Essay on streetcar named desire a

Submitted By alperelik
Words: 1109
Pages: 5

''A Streetcar Named Desire" by American playwright Tennessee Williams is a play about Blanche who is a schoolteacher from Laurel, Mississippi, arrives at the New Orleans apartment of her sister Stella Kowalski and her husband Stanley Kowalski because she has nowhere else to go, lose her plantation and the family home Belle Reve, due to the mismanagement . Her life totally changes when she faces with her lies, desires and especially gender discrimination while living at her sister’s apartment. Actually, siblings have a tragic story which effects their relation, personalities and mental health. However, readers can argue that Blanche is more exposed to tragic events than Stella.
To begin, the story takes place in 1947, two years after World War II and the entire story is staged in the cramped two-bedroom flat in a low-income area of the city's oldest section. Female characters like Blanche and Stella expect more than life, just as hundreds of women after World War II wanted to retain their new careers and worthiness. Blanche Dubois is by far the most complex character, to explore whether the novel can be regarded as her tragedy, protagonist has tragic and melancholic story with both pride of sexual desire and pride of intellect.
At the rising action of the novel , Blanche and Stanley's relationship grows more and more difficult, then Blanche starts to insult Stanley and he becomes more angry, also, aggressive. Before poker night, Stanley angrily pulls all of Blanche’s belongings out of her trunk. To him, Blanche’s gorgeous evening dresses, feather boas, fur stoles, and costume jewelry look expensive, and he assumes she has spent the family fortune on them. Later on, Stanley learns about Blanche's dubious past that she has lost her career as a teacher due to the unfortunate choices she made after learning of her husband's cheat on her. However, Stanley questioned Blanche about Belle Reve because he thinks she has still Money from the sale of the old family house. As Stanley states, “I pulled you down off them columns (of Belle Reve) and how you loved it." (62).He attacks Blanche’s aristocratic ways and humbled her to his status in society. Sum up, he blames honest Blanche as a thief and liar, therefore , Blanche feels embarrassed in the first days of her new life and her mood tragically affects her personality.
Blanches tragic story grows in a little while until climax of the novel. Stanley wants to rape Blanche because he knows that her wife, Stella loves him so much and blind to believe Blanche’s excuses. At the last chapter, Stanley tells to Blanche, "We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning!"(180). Stanley totally learns about Blanche's past and her prostitution. He also knows that she is slowly losing her mind. The rape of Blanche is what forces Stella to commit Blanche. One could easily justify that Stanley rapes Blanche only to force her out of his home.
Furthermore, Blanche, who insisted that “I don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be truth.”(129), has actually come clean about reality for the first time (by revealing that Stanley raped her). However no one believes her and Stella thinks her sister has serious mental problems. Therefore, she does not accept Blanche’s accusations that Stanley dislikes Blanche, and she dismisses Blanche’s claim that Stanley raped her. Eventually, she stands by Stanley, perhaps in part because she gives birth to his child. Readers can see at the end of the novel Blanche tragically suffers from dementia, therefore, she is interned into a mental hospital.
On the contrary, one might say that Stella is a more tragic character who married lower-class Stanley whom shares a tough sexual relationship. Her marriage with Stanley is wild and violent but renewing. In "A Street Car Named Desire" there is a important example of the gender discrimination when Stanley talks to Stella in a degrading voice. "Let me enlighten you on"(24) Stanley attacks females, he