nicer, perhaps to the home of an old beau of hers by the name of Shep Huntleigh, who is now a millionaire. It is never determined whether this individual actually existed or would have recognized Blanche had he been given the chance. The closest she ever comes to actually contact him is in a frenetic phone call to Western Union, dropped as soon as Stanley walks in the room. However, Stella asks her what might have possibly given Blanche the impression that she was caught in something she wanted to get out of.

Having finally reconciled herself to her sister’s home, for the time being, Blanche remains unable to accept her dismal surroundings and she immediately begins setting about to make the small apartment more opulent-seeming by hanging paper lanterns over bare light bulbs and sewing new slipcovers to cover the shabby furnishings of her new home. ...Download file to see next pages Read More