hello everyone I'm Jen and I make youthful English liit steady videos on Shakespeare poetry fiction literary ideas and more to help you become a litery expert so if that sounds like exactly like what you need then make sure you hit the Subscribe button below so in today's video we are looking at the context of Tennessee Williams play a street car named design specifically at how historical social and cultural influences in Williams's own time might have shaped his writing of the play now those of you who are seasoned literary students would know that context is important in so far as it illuminates the themes and ideas in the primary text and should always be viewed as secondary or supplementary to our engagement with the fictional work itself so by far the most common challenge I hear from students when it comes to context is how and where to incorporate their contextual knowledge in this essay paragraphs and in a way that's seamless logical and insightful and I've actually done quite a few videos on illustrating this so you can check them out right here and in the rest of this video I will present the plays context and in close parallel to specific moments in street car so hopefully that will show you how we can weave the factual and the fictional elements in an effective and elegant manner when we're writing our essays so with that let's dive straight into it so we know that the play is set in late 1940s New Orleans which is doubly interesting for its post World War II timing and its postbellum Southern environment because they Mark a point of turbulence and rupture in 20th century American history to understand how williams might have seen this conflux of historical energies perhaps we can turn to the epigraph by heartt crane at the start of this play which begins with and so it was I entered the broken world to trace the Visionary company of love now while Crane's original poem is largely a personal meditation on his creative and spiritual journey the broken world he alludes to could be interpreted in Williams's context as a New Orleans or the broader American South that's caught in the cusp between the old old and new worlds between a reified past when Confederacy values of racial hierarchy and aristocratic distinctions were the norm versus an emerging America where cultural diversity social mobility and ethnic heterogeneity were quickly gaining ground this break between past and present then sets the overarching dynamic of street car which plays out not only in the heavy atmospheric descriptions but equally in the dubo Kowalski power struggle throughout the play now at the start of scene one the setting descriptions establish a strong impression of New Orleans as a Nexus of contradictions it is poor but has a raffish charm the architecture is a wash with soft Hues like white and tender blue yet there's an atmosphere of Decay desires of the body and soul collided with the viseral aroma of bananas and coffee fused with the dreamy lyricism of piano music the only conflation that doesn't seem to fit in comfortably is actually the racial one as suggested by the Jos of the two women one white and one colored their simultaneous presence in the scene is given an explanation for New Orleans is a Cosmopolitan City where there is a relatively warm and easy intermingling of races in the old part of town which may seem odd and overcompensatory to a 21st century audience or probably necessary to Williams's contemporary audience whose racial Consciousness would have largely carried segregationist assumptions and been much less liberal than as today so for them to have a white and black woman appearing in the same setting might have been discomforting if not even outrageous most significantly though is that this series of contrast at the start of the play casts the street name elisen fields into sharp irony alysium means an imaginary Utopia where presumably all people and things align in Perfect Harmony the various clashes implied so far about this French Quarter section in New Orleans however whether in socioeconomic class architectural aesthetic sensorial experience or racial makeup suggest that any elisan state is probably more aspirational and Fantastical than achievable and realistic indeed as the play progresses we see this argument borne out in the characters remarks about the quarter and New Orleans with blanch making no secret of her dismissive disdain towards the place lack of refinement and others like Stella and Mitch accepting the neighborhood's rakishness as part of its charm when blanch first arrives at the Kowalski's flat she is a gast at the rundown nature of her sister's living environs why didn't you tell me why didn't you write me honey why didn't you let me know tell you what lanch what that you had to live in these conditions aren't you being a little intense about it it's not that bad at all New Orleans isn't like other cities this has got nothing to do with New Orleans you might as well say oh forgive me blessed baby the subject is closed thanks and during the pause blanch stares at her and she smiles back at blunch and this is one of the earlier moments which exposes just how far the duar sisters have diverged in their values if they were even that much aligned to begin with back when they were children but we don't know that in fact they're not even talking about the same thing as we notice blanch is fixated on the poverty and roughness of the French Quarter while Stella sees her environment with a much broader perview she isn't just some dweller in a dingy flat somewhere in the poorer part of town she sees herself as a mopolitan aspirant in a dynamic exciting upand coming City representing a new America now Stella psychology is a bit like how many people would willingly exchange living in a big house in a suburb and small town for shacking up in less than ideal flatsharing Arrangements in a place like New York City San Francisco or London because for Stella New Orleans isn't like other cities and it holds the alluring promise of radical self-fashioning where she can reinvent her identity and shared the stuffy baggage of Southern gentility by marrying someone just as radical