A Streetcar Named Desire

The most obvious difference between Blanche and Stanley is one of social background. Whereas Blanche comes from an old Southern family and was raised to see herself as socially elite, Stanley comes from an immigrant family and is a proud member of the working class. They meet one another in the socially turbulent postwar period in New Orleans, one of America’s most diverse cities. Each represents values that are antagonistic to the other’s chance at success in the modern world.

Within the play, Stella’s loyalty serves as a symbol of that societal success. Blanche attempts to convince Stella to leave Stanley because she was born for better society and values, while Stanley keeps Stella in his grasp through his unpretentious, powerful sexual attraction. The basic differences in Blanche’s and Stanley’s social stations and relationship to Stella expand into larger issues that make compromise impossible.

Blanche and Stanley are polar opposites in several respects. Blanche clearly represents the world of fantasy. As she admits to Mitch, she wants to misrepresent things, and she wants things misrepresented to her. She lives for how things ought to be, not for how they are. She prefers magic and shadows to facing facts in bright light. Stanley, on the other hand, is a no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase kind of guy. He looks for joy in life, and where he finds it, he celebrates it. But, as he says, he expects people to lay their cards on the table. He has no patience for idle chit-chat, social compliments, fools, and frauds.

Blanche repeatedly refers to Stanley and his world as brutish, primitive, apelike, rough, and uncivilized. Stanley finds this sort of superiority offensive and says so, but there is something primal and brutish about Stanley. By contrast, Blanche represents civilization on the decline. She speaks vaguely of art, music, and poetry as proof of progress, but reveals little true knowledge. Blanche does not give Stanley credit for any higher feelings, but Stanley dislikes Blanche because of her unwillingness to reconcile herself to her own “lower” feelings.

The story of the DuBois and Kowalski families depicts the evolving society of the South over the first half of the twentieth century. The DuBois clan, embodied in the play by Blanche, represents the genteel society of the Southern plantation owners that presided through the nineteenth century. Stanley Kowalski, the son of Polish immigrants, descends from new Southerners. He works in a factory and is therefore engaged in the industrialization of the South, which contributed to the demise of the agrarian society in which Blanche and Stella were raised. The play demonstrates that Stanley is well adapted for survival in the New South, represented by the diverse city of New Orleans, while Blanche is unable to survive in the new society.

Blanche and Stella are remnants of Southern aristocracy’s decadence. The family’s material resources have been swallowed up, and all that remain are its manners and pretensions. Blanche deludes herself and imagines she lives in a world in which manners and pretensions are still relevant. Stella, however, has turned her back on her ancestors and married someone who would have been considered below her station by her own people. Stanley is new blood, for a new South in transition. But Williams portrays Stanley as possessing a fare share of brutality, suggesting that the changing world in which Stanley fits so perfectly is not necessarily a kind one. The struggle for survival has replaced gentility, and Blanche is an inevitable loser in this struggle.

The events of the play’s conclusion represent the death of the Old South. Unable to cope or to find a way to support herself since the loss of Belle Reve, Blanche goes mad and departs from reality. Stella sustains herself through her marriage and sexual union with Stanley. Stella and Stanley’s newborn child, a mixture of immigrant American and Southern American heritage, represents the South’s future.