American literature shows the relationship between traditional and modern values in Tennessee Williams's psychological drama A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). After the brief introduction, the author focuses on two main characters Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski who symbolize significant historical pressure between the traditional values of the Old South, and the modern values of the New South. The central heroine of the drama, Blanche, is partially like Williams's schizophrenic sister Rose, and partially like him neurasthenic, sensitive, and shy. By the extensive use of color religious symbolism, and dramatic technique, through the character of Blanche, Williams explores prejudices and ideas about the South in the 20th century, about its almost non-existent values and culture. Through the character of Stanley Kowalski, Williams explores the new, urban modernity of the New South with its gracious and comfortable life. The use of ubiquitous symbolism emphasizes the emotions and conflict between Blanche and Stanley. Certain symbols influence each other by the accent put on the opposite aspects of related qualities. In the paper, there are discussed only the symbols according to their thematic importance. Williams concludes the last scene with the victory of the old world. Blanche is like a living martyr as she leaves Stanley's house with dignity. Triumphant in suffering, she rises to a new life.
Introduction
Tennessee Williams has achieved superior status in the realm of American theatre. Though, Williams was a prolific author of drama, essays, poems, short stories, novels, and screenplay, his status as an essential American dramatist seems inseparably linked with what is arguably his most famous play, A Streetcar Named Desire. It has the tragic overtones of grand opera, and is, indeed, the story of a New Orleans Camille – a wistful little trollop who shuns the reality of what she is and takes gallant and desperate refuge in a magical life she has invented for herself. (Chapman, p. 29). Philip Kolin makes a distinction between works of art that appeal to a general audience and those that appeal to what he calls “Sophisticated literary critics” (Kolin, p. 133). William’s A Streetcar Named Desire, perhaps no play in English since the time of Shakespeare, has won much praise from both the critics and the populace. (Kolin, p. 134). Looking at A Streetcar Named Desire from a feminist perspective proves enormously complicated. This is a Woman’s story, Blanche, the key character, whose point of view dominates the story; is a woman; her problems are distinctly women’s problems, and her limitations and strategies are peculiar to powerless women. In addition, the character who is faced with deciding between the warring parties, Stella, is another kind of wake. Yet her choices are also peculiarly female choices, she ignores the needs of others and eventually adopts her illusion. Life (sex) with Stanley is her highest value. Her refusal to accept Blanche’s story of the rape is a commitment to self-preservation rather than love, and thus Stella contributes to Blanche’s disintegration. Her final decision is a concession to the constraints on a woman, not only in twentieth-century America but in most of human history. Blanche refuses to accept the reality of her life and attempts to live under illusion. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Stella and Blanche are portrayed as the weaker sex: Women who are overpowered by Stanley, the self-aggrandizing macho hero Williams Confronts Modern Society directly with the problem of female victimization because even though we have made considerable progress over the last century, women remain subordinate to men. Much of William’s beliefs about marginalized women are rooted in his own life story.
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Discussion
Williams’s women characters are among some of the finest ever portrayed. They are also among the most complex and anti-stereotypical. Blanche is both a villain and a victim, the cause of her husband’s suicide and the suffering widow as a result of it. William’s sympathy, by and large, lies with the women: Furthermore, unlike traditional writers of romantic fiction, he is not fixated on nubile young virgins. His interesting women tend to be older, experienced, and subtle. In addition, instead of seeing marriage as the end of a woman’s life, he sees it as the beginning. He loved and admired many woken for their courage and their integrity. Critics pay particular attention to Blanche’s character and much less to Stella, who is every bit as much a victim of her gender and puts up with more than she needs or deserves to, Stella, the misplaced gentle lady, serves as a foil to Stanley, the brute, William’s choice of names for these two charactersis noteworthy in how it sets them apart. A homeless woman in her thirties, Blanche arrives at her sister’s house at the beginning of the play. She had been a school teacher and married Allan, a man she later discovered to be homosexual. His reactions to his sexual orientation cause him to commit suicide. Lonely and guilty, she becomes a prostitute, who loses her teaching position when he sexual relationship with a teenager is discovered. After the family plantation Belle Reve is lost, she turns to her sister Stella, who is sympathetic towards her older sister (Blanche) and is protective of her, especially when she observes Blanche’s emotional instability. She pleads with Stanley to show kindness to her as well. He ignores Stella’s request not to tell Blanch about the baby and overrides her feelings as he asserts his male dominance in his power struggle with Blanche. Blanche and Stella are portrayed as victims of traditional Southern Society in which females ad few choices in life. Both sisters raised in Southern tradition, were to seek the security of marriage, but chose unsuitable husbands. At the end of the play, when Stella is faced with believing either Stanley or Blanche about the rape, she tells Eunice that she could not continue to live with Stanley if she were to believe Blanche. She follows Eunice’s advice to believe her husband because “Life has got to go on.” However, this decision will ultimately cause her bad marriage to become worse. The ultimate act of violent male domination occurs when Stanley rapes Blanche. Rape is a very difficult problem to decipher, and most feminists agree that it represents the ultimate outrage of men’s abusiveness towards women because women are particularly vulnerable to the invasion of their bodies. The setting for A Streetcar Named Desire is Post World War II when the American South was steeped in sexist views that were established during the mid-eighteenth century. Cash explains that Southern Society perceived the ideal woman as merely pure and innocent. Women were expected to attract and allure men, but they were also required to maintain their innocence and purity, which made their rules particularly challenging Blanche is right brain hemisphere dominant and Stanley is left: the world of “idealized romance versus the world of brute reality”. Kernn indicates that Stella balances the two perspectives – “born kin to the ‘romantic’ and married to the ‘realistic’”. Williams indicates that Stella is a sad victim in a relationship that she thinks is within the boundaries of normal. The most disgusting element in the play occurs at the end when mental health professionals take Blanche away and Stanley puts his hands in Stella’s blouse to console her. This chauvinistic act is the ultimate degradation of a woman amid a devastating family trauma and reduces him to a mindless animal. Williams acknowledges his sensitivity to the status of women as powerless and defined as the “other” because he experienced sexual abuse and received his share of the marginalization as a homosexual. Frequently, Williams's female characters become his mouthpiece, because both Psychologically and thematically women better express his romantic and poetic style. As mentioned earlier, Blanche is sometimes viewed as a spokesperson for Williams. Williams is sometimes viewed as an “androgynous artist leaning more towards feminine sensibilities”, because he presents women as more sensitive, feeling, and humane than their male counterparts. Williams identified with women and loved and admired them for their courage and their integrity. Williams held that the two conflicting strains in his nature; the “Puritan” and the “Cavalier”, are also present in every human being. Harold Bloom indicates this dualism in Blanche who yearns for the values of the aesthetic but scarcely embodies them, might represent a “masochistic self–parody” on the part of Williams himself.
Conclusion
Tennessee Williams masterfully presents women’s oppression in male Patriarchal Society in Streetcar Named Desire. He relates to the male other through his own experience as a marginalized segment of Society as a homosexual. Williams also shows sensitivity towards the mentally ill, another victimized minority in a male-dominated world. In Streetcar Named Desire, the dramatist is attacking those disruptive forces in Modern Life that disturb the women.
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