Loneliness and isolation are themes explored in various differing ways throughout Tennessee William’s play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ (1947) and Colm Toibin’s novel ‘Brooklyn’ (2009), mainly through the way their protagonists are presented and...

Stanley Kowalski stumbles home drunkenly to his upstairs apartment. He sees his pregnant and glowing wife Stella preparing him dinner. Without explanation, he feels an uncontrollable rage of emotions. Stella is confused and frightened. Stanley...

Expressionism was key in many of Williams’s plays – so much so that it was he who came up with the term ‘Plastic Theatre’. Throughout his plays, and particularly in A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams uses expressionism to show emotions or themes...

The theme of contrast is key to A Streetcar Named Desire as it is so obviously displayed in every aspect of the play. Most importantly, Blanche is in a stark contrast with Stanley – a contrast which ends up being very problematic – and there is...

Both Harold Pinter and Tennessee Williams depict vivid and intimidating oppositions in their characters Stanley Kowalski and Goldberg and McCann. The oppositions in both A Streetcar Named Desire and The Birthday Party strive to assert their power...

In both Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar named Desire and Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, there is extensive concern for how masculinity and femininity are portrayed. Both texts present archetypical interpretations of gender as well as juxtaposing figures...

In Webster’s Jacobean revenge tragedy The Duchess of Malfi, and Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, written in 1947, both men consider the themes of chastity and the effect chastity has on the main female characters’ reputation within society....

The postmodernist writers emerged after the Second World War, and their fierce critiques of human nature showed a race that was vile and heinous at best, with Tennessee Williams’s depiction being no different. In his play A Streetcar Named Desire,...

The climax of Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire occurs in “Scene Ten,” when Stanley ultimately rapes Blanche, his sister-in-law. Many audiences and readers have debated whether or not this act was premeditated or done impulsively, as to...

Composers creatively explore the intangible nature of the American identity reflecting the flawed values of American exceptionalism and capitalism. Tennessee Williams’ symbolist play, A Streetcar Named Desire, 1947, inspects the destabilisation of...

Throughout A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche is caught between the contradictions of her own character and the society surrounding her. She persistently fights to conceal the truth of her personality and past, failing to comprehend the changing...

Tennessee Williams’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire, illustrates the struggle of power between economic classes and the changes taking place in America at that time, regarding social status. The constant tension between Blanche and Stanley...

In reading through the plays of Tennessee Williams, one may notice the “predominance of sex” as a theme throughout many different works, and more specifically, the theme of sexual rejection (Reid 431). In the interconnected systems of ethics...

An extremely specific author, Tennessee Williams is known for his elaborate and in-depth descriptions of sets, costumes, sound, and general staging, often appearing to have the last detail written out in his seemingly endless supply of stage...

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams presents desire as an overwhelmingly destructive and negative force. All of the characters grapple with their desires: both Blanche and Mitch desire companionship, Stella desires to upkeep her life with...

To a great extent, Williams presents a clash between two cultures rather than one between two individuals. Witnessed in the play is the struggle between ‘Old Southern’ culture, whose values are embodied by protagonist Blanche Dubois and the new...

Within ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ by Tennessee Williams, and ‘The Great Gatsby’ by Scott Fitzgerald, marriage is debated, and potentially condemned, in three different fashions. Interestingly despite the two pieces being written and based twenty...

Tennessee Williams portrays the character Stella as an adaptable character who has changed to fit in with her new surroundings in order to survive. She is also portrayed as a vulnerable possession, quite primal and driven by desire but also as a...

Tennessee Williams creates tension and conflict through oppositions in the play – he shows striking differences between the characters Stanley and Blanche, animalistic qualities, the contrast between the old world versus the new world and the...

Women holding onto their youth plays a significant role in Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire which opened on Broadway in 1947 and in Notes on a Scandal published in 2003 by Zoe Heller. In both texts this theme is caused by many...

In many dramatic works, the use of barriers is crucial - they determine the play’s developments and how much it will affect the audience. This is certainly the case of “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”. The former,...

Space is an important element in drama and is embodied by the stage itself as a representation of a space where action is presented. Plays differ significantly with regard to how they present space and how much information about space they offer...

Those People: A Look at Demonic Othering and Homosexuality in Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Kushner’s Angels in America

The arts and humanities have served as not only social and political barometers of their representative ages, but also as...

After seeing a play such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or A Streetcar Named Desire, a viewer may be hard pressed to remember that there was once a time in Western culture when the revealing of a woman’s bare foot proved entirely scandalous. What was...