Neil Bowen on
A Streetcar Named Desire was first performed in 1947, two years after the end of WW2. As such, it reflects a time of enormous social and economic change in America. The end of WW2 brought about an acceleration in a transition which had already begun during the American Civil War [1861-65] and as a result of the Abolition of Slavery in 1865. Gradually the old, southern aristocracy, whose power and wealth had largely been a product of the slave trade, lost much of the privilege it had previously enjoyed. The decline of the South is clearly embodied in the character of Blanche, posing as a ‘Southern Belle’ and desperately trying to hold on to her dignity and superior social status at a time when most people no longer deferred to class hierarchy. Everything about Blanche’s appearance and behaviour smacks of a bygone era: she wears glamorous ‘upper class’ clothes, attempts to assert her superiority by using elevated and affected language, and frequently demonstrates her class’s old, xenophobic and discriminatory attitudes through her response to Stanley and the conditions in which he and Stella live. By contrast, Stanley is dressed in ‘blue denim work clothes’, a look that has since become synonymous with blue-collar cool, in brands like Levi’s 501 jeans.
Unfortunately for Blanche, by the late 1940s, the old-fashioned southern way of life had begun to change radically. The world that Tennessee Williams depicts so knowledgeably was forward-thinking and diverse, a country in which individuals could confidently pursue their idea of the ‘American Dream’. One aspect of this modernisation was industrialisation. Having suffered greatly during the Great Depression of 1929-1939, New Orleans became a thriving hub of industrial activity during WW2, primarily in the making and supplying of military equipment for the war effort. During the war, military bases and factories had been set up all over the south, most of which continued to function after the war and provide ongoing employment for local people, fuelling a rise in rural-urban migration. Furthermore, the southern states of America were a rich source of oil and gas, creating oil millionaires, like the offstage character of Shep Huntleigh, to whom Blanche turns for financial support.
During the twentieth century, and particularly after the war, immigration rates rose dramatically in America as people flocked to the ‘land of opportunity’ from all over the world in search of freedom and prosperity. As the son of a Polish immigrant, Stanley represents this social shift. Although Blanche refers to him disparagingly as a ‘Polack’, naively looking down on and trying to assert her superiority over him as an outsider, in fact it is she who does not fit in. In his cast, Williams also includes characters from a range of other heritages, including the Mexican flower seller, Pablo and the Negro woman. Although racial tension was, and would continue to be, hugely problematic in America at this time, Tennessee Williams’ New Orleans reflects a uniquely harmonious multicultural community, in which working class immigrants like Stanley could prosper. Soldiers like Stanley had earned the respect of their contemporaries not by being rich slave owners, but by fighting bravely for their country and becoming national heroes.
The end of WW2 also brought about some retrograde changes in attitudes towards gender and sexuality. Although many women had found strength and fulfilment by taking on traditionally male roles during the war, most were expected to return to their pre-war domestic lives in peacetime. While the more conventional gender roles of Stella and Stanley conform to this, clearly Blanche stands out as an example of a woman who does not fit neatly into that stereotype. Up until recently a schoolteacher with her own income, she is not married and has what some might regard as a more masculine and predatory attitude towards sex. Unconventional and different, Blanche is eventually rejected by Mitch and committed to an asylum. Similarly, her former husband Allan Grey has been driven to suicide by society’s condemnation of homosexuality, still illegal in America at this time.
Despite presenting us with a post-war world which is indisputably progressive in so many ways, Tennessee Williams shows us that society’s attitude to difference in 1940s New Orleans was nevertheless intolerant and exclusive.