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Papadimitriou Vaia
Instructor: Kalaitzidou Despina
Introduction to the Research Paper (Lit9-390)
8 June 2016
A Streetcar Named Desire And The Male Influence on the DuBois Sisters' Lives
Tennessee Williams's play A Streetcar Named Desire is set in the post war American
South and focuses on Blanche DuBois visit to her sister Stella and her husband Stanley and
the attempt of these three to get along despite the obvious differences in each one's character.
However, what mainly intrigues those who study the play is the theme of intense gender
differences. The subject under discussion in this essay is the impact that the male characters
in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire have on Blanche and Stella DuBois.
To begin with, during the second World War women faced many difficulties since the
absence of men led to their taking over many jobs that were previously taken up by males.
However, during the post war era southern women went back to their domestic
responsibilities and were mainly treated as submissive human beings and as sexual objects by
their husbands and men in general. According to Zhang, Williams "pays close attention to the
tragic fate of the southern women" (52). He points out that according to Williams the
southern women "are leaving in an illusion and are incapable of adapting to an intense
industrialized society without any humanity" while living in "a world which is governed by
men" where women's role is to sexually please them and constantly make them feel
dominants in the society they live in (56).
Through the character of Blanche DuBuis Williams perfectly portrays the image of a
fading Southern Belle. Quang Zhang claims that Blanche DuBois is the representative of the
women who were obsessed with their looks in the Old South (53). Blanche is currently an
insecure creature with drinking problems that according to Kimball King once represented

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the plantation era which now is a victim of the evolving industries (110). Additionally,
Blanche lives in a state of constant fear for the loss of her beauty and struggles unsuccesfully
to hide her insecurities by trying to maintain her southern aristocratic status through her fancy
clothes and her presumed dependence on men. It can be supported that "Blanche's neurotic
behaviour and the decadence of her life at Belle Reve made her a pitiful relic of an old order
which somehow 'deserved' to be supplanted by a new one" (King 110). Furthermore,
"perceptions of Blanche as the sole representative of sensibility destroyed by a callous society
stand side by side with descriptions of her as sexually immoral or as a prostitute and
nymphomaniac" (Vlasopolos 323-324).
It can easily be assumed that Blanche DuBois is a tragic figure who cannot let go of
her past; it seems to constantly haunt her. Blanche was once married to a young man named
Allan Grey who, after coming out as a homosexual commited suicide and "Blanche might be
said to have entered 'the broken world' when [he] died" (Londre 49).Later on it is revealed
that Blanche used to have intimate relationships with strangers in a hotel named "Flamingo".
Therefore, it could be deduced that Blanche seeks relief in the embrace of strange men
because she cannot overcome the guilt she feels for failing Allan but "sex with these men
does not achieve her goal. Blanche still feels guilty" (Zak 61).Furthermore, apart from her
regular meetings with men Blanche also had affairs with soldiers and with a student; such an
affair led to her being fired from her job as a school teacher. Alice Griffin suggests that the
young age of the student and the soldiers as well as the fact that she calls Allan "a boy"
"would explain her obsession with such young men, even boys, who would be close to Allan's
age when, at sixteen, she fell in love with him" (50). Deborah Jeanne Zak states that if Allan
had not "commited suicide, Blanche might have simply felt betrayed that he had concealed
his homosexuality and eventually recovered" (54). Zak though also states that Allan's suicide
makes Blanche become more emotianally attached to him (54).

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After moving in with her sister in New Orleans Blanche develops a relationship with
another man, Harold "Mitch" Mitchell. Mitch can be described as a gentleman. Despite the
fact that he is not the kind of man that Blanche is actually looking for, she tries to build a
relationship with him probably in a desperate attempt to follow society's expectations. Mitch
somehow becomes "a hope of sanctuary for Blanche" (Griffin 51). It can be said that Blanche
wants so desperately to conform to the norms that "[s]he confides to Stella that she has been
pretending to be 'prim and proper' with Mitch" simply because she needs to hold on to
someone through marriage (Griffin 51). Blanche also mentions that "... [she] had many
intimacies with strangers....So [she] came here. There was nowhere else [she] could go. [She]
was played out....and [she] met [Mitch]. [He] said [he] needed somebody. Well, [she] needed
somebody, too. [She] thanked God for [him], because [he]seemed to be gentle - a cleft in the
rock of the world that [she] could hide in!" (9.205). Unfortunately, Blanche's attempt to find
redemption through marriage fails when Mitch decides to pause any relationships with her
because of those past intimacies with strangers; that is when "the last of the paper-moon
world is taken down" (Zak 66).
Apart from Blanche , another major character of A Streetcar Named Desire is Stella
DuBois. Stella is also a former Southern Belle and also a perfect example of the post war
housewife. Both Stella and Blanche were aristocrats that came from the Old South and shared
the same education. However, despite of being sisters, Stella and Blanche are two completely
different figures. Blanche led a quite vulgar life while "Stella, the same as other low class
wives, repeated the boring life day by day and lived and unenlightened and satisfactory life in
her husband's sexual world by not realising the intrinsic meaning of it" (Zhang 55).
Furthermore, the path that both sisters finally follow is also different. Blanche ends up
hospitalized in a mental asylum and Stella simply accepts the fact as if it was normal and

