1. A Streetcar Named Desire
1940’s New Orleans:
Social Context

2. Introduction
“[New Orleans] is poor but unlike corresponding sections in other American cities, it has a raffish charm.”

3. The Old South
“The Old South is part of our national myth - corseted Southern belles strolling with lacy parasols, gentlemen sipping mint juleps on the porch of the plantation house, slaves toiling in cotton and tobacco fields, the Blue and the Grey battling in the nation's bloodiest war. But new research shows that the South was never as simple as the myths suggests. Nor will it ever be, say scholars who herald the New South as a dynamic, modern, and complex place.”

4. “New Orleans – a black sheep.”
Southern Lifestyle
“New Orleans – a black sheep.”

5. Southern Literature
“ As an exposition of its life, the literature of the South is a study. For even in our Slave States the thoughts of scholarly men, who have the leisure and inclination for reflection, are, in due process of time, translated into the prose of every-day conduct.”

6. The Era of Change
“ Thus the conflict is between the oversensitive aristocratic world of Blanche and the brutal, realistic, present-day world represented by Stanley.”

7. The End
Episcopal Rectory, Columbus, Mississippi (ca. 1875). Birthplace of Tennessee Williams