In the play a streetcar named desire there are many conflicts between the characters representing the conflict between the values of the old world and the new, and that this conflict is expressed through the battle between Stanley and Blanche. Blanche thinks she is so high class and looks down on Stanley even though he is paying for her to stay at his house. The writer’s life Tennessee Williams has many influences on the play like when he was a kid he used writing as “an escape from a world of reality in which he felt acutely uncomfortable.
” You can see how this links in with the play when Blanche tries to escape from the world of New Orleans to the high-class society of which she is accustomed. In the play Blanche and Stanley appear very different in appearance and the way they talk. Stanley gets home from the butchers and says to Stella “meat” and proceeds to throw it at her showing his caveman attitude towards her and life. After catching the meat she looks up to see he has already started round the corner not caring at all about her. Blanch however is dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice and a necklace as if she is going to a tea party.
In reality she is in down town New Orleans where class does not mean anything (she represents the old Order of status and class), what you work for is what you get (Stanley represents the New Order of fighting for survival with no class). In scene 2 and 3 you get a picture of how the New World men behave compared to the old order of Gentleman. Stanley and his work mates are having a poker game. Blanche comes in and says “please don’t get up”, Stanley replies “Nobody’s going to get up, so don’t be worried”.
In the old world a gentleman would get up and welcome her in but Stanley in the New world does not care for class and does not even lift his head. This links in with Tennessee Williams life because he believed that “we are all savages at heart” and the people of New Orleans are quite Savage. In scene 6 you find out that Blanche is pretending to be something she is not when she flirts with Mitch. She complains to Mitch about her accommodation “And I have to ask him to close the bathroom door. That sort of commonness isn’t necessary”.
She thinks she is so high class and above ever one else even though she used to get in bed with anyone who would give her a roof over her head. This links in with Tennessee Williams life as he used to write about the human condition as he saw it; he was not afraid to talk and tackle topics such as incest, rape and madness. Scene 7 is Blanches birthday dinner, Stanley explodes into rage and tells Stella about what he’s heard about Blanche in Loral, Stella is torn between the two not knowing weather to support her husband or her decaying sister Blanche.
He tells Stella about how Blanch got kicked out of the school she used to work out, “A seventeen -year-old boy- she’d gotten mixed up with”. She slept with the boy telling us that she is very lonely after loosing her husband when she was just a chid and that she never really recovered. This links in with Williams’s life because in 1937 his sister Rose suffered a break down and was admitted to a mental hospital and not long afterwards she was lobotomised. Williams suffered from depression throughout his life and lived in fear that he too would go insane. I think he also suffered from loneliness as his sister was very close to him.
In scene 10 Mitch has rejected Blanche and found out he does not like her, as they are both two different people. Stanley comes home and Blanche tells us that Shep Huntley is coming to pick her up. “Then-just now-a wire inviting me on a cruise of the Caribbean”. In reality she has just made it up with out knowing it (this tells us she is going mad), it is another example of the old order trying to impress when really it is just a meaningless lie. Stanley then rapes her. This is typical of 1950 New Orleans where all manner of behaviour was tolerated if not encouraged.
