Comparison Of Blanche And Stanley Kowalski In A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire was written during the vivacious 1940s. Tennessee Williams, the playwright of A Streetcar Named Desire, focuses on two aspects of life throughout his writing: civilization, and cruel, primitive brutality. Blanche Dubois, a former English instructor and a considerably promiscuous woman in the eyes of society, lost her husband several years before traveling to New Orleans to visit her sister, Stella. Blanche is a social pariah due to her sexual relations with various strangers and one of her students. Recently, she lost Belle Reve, a plantation in Mississippi where Stella and Blanche once both lived due to an unpaid mortgage. Meanwhile, her sister, Stella, resides in the slums of New Orleans. Stanley Kowalski, a brutish, animalistic, and practical

Stanley possesses an animalistic physical vigor that is evident in his love of work, fighting, and sex. Stanley represents the new, heterogeneous America in which Blanche does not believe in since she is from a defunct social hierarchy. Stanley’s hobbies consist of gambling, bowling, sex, and drinking. In addition, Stanley seems to lack ideals and imagination. His authoritative possession over Stella is unsettling. Stanley tells her, “I am the king around here, so don’t forget it!...” (Williams 131). His disturbing, degenerate nature, first hinted at when he beats his wife, is fully evident after he sexually assaults Blanche. Stanley does not express remorse for his callous behavior. Interestingly enough, Stanley’s violent behavior heightens Stella’s desire for him. After Blanche tells Stella he is unfit for her, Stella claims, “...there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark-that sort of make everything else seem-unimportant” (Williams 81). The play ends with the representation of Stanley as the ideal family man, comforting his wife in the only way he knows how as she holds their newborn