Tennessee Williams and A Streetcar Named Desire: Exploring American Drama
7) TENNESSEE WILLIAMS AND A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
Development of American Drama
American drama wasn’t an ambitious art form until the 20th century due to Puritanical hostility. Theater was seen as an Old World pleasure, with London companies primarily performing Shakespearean plays. Plays performed in previous centuries were considered entertainment rather than literary works.
Late 19th Century: REALISM
Serious American theater began in the late 19th century. American playwrights, however, didn’t follow European models like Ibsen, Shaw, Chekhov, and Pirandello. Instead, they reflected the methods of the realist American novel. An example of this is Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916), a local color play.
The 1920’s: EXPERIMENTATION
American theater in the 1920s was influenced by European modernist experimentation. Realism combined with non-realist forms. Eugene O’Neill (The Hairy Ape, 1922; Desire Under the Elms, 1924) was dissatisfied with the limitations of realism in drama. He wanted drama to express more, to delve deeper, and to show more, leading to the importance of Expressionism.
EXPRESSIONISM
Expressionism, a German avant-garde movement, sought to portray the inner experience of reality through the performance of dreams, memories, fantasies, symbols, and symbolic characters on stage. It made the psychic condition of the character visual and perceivable, allowing the audience to share an internal perception that other characters couldn’t see.
1930-1945: Back to Realism
The Great Depression significantly affected the lives of Americans, impacting careers, education, marriage, and crime. This era was perceived as irreversible, leading to a return to realism. Domestic realism emerged as the dominant, natural, and native voice of American drama.
Domestic Realism
Domestic realism focused on the domestic experience: a small group of people interacting in a domestic setting, usually a living room, in their personal and private ways, coping with their problems. The domestic experience was used to dramatize larger social issues like the Depression and War.
1945-1960: Broadway Theater
American theater during this period was Broadway-based. This era saw the greatest plays of America’s greatest playwrights, including the early works of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams and the late works of Eugene O’Neill. Off-Broadway theater also emerged. This generation of playwrights utilized the discoveries of previous theater movements, including domestic realism and experimentation.
Arthur Miller and T. Williams
Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams shared common ground in their use of domestic realism, expressionistic elements, and kinesics (non-verbal communication through light gradations, music, stage symbols, and body language). However, they diverged in their focus: Miller leaned towards the social and political, while Williams explored the psychological and spiritual.
Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) and the South
The South played a significant role in Williams’ work. He portrayed its positive qualities (myth) such as grace, taste, elegance, decorum, poetic sensibility, rootedness in the soil, close family ties, and strong women (often referred to as “steel butterflies” or “iron magnolias”). He also acknowledged its flaws, including intolerance, violence, and hypocrisy (particularly regarding religion and women). Williams was influenced by the Protestant work ethic and the Puritanical nature of the South.
CONTRIBUTION TO DRAMA
Psychosexual Focus
Williams’ characters often struggled with their emotional and sexual drives. He eroticized the American stage, foregrounding topics of sexuality and desire. In his plays, desire often led to social rejection and atonement.
Sexual Politics
Influenced by D.H. Lawrence, Williams viewed sexuality as a life force that restored balance between flesh and spirit. He reversed the tendency in American literature to portray desire as solely male and heterosexual. His female characters were subjects of desire, though their bodies weren’t eroticized in the same way as male bodies (e.g., Kowalski, played by Marlon Brando). Williams also made room for homosexual characters in his plays, though limitations were imposed by Cold War conservatism, McCarthyism, anti-communism, and homophobia.
Characters
Williams often focused on individualistic, eccentric, and outcast characters (unlike Miller’s focus on the “everyman”). These characters faced difficulties in coping with life and were often punished by society.
Themes
Recurring themes in Williams’ work include sexuality and desire, escapism in art and fantasy, tenacity and endurance in the face of difficulties and social indictment, and, indirectly, social issues in post-war America such as the war, the old versus the new South, and multiculturalism.
Plastic Theatre Pictures
Williams employed poetic language that was vivid, visual, and evocative. He utilized symbols, music, and sound effects to highlight characters’ thoughts and obsessions. He incorporated expressionistic moments without weakening the sense of realism and domesticity.
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
A Streetcar Named Desire is a compendium of Williams’ themes and techniques. It ran for 855 performances and won all major awards. The central characters, Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski, represent opposing forces, and the action develops through their clashes. Trial titles for the play, such as The Moth, Blanche’s Chair in the Moon, and The Poker Night, highlight Blanche’s central role. The characterization is complex, with both Blanche and Stanley possessing positive and negative traits.
Southern Roots and European Influences
The play draws inspiration from Southern literature, including Gone with the Wind (1936), the works of William Faulkner and Carson McCullers, and D.H. Lawrence’s “The Princess” and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It also shows influences from European dramatists such as Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1904), Henrik Ibsen, and August Strindberg.
Setting
The play is set in the French Quarter of New Orleans, a mixture of decay and continental refinement. This multicultural, colorful city with its vibrant blues scene provides romantic and sensual undertones. The play features locations like “Cemeteries” and “Desire” (referring to streetcar lines) and the Elysian Fields. The main action takes place in Stella and Stanley’s street-level flat in the Quarter. There are allusions to Laurel, Belle Reve (the Dubois family mansion), and the old South.
Structure
A Streetcar Named Desire is an episodic drama comprised of eleven scenes. In performance, it typically follows a three-act structure, with breaks after scenes 4 and 6. These breaks mark shifts in the seasons: scenes 1-4 depict two consecutive days in spring; scenes 5-6 take place on a hot summer evening; and scenes 7-11 occur on the afternoon and night of Blanche’s birthday in September, marking the fall.