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Return to Book Page. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Get A Copy.
Paperback , pages. Published December 1st by Dramatists Play Service first published More Details Original Title. New Orleans, Louisiana United States. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about A Streetcar Named Desire , please sign up. Spoiler alert: Ironic that Blanche is taken away at the end Hannah A Maybe Blanche being taken away is Williams commenting on the treatment of mentally unwell people.
I read that her unsuitable condition was inspired by …more Maybe Blanche being taken away is Williams commenting on the treatment of mentally unwell people. I read that her unsuitable condition was inspired by his sister who was sent to an asylum and forced to undergo lobotomy brain surgery. But Stanley and Stella's relationship is in my opinion emotional abuse. Their whole relationship is based around sex and Stanley gets mad because he's cockblocked cos Blanche is around, Another point of irony is that even Blanche who losing her sanity knows that their relationship is wrong.
Stella needs as much help as her sister. Who is the real victim of this play? Stanley, Stella or Blanche? Orinoco Womble tidy bag and all Define "real. Stella is a victim of her own unrealistic expectations, which she projects onto Stanley instead of …more Define "real. Stella is a victim of her own unrealistic expectations, which she projects onto Stanley instead of seeing who he is. And we've all done that. She is also a victim of Stanley's belittling, fits of rage, violence, and "he-man" user attitudes.
Blanche is also a victim of her unrealistic expectations for life; like many alcoholic women I have known, she seems to be a lightening rod that attracts any problem or disaster in the vicinity; also she is victimised by Stanley because she happens to be there and is weak and he figures no one will believe her side of the story. And ol' Stan is a victim of his own ideas of what a "real man" should be. And then there's the merry-go-round of the group dynamic. See all 10 questions about A Streetcar Named Desire….
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Oct 24, Lyn rated it really liked it. Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes. Here is raw, primal, lustful sexuality that pulses and seduces a reader or audience. A must read, but like all plays, it must also be seen. Interestingly, and sadly, Vivian Leigh, who suffered from bipolar disorder, later in life had trouble distinguishing her real life from that of her character Blanche DuBois.
Also, Leigh was paid more than Brando for her performance. Both had previously played these roles on the stage. View all 24 comments. I did not consume this play as I was intended to. I mean, honestly, you're not supposed to read a play. Tell that to any high school English teacher ever, but still. Tennessee Williams didn't write this like "Hopefully in sixty years a girl will read this alone in her room in one sitting so she can fulfill her goal of reading a classic every month. That being said.
A play is supposed to be acted, obviously. Reading it leads to a less emotional Whoa. Reading it leads to a less emotional rendering, with less full characters, in an imagined version of what is supposed to be a concrete setting.
It's a lesser experience - like reading a screenplay. And still this was incredible! Blanche and Stella and Mitch were heart-rending. There's so much tension here, and the revelations and the moments of climax and action are just unreal.
I don't even know what to say beyond whoa. Guess I should've stopped this review after the first word. This reading-a-classic-a-month thing is the best thing I'm doing this year. View all 20 comments. Oct 04, Brina rated it really liked it Shelves: southern , classics , plays , tennessee-williams. It is the steamy summer in New Orleans in the late s.
Old war buddies have gone to their weekly bowling league after work. Meanwhile, young brides pass the time in their two flat apartment while waiting for their husbands to return. It is amidst this backdrop that begins Tennessee Williams' classic play, A Streetcar Named Desire, which still stands the test of time today and became a classic film featuring Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy.
This steamy play ran the gamut of human emotions, and It is the steamy summer in New Orleans in the late s. This steamy play ran the gamut of human emotions, and for this I rate it 4 stars. Tennessee Williams introduced the world to characters who have become archetypes for the post-war s. Stella Kowalski, a young bride expecting her first child, who is very much in love with her husband and submits to his every want and need.
Her husband, Stanley Kowalski, a war veteran working in a supply company to provide for his wife, and still feeling the need to gather with the men bowling or playing poker after work.
Harold Mitchell "Mitch" the bachelor son who looks after his sickly mother. And, of course, the sultry Blanche DuBois, Stella's sister of an undetermined age, the independent, modern woman, who also has a myriad of problems. Blanche DuBois, fresh off of another failure, has taken a streetcar named Desire to spend the summer with Stella and Stanley Kowalski in their one bedroom apartment. Heightened sexually whereas Stella is submissive, there is obvious tension between Blanche and Stanley from the beginning, with Stella acting as a go between.
