A Streetcar Named Desire

1. A Streetcar Named Desire

2. A Streetcar Named Desire • “Streetcar” opened on Broadway in 1947 for a two-year run. It starred Marlon Brando. • In 1951, it was made into what is considered one of the best-ever adaptations of a play into a movie. • It starred Brando, Vivian Leigh (“Scarlett O’Hara”), Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden. • 4 Oscars, including Best Actress (Leigh); Best Supporting Actress (Hunter); Best Supporting Actor (Malden) • The film tempers but remains true to the play’s controversial issues (for its time), ranging from rape and domestic violence, to homosexuality, and female promiscuity.

3. A Streetcar Named Desire The story opens with Blanche DuBois coming to New Orleans to visit her younger sister, the pregnant Stella, and the sister’s husband, Stanley Kowalski. To get to their seedy apartment, Blanche has to take a streetcar named Desire.

4. A Streetcar Named Desire • Thus, the Desire streetcar became the most famous street railway in the world. • It was started by the New Orleans Railway and Light Co. in 1920. It served the bar and nightclub section of the French Quarter along Bourbon Street.

5. A Streetcar Named Desire • The play occurs in three acts; somewhat of a rarity, but Williams’s intent was to suggest the passage of time: Act 1 occurs in late spring, Act 2 in summer, and Act 3 in early fall. • This poses the question as to whether Blanche overstays her welcome. • It is set in the late 1940s in the French Quarter of New Orleans. • The main setting is the Kowalskis’ run-down apartment in a squalid community that was once a neighborhood rich in old-world refinement and grandeur. • This is very symbolic of Blanche DuBois herself.

6. A Streetcar Named Desire • This is the story of the mental and emotional demise of Blanche, a fragile, repressed, delicate, Southern woman born to a once-wealthy, aristocratic family of Mississippi planters at the ancestral home, Belle Reve. • After losing her husband, home, and job, Blanche visits her sister, Stella, and brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, and becomes a long-term guest in their home. • She seeks refuge and happiness, but finds drunkenness, violence, lust and pain. • Williams described her as “moth-like” and delicate. She is a refined, sensitive, cultured, intelligent woman who is never willing to hurt anyone. • She is at the mercy of the brutal, realistic, world.

7. A Streetcar Named Desire Stanley Kowalski • That world is symbolized by Stanley, a common, working man who is simple, straightforward, and honest. • He tolerates nothing but the bare, unembellished truth and lives in a world without refinements. • He views women in a limited capacity. • He is seen as common, crude, and vulgar. • Stanley is the opposing force to Blanche’s struggles and her world of illusion.

8. A Streetcar Named Desire Stella Kowalski • Blanche’s younger sister, married to Stanley. • She has turned her back on her aristocratic upbringing to enjoy common marriage. • She is caught in between the two opposing worlds of her husband, Stanley, and her sister, Blanche. • She is a passive, gentle woman who nonetheless enjoys a raw, physical attraction to her husband.

9. A Streetcar Named Desire Mitch • Stanley’s best friend, who went through World War II with him. • Unmarried, he lives with his sick mother. • Softhearted and sensitive, he initially relates to Blanche and her world, but this often places him in conflict with Stanley.

10. A Streetcar Named Desire The play’s structure revolves around contrasts and confrontations between Blanche and Stanley. • Their backgrounds are very different, evidenced by their names. DuBois is assumed to be aristocratic, of proud heritage. Kowalski is a rough-hewn name, a worker in a steel mill.

11. A Streetcar Named Desire • Blanche speaks softly and flittingly; Stanley speaks loudly and brutally. • Stanley loves loud poker parties, rough humor, and hard drinking. Blanche is inclined toward teas, cocktails, and luncheons.

12. A Streetcar Named Desire • Stanley uses speech to express his wants, likes, and dislikes. Blanche speaks as if searching for higher values, reflecting education in her manner of speaking. • Money to Stanley is power that can buy basic wants and pleasures of life; his interest in Belle Reeve is only in the money he feels entitled to under the Napoleonic Code.

13. A Streetcar Named Desire • Stanley is “simple, straightforward, and honest.” He tolerates nothing but bare, unembellished truth. • Blanche, literally and figuratively, “puts a gaily-colored paper lantern” on the harshness of truth. • This isn’t lying to Blanche. A lie for Blanche would be a betrayal of herself, of everything she believes in. • Stanley hates the paper lantern. He sees it for nothing other than a lie, and he hates Blanche for deceiving others with it. • This conflict cannot be resolved; it originates in the essence of their personalities.