"Williams regards sex as a corrosive agent of evil..."
I find it difficult to wholly accept his reasoning behind this statement. Gardner seems to take the view that Williams presents sex as merely an agent of evil, but I consider it to in fact be the cause.
Perhaps the most vivid illustration of the difference of philosophies between Blanche and Stella can be found in Scene Four, when the two sisters heatedly argue about Stanley’s merits. Stella asks of Blanche is he she “never ridden on that streetcar [named Desire]” – turning a metaphor Blanche had just coined against her. This perfectly highlights that the women do hold differing opinions on the subject of lust: Stella sees desire as a powerful attractive force and uses this to explain her attraction and marriage to Stanley. Blanche, however, tarnished into scepticism by her prior experiences, sees it as an inescapable trap “that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another”. What Blanche is effectively communicating is her belief that sex is the force that uncontrollably steers people through life, whether for worse, as embodied by Blanche, who refers to her situation on the whole as being like being “caught in a trap” to the Western Union operator, even before Stanley’s unwelcome advances, or for better as represented through Stella, who says in Scene Four that “there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark – that sort of make everything else seem – unimportant.”
Underlining this is the fact that the two are sisters who experienced precisely the same kind of upbringing. By bonding Stella and Blanche with the strongest of bonds he is disallowing the audience from attributing each sibling’s respective stance to a contrast in background, forcing us to delve deeper to find the root of the issue – and thus the source of Blanche’s tragic ultimate position.
Through all of this, one question remains unanswered: which sister’s philosophy was correct? The ending of the play indicates that perhaps they both are: Blanche’s eventual fate indicates that she was right and desire is indeed irrepressibly destructive, but juxtaposing this is Stanley and Stella’s final sexual embrace despite all that has happened to Blanche. Perhaps what Williams is trying to communicate is the idea of desire as both a destructive and productive force, and that therein lies the tragedy – that in order for human life to progress (represented in Streetcar by the Kowalski baby), casualties such as Blanche must be incurred. Shirley Galloway’s commentary touches on this idea, but I believe Williams is presenting desire as far more destructive a force than Galloway comprehends it to be.


...or something.
( Malchick, Thu 17 Feb 2005, 21:05, Reply)