A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE TENNESSEE WILLIAMS A*ENGLISH LITERATURE the characters of Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski
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Course
AS Unit 1 - Prose and Drama
Institution
WJEC
A sample essay on the characters of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski
do the characters engender empathy/ antipathy - to what extent? - who burdens the blame? upon whom should the blame lie
‘Williams makes it tough to take sides between Stanley and Blanche.’
In the light of this comment, discuss the roles of Stanley and Blanche in A
Streetcar Named Desire.
Exemplar Essay
This statement is true to a large extent, as Williams presents both Stanley and Blanche
with qualities and failings that make them simultaneously likeable and unlikeable.
The phrase ‘takes sides’ points to a wrongdoing or misdemeanour on each of their parts which leads to
the question of who was primarily to blame. They both perpetrate a wrongdoing against Stella; Blanche
is more passive in this respect than Stanley but nonetheless should shoulder some blame. Would the
encounter between the two of them have occurred were it not for Blanche’s incessant flirtation? When
Blanche asks Stanley to do up her buttons the stage directions are “He crosses through the drapes with
a smouldering look”; ‘smouldering’ has sexual connotations and this foreshadowing of what is to come
causes the audience simultaneously to sympathise with Stella and to allocate a degree of blame to both
Blanche and Stanley.
Stanley is presented as a character who embraces the ‘New America’, which is evident
in the phrase, “You didn’t fall for that brass, did you?” and reinforced by the stage direction “Stanley
heaves a package of red meat”. The fact that Stanley used to serve in the war and is
financially dominant in the Kowalski household suggests that he is the one who brings
home the meat. After the Second World War, males and females were expected to
return to their domestic roles, where women were subservient. This relates to his
masculinity, as he is described as, “a gaudy seed-bearer … flaunting his wings”, which
, highlights his sexual prowess. In the original production, Marlon Brando was cast as
Stanley, and his raw performance led the famous playwright, Arthur Miller, to comment
that, “Brando is a tiger on the loose … the epitome of masculinity [in the 1950s]”.
Moreover, the repetition of the possessive pronoun “his” during the description of his house, “his radio,
his bedroom .” reinforces the idea that he is the ‘New Man of America’, something that will
frequently clash with Blanche’s old traditional values of the South. When the play was
first being performed, audiences would not have found it as sexual as modern
audiences, demonstrating that views and attitudes towards the play have altered over
time. Whilst Williams presents Stanley as antagonistic, it could also be argued that he is
also rather sympathetic, to an extent. This is revealed when he, “sobs with tears” after
hitting Stella, who later says, “he was as good as a lamb”. Although some audiences
may sympathise with this, the fact that these instances have occurred before illustrate
that Stanley is in a vicious cycle. Furthermore, Stanley giving Stella “ten dollars to smooth
things over”, suggests that he essentially pays to beat Stella, using capitalism to his
advantage. As a result, Williams makes it difficult for audiences to decide whether or not
to sympathise with Stanley, as his irrational behaviour contrasts with his sympathetic
side.
There are however further aspects of Stanley’s character that veer the audience away from taking his
side. Stanley does not have the sensibility to realise that perhaps Blanche and Mitch could have had a
successful marriage in spite of Blanche's past. Instead, he feels some manly obligation to inform Mitch of
Blanche's past life. Further to this, he buys a bus ticket for Blanche back to Laurel. Stella says “You
needn’t have been as cruel to someone alone as she is.” He could of course have bought a ticket to
another town, but he cruelly buys one that sends her back to the scene of her last failure and the one
place where she cannot possibly return.
Blanche is presented as a tragic heroine in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, which is symbolised by her
arrival at ‘Elysian Fields’, the name of the place where classical heroes go after they die. This
foreshadows her ruinous fate at the end of the play, where she suffers a mental death. Her downfall has
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