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continues living her conventional life .The only thing that the two sisters have in common is
the vulnerability that haunts and alienates women of the modern society.
The main figure of masculinity and of complete male dominance in the play is that of
Stanley Kowalski. He plays the part "of the 'dark' male" (Van Duyvenbode 204).To be more
specific, he is assigned the "dark tasks of rape and psychological terror" (Van Duyvenbode
204). Stanley's behaviour is quite animalistic, he is a crude character that constantly gets into
fights and despite of the fact tha he loves Stella he believes that women should be submissive
to men, and views them as sexual objects. It should be mentioned at that point that when
Blanche talks about Stanley's character, she states that "[h]e acts like an animal, has an
animal's habit. Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There's even something - sub human - something not quite to the stage of humanity yet!Yes, something - ape - like about
him..." (4.163). However, Stella seems to be so madly in love with him that she somehow
ignores his flaws and hangs from every word he says and everything he does; her love for
him is unconditional. Nonetheless, Stella's behaviour could either be explained as passionate
love or as conformity to a society that wants women to be utterly manipulated by men. To be
more specific, Stanley always uses sex as a means to an end every time he has a fight with
her. Stella's submission to Stanley is so complete that when Blanche tries to convince her to
leave him in scene 4 she says:"But there are things that happen between a man and a woman
in the dark- that sort of make everything else seem- unimportant" (4.162). Added to that, it
seems that Stella find Stanley's violent behaviour quite alluring. Zhang point out that Stella
probably rejected her aristocratic status by marrying Stanley who was iferior and led a life
that eventually made her become fond of Stanley's violent behaviour (55). Stella is under
Stanley's spell and she puts him first even when it comes to her own sister's sanity.
Apart from Stella, Stanley has a huge influence on Blanche as well, and it is
represented mainly through their numerous confrontations. Unlike Stella, Blanche does not

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accept Stanley's crude behaviour and always feels free to argue with him. However, her
feminine manipulative tricks do not work on Stanley who simply wants to dig deep into her
past and expose her for what she used to do. What is more, according to Felicia Hardison
Londr "his words add up to nothing more than cheerful vulgarity" and "Blanche regards
[Stanley] as a brutal predator"... (53,56). Additionally, Rachel Van Duyvenbode mentions that
" Blanche reduces Stanley to the status of animal or predator" (212). Moreover, Alice Griffin
says that "[to] him Blanche, even in her present state of desperation, is a woman, and to
Stanley women mean one thing only - sex" (60). Probably that belief and the idea that
Blanche had already slept with too many men - so one more would not make a difference made Stanley rape her without any remorse. Consequently, after being raped and driven to an
asylum it can be stated that she became Stanley's victim (Vlasopolos 333).
When everything comes to an end and the audience of A Streetcar Named Desire
experience the victimization of women by men in the play, there comes one last male figure
who seems softer and kinder than the others. That is the doctor who takes Blanche to the
mental asylum and is seen as the southern gentleman - yet strange - who will offer her
salvation; that is why Blanch says that "[w]hoever [he] is - [she] has always depended on the
kindness of strangers" (11.225). The doctor takes off his hat and lifts her from the ground in
an attempt to confort her. As Francis Donahue mentions, "Blanche struggles with the matron
and is knocked on the floor ... The physician, taking one quick look at the fallen southern
belle, resolves to help [her] salvage her self-respect" (35).
To sum up, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams is a fine representation
of the way that women were treated by men in the post-war American South. On the one
hand, Stanley Kowalski is the perfect example of the dominant and manipulative male who
wants to be in total control and views women as nothing more that sexual objects. On the
other hand, Stella and Blanche, despite being completely different, are both without any

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doubt utterly influenced by men. Consequently, what Williams is trying to do in his play is to
expose the patriarchical society of the 1940s that wanted women to be ruled by men and he is
quite successful at doing so.

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Works Cited
Donahue, Francis. The Dramatic World of Tennessee Williams. New York: Ungar. 1964.
Print.
Griffin, Alice. Understanding Tennessee Williams. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1995.
Print.
King, Kimball. "A Defining Moment in Southern Drama". Rev. Of Confronting Tennessee
Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire: Essays in Critical Pluralism, ed. Plilip C.
Kolin. Southern Literary Journal 27.1 (1994) 109-111. Periodicals Archive
Online. Web. 24 March 2016
Londr, Felicia Hardison. "A Streetcar Running Fifty Years". Ed. Matthew C. Roundan. The
Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. 4563. Print
Van Duyvonbode, Rachel. "Darkness Made Visible: Miscegenation, Masquerade and the
Signified Racial Other in Tennessee Williams' Baby Doll and A Streetcar Named
Desire". Journal of American Studies 35.2 (2001): 203-215. ProQuest. Web. 22
March 2016.
Vlasopolos, Anca. "Authorizing History: Victimization in A Streetcar Named Desire."
Theatre Journal 38.3 (1986): 322-338. ProQuest. Web. 22 March 2016
Williams, Tennessee. "A Streetcar Named Desire". A Streetcar Named Desire and Other
Plays. London: Penguin. 1983. 114-226. Print
Zak, Jeanne Deborah. "Her Story Resisting His: Mad Women in F. Scott Fitzgerald's
Tender is the Night and Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar
Named Desire". MA thesis. California State University, 1996. Web. 13 April 2016.

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Zhang, Qiang. "Interpretation on Social Origin of Southern-American Women's Tragic
Fate in A Streetcar Named Desire."English Language and Literature Studies 4.3
(2014):52-57.CsCanada. Web. 22 March 2016