Explore Williams’ presentation of Madness in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. You must relate your
discussion to relevant contextual factors.
Introduction (Topic Sentences for all paragraphs included)
Blanche’s madness is a sickness that follows her from her arrival. Due to tragic events in her past,
she refuses to accept anything in the present from a realist standpoint if it does not align with her
fantasy.
Blanche’s madness drives her out of Elysian Fields because she cannot keep up her façade and
Stanley sets out to reveal the false pretence that she is setting for herself.
Blanche’s madness leads to her losing the trust of her sister and her love interest, which is the only
thing that Blanche had left.
Paragraph 1
Point: Blanche’s madness is a sickness that follows her from her arrival. Due to tragic events in her
past, she refuses to accept anything in the present from a realist standpoint if it does not align with
her fantasy.
Quotes: Scene 9;Blanche: “I don’t want realism. I want magic!”, Scene 9;Blanche: “I misrepresent
things to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be truth.”, Scene 1;Blanche: “…And funerals
are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths – not always.”,
Literary Context: Towards the end of the 19th century many playwrights wanted to write drama that
were more realistic, involving domestic storylines, everyday language and box-sets which resembled
real houses and followed the principles of acting suggested and formalised by Russian theatrical
theorist Konstantin Stanislavski.
Conventions of modern domestic tragedy: The central characters are anti-heroes or heroines, these
characters are ordinary people- not great men or women of earlier tragedies, although family life is
central, it is presented as somehow corrupt and diseased, this corruption undermines faith and
belief in the whole order of society. The world is seen as being full of deceit and prices or dreams
chased are illusory, often characters vie and manoeuvre for control, there is often an emphasis on
psychological elements, the disorder of the world sometimes matches the disorder of the mind.
Paragraph 2
Point: Blanche’s madness drives her out of Elysian Fields because she cannot keep up her façade and
Stanley sets out to reveal the false pretence that she is setting for herself.
Quotes: Scene 5;Blanche: “Young man! Young, young, young man! Has anyone ever told you that
you look like a young Prince out of the Arabian Nights!”, Scene 11;Blanche: “You know what I shall
die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape one day out on the ocean.”, Scene 3;Blanche:
“There’s so much – so much confusion in the world… [He coughs diffidently.]Thank you for being so
kind! I need kindness now.”, Scene 11;Blanche: “I will die – with my hand in the hand of some nice-
looking ship’s doctor, a very young one with a small blond mustache and a big silver watch.”
, Stanley is Williams’ reflection of the concept of Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism has ties to
Nietzsche idea of a will to power as the governing force behind human behaviour and the theory
suggests that human behaviour is shaped primarily by an aim to establish power over others and
that even basic actions are performed with the aim of establishing or retaining power.
Social Darwinism- The concept is based primarily on the notion that individuals with less desirable
traits of less leverage over others are subject to ‘social extinction’ if they do not strive to exert their
own power over others. The theories place the struggle for power in a position of relative
importance in the hierarchy of needs of the human being and generally conclude that individuals
who are relatively assertive in comparison to their peers are more likely to be socially accepted and
therefore more likely to survive.
Paragraph 3
Point: Blanche’s madness leads to her losing the trust of her sister and her love interest, which is the
only thing that Blanche had left.
Quotes: Scene 1;Blanche: “…I want to be near you, got to be with somebody, I can’t be alone!
Because - as you must have noticed - I’m – not very well…”, Scene 6;Blanche: “I guess it is just that I
have – old-fashioned ideals! [She rolls her eyes, knowing he cannot see her face.]”, Scene 9;Blanche:
“Never inside, I didn’t lie in my heart…”, Scene 11;Stella: “I couldn’t believe her story and go on living
with Stanley.”
Context: Like the other major themes of the play- desire, fate and death- madness to was Williams’
obsession. He was afraid that he might go mad because of his siter Rose, whose strange behaviour
had long been a source of anxiety to her parents (the anxieties of the family over Blanche at Belle
Reve echo this.) Rose experienced violent sexual fantasies and made accusations against her father.
To avoid scandal, Rose’s parents had her committed to a mental hospital and consented to a pre-
frontal lobotomy. Rose calmed down as a result, but was result, but was left with no memories, no
mind. The effect on Tennessee Williams was shattering. Not only did he feel guilty because, being
absent from home, he did nothing to prevent the operation, but he also feared that Rose’s mental
illness might be hereditary and that he too might lose his sanity. He certainly did have some sort of
mental breakdown in his early twenties, which contributed to his anxieties later on.
