Since its debut on Broadway in 1947, A Streetcar Named Desire has gotten unanimously laudatory reviews. The importance of A Streetcar Named Desire lies in its effect upon an audience. Brooks Atkinson, a drama critic for the New York Times at the time of the play’s premiere, has a good opportunity to witness this effect and he concludes that “out of nothing more esoteric than interest in human beings has Williams looked steadily and wholly into the private agony of one lost person” and calls A Streetcar Named Desire “a quietly woven study of intangibles.” Besides, The New Yorker describes A Streetcar Named Desire as “a brilliant and implacable play about the disintegration of a society.” What is more, critics such as Roger Boxill, Lyle Leverich, and Donald Spoto maintain that Williams presents cases for the alienated, the dysfunctional, and other outcasts of society, and that his genius sparks concern for their suffering, which may account for the play’s enduring popularity. Of course, severe criticism has also been made due to the sensational moments of the play with the beating of Stella and the violation of Blanche, but Joseph Wood Krutch argues that, “in spite of the sensational quality of the story, the author’s perceptions remain subtle and delicate,” while Brooks Atkinson calls Williams “a genuinely poetic playwright whose knowledge of people is honest and thorough.”

From all the above with Williams’ wit, aplomb, mischievousness, and wickedly keen eye for human idiosyncrasies, no wonder Gore Vidal declares Williams “the most distinctive, humorous, American voice since Mark Twain.” The play is highly eulogized for its delicate construction, refined writing, vivid characters and provoking thoughts. A Streetcar Named Desire is preoccupied with the extremes of human brutality and sexual behavior such as madness, rape, incest and nymphomania, as well as violent and fantastic deaths. With such series of powerful portraits of the human condition, Williams offers American theatergoers unforgettable characters.

2. Researches Situation

So far, a substantial number of researches have been done on the theme of A Streetcar Named Desire. In order to show how the play has been variously studied, I classify these different researches into three groups which, I think, can draw the essential lines of demarcation. I will first begin with the studies on cultural clashes between Stanley and Blanche, then those on Blanche’s tragedy from the feminist perspective. Finally, there will be some researches of the trend to import sexuality along with queer to the play’s analysis.

Kenneth Bernard (1998), for instance, argues that the play shows us the decline of one culture and the subsequent rise of another in naturalism. Bernard believes that Stanley’s ascension in the New South means, Blanche, the aristocratic but bourgeois Old South has fallen victim to the natural evolution of the rise of the proletariat. Jonathan Rick (2000) asserts that the theme of A Streetcar Named Desire follows the emotional struggle for supremacy “between two characters who symbolize historical forces, between fantasy and reality, between the Old South and a New South, between civilized restraint and primitive desire, between traditionalism and defiance.” As for the research at home, let us take Professor Wang Yiqun (1992) for an example. Wang espouses that the play primarily portrays the contradiction between Blanche and Stanley, and the failure of Blanche can be considered as the decline of the south.

It is also a critical perspective from the point of the much-discussed question of Blanche’s tragedy. Verna Foster (1999) digs out Williams’ unique adaptation of the tragedy and tragicomedy to suit the strictures of modern drama and the tastes of contemporary audiences. Foster states that the play is tragicomic with a genre that offers its audience “a less cathartic, more ambiguous and disturbing kind of theatrical experience than tragedy might” and is also “an experience better suited to the needs and tastes of audiences in mid-to-late twentieth-century America.” Judith J. Thompson (2002) works out that Blanche’s downfall follows a common pattern, “which begins always with mythically elevated expectations, followed by inevitable disillusionment, and the physical corruption of the soul’s transcendent dreams.” Zhu Yanyan (2008) intimates Blanche’s tragedy by her unsuccessful journey of self-salvation. Suffering from her husband’s death, family’s misfortune and unconventional life, Blanche bears so tremendous a psychological burden that she has to purify her body and soul and undertake a series of actions by frequently bathing in hot water, secretly drinking wine, and consciously distorting reality. Liu Xiling (2009) points out the reason why Blanche’s self-salvation is useless is that she fails in getting rid of the protection of men, as well as changing her values on men and herself. As far as Liu is concerned, Blanche is the tragedy of the society which is ruled by males. Liu appeals females to realize what the value is as a woman and gain dignity in a right way.