Stanley Clisby Arthur's Old New Orleans (Gretna, La.: Pelican, 1990) provides an insightful picture into the setting of Williams' play and a view of the American South in the first half of the twentieth century.

Williams' earlier play, The Glass Menagerie (1944), also portrays a Southern belle, Amanda Wingfield, who represents the playwright's ambiguous feelings about his mother's pretensions, possessiveness, and insensitivity. She also shares some similarities with Blanche Du Bois.

The memoir of Williams' mother, Remember Me to Tom (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1964), provides insight into the relationship between mother and son. This account was ghost-written by Lucy Freeman.

Margaret Mitchell's 1936 bestseller, Gone With the Wind, is set in the antebellum era in the American South on through the aftermath of the Civil War. Depicting the porticoed mansions of Southern planters, the suffering of black slaves, and the unspoiled glamour of Southern belles, this novel (and the more famous film, which, like Streetcar, starred Vivien Leigh) was one of the last popular works to idealize the South.