Context of A Streetcar Named Desire

Context of A Streetcar Named Desire

1. Sources

   • http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/streetcar/context.html
   • https://prezi.com/p6myg8uawxl0/historical-context-of-the-streetcar-named-desire/

2. Biography of Tennessee Williams

   • Early life
     • born in Columbus, Mississipi, 1911
     • his father, C.C. Williams, was a traveling salesman and a heavy drinker
     • his mother, Edwina, was a Mississippi clergyman’s daughter prone to hysterical attacks
     • when Williams, his parents and his siblings moved out of the maternal grandparents' home, the family detorioriated
       • CC's drinking increased
       • the family moved 16 times in 10 years
       • the shy Williams was ostracised and taunted at school
       • he became close with his older sister, Rose
       • he loathed his father, but later decided in adult therapy that he was grateful to him for giving him a tough, survival instinct
       • after being bedridden for two years because of severe illness, Williams became a withdrawn, effeminate 16 year old, whose only solace was his writing
   • Adult life
     • he started a degree in journalism at the University of Missouri
       • his father forced him to drop out and he started working with his father for a shoe company
         • after 3 years, Williams had a minor nervous breakdown
           • enrolled in University of Washington, and then the University of Iowa, finally graduating in 1938
             • while he was in Iowa, Rose began suffering from mental illness, had a prefrontal labotomy and was left institutionalised for the rest of her life, which greatly upset Williams
     • following his graduation, he continued to work menial jobs, but focused on drama

3. A Streetcar Named Desire premiered in 1947 at the Barrymore Theatre in New York City

   • much of the pathos is derived from Williams' life
     • Alcoholism, depression, thwarted desire, loneliness, and insanity
     • experiences as openly homosexual in an era disapproving of that informed work
   • most memorable characters
     • most of them female
       • baring resemblance to Edwina and Rose
     • vulgar, irresponsible male characters (Stanley) seem to be modelled on his father and other males who bullied him during his childhood
   • A Streetcar Named Desire, like many of Williams' plays is set in the South of the USA
     • A Streetcar Named Desire is set in the French Quarter, New Orleans
       • The French Quarter, also known as the Vieux Carré, is the oldest neighborhood in the city of New Orleans
       • famous for jazz clubs and the first place homosexuality was tolerated
       • New Orleans is nicknamed 'The City that Care Forgot' or 'The Big Easy', with a reputation of excess and sexual freedom
     • despite the specific setting, the themes of his plays are widely generalisable

4. combines new American taste for realism following the Depression and WW2

   • characters trying to rebuild their lives after the war
     • Stanley and Mitch survived the military
     • Blanche had several affairs with soldiers based near her home

5. the play represents the decline of the aristocratic families commonly associated with the South

   • the South's agricultural base could not cope with industrialisation, so once influential families lost their importance

6. show the conflict between old and new values

   • physically aggressive materialism of the new world
   • workforce radically altered to include women, black people and immigrants
     • Blanche has prejudices towards people (old values)
       • in New Orleans, everyone is accepted

7. Blanche Du Bois

   • struggling to keep up with the demands of the new world
   • her sexual freedom and dependency on men do not fit in with the behaviour of the Southern people
     • symbolises destruction of the old South
   • she represents the old, romanticised culture of the South, and Stanley represents the urban, greedy, New America
     • conflict between them represents the clash of values

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