A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

“There isn’t a goddam thing but imagination!... And lies and conceit and tricks!”

We can hardly imagine A Streetcar Named Desire divorced from the powerful acting of Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando. Brando’s sexy bravado mixed with his dangerous leer and, particularly, his yells of “Stella!” are required viewing in any acting class. However, neither performer could have managed the depth and nuance of these performances without the complicated characters created by Tennessee Williams. Like in Menagerie, Williams creates a small group of characters and then beats them against one another – in Streetcar the beating is just a lot more forceful.

Streetcar traces the “lies and conceit and tricks” of Blanche DuBois as she moves from doting to flirting to loving to hating before her final dive first into honesty (with Mitch) and then into insanity (after being raped). The rape of Blanche DuBois is so disturbing because of the way Williams sets up the reader to judge her (as Mitch does) as an undeserving slut. Stanley’s violent attack of her, and subsequent rape, would normally provoke nothing but hatred of him and sorrow for her in the reader. Yet, Williams has created in Blanche a mockery of humanity. She is certainly someone to pity while Stanley is someone to hate, but neither of them is likeable.

As Nabokov tells us, we shouldn’t identify with either character in the play; however, Williams does want us to judge his characters. And not as real people, but as part of his move toward a society based in mendacity where characters like Blanche, Amanda, and Cat act out the choices such women are given in a society dominated by patriarchal demands for women to embody the Madonna/whore dichotomy. The sexuality of Blanche is particularly problematic because we learn in the play that she has used men for her own advantage – even so far as to have sex with a boy – an illegal (and immoral?) act which seems to be the primary root of her current problems.

So, with Blanche the reader gets a character – a woman – who is both the victim of her society’s abuse of women and an abuser herself. Clearly there is no absolute good or bad in her. The reader is bothered at her attempts to deceive Mitch – but understands that the truth about her age or sexual history can only undermine the security of the life she wishes with him. Would you tell her to lie? If she were your friend you might. And if you were Mitch’s friend you might uncover her lies as Stanley does. There is no absolute morality here, but there is morality.

In “Why the Novel Matters,” D. H. Lawrence claims, “In life, there is right and wrong, good and bad, all the time. But what is right in one case is wrong in another…. Right and wrong is an instinct: but an instinct of the whole consciousness in a man, bodily, mental, spiritual at once. And only in the novel are all things given full play, or at least, they may be given full play, when we realize that life itself, and not inert safety, is the reason for living.” Blanche wants to live. As does Stanley. Streetcar doesn’t have room for them both. In the so-called real world, we can find no excuse for Stanley’s rape of Blanche. In Williams’ play we can see that it has to happen from the very first scene. And we also understand why it must be denied:

Stella: “I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley.”

Eunice: “Don’t ever believe it. Life has got to go on. No matter what happens, you’ve got to keep on going.”

Eunice must mean that only through imagination – through “lies and conceit and tricks” – are humans even able to go on living. That’s a dark truth, but one recognized by any Existentialist. We are here. We are each alone. No one and nothing cares, ultimately. Now, lie to yourself and convince yourself that life does have meaning. It does, but only once you’ve managed to imagine it.