"A Streetcar Named Desire" is a play by American
playwright Tennessee Williams. First performed in New York in 1947, it received
both a New York Drama Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize.
The play begins with the visit of Blanche Du Bois to her sister Stella, who lives with her beastly-mannered husband Stanley Kowalski, in New Orleans near the stop of the streetcar named Desire.
Blanche, whose appearance is deceiving, looks ladylike and constantly refers to her early life at the family estate of Belle Reve. Baffled by her sister's environment and the
antagonistic way her brother-in-law treats her, she turns to Mitch, Stanley's friend, for company.
Soon enough, Stanley learns that Blanche is not what she appears to be, and certainly not the Southern belle she says she is. He tells Mitch that in reality she is a lonely alcoholic forced into bankruptcy and who has lost her job because of an affair with a boy who reminds her of her dead husband.Blanche's antagonistic relationship with Stanley ends in his raping her. Blanche tells Stella about it, but Stella does not believe Blanche. It ends with Blanche being taken into a psychiatric care.
The play depicts an apparent clash between the two symbolic characters, Du Bois and Kowalski, and coming from different cultural backgrounds coping with each other's present situation - her, from the pretentious fading old South, and him, of the rising industrial immigrant class. Both characters are strongly represented.