A street car named desire by Tennessee Williams

"Whoever you are ­ I have always depended on the kindness of strangers" Blanche, scene 11, A street car named Desire

This is almost certainly the most famous line of Tennessee William's brilliant 11 scene play. The story takes place after World War II, in New Orleans. Stella, a twenty-five year old pregnant woman, lives with her blue-collar husband Stanley Kowalski. Her older sister, Blanche Dubois, arrives out of the blue, carrying all that she owns as well as bad news: Belle Reve, the family mansion has been lost. While Stella had left to do something with her life, Blanche had stayed behind to take care of their dying family in the South. When Blanche meets Stanley, she feels uncomfortable at once. The situation grows more and more tense as Stanley becomes more and more irritated by Blanche's little fantasy world and her "virginal belle from the South" act. We learn that Blanche was once married when she was young but that her husband died. Blanche is appalled to find out that the happiness in her sister's couple is simply based on animal-like sex. Whatever Stanley pulls ?as harsh as it may be- she always gives in to his groveling. One poker-night, Blanche meets Mitch, a simple but kind man, and there is an immediate mutual attraction between the two. The next day, Stanley overhears Blanche saying to her sister that he's a stone-age man without any manners and that she's worth better than that. From that time on, he devotes himself entirely to her destruction. He maliciously digs up her shady past in Laurel, where she had a bad reputation of seducing strangers. Mitch, when he learns the truth, loses all interest in Blanche and treats her like a slut. On her birthday, Stanley offers Blanche bus tickets back to Laurel, which makes Stella very mad because Blanche cannot return there. But mid-fight, she has to go to the hospital because she feels the baby is coming. During her sister's absence, Blanche is left helpless with Stanley that mercilessly destroys all her illusions one by one and then rapes her. Weeks later, Blanche has to be taken away to an asylum for a nervous breakdown, before the very eyes of her crying sister that refuses to believe what Blanche claims to go on with her life.

A Streetcar named Desire hit the theaters in 1946 and won a Pullitzer prize. Williams depicts - in a very personal way - the psychology of working class characters as well as sexuality as a potent force of life. The script is very explicit: there are many indications between brackets to set the mood as well as the stage effects that are used to represent Blanche's descent into madness. New Orleans, the city of powerful contrasts between old French architecture and new rhythms of jazz, is opposed to the old South, a dying world that may have been beautiful but that is gone forever. The title, a "streetcar named Desire" is a powerful metaphor: to get to the "Elysian Fields," where Stella and Stanley live, Blanche had to take "a streetcar named Desire" and then a "streetcar named Cemeteries"? The theme of desire is thus intimately liked with that of death as Freud had explained with his "eros" and "thanatos"..

Williams' plays are full of symbols that resonate with his central themes such as desire. Blanche obviously has no control over her own desire, which is the cause of her mental and physical frailty. Even if she's repulsed by Stanley's plainness, she isn't indifferent to Stanley's down-to-earth charms. She's to some extent jealous of Stella's choice of building her life around a powerful sexual relationship. Stanley is a superb specimen of primitive, unthinking, brutal man driven only by emotions. Blanche understands by instinct the threat that he represents. However, Blanche's presence seems like a threat to Stanley's authority as she openly denounces him in from of his wife. He's her complete opposite, living in the real world in which Blanche cannot survive because of her frayed nerves. She is more comfortable with make believe than reality as she always keeps away from the harshness of crude light. But, even if she does lie, it's never with the intent to hurt. She seeks to become what she thinks will please others. She speaks of the world as it ought to be, and as people would prefer it to be.

Her driving force - desire - makes her constantly suffer inside. That's why Blanche has the habit of always bathing as if it were a cleansing ritual. But the feeling of refreshment and renewed strength is not long lasting: the past does not wash away so easily and brings her to the terrible climax. Blanche feels desperately lonely and hopes to meet someone to save her from falling into depression. Meeting Mitch was a breath of fresh air for her. She puts on a real act for him as she pretends to be taken with good old-fashioned values to feel young and no longer scarred. She's had quite a past with men. We find out ?depending on the version of the play you have- that her former husband was homosexual and that he committed suicide because she ruthlessly rejected him. Blanche never overcame her sense of guilt for what happened.

In the last scene comes the deathblow to her sanity. The man she had placed her dopes in rejects her and the man she loathes takes her by force. After this, Blanche can never be the same again. Everyone else apparently can as the other men callously choose to go on with their poker game, denying Blanche the dignity of being taken away in private. Stella, who betrayed her sister, believes her husband because the priority is believing whatever it takes to go on with life. That's where the famous line comes in. She accepts tacitly to follow the doctor, after having struggled against the nurse's grasp and says: "Whoever you are ­ I have always depended on the kindness of strangers". It's the severe truth of her life: stretching out for help from strangers to in the end only receive abuse and be abandoned. If you're not into reading plays and you'd rather see it, be sure to catch the movie by Elia Kazan (1951) with the remarkable performances of Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski and Vivien Leigh as Blanche Dubois.

Retrouvez la critique du film dans la rubrique Cinéma

07/05/2006

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