Discussion Topic
The portrayal of the American Dream in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire
Summary:
In A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams portrays the American Dream as an elusive and destructive force. The characters' pursuit of success and happiness often leads to disillusionment and tragedy, highlighting the disparity between their dreams and reality. Blanche's fall from grace and Stanley's brutal pragmatism exemplify the harsh realities that undermine the idealistic vision of the American Dream.
In Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, how does the play reflect the American dream?
A Streetcar Named Desire does not present a favorable view of the American dream for any of the characters. One walks away from the play feeling as if the American dream is only for men. Even then, it still is not very reachable. Stanley Kowalski's two historical allusions encapsulate his view of the American dream, which, since Stanley "triumphs" in the end, becomes the predominant slant of the play.
First, Stanley refers to the Napoleonic code, "according to which what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband and vice versa." Stanley invokes this legalese in order to assert his right to half of Belle Reve, the plantation that Stella abandoned for her life with him. Granted, Stella would benefit from joint property laws as well considering Stanley's property consists of a rented one-bedroom flat in a shabby neighborhood. Stanley's main hope for achieving the American dream seems to be to acquire...
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it through marriage.
Secondly, Stanley invokes Huey Long, former Louisiana governor, who said, "Every man is a king." This statement works itself nicely into Stanley's way of thinking because he is granted superiority over his wife and sister-in-law without having to do a thing—simply because of his DNA. Again, the American dream—if it means getting what you want in life—revolves around predation: take from others to advance yourself.
At the end of the play, Stanley asserts his Napoleonic and kingly privileges over Stella's sister by raping her, then denies her accusation and casts her out like a leper. Stella submits to her ruler; she sees no other choice since she has a newborn and no means of financial support other than Stanley. Does Stanley get what he wants? Evidently, but his is a sorry kingdom.
Whether the play intends to comment on the American dream in general is debatable, but for these characters, especially the women, it seems unattainable.
References
Tennessee Williams’ drama A Streetcar Named Desire portrays three unstable characters whose reality is not the American dream. Blanche, Stella, and Stanley approach life hoping for different outcomes in their lives. What is the American dream? In looking at the principles of America, the primary dream for everyone is to have a well-lived life. This might include a family, money, success, love, independence, and happiness. If these are the constructs of the American dream, Blanche Du Bois nor the Kowalskis may never find the American dream.
The Kowalskis do in some way love each other and want to be together. With their newborn baby, they may be lucky enough to find a small version of the American dream. Stella settles into a life very different from her upbringing with Blanche. From her comments to Blanche, Stella gives up trying to find a place in the life of the plantation. Blanche dominates that world.
Stella finds a man who is in direct opposition to her previous life. There is little that is cultured or refined about Stanley. He is loud, chauvinistic, rude, selfish and crude. Yet, he does seem to care for Stella if only sexually. If this kind of life is enough for Stella, then kudos for her dream world. When the problem of her sister is solved, Stella is able to continue on passively surviving in Stanley’s world.
When Stanley Kowalski meets Blanche DuBois, two diverse worlds confront each other. The Polish steel worker and the aristocratic former Southern belle will never understand one another. These two distinctive characters represent reality versus pretension and pretending. Blanche never understands the finances of her plantation, so it is lost to bankruptcy. When Stanley learns that his part of the plantation is gone, he centers on the fact that he has lost money.
Blanche will never find the American dream. She does not understand the harsh reality of life. Her dream is the life of the plantation when the women were courted and treated like princesses. She wants to attend the dances and dinners that were in her past life.
A cultivated woman, a woman of intelligence and breeding can enrich a man’s life – immeasurably! I have those things to offer…Physical beauty is passing. A transitory possession. But beauty of the mind and richness of the spirit and tenderness of the heart – and I have all of those things…But I have been foolish - casting my pearls before swine!
When she lost her home and money, Blanche resorts to using her body to survive. In reality, Blanche finally admits to Stella that what she wants is security and someone who would devote himself to protect her.
Finding no one to help her hide from reality, Blanche is given over to the kindness of strangers. Her world self-destructs when Stanley rapes and brutalizes Blanche. She is not able to find the sensitive, delicate world of which she dreams.
How does A Streetcar Named Desire relate to the American dream, and who achieves it?
The term "American Dream" was coined by James Truslow Adams (October 18, 1878, to May 18, 1949), an American journalist, in his 1931 book The Epic of America in which he stated:
The American Dream is that...life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement....It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature...regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.
This notion of an American Dream was set up in opposition to the aristocratic society of Europe—in which a person's birth determined their social and economic fortune in life.
In a sense, Blanche DuBois, with her dreams of the Belle Reve plantation, represents a European dream of a hereditary aristocracy with a role in life determined not by her abilities or efforts but one to which she is entitled by birth. Even her efforts to fantasize about a better life are grounded in the conventions of a "good" and class-appropriate marriage.
Stanley Kowalski appears closer to an exemplar of the American Dream in that he is a working class man who started his career in the Army and now is attempting to build a career and support a family. In reality, though, he is brutal, lives in a small apartment, and compensates for his lack of career success through indulgence in alcohol and what we might now call toxic masculinity.
Stella Kowalski has married Stanley, a man outside her own class, in search of the American Dream. She sees him as someone who will be able to provide for her through his own drive and abilities.
Harold Mitchell appears closest of the characters to representing the potential of the American Dream. He is a competent worker, less volatile that Stanley, reliable, and family-oriented. One could imagine that he would be able to sustain a good marriage that would fulfill the aspirations of the American Dream fantasy. However, his very strong conventional nature makes him uncomfortable with Blanche's lies and checkered past.
None of the characters really achieve the American Dream in the play, but it influences their aspirations and disappointments. Stanley and Blanche as a couple are closest to it, but Williams shows that their marriage and life ultimately fall short of this dream.
In her own way, Stella has a shot at the American Dream by virtue of her marriage to Stanley. Her own family has come down in the world, but unlike Blanche, Stella's able to move on with her life. Though her home life with Stanley is tempestuous and frequently abusive, it still represents a material improvement on what might have been.
The American Dream as presented in A Streetcar Named Desire is purely materialistic; it has no spiritual dimension whatsoever. In choosing to hitch her wagon to Stanley's star Stella is rejecting her spiritual home, her identity as a member of the Du Bois family, a family which, due to its own inability to realize the American Dream, is now materially impoverished. With the fallen, mentally-unbalanced Blanche unable to adapt to the ever-changing world, it's up to Stella to pick up the baton and see if she can't restore the Du Bois family to something like its former glory.
A Streetcar Named Desire presents the American dream through irony. It is represented in the character of Stanley Kowalski, a Polish American who could boast a good job for substenance, a home, a stay-home wife, and a certain success in his job which allows him to have these things.
On the other hand, he is kniving, evil, cruel, chauvinistic, abusive, and overpowering behind closed doors. He is also reproachable in his treatment of Blanche who, no matter what, did not deserve being raped by him and much less have her life torn apart by his cruelty.
Concisely, Williams presents an ideal which is hardly attainable, in the open hands of a man who seems in the outside like the epitome of the American Dream, but in the inside is the epitome of a nightmare.