Notes on Context of 'A Streetcar Named Desire'

Notes on Context of 'A Streetcar Named Desire'

Southern Belle

The southern belle is based on the young, unmarried, upper-class women of Southern society. They were expected to find suitable husbands, raise families and retain the social status of the family by socialising. The character of a southern belle represents the expectations of southern women to be dedicated to community and family and to have a 'flirtatious yet chaste demeanour.

New Orleans and Immigration

In the 1940s there were more immigrants than ever in New Orleans and although people tended to gravitiate towards people of their own ethnicity, New Orleans remained very intermixed and multicultural.

Tennessee Williams' Other Plays

The Glass Managerie was the play that catapulted Williams' career and has strong autobiographical elements. It features characters that are based on himself, his mother and his mentally fragile sister.

Williams' Life and Times

Tennesse Williams spent the first ten years of his life living at his grandparents' home as his father was a travelling salesman. He then moved to St. Louis with his family when he was twelve, a town similar to New Orleans in Streetcar, and the nastiness of city life left an impression on him, which can be shown in many of his plays.
It was in St. Louis that his older sister, Rose, failed to cross over from a child into adulthood, inspiring the character to Laura in The Glass Managerie.
Williams attended the University of Missouri for three years, until his father got him a position in a shoe factory. He suffered a nervous breakdown two years later and recuperated in Memphis, Tennessee , with his grandfather.