A Streetcar Named Desire- Names

A Streetcar Named Desire- Names

1. Blanche DuBois

   • French
     • Hints at her sophistication and aristocracy
     • Link to French Huguenots
       • Blanche mentions first ancestors in Scene 3
   • 'Blanche'= white
     • White typically connotes purity
       • Ironic considering Blanche's sexual promiscuity
   • 'DuBois'
     • Woods
       • 'White woods' creates skeletal and surreal imagery
         • Link to Southern Gothic's death imagery
         • Ghostly
         • White trunks are like Antebellum plantation columns
           • Decay of Old South links to decay of Blanche herself

2. Stella Kowalski

   • 'Stella'= star
     • Vibrant and bright
       • Contrasts death imagery for Blanche
     • Suggests distance from reality
       • Otherworldly
       • Naivety of Stella
   • French/Polish
   • Kowalski
     • Polish
       • Link to Stanley in Scene 8- 'I pulled you down off them columns'
       • Multiculturalism- typical of New Orleans
   • Euphonic phonemes in 'Stella' jar with the consonance of 'Kowalski'

3. Stanley Kowalski

   • Stanley sounds like 'manly'
     • Link to his vitality and masculinity
   • Kowalski
     • Multiculturalism and diversity
   • Stanley means 'stone wood'
     • Link to 'concrete jungle', and therefore to the industrialisation of the New America
       • More appropriate for a contemporary audience than the audiences in 1947
   • France betrayed Poland in the Polish Defensive War, 1939
     • Link to Stanley's distrust of Blanche e.g. trunk scene

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