A Streetcar Named Desire

Rating:
Summary: Fallen Woman
Review: It amazes me how few people young people have actually read through "A Streetcar Named Desire". Tennessee Williams is certainly one of America's trademark playwrites of the past century, along with Arthur Miller. His stories are timeless and his characters are unforgettable.

The immortal character of Blanche DuBois is a classic icon, a woman who's lost not only her material wealth but her virtue. In her last attempt to hold onto some shred of happiness, she goes to stay with her sister, Stella, and Stella's working class husband, Stanley Kowalski. Blanche's fortune has been lost, but she attempts to maintain her dignity and stature as a debutant. Stanley however, is repulsed by the fallen woman, convinced she is not only snobby, but hiding Stella's share of the family fortune. What he discovers is that Blanche has created quite a reputation by having numerous affairs with random men in the surrounding communities. To spite her, he ruins her last chance at getting married and pushes her into the realm of insanity.

A Streetcar Named Desire is a blunt look at the violence of lower class life and how it clashes with the upperclass. Everyone should read this American classic once, if not for the historical benefit, but for amazing dialogues that have been quoted over the years. At this point, pretty everyone knows the phrase, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers", but few realize its origin or the context in which it was spoken. I think its about time everyone knew.

Happy Reading!

Rating:
Summary: great storytelling
Review: This book is very good, I am glad I was forced to read it in school.

Rating:
Summary: A New Appreciation of Blanche DuBois
Review: Upon a recommendation, I read the stage play after watching the movie with Vivian Leigh.

Sure, she is neurotic, but she suffered many losses. One loss from which she was unable to recover was the suicide of her young husband. The play specified the reason for his suicide, that could not be revealed in the 1951 movie. To me, it explained her promiscuity, because she needed to be constantly reassured of her attractiveness.

Rating:
Summary: An eternal tragedy in our modern world
Review: Tennessee Williams probably signed there his best play, at least the one that is best-known. It is entirely centered on a woman who flees from Mississippi to New Orleans to live, for a while, with her married sister. The two sisters were born in the Southern aristocracy that got bankrupt by not being able, or even refusing, to get into the new flow of time. One went away and married a working class immigrant who is in many ways uncultured and rough, even violent at times. But desire is stronger than that violence and love survives a row from time to time, provided truthfulness and some sensual sincerity exist. But that is only the secondary theme to which Blanche, the other sister, is confronted and this brings back her real drama that is burried in her memory. She married very young. Her husband was also very young and a poet. But she discovered that he also was gay and she could not accept it due to her southern aristocratic principles. He was an abomination and she told him so one night and he went out and killed himself. She never overcame her guilt and she delved into a more and more dissolute life with any man that could come along, till she went back to a substitute of her dead husband, a 17 year old boy. The family protested and she was expelled from the school system (she was a teacher) and from the city. Confronted to the life of her sister and husband, she regresses into southern sophistication. She comes across a man, Mitch, who could and even would like to marry her. But her sister's husband, wanting to get rid of her, exposes her lies about her past to his friend Mitch and his wife. He destroys the dream and Blanche sinks into some psychotic nightmare that becomes a complete breakdown when her brother in law, on the very night when his son was born, rapes her. The end is a lesson about the savage and wild world in which we live and in which life must go on, or, as actors say, the show must go on. Her sister has to come to terms with this sad event, accept it or rather negate it not to be broken up by the event, and sister and husband have to get rid of Blanche. Only one solution : to have her institutionalized. The play is an extremely strong exposure of that simple fact that one has to follow the trend and change along with the world, no matter how hard it may be to adapt, to survive and remain balanced and sane in an insane and completely incomprehensible world. It also exposes that one is in a way one's own victim when one is not able to accept the world the way it is and imposes rules from the past onto it. This is probably the worst crime because it leads other people into suffering or even death, and you into guilt. So what is the desire that is at stake on such a play ? Sexual desire ? Maybe. Sentimental desire ? Maybe. But first of all the desire to survive by paying the price you have to pay for it. It thus becomes the exposure of a society in which feelings, sentiments, sexual impulses are nothing but secondary emotions and pleasures that can gratify your life if you are able to adapt to the world and survive in it. This world is inhumane, dehumanized, extremely savage. Men and women are like animals who can only aim at surviving or satisfying their animal impulses. Culture, civilization, principles, ethics, everything really human becomes a trauma in such a world. At the time of the play the only outcome could be the sacrifice of those who cannot adapt. Has it really changed ?

