Southern Discomfort: An Introduction To Tennessee Williams And A Streetcar Named Desire

The Playwright: Tennessee Williams BornMarch 26, 1911 Columbus, Mississippi DiedFebruary 24, 1983 New York City OccupationPlaywright GenreSouthern Gothic Influences Anton Chekhov, D. H. Lawrence, August Strindberg, Hart Crane

Hart Crane, The Broken Tower Hart Crane, one of Williams’ biggest influences, provided the epigraph for A Streetcar Named Desire: “And so it was I entered the broken world, To trace the visionary company of love, its voice An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled) But not for long to hold each desperate choice.” Think about what this means in the context of the play; we will come back to this idea later. This is immensely important to think about.

Who Was Tennessee Williams? Williams is thought to have been able to identify with a fragility and vulnerability in women and once said: “I draw every character out of my very multiple split personality. My heroines always express the climate of my interior world at the time in which those characters were created.” This may stem from Williams’ struggle with his sexuality. From an early age, Williams used writing as “an escape from a world of reality in which [he] felt acutely uncomfortable.” He lived in New Orleans from 1938, a bohemian place where all manner of behavior was tolerated, if not encouraged. It was here that he was inspired to create Streetcar. It is said that he saw, on the Vieux Carré, two streetcars. One was named “Desire” and the other “Cemetery” – which he thought was somehow symbolic of life itself.

Characters In Streetcar Blanche – From the South, has French ancestry; a “cultivated woman” of intelligence and breeding. Locked in mode of Old South. Out of place in setting. Talkative, active, often hysterical. Huntleigh – Stella’s ideal man: rich; aristocratic; polite to woman. Stella – Stella is opposite of Blanche: passive, silent, and submissive. She is worn down by the loss of Belle Reve (the beautiful dream). Representative of the fall of the Old South; the prosperity of the plantation-based aristocracy is failing. Stanley – Strong, compactly built; animal joy, especially with women; the gaudy seed-bearer. He is representative of power and pride. Eunice – Representative of the local people: kind, warm-hearted, getting close with strangers quickly; not educated. Contrast with Blanche.

The Southern Gothic Style Subgenre of the Gothic style popular in Europe during 1800s (i.e. Frankenstein). Southern Gothic is unique to American literature. – Relies on unusual, supernatural events to guide plot; uses these to explore social structure and cultural elements of the American South. – Features a cast of physically and mentally broken characters with one unbroken character who often functions as a savior. The hero is a gothic stereotype: a drunk lawyer, a spiteful recluse. – Common themes: freakishness, being an outsider, imprisonment (figurative or literal), violence.

Historical and Spatial Context Following their defeat by the Northern states, the South suffered economically during and after the Civil War. However, this air of decaying grandeur added to the romantic appeal for many writers, including Williams. As time moved on, industrialisation continued in the cities. Whilst the plantations continued to decay, urban growth and capitalism flourished in the cities. (Consider Stanley and Blanche as symbols of the urban and the decaying traditional plantations respectively). Williams was interested in the progress of American history – not only where it had been, but also where it was going and how it would get there. Stanley represents the American Dream that all men are born equal and can succeed equally, whilst Blanche represents the old world, where class and race are still important issues.

Southern Politics And Culture The American South is arguably the most unique political region in the world. – The South must deal with many novel crises: the legacies of slavery, war, and an economy that has continued to evolve from its agrarian roots. There has been a division between the “Old South” and the “New South.” – New South advocates want to seek a more equitable future; this faction has made some progress over the last fifty years. The sociopolitical cleavages are drawn between races and classes. Social order, continued political dominance, and supply-side economics have all taken root in the South. – These core Southern values are at odds with the new Southern values; they are reminiscent of the morals of the Old South.

Cultural Context Tennessee Williams saw the South as a broken and damaged place in which the decay was somehow charming. He said:“I write out of love for the South … once a way of life that I am just able to remember – not a society based on money … I write about the South because I think the war between romanticism and the hostility to it is very sharp there.” Williams is an almost completely non-political writer. More than any other American dramatist, he began to move away from writing about the large political issues to writing about the emotional burdens of everyday life. The tensions in this play come partly from cultural conflict – the worlds of Stanley and Blanche are so opposed that neither can understand the other. In this, notice the way in which they speak. Language (i.e. diction) gives us insight into one’s sociocutural standing.

Social Context Women in the Old South had a social and symbolic role, were expected to be passive and chaste. This world could not give Blanche what she needed (see scene 5) and so she tried to marry into the ‘light and culture’, but on doing so, she discovers that there is corruption and deceit behind the façade. All of the Southern writers seemed to have vivid imaginations which were often bizarre and grotesque (Southern Gothic). The roots of this literature lay perhaps in the fact that the writers knew that they were part of a dying culture – where the dashing and romantic were founded on an economy based on injustice and cruelty. Blanche and Stanley are from different worlds where money has different values... hence Stanley’s attitude to the lost Belle Reve and ‘Dame’ Blanche’s appearance of wealth (furs, rhinestone, tiaras, etc.).

Theatrical Context Through his staging and other theatrical effects, Williams created a ‘theatre of gauze’ which makes the audience more self conscious of the playgoing experience, and thus gives ‘truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion’ This allows the audience deeper into the experience using lighting, music, colour, sound to appeal to the senses Expressionist features (eg music, lighting used to represent the workings of the protagonist’s inner mind) allow the audience to experience the psychic condition of the central character Symbolism: Williams structures Streetcar using a vast array of imagery arranged in patterns of opposition. As Williams himself said “symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama…the purest language of plays.”

So, What Is The Play About? According to Williams, the play is about: “the ravishment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate, by the savage and brutal forces of modern society.”