To took what extent to Tennessee Williams's plays lend support to such a proposition?

Speaking to a reporter in 1963 Tennessee Williams said,

" Death is my best theme, don't you think? The pain of dying is what worries me, not the act. After all, nobody gets out of life alive. "1

The themes of death and desire are central in the play A Streetcar Named to Desire. When the play was released in 1948 it caused a storm, its sexual content was controversial to say the least, but also it was, "virtually unique as a stage piece that is both personal and social and wholly a product of our life today." 2 The play tells of the visit of the main character, Blanche, a supposedly typical to Southern Belle, to her long estranged sister Stella, who she finds living in modesty in New Orleans. Williams brutally rips away the skin of conventionality to reveal the true motivations of the characters, focusing on Blanches apparent fall to madness, and culminating in her eventual rape by her brother-in-law Stanley.

It is important to understand what Williams means when he talks of death to the reporter. For Williams the fact of being dead or the act of death is not important, but it is the pain

The act, which is the climax of the play, that finally causes her descent to madness, is of her been raped by Stanley. As Corrigan points out," the conflict between Blanche and Stanley is an externalisation of the conflict that goes on within Blanche, between illusion and reality."14. The rape is the culmination and climax of contradictory desires represented in a physical act. It is what finally pushes Blanche beyond the realm of the sane. Though it is Blanche's inbuilt and untempered desires that lead to her demise, it is Stanley who acts as the catalyst. A full discussion on how Williams represents 'desire leading to death' would not be complete without looking more closely at Stanley's role.

" since earliest manhood, the centre of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking a of it, not with weak indulgence, dependently, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens... his heartiness with men, his appreciation of rough humour, his love of good drink and food and games.... that bears his emblem of the gaudy seed bearer." 15

When Blanche enters the play she appears to be the epitome of prim and properness, to the audience she is the typical Southern gentlewoman. Williams wastes little time in destroying this facade, to reveal a woman riddled with conflicting desires. From the outset it is clear that she desires to be seen as someone from a higher class. This is shown by the repugnance she feels for her modest surroundings. It is also evident in her class snobbery, the way she dismisses the friendly help from Eunice, "what I meant was I'd like to be left alone." (scene 1). This is also seen when she calls Stanley a "Polack!", "he tells her off in a jingoistic speech their New York audiences in 1947 applauded."10 This is the conception of the conflict between Stanley and Blanche, which acts as a catalyst to her, fall. Her heightened sense of social self is also evident in the way she covets her possessions i.e. her clothes and jewellery. Most important though, is the way her heightened demeanour and the way she talks down to others, leads to her loneliness and isolation. The seriousness of this issue for Blanche is evident in Scene 1, when she says, "I want to be near you, got to be with somebody, I cannot be alone!"

Some common words found in the essay are:
Blanche Stanley, Stanley Blanche, Rive Beautiful, Roxanna Stewart, Laurel Mississippi, Orleans Williams, Streetcar' Stella, Named Desire, Tennessee Williams, Elysian Fields, streetcar named desire, sexual desires, streetcar named, named desire, throughout play, southern gentlewoman, conflicting desires, conflict blanche, id force, tennessee williams, 'desire leading death', acts catalyst, uncontrollable id force, southern gentlewoman scene,
Approximate Word count = 2599
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)