'A Streetcar Named Desire' is a great play that invites a lot of clichés and many standard interpretations.
The play was first performed in the 1940s (less than 100 years a after the
American Civil War) and it was considered very modern for American theatre.
The American Civil War was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865 to determine the survival of the Union or independence for the Confederacy. Among the 34 states in January 1861, seven Southern slave states individually declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy, often simply called the South, grew to include eleven states, and although they claimed thirteen states and additional western territories, the Confederacy was never diplomatically recognized by any foreign country. The states that remained loyal and did not declare secession were known as the Union or the North. The war had its origin in the fractious issue of slavery, especially the extension of slavery into the western territories. After four years of combat, which left over 600,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead and destroyed much of the South's infrastructure, the Confederacy collapsed and slavery was abolished. Then began the Reconstruction and the processes of restoring national unity and guaranteeing civil rights to the freed slaves.
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Tennessee Williams always set his America-based plays in the South. 'A Streetcar Named Desire' is set in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The definition of
'the South' is key in all of his plays.
The late 1940s is
before the basic integration of coloured people into society (before the civil rights movement, before influential figures like Martin Luther King).
The South , in terms of the United States of America and New Orleans in particular, is another country compared to northern cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
New Orleans is a world removed from the
NORMAL America - removed from American literature and the traditions of its culture.
This is very significant in the localisation of the culture in the play.
In some ways, New Orleans established a whole
new America.
With 'A Streetcar Named Desire' Tennessee Williams introduces...
... new theatrical language
... a new kind of character
... a new kind of drama
The play is a TRAGEDY in which the main character doesn't die, like in most conventional tragedies, although there is a horribly significant death in the play.
It is a tragedy with
many layers - with each layer being surrounded by clichés:
- Tennessee Williams was homosexual.
- His sister, Rose, was institutionalised in a mental hospital after being diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young woman.
- Williams was an outsider in the society that he grew up in.
These clichés are reinforced when people tend to look at these kinds of themes in his plays, however his plays go far beyond these clichéd ideas.
TRAGEDY
