Blanche’s Destruction: Feminist Analysis on A Streetcar Named Desire

Abstract: A Streetcar Named Desire is a famous play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1984. He is highly praised and eulogized for its delicate construction, refined writing, vivid characters and provoking thoughts. It mainly deals with the conflicts between two symbolic characters, Blanche DuBois—a fading gentlewoman of the Old South--and Stanley Kowalski, an industrial, urban immigrant with unrefined characteristics. In particular, Blanche, as the representative of delicate and fragile southern female images, has been the focus of discussion. This paper analyzes this typical controversial heroine from the perspective of feminism in terms of social culture, economic factor and women’s psychology to find out the main factors for her destruction