Themes in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’
Three themes are very prominent
throughout the play:
·
Desire and Fate
·
Death
·
Madness
Desire and Fate:
This is a dominant theme that runs
throughout the play and is particularly prominent in the title itself. Williams
himself was intrigued by the names of two streetcars that carried the words
‘Desire’ and ‘Cemeteries’ as their destination. Whilst living in
Their indistinguishable progress
up and down Royal Street struck me as having symbolic bearing of a broad nature
on the life in the Vieux Carre – and everywhere else
for that matter.’
A streetcar running directly to
its destination on a predetermined course could easily be seen as a symbol of
fate. For Williams, however, the streetcar’s destination, ‘Desire’, spoke more
than an undefined force of fate. This force clearly drives Blanche, her sexual
passion and desire overwhelms her at moments in the play, we see her clearly
driven by forces more powerful than her. She acknowledges
The image of the streetcar is used
in scene 4 when Stella and Blanche discuss sexual desire. Stella asks Blanche,
‘Haven’t you ever ridden that streetcar?’ Stella is clearly a passionate woman
too, perhaps driven by the same force as Blanche. She did after all abandon her
life on a country plantation and succumb to the passionate love of Stanely. Is the final destination for Stella shown in
Eunice perhaps?
There is another image of fate in
the play. In scene 4, 6 and 10 Williams introduce a roaring locomotive at a
dramatic moment: Blanche’s condemnation of
The idea that Williams is trying
to convey seems to be that to be drive by desire is self destructive, yet the
victims of an overpowering passion are carried along helplessly, unable to
escape. Blanche’s fate is preordained, this is not only stressed in the
streetcar image but several key moments in the play indicate that there cannot
be a happy conclusion to Blanche’s story. The incident with the ‘young man’
collecting money and her elusive and dishonest drinking reveal the
uncontrollable forces that drive her. Throughout his life Tennessee Williams was driven from one
sexual encounter to another, exactly like Blanche, and like Blanche he too
seemed incapable of committing himself to a permanent relationship, in his case
homosexual. When Blanche longs for Mitch to marry her, she is not seeking a
permanent sexual relationship but the material security of a home of her own
(‘The poor man’s
Death:
Images of death recur throughout
the play. The streetcar going to ‘cemeteries’ is another reminder
from Williams of the likely eventual outcome of a life driven by passion and
serves to reinforce the theme of fatal desire.
The references that Blanche makes
to caring for her dying relatives at Belle Reve
remind us of the strength she once must have had and the horrors that she
witnessed. The woman swollen by disease and unable to fit into a coffin and
then ‘burned like rubbish’ and the ‘blood stained pillow-slips’ then later
Blanche’s wish to be ‘buried at sea sewn up in a clean white sack’ all provide
chilling reminders of the life Blanche has left behind physically but not
mentally. When Blanche comments that she didn’t speak about death in her
conversations with the dying we see how he probably never let herself grieve,
especially for her dead husband.
The suicide of Blanche’s young
husband is significant throughout the play. It’s own
polka music reminds us insistently of the tragedy. The music in Blanche’s mind
haunts her and grows louder until the fatal echo of the gunshot stops it. The
disgust she openly showed at her husband’s homosexuality and her guilt at his
subsequent suicide partly accounts for mental instability, her promiscuity and
her alcoholism.
Madness:
Blanche’s fear of madness is first hinted at in Scene 1 (‘I
can’t be alone! Because — as you must have noticed — I’m — not very well ...‘).
Never stable even as a girl, she was shattered by her husband’s suicide and the
circumstances surrounding it. Later the harrowing deaths at Belle Reve with which she evidently had to cope on her own, also
took their toll. By this time she had begun her descent into promiscuity and
alcoholism, and in order to blot out the ugliness of her life she created her
fantasy world of adoring respectful admirers, of romantic songs and gay
parties.
She is never entirely successful at this, as the memories of
her husband’s suicide remain persistently alive in her mind, always accompanied
by the polka music. Drink is her solace on these occasions as she waits for the
sound of the shot that signals the end of the nightmare. It seems that she has
learned to live with this, as she remarks to Mitch in a matter-of-fact way,
‘There now, the shot! It always stops after that!’ (Scene 9).
She has reached an accommodation with the nightmares in her mind,
but she cannot bear the intrusion of ugly reality into her make-believe world.
Stanley’s revelations of her past, Mitch’s rejection of her as ‘not clean
enough’ and his clumsy attempt at raping her, and finally her rape by Stanley
on the night when her sister is giving birth to his child, all these break her
and her mind gives way. She retreats into her make-believe world, making her
committal to an institution inevitable.
Like the other major themes of the play - desire and fate,
and death - madness too was