and unconventional as Stanley Kowalski by the way guys if you find this video helpful so far I'd massively appreciate it if you could hit the Thumbs Up Button below and subscribe to my channel so that you don't miss out on any of my top grade lit study content going forward I'd also encourage you to check out my membership program by clicking the join button below if you want exclusive access to members only study content and make special video requests I'll see you there but of course blanch can't understand this because she desperately wants to hold on to the Southern bell identity of your to her New Orleans doesn't mean anything which is why her rort to Stella's protest is that her grievance has nothing to do with New Orleans but everything to do with her sister's glaring and in some ways for blanch hurtful rejection of their rear guard routs as Plantation era Aristocrats this incompatibility in values is invade as well through blanche's Blank Stare at her sister who reciprocates with a smile that suggests more kind of quiet Defiance than sisterly reassurance in fact a large part of blanche's tragedy is her inability or refusal to accept the generational change symbolized by a place like New Orleans as we see from her somewhat comical outof touch self-consciousness when Mitch invites her for a casual chat on the porch after the first pokon knite scene sit down on the steps and have a cigarette with me I'm not properly dressed that don't make no difference in the quarter oh it's such a pretty silver case now most people would agree that having a chat over a sigy on the front steps is pretty casual activity but for blanch even something as informal as this requires proper dressing which suggests her pathological need to cover up her true raw self with extra elaborate layers so blanch is obviously someone with a lot of clothes but it's perhaps less a reflection of a passion passion for fashion or even a reflection of egoistic vanity but more of a compulsive crippling need to hide herself from the changing reality of her environment and the growing problems that her unchanging views about how people or Society should be are causing for her just as Mitch points out that being properly dressed don't make no difference in the quarter so blanch is non sequor of a response such a pretty silver case alluding to Mitch locket indicates that the quarter's behavioral Norms like wise don't make no difference to her and eventually it is blanche's refusal to respect this neighborhood's cultural codes that lead to her expulsion from the space as in Stella's final decision to send her away to a mental institution so sexuality is a key theme in street car especially its manifestations in what would have been deemed more socially deviant forms back in Williams's time such as promiscuity and homosexuality and while the play is set in mid 20th century American South many of the gender values that blanch subscribed to and is judged by have not really evolved from the antibellum era in the 19th century when patriarchal men wielded power in both public and private domains while expecting women to embody madona esque virtues like Purity innocence and docility same-sex relationships were of course virtually unheard of or else deemed taboo altogether and those exposed as homosexuals were sure to become social parias life the prescription of such strict unforgiving moral codes on sexual identity meant that the concept of sexuality was often associated with deep shame and unfulfillment and this applied actually both to those who complied with and defined sexual Norms like stellar and blanch respectively one of the most intriguing ironies in the play is how the gender archetypes that blanch and Stellar each in body in fact contradict their deeper core identities in relation to the past history and present reality for example while blanch behaves like a morally loose woman being an escort at the CD Hotel Flamingo back in Laurel engaging in sexual relations with a minor and even after arriving in New Orleans attempting to flirt with her brother-in-law Stanley and a random young Postman blanch paradoxically Pines for an Old South where women were actually held to be impossible exemplars of sexual Purity and in a similar vein Stella outwardly conforms to the Persona of the obedient and forbearing wife accepting the boatload of physical and emotional abuse from St despite the hurt that his actions cause her but oddly her subservient attitude actually jars with the rebellious spirit that would have first motivated Stella to marry an immigrant upstart like Stanley it's tragically ironic though that in seeking to liberate herself from the suffocating gender expectations of her Southern root Stella comes full circle by seeking another equally constraining Arrangement through marriage orbe it of a different patriarchal flavor most importantly the the cognitive dissonance in the DUIs sister's gender choices and true desires reflect a much more complex internal struggle that many postbellum women would have faced caught between the chasm of traditional expectations and nent gender possibilities these women like many others were desperately looking for ways to understand how they could show up in a changing chaotic world as Unique Individuals rather than as women with a capitalized W who were dutifully per form a set of social cultural assumptions about how they should act in and out of the household this inner conflict is best encapsulated in blanche's Rambling monologue in scene five when she tries to gauge of Stella has caught wind of the gossip about her disreputable past in La rule I never was hard or self-sufficient enough when people are soft soft people have got to courau the favor of hard ones Stella have got to be seductive Ive put on soft colors the colors of butterfly wings and and flow and make a little temporary magic just in order to pay for one night's shelter that's why I've been not so awfully good lately I've run for protection Stella from under one leaky roof to another leaky roof because it was storm all storm and I was caught in the center people don't see you men don't don't even admit your existence unless they