A Streetcar Named Desire

This revised Student Edition includes an introduction by Bess Rowen, Assistant Professor at Villanova University, US, which looks in particular at the play's treatment of rape, vulnerable people, mental institutions (especially in connection to Williams's own family), sexuality and sexual desire.
A Streetcar Named Desire shows a turbulent confrontation between traditional values in the American South - an old-world graciousness and beauty running decoratively to seed - set against the rough-edged, aggressive materialism of the new world.
Through the vividly characterised figures of Southern belle Blanche Dubois, seeking refuge from physical ugliness in decayed gentility, and her brutal brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski, Tennessee Williams dramatises his sense of the South's past as still active and often destructive in modern America.
METHUEN DRAMA STUDENT EDITIONS are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and classic repertoires. A well as the complete text of the play itself, this volume contains:
· A chronology of the play and the playwright's life and work· An introductory discussion of the social, political, cultural and economic context in which the play was originally conceived and created· A succinct overview of the creation processes followed and subsequent performance history of the piece· An analysis of, and commentary on, some of the major themes and specific issues addressed by the text· A bibliography of suggested primary and secondary materials for further study

Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams; 1911-83) was a US playwright, whose controversial plays dealt with themes of repressed sexuality and family conflict. Williams was the most popular playwright in America between 1945 and 1960, winning the Pulitzer Prize twice and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award four times. Amongst serious playwrights, only Eugene O'Neill equalled his achievements on the Broadway stage; several of Williams's plays were also made into successful films. The son of a shoe salesman, Williams grew up in some poverty in Mississippi and Missouri. Many of his early frustrations, which are reflected in his plays, arose from the prudery of his mother and the coarseness of his womanizing father, who, as his son's homosexuality became apparent, invariably referred to him as 'Miss Nancy'. The playwright revealed his homosexuality in his Memoirs (1975), having previously explored the subject in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly Last Summer. Williams tried his hand at fiction and poetry before turning to drama in the late 1930s, winning a Theatre Guild prize for the four one-act plays entitled American Blues in 1939. Recognition as a major playwright came with The Glass Menagerie, a tender work inspired by the tragic life of his sister, a schizophrenic. His next play, the brutal A Streetcar Named Desire, opened in 1947, winning the Pulitzer Prize and making a star of Marlon Brando. It was followed a year later by Summer and Smoke. In 1949, these three plays were running simultaneously in London. His later works included The Rose Tattoo (1951), Camino Real (1953), Orpheus Descending (1957), and SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH (1959), which opened with Paul Newman and Geraldine Page in the leads. By the late 1950s, Williams was being accused of repeating himself, and after Period of Adjustment (1960) and The Night of the Iguana (1961), his plays were received unenthusiastically. During his later years, Williams became increasingly dependent on drugs and alcohol, suffering a nervous breakdown in 1969. He died in 1983.

Chronology
Introduction
Cultural Context: The United States in the 1940s
The Glass Menagerie and the Beginning of an Era
Williams and the Writing Process
Realism, Naturalism, and Expressionism
Method Acting and Elia Kazan
Depicting Rape and Vulnerability
Sex and Sexuality
Production History and Adaptations
Further Reading
A Streetcar Named Desire
Notes