Not only is there tension, Stanley immediately sees beyond Blanche's gaudy clothes and jewelry and sets out to investigate her past. With only a sheet separating their living arrangements in a sweltering summer, the tension continues to escalate throughout the play. As Stanley discovers layer upon layer of Blanche's past, Stella is forced to choose between her dominate husband and sister. While very much in love with her husband, as she points out, she still feels a loyalty to her sister and to her past.
She is appalled when her husband reveals that Blanche compromised her role as high school English teacher to engage in inappropriate relationships with her students. If this play had taken place thirty years later, I can believe that Stella would have done some digging of her own to clear Blanche's name. Yet, it is clear that Stella's loyalties lie with her husband, and that what makes the denouement of the play all the more shocking for me, as I am sure it did for many others as well.
Tennessee Williams went on to have a hall of fame career as a playwright, including the classics Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Glass Menagerie, which have been performed hundreds if not thousands of times over the years. He also was ahead of his time in Desire by discussing social issues such as homosexual relationships, domestic violence and a woman's monetary independence from her husband. While not my absolute favorite play, A Streetcar Named Desire introduced classic characters, and I look forward to seeing them portrayed on film.
View all 7 comments. Jul 11, Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it Shelves: united-states , 20th-century , drama , classics , fiction , script. The drama A Streetcar Named Desire is often regarded as among the finest plays of the 20th century, and is considered by many to be Williams' greatest. Blanche is in her thirties and, with no money, she has nowhere else to go. Blanche tells Stella that she has taken a leave of absence from her English-teaching position because of her nerves which is later revealed to be a lie.
She finds Stanley loud and rough, eventually referring to him as "common". Stanley, in return, does not care for Blanche's manners and dislikes her presence. Williams does a tremendous job of evoking the atmosphere of New Orleans during the 's — the music, the heat, the people. The prose is lyrical and truly astonishing at times. I felt as if I were a participant in each and every scene. You can almost feel the warm breath of the brown river beyond the river warehouses with their faint redolences of bananas and coffee.
Blanche's duplicitous nature makes for an intriguing character study. The quiet and reserved Stella is the complete opposite of her sister. She shares a passionate relationship with Stanley who is perfectly characterized by Williams: "Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes.
Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence, dependently, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens.
Unfamiliar with this play, I was surprised at the heavy themes, in particular those of domestic violence and mental illness. This play felt very real and human, extremely powerful and ultimately quite heartbreaking. View all 45 comments. A Streetcar Named Desire is a play set in New Orleans, from a period of social realism that could be described as a modern tragedy.
The play follows two main protagonists, Blanche, and Stanley, husband of Blanche's sister Stella in a complex domestic conflict.
The play is set in a period post-Great depression, describing the clash of social classes in new American society where previous segregation in wiped out by the Great depression and divided are forced to merge and live side by side. Stanle A Streetcar Named Desire is a play set in New Orleans, from a period of social realism that could be described as a modern tragedy.
Stanley is a Polish self-made man, part of the working-class, while Blanche is a descendant of landowners in the Old South, so the tension between them is magnified by their social incompatibilities. The psychological dichotomy between Blanche and Stella further intensifies the tension that culminates in the tragic act view spoiler [ of rape by Stanely hide spoiler ] that causes Blanche's demise.
Looking through the lens of Jungian psychology Blanche is a typical representation of archetypal immature, wounded feminine. She is unable to cope with reality and truth, therefore, uses illusion, lies, and manipulation of seduction to get to her goal, which is marriage. In the idealized view of marriage, she wants a man to shield and save her from the reality of the loss and death of her husband, which she is incapable to handle by herself. Emotionally dependent, her regulation of feelings is so immature it is almost unexisting, obvious in her hysteric overreactions.
Blanch is also unable to process her grief and address properly the mourning over her dead husband. Her sexuality is completely unconscious and ambivalent, acted out in two extremes, one of chastity and sexual repression and one of promiscuity in drunken sex with younger men, reflecting the fixation in the tragedy of her husband's death. She uses sexuality as another form of escapism from unpleasant, but in the process loses her family fortune, destroys her reputation and chance to live a respectful life she longs for.
Stanley, on the other hand, is a representation of archetypal immature masculine. He could be perceived as confident but is in fact arrogant and dependent on his tyranny. Stanley unconsciously sees Blanche as a threat to his power structure. He also does not shy away from using physical force on women as he has no capacity to regulate emotions and not act it out in a neurotic and violent way. He uses not only phallic power as a weapon to dominate and suppress the feminine, both in his wife Stella and even more so in Blanche.
