Themes
Fantasy’s Inability to Overcome
Reality
Although Williams’s protagonist in A Streetcar Named Desire is the romantic
Blanche DuBois, the play is a work of social realism. Blanche explains to Mitch
that she fibs because she refuses to accept the hand fate has dealt her. Lying
to herself and to others allows her to make life appear as it should be rather
than as it is. Stanley, a practical man firmly grounded in the physical world,
disdains Blanche’s fabrications and does everything he can to unravel them.
The antagonistic relationship between Blanche and Stanley is a struggle
between appearances and reality. It propels the play’s plot and creates an
overarching tension. Ultimately, Blanche’s attempts to remake her own and
Stella’s existences—to rejuvenate her life and to save Stella from a life with
Stanley—fail.
One of the main ways Williams dramatizes fantasy’s inability to overcome
reality is through an exploration of the boundary between exterior and interior.
The set of the play consists of the two-room Kowalski apartment and the
surrounding street. Williams’s use of a flexible set that allows the street to be
seen at the same time as the interior of the home expresses the notion that the
home is not a domestic sanctuary. The Kowalskis’ apartment cannot be a
self-defined world that is impermeable to greater reality. The characters leave
and enter the apartment throughout the play, often bringing with them the
problems they encounter in the larger environment. For example, Blanche
refuses to leave her prejudices against the working class behind her at the
door. The most notable instance of this effect occurs just before Stanley rapes
Blanche, when the back wall of the apartment becomes transparent to show
the struggles occurring on the street, foreshadowing the violation that is about
to take place in the Kowalskis’ home.
Though reality triumphs over fantasy in A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams
suggests that fantasy is an important and useful tool. At the end of the play,
Blanche’s retreat into her own private fantasies enables her to partially shield
herself from reality’s harsh blows. Blanche’s insanity emerges as she retreats
fully into herself, leaving the objective world behind in order to avoid
accepting reality. In order to escape fully, however, Blanche must come to
perceive the exterior world as that which she imagines in her head. Thus,
objective reality is not an antidote to Blanche’s fantasy world; rather, Blanche
adapts the exterior world to fit her delusions. In both the physical and the
psychological realms, the boundary between fantasy and reality is permeable.
Blanche’s final, deluded happiness suggests that, to some extent, fantasy is a
vital force at play in every individual’s experience, despite reality’s inevitable
triumph.
The Relationship between Sex and
Death
Blanche’s fear of death manifests itself in her fears of aging and of lost beauty.
She refuses to tell anyone her true age or to appear in harsh light that will
reveal her faded looks. She seems to believe that by continually asserting her
sexuality, especially toward men younger than herself, she will be able to avoid
death and return to the world of teenage bliss she experienced before her
husband’s suicide.
However, beginning in Scene One, Williams suggests that Blanche’s sexual
history is in fact a cause of her downfall. When she first arrives at the
Kowalskis’, Blanche says she rode a streetcar named Desire, then transferred
to a streetcar named Cemeteries, which brought her to a street named Elysian
Fields. This journey, the precursor to the play, allegorically represents the
trajectory of Blanche’s life. The Elysian Fields are the land of the dead in Greek
mythology. Blanche’s lifelong pursuit of her sexual desires has led to her
eviction from Belle Reve, her ostracism from Laurel, and, at the end of the play,
her expulsion from society at large.
Sex leads to death for others, as Blanche knows as well. Throughout the play,
Blanche is haunted by the deaths of her ancestors, which she attributes to
their “epic fornications.” Her husband’s suicide results from her disapproval
of his homosexuality. The message is that indulging one’s desire in the form of
unrestrained promiscuity leads to forced departures and unwanted ends. In
Scene Nine, when the Mexican woman appears selling “flowers for the dead,”
Blanche reacts with horror because the woman announces Blanche’s fate. Her
fall into madness can be read as the ending brought about by her dual
flaws—her inability to act appropriately on her desire and her desperate fear of
human mortality. Sex and death are intricately and fatally linked in Blanche’s
experience.
Dependence on Men
A Streetcar Named Desire presents a sharp critique of the way the institutions
and attitudes of postwar America placed restrictions on women’s lives.
Williams uses Blanche’s and Stella’s dependence on men to expose and
critique the treatment of women during the transition from the old to the new
South. Both Blanche and Stella see male companions as their only means to
achieve happiness, and they depend on men for both their sustenance and
their self-image. Blanche recognizes that Stella could be happier without her
physically abusive husband, Stanley. Yet, the alternative Blanche
proposes—contacting Shep Huntleigh for financial support—still involves
complete dependence on men. When Stella chooses to remain with Stanley,
she chooses to rely on, love, and believe in a man instead of her sister.
Williams does not necessarily criticize Stella; he makes it quite clear that
Stanley represents a much more secure future than Blanche does.
For herself, Blanche sees marriage to Mitch as her means of escaping
destitution. Men’s exploitation of Blanche’s sexuality has left her with a poor
reputation. This reputation makes Blanche an unattractive marriage prospect,
but, because she is destitute, Blanche sees marriage as her only possibility for
survival. When Mitch rejects Blanche because of Stanley’s gossip about her
reputation, Blanche immediately thinks of another man—the millionaire Shep
Huntleigh—who might rescue her. Because Blanche cannot see around her
dependence on men, she has no realistic conception of how to rescue herself.
Blanche does not realize that her dependence on men will lead to her downfall
rather than her salvation. By relying on men, Blanche puts her fate in the
hands of others.
