Literary and Critical Context

• The play received a variety of responses when it first hit Broadway, with some rejecting the bold portrayal of sexuality, morality, and desire, but it also became very popular amongst those audiences who felt the crude realism was admirable.
• Robert J. Leeney, the editorial writer of the Register, called Williams an “ultra-realist” who was blunt in his ideas and did not overlook basic human needs behaviour.
• Many critics constantly compared his play to his The Glass Menagerie, but unlike The Glass Menagerie it was deemed far graver.
• Some critics and audiences looked at Stanley as a victim of Blanche’s madness and attack against his masculinity, class, and heritage.
• The rape scene in this approach is justified as an event initiated by Blanche through her flirting and exhibitionism.
• It was reported that some audiences actively cheered during Blanche’s rape.
• Through a Marxist lens, we see Stanley as the reigning champion of the working classes, defeating the old aristocratic ways by removing Blanche, the symbol of the Bourgeois, from their lives and moving on to live with his wife and newborn son, the symbol of his future.
• The Marxist lens can be furthered using the Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’— Stanley, ‘the gaudy seed bearer’, as Williams calls him (Scene One), emerges the survivor at the end ready to pass his way of life down to his new-born child as he defeats the final remnants of the Bourgeois threat to his life—Blanche.
• Albert Wertheim, professor and author, considers the baby as a representation of a Kowalski future and not a DuBois one; Blanche is removed from the picture while Stanley stays back— his final win.
• This is in direct contrast to understanding the play from a feminist lens, which portrays the play as a critique of the expectations of patriarchal society, expressed through the psychological unravelling of characters.
• Williams’ twisted portrayal of masculinity and femininity can be seen in this light as well, particularly using Blanche who tends to show masculine energy which in turn becomes a threat to Stanley, the established Alpha male and Patriarch.
• The rape of Blanche through a feminist lens becomes a scene where Stanley asserts his masculine power and authority over Blanche through sexual violence.
• Stanley uses Blanche’s past decisions against her, a past that is unacceptable because she is a woman.
• This entire event, in feminist discourse, portrays women as victims of the oppressive patriarchy.
• The patriarchy and its norms recurrently chipped at Blanche’s sanity as she felt she needed to find a husband to be accepted by society.
• 'As we cannot fully accept or reject Blanche, when she i eliminated we don't fully sympathize nor do we rejoice fully' - Klara Bodis, "Blanche: A Complexity of Attitudes"