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan

Rating:
Summary: Strong characters
Review: A Streetcar Named Desire is a compelling play with rich characters. I enjoyed the story, however it all seemed a little too unrealistic for it to be considered a naturalistic piece of literature. The characters were very interesting, but exaggerated. However, the themes of the play were very real. Williams' attention to the treatment of women was particularly interesting. This was played out in Stella's abusive relationship with Stanley Kowalski. He could treat her like dirt, but she always took him back. Also, intriguing was Williams' play on romanticism through the character of Blanche DuBois. In a sense, I feel he is commenting on the slowly dying theme of romanticism along with the Old Southern "plantation fantasy" and "Southern Belle." His use of symbolism was powerful and can be seen in the title itself. Blanche rode a streetcar named Desire, connected to Cemetaries and arrives at the neighborhood of Elysian Fields. Blanche was full of desire -to start a new life, to portray the image of a rich Southern belle, to deceive people of her age. She came to Elysian Fields, which is the land of the dead in Greek mythology, and met the end of her game. Overall, the play was well developed and logical in order. If you like stories with realistic themes and powerful, yet contrasting, characters, I would recommend reading A Streetcar Named Desire.

Rating:
Summary: Williams View on the Fall of the Old South's Ways
Review: South and brought upon changes that broke up the mystique that the south had. For example you saw how New Orleans was becoming a city of many cultures instead of the domination by the Creole society and in the main character Blanche you started to see the death of the southern belle. Blanche seemed to be caught in the life of appearing to be the daughter of a rich southern aristocrat and when her family lost the plantation she grew up on, she began to lose her esteem, which was all she valued in life. The story really focuses on the characters and lets you see them for who they are and not from the perspective of the narrator (since there is not one in this play). Also the scenery does not is not very important in the play because it is all about the characters and how they interact with each other and their conversations. I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a read that shows the transformation from the Old South and Old Southern Literature, to a new more realistic view of how things are in the world.

Rating:
Summary: Williams Paints An Accurate Picture of the South
Review: This is a play written by the Southern genius, Tennesee Williams. It is a tradegy about the life of a woman named Blanche, the main character. She has come to live with her sister, Stella, in order escape her past life. In the play Williams shows how women were dependent on men after the Second World War. Women viewed men as money makers and a way to assure their future security. Also the play is quick paced with moving conversations. Also the setting shows how Louisana was a very diverse place filled with many different ethnic groups. With this play, Tennesee shows how southern life was during the 1940's.

Rating:
Summary: interesting but stereotypical
Review: A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams is a play about class and gender, and how they interact in a specific time period and place, much more than it is about individual characters. The main characters embody some of the most stereotypical characteristics of all time. Stanley Kowalski - the male lead - is a working class man who uses strength to succeed in his job and his marriage. His wife, Stella, demurely accepts Stanley's verbal and physical abuse because she loves him. Their world is a perfect balance of male/ female, active/ passive, love/ fear, and rough/gentle, until Stella's sister comes to visit. Blanche is much more rounded character, but she is stereotypically a southern belle and a snob, to the point where she lies about her age and how much she drinks because it is the ladylike thing to do. The play unfolds rather fascinatingly, and it quite well written - dramatic but with enough humor to make it bearable. There are an abundance of very obvious symbols, which might tire the reader after awhile. Desire covers a lot of themes, including, as I said before, class and gender, desire and the south, which may be too much for one play, but Williams pulls it off well. The reader comes away with a good sense of the New Orleans working class after the war. A good play, but probably a better performance than read, as befits a play.

Rating:
Summary: A Piece of America
Review: Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece has been the source of controversy since it was written five decades ago. It is the story of the fallen Southern belle Blance Dubois, whose desperate illusions of grandeur are rent to shreds by her earthy and realistic brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Touching on issues of prejudice, sexual codependence, mental breakdown, and rape, A Streetcar Named Desire is at times disturbing in its brutal honesty. Readings of this sultry play have found it to be anything from a critique of the conflict between the North and South in post Civil War America, to a subtle commentary on the struggles of Williams' life as a homosexual. The image of Stanley bellowing drunkenly to his wife Stella, as well as lines such as Blanche telling how she has "always depended on the kindness of strangers" have become so much a part of the American consciousness that they are recognizable even to those who are unfamiliar with Williams' work itself.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing Desirable
Review: Although it is considered an American classic and continues to be popular, I found A Streetcar Named Desire a total waste of time. The melodrama of the lives of the three main characters barely redeems the pointless plot. The story can be compared to the whinings of a "Jerry Springer Show" guest; over the top and barely believable. A Streetcar Named Desire gives a perverted glimpse into the life of Blanche, a natural victim who marries a gay boy. Her confused life-partner ends up killing himself, which sends Blanche into a vortex of self-pity and phoniness. You later find that her sister, Stella isn't any stronger as she subjects herself to her abusive husband. As if these weak female characters weren't offensive enough, the character of Stella's husband is stereotypically portrayed as a drunk "Pollack." A Streetcar Named Desire is nothing but a sad story about hopeless characters. The possibility of a deeper meaning is lost in the Southern soap opera. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.