His sexuality is maybe not as unconscious as Blanche's, but equally destructive, as he does not use sexuality to escape reality as Blanch, but to bend reality to his will. Stanley's quest, in which he, in the end, succeeds view spoiler [ through rape hide spoiler ] is to destroy Blanche and cause her demise, and his motivation is unconscious hatred towards the feminine and everything else Blanche is symbolically representing.
Stanley and Blanche are equally driven by the desire that leads to destruction. Trapped in a cycle of violence and lust, both corrupted, immature, toxic, wounded and embedded in internal chaos and madness. The real inequality becomes evident in the difference with which society and their environment treat Blanche and Stanely. Blanche's flaws and madness make her unmarriable, and she is stripped of her worth and dignity, her reputation and sanity are destroyed.
She ends up isolated and abandoned by all, even by her sister. In the culmination of her pain view spoiler [after rape hide spoiler ] , she is put away in the mental institution and stigmatized once and for all as unstable and mentally ill.
Stanley's pathology, on the other hand, is not noticed at all by society. He remains well integrated, respected and loved man in the community, even though he beats and rapes women. He is not stripped of his reputation or dignity and continues his life as a married man with a child, even though his acts of destruction are far more insane and morally corrupted than Blanche's.
The rights of being someone's partner in marriage and procreate are not taken away from him as they are from Blanche. He is not put in a mental institution and no one perceives him as mad or mentally unstable. The lack of sexual repression and free expression of desire which is in Stanley perceived as expectable and acceptable are in Blanche punished most extremely.
That shows societal hypocrisy and gender discrepancy, distorted and unjust views on male and female sexuality, tailored to control women and suppress them in the free expression of their sexuality on the collective scale.
Men oftentimes get to be unapologetically sexual while women rarely have that luxury without being stripped of their value and dignity. Blanche and Stanley could be both easily diagnosed with personality disorder, and they both act out deep psychological pathology but one of them will be stigmatized by society, and one of them will even be accepted as normal, and even be praised by some for his strong masculinity. This is how gender inequality works, a lot of times it is not easily detected or perceived, hidden in the shadows of reaction patterns we are sometimes not even aware of.
View all 9 comments. Okay, first of all, may I just say: you should see the movie before you read the book. The thing about this play is that it absolutely relies on tension. And that tension is absolutely there in a quality rendition of this show. But it is not conveyed on page.
In a character like this, a character full of ambiguity and hu Okay, first of all, may I just say: you should see the movie before you read the book. In a character like this, a character full of ambiguity and hurt and angst, how could an on-page rendition be so sympathetic?
How could she gain your sympathies despite her flaws? Until you see the movie and she breaks your fucking heart. Honestly, I think there is a lot to be said about this play and its connection to the downfall of Southern white life [wow, we have read about that a lot in AP Lit this year].
Which is something the movie plays up, um, kind of a lot. It made no impact on me when I read it, but it's worth the watch. View all 15 comments. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people.
I misrepresent things to them. Stanley is an animal, a sexual animal, "uncouth," works hard, bowls, play cards, drinks hard, married to Stella, who was formerly from a more "genteel," upper-class family. The image you are left with is Blanche, a woman in financial ruins—her beautiful young husband had turned out to be gay, she lost her inheritance, she'd been a victim of scandal, and now she is simply trying to seek help from her sister, out of options.
She's a single woman without property, she's fragile and vulnerable, she's aging and her attraction to men crucial in this time because she has no money is fading, she's possessed by delusions of grandeur, and yet she possesses some strength, some spirit you admire more than just pity, as she fights for a place in an often threatening male world that blames her for her vulnerability.
And seeing it is always better, of course, but I recommend seeing the Brando film version, of course. Amazing literary experience that will never leave you. Mar 07, Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing Shelves: audible-originals-podcasts , audiobook. The audiobook was phenomenal… an absolute joy to listen to. It put energy into my steps on these hilly trails.
A terrific theatre production The actors were fantastic The sounds and special effects gave this play the emotional integrity that this play deserves. Great way to start my morning!!! View all 18 comments. It's the late 's and I could visualize the setting of the New Orleans French Quarter love it and hear the jazzy blues music playing thru the window as Tennessee Williams brings to life the characters of a very well-built Stanley, his better-half Stella, and her delusional, whiskey-drinking southern belle of a sister Blanche who is in town for an "extended" visit.
With two women and one hot-tempered, suspicious man in a dinky one bedroom flat, trouble starts brewing at the onset and never le It's the late 's and I could visualize the setting of the New Orleans French Quarter love it and hear the jazzy blues music playing thru the window as Tennessee Williams brings to life the characters of a very well-built Stanley, his better-half Stella, and her delusional, whiskey-drinking southern belle of a sister Blanche who is in town for an "extended" visit.
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