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Streetcar Named Desire Opening Scene Analysis

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Summary of the Opening Scene A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams is in New Orleans just after the second world war and focuses on three central characters: Blanche Dubois, her sister Stella & Stanley Kowalski. These three characters are very different. Stella is Blanche’s sister & Stanley’s wife & so she serves to link them. TW creates a very distinctive setting for the play in the opening scene. He is mainly focused in the relationship between Stellas sister, Blanche and the environment of the raffish charm city, New Orleans. In the beginning of the play, Blanche and New Orleans are anticipated as totally incongruous together. The reason why this controversy is created between Stellas sister and New Orleans, is that Blanche comes from Belle Reve, a completely different city, and she is not used to the life in the place where Stella has settled down, as she is described as a highbrow person, from an elevated social class who is well refined and very delicate. Her character is also noticed from the fluffy bodice clothes and the white gloves that she is wearing, as well as the cultural language that Blanche uses to communicate with the others. On the other hand, New Orleans is a small city, with old white painted houses with rickety stairs, with an atmosphere of decay, full of bars where the loud disturbing sound of the tinny piano is heard, and people that behave differently from what Blanche expected. …show more content…

The first scene takes place at a street called Elysian Fields. Stella and Stanley live in the first floor of a building, while in the second one, Eunices flat is

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Her Otherness and incongruity in the lower-middle class New Orleans neighbourhood are apparent from the moment she enters. At the beginning of the play, the inhabitants of Elysian Fields enjoy themselves in some earthly, bawdy activities. Eunice and the coloured woman are chatting “on the steps of the building” (3), making ribald jokes about Stanley’s “package” (4). Mitch and Stanley are going to the bowling club while Stella rushes to join them (4-5). Then Blanche, “daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, …, white gloves and hat” (5), the very image of a Southern gentlewoman, steps into the scene.

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