Streetcar named desire- critics and alternative

perspectives
 TENESEE WILLIAMS:
- “the ravishment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate by the savage and brutal forces
of modern society”
- Depicted desire as being “rooted in the longing for companionship”
- Williams identified with Blanche “I am Blanche Dubois”; he had a sense of hysteria and
lied a lot.
- "an extremely and peculiarly moral play, in the deepest and truest sense of the word."

 Galloway:
- “the play has no clear victor, everyone loses something”
 Samual Tapp:
- “Blanche Dubois is a victim of the mythology of the Southern Belle”
- “[Blanche’s] coquetry is often a self-defence strategy”
- “Stanley is as much a victim of masculine ideology”

 Albert Wertheim:
- Stella and Stanley’s baby represents a Kowalski future, not a Dubois one. Reinforced by
how Blanche is removed and Stanley stays.

 Harold Bloom:
- “Williams builds up archetypes and then destroys our preconceived notions of them”
- “Desire is the most important theme” (Blanche (white) is stained with desire”

 J.H.Adler:
- “Stanley is more creative than destructive”

 Leonard Berkman:
- “the trauma that underpins Blanche’s reality is not that Allen Grey was a “degenerate”
but that she caused his suicide”
 Holditch:
- “Blanche’s difficulties stem from the lack of a forceful patriarchy”

 Elia Kazan (director)

- What Williams was trying to say “we move on, the best we can”
- Blanche’s tragic flaw is that she adheres to the Southern tradition that she needs a man
for completion.