What if I told you something, all-pervasive and almost imperceptible, has rooted itself in society and is slowly tearing the world apart? No, I’m not alluding to a conspiracy theory or a doomsday situation. What I’m referring to is a theme that persists throughout the play we’re reviewing today — binaries.

A Streetcar Named Desire, written by the American playwright Tennessee Williams, was initially produced and performed in 1947. Those were turbulent times. World World II had just ended not long ago and American was determined to recover from the catastrophe. Despite having regained the long-lost peace that many yearned for, the American society was enveloped in, as Williams himself put it, “developing tension and anger and violence”. Indeed, America in the 1940s was shrouded in divisiveness which manifested itself in various aspects of life, including race and gender. Noting this, Williams created A Streetcar Named Desire, a play filled with binaries that were all too familiar to the American crowd at that time. Its success was subsequently elevated with the production of a movie adaptation, making it one of the most well-known plays of all time.

What is A Streetcar Named Desire About?

The plot of the play is rather straight-forward— Blanche, a girl who claims to have just lost her plantation, travels to New Orleans in hopes of seeking help from her sister, Stella. While Stella herself is more than delighted to meet her sister, Stella’s husband, Stanley, suspects that Blanche is merely deceiving the two in order to wring them dry of money. During her stay there, Blanche finds herself falling in love with a man named Mitch. However, the seemingly bright future before Blanche eventually dims as Stanley proves himself to be correct in his doubts. An ambiguous scene of Stanley sexually assaulting Blanche ensue, which leaves Blanche in a state akin to insanity.

Binaries in A Streetcar Named Desire

One can tell from just a brief summary of the play that gender is a binary one cannot afford to ignore. Upon our first reading, it may appear that the differences between men and women are absolute and irreconcilable. The notion that women are frail is planted in the readers’ head from the very beginning of the play, where our female protagonist, Blanche, is described as “a moth”, a creature known for their delicate figure and propensity to hurt themselves due to their attraction towards flames. It would not be unfair then to imagine that women are individuals in need of protection and are easy to manipulate. The subtle hint of self-destruction here also seems to dash any hopes of long-term solidarity, which proves to be true at the end of the play where Stella betrays Blanche despite both of them sharing the same gender identity. On the opposite side of the scale are men, as represented by the “strongly, compactly built” Stanley, who possesses what Blanche refers to as “animal force”. The contrast here is stark— while women are portrayed to be weak and fragile, men are painted as individuals teeming with brutish, raw strength, much like an untamed beast. As a result, readers are naturally led into believing that men, being protective and ostentatious, are always the dominant party in a heterosexual relationship, or in the world in general, as women tend to be more submissive due to their frailty.

A Turn to Behold

Now, such an interpretation seems fine and dandy, or does it really? Let’s not forget how Blanche interrogates Stella by bombarding her with a series of questions like “[w]hy didn’t you tell me, why didn’t you write to me, honey”. The way that Blanche feels the need to know everything that her sister does shows her over-protectiveness, which should be regarded as a trait belonging to men if we were to strictly follow the methods of categorisation previously established. Indeed, the addition of a title of endearment at the end of successive questions does ameliorate the issue by insinuating that Blanche has only done so in the name of love, but one question we may ask ourselves is if love equates to control. And what about when Stanley tries to beg for Stella’s forgiveness while only being “half-dressed”? The fact that Stanley is so terrified by the though of losing Stella that getting dressed is deemed a waste of time by him is reflective of an emotional mind, a womanly quality according to the stereotypes we are first led into believing.

Want to Know More?

So what is a man and what is a woman in Tennessee Williams’ head? If you would like to know the answer to this question, I’d highly recommend going through the play again specifically with binaries in mind and booking a Literature class with one of the professional teachers at NTK Academic Group. Thanks for listening and I look forward to seeing you next time.