The Tragic Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams has become one of the best known literary figures on the American Scene and also one of the most controversial. A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play opened on Broadway on December 3,1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the

Ethel Barrymore Theatre. While recognizing his compassion for frustrated and sensitive persons trapped in a highly competitive, commercial world, question whether he has not sacrificed his talent for popular success (Mood 43). “He [Williams] continued this study with Blanche Dubois of A Streetcar Named Desire (1947).” Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire is epitome of full-bodied male pulchritude and Williams’ most radiant symbol of virility. “In A Streetcar Named Desire the Southern gentlewoman, the last representative of a dying culture, is to delicate to with land the crudeness and decay surrounding her [Blanche Dubois]” (Mood 45). Blanche Dubois the last relic of the decade Southern plantation “Belle Reve”. “It would take Williams to place the sex-happy adult children of the New Orleans slum in the Greek Isles of the Blessed” (Mood 45). “The entrance of Blanche Dubois, delicate as a moth and dressed in immaculate white- and looking as if Blanche Dubois were about to take cocktails or tea in the best drawing room or garden, is an incongruous and shocking intrusion” (Mood 46). “Williams was born on March, 26, 1911, Williams suffered through a difficult and troubling childhood. William’s father, Cornelius Williams, was a shoe salesman and an emotionally absent parent” (Mood 48). William’s father became increasingly abusive as the Williams children grew older. Williams’s mother had lived the adolescence and young woman hood of a spoiled Southern Belle. “While success freed Wil...

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...rapes her (Cardollo 89).

Works Cited

Bigsby, C.W.E. "Tennessee Williams Streetcar to glory." Modern Critcial interpretation. (1988): 41-48. Print.

Brekman, Leonard. "Tragic downfall of Blanche Dubois." Modern Critical Interpretation. (1988): 33-45. Print.

Cardollo, Bert. "Drama of intaming an tradegy of incomprehension ." Modern Critical Interpretation. (1988): 60-92. Print..

Corrigan, Mary. Critical Companion To Tennessee Williams. 260-280. Print.

Kernan, Alvin B. "Truth and dramatic in Street Car." Moderen Critical Interpretation. (1988): `17-20. Print.

Mood , John J. "Structure of a streetcar desire." Street Car Named Desire . 1. (1998): n. page. Print

Qurine, Leonard. "The Cards indicate a voyage on a streetcar named desire." Modern Critical interpretation. (1988): 61-78. Print.

Tennessee, Williams. Street Car Named Desire. New Orleans : 1947. 1-144. Print.