Paper Topic:

A Streetcar named desire

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

2007

Southern culture has gone through many dramatic changes over the course of the last century . Culture clashes during the Civil War left the region torn and struggling during the Reconstruction Years , and the strife continued as Southerners tried to find a new economy and morality when World War One rocked the world . There was a period of modulation between the old Southern culture and a new one , and this caused individuals anxiety at the thought of the danger of losing touch with their identity found within

the boundaries of their society . This is the clash that pits Blanche and her old Southern fantasies against Stanley 's new Southern reality

Blanche is a perfect dramatic example of a person caught out of her appropriate time . She bases much of her personal morality and beliefs in the old Southern Belle construct . The belle was thought of as a white upper-class Southern virgin , and to keep that image alive restricted the kinds of activities , especially sexual , in which she could participate . She places herself mentally upon a pedestal , and would have been considered a dominant figure in the old culture However , this limits what

Student last name 2

she allows herself to do , and how unwilling she is to conform to the new society

Stanley , in contrast , represents a new Southern culture that restricts and eventually kills the power that Blanche held over him . He fights Blanche because to accept her terms of reality would emasculate his completely , and he cannot allow that to happen . He rapes her , and in so doing completely crushes her Southern Belle identity , which is tied to virginity . Blanche , confronted by the new Southern social constructs uses her old identity as a prison into which she tries to flee , but Stanley annihilates the safety it once afforded her with his sexual conquest of her

After the rape , in contemporary times you would expect that Stanley would have been sent to jail for a crime . Instead , Blanche is seen as crazy , as not fitting into the new society , and is taken off to a mental hospital (Norton 1866 . In the new society , she does not conform to its acceptance of sexuality , and because she does not conform , Stanley sees her as a threat . Because she defies him by withholding sex , he destroys her through the use of sex

Women have always had to find their way in cultures where they did not hold dominance . Blanche , unlike her sister Stella , could not make the shift from old to new society , and the two cultures could not exist in harmony at the same time . One had to succumb to the other , and in this instance Blanche 's old culture loses out to Stanley 's new one

Works Cited

Williams , Tennessee . A Streetcar Named Desire . 1947 . The

Norton Anthology of American Literature . Ed . Nina Baym

et al . Vol 2 . New York : Norton , 1994 . 1810-1870

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE Page PAGE 4...

2 pages

32.5 KB

Free sing-up