are making love to you and you've got to have your existence admitted by someone if you're going to have someone's protection and so the soft people have got to Shimmer and glow put a paper lantern over the light but I'm scared now awfully scared I don't know how much longer I can turn the trick it isn't enough to be soft you've got to be soft and attractive and I'm I'm fading now and then the stage directions read the afternoon has faded to dusk Stella goes into the bedroom and turns on the light under the paper lantern she holds a soft drink in her hand back to blanch have you been listening to me I don't listen to you when you are being morbid so to 21st century audiences like ourselves in feminist liberal Democratic societies it may be emotionally challenging to take blanche's words about needing to be soft and seductive seriously probably because most of us would have internalized the notion of gender equality and have danced to Destiny Child or Beyonce's Independent Women anthems but this sort of expectation was standard Fair back in blanche's time as evidenced by the antibellum writer and college President Thomas rodri du in his unironically titled dissertation on the characteristic differences between the Sexes well he claims that a woman's power is to Perfect all those feminine Graces all those fascinating attributes which render her the center of Attraction and which Delight and charm all those who breathe the atmosphere in which she moves by her very meekness and Beauty does she subdue all around her the phras is Center of Attraction meekness and Beauty are echoed in blanche's belief that a woman must put on soft colors and be both soft and attractive for men to even acknowledge her existence it's clear then that Blancher sense of self is wholly contingent upon masculine validation but the more nuanced point to make here lies in her remark that she's run for protection from one leaky roof to another leaky roof because it was storm all storm and I was caught in the center so going back to our earlier argument about the conflicted nature of blanch and Stellar's gendered Behavior this image of being caught in the center between leaky roofs which represent the perilousness of depending on external sources of protection is an apt representation of the cultural entrapment suffered by Southern women women like the two DUIs sisters Stella's actions of turning on the light under the paper lantern and her advancing towards her sister with the bottled Coke are pregnant with defiant symbolism compared to her Damsel in Distress of a sister who fears the light and holds tightly onto the past Stella sees herself as a more liberated one as the woman who doesn't shy away from the light and takes a forward step towards this new world new America that's being born of course as we go on to witness the way Stella condones Stanley's transgressions the self-perception doesn't really quite square with her real much meaker modes of behavior but at least it presents a moment where Stella could be viewed as contemplating a more defiant version of Womanhood so if feminism in the postbellum American Self can only be a distant fantasy at best imagined in subconscious States and at worst impossible in real life then homosexuality was even more of a social impossibility with values such as honor session and Mastery rooted at the core of anti Bellon Southern manhood the very thought of men's sexually Consulting with other men was unfathomable first for his breaking with Christian Moray but perhaps more importantly accepting homosexuality would have implied a total repudiation of the plantation class structure and master versus slavery dialectic upon which the American southern society and culture were built a major source of blanche's tragic self-sabotage is her Discovery and condemnation of her ex-husband Alan's homosexual Affair and while the man's homosexuality itself may be the shock Factor here Williams is perhaps making the point that rather than the sexual orientation itself being the problem it is the way that people react to homosexuality by attaching such shame and sin to it that causes ultimately the greatest form of Destruction as an openly gay man himself Williams would have felt strongly about the psychological consequences of hiding his own sexual identity which of course he had to deal with in his earlier years before he came out of the closet and even afterwards he faced considerable social stigma for this so this personal experience translates into the devastating end of blanch and Allan's marriage had Allan not seen the need to hide his true sexuality in the first place who would not have married blanch to cover up his homosexuality hence removing the original source of trauma and tragedy in the CL and despite claiming to have loved her husband blanch defaulted to social judgment upon realizing alen's true sexual orientation and rather than showing him the sort of compassionate tenderness that she herself so craves and later ironically purports to possess herself as she reveals to Mitch in scene six I didn't find out anything till after our marriage when we run away and come back and all I knew was I'd failed him in some mysterious way and wasn't able to give him the help he needed but couldn't speak of he was in the quicksands and clutching at me but I wasn't holding him out I was slipping in with him I didn't know that I didn't know anything except I loved him unendurably but without being able to help him or help myself then I found out in the worst of all possible ways by coming suddenly into a room that I thought was empty which wasn't empty but had two people in it notice that the diction blanch chooses in the quicksands slipping in indicate a downward falling movement implying that she perceives Alan's gayness as a mark of fallenness and sin the adverb unendurably when she says she loved him unendurably is baffling if not almost a frauding slip because of Taken literally she's saying that her love for him was intolerable to begin with even before she had found out about his homosexuality as the moment continues the entrance and fusion of locomotive noise and poker music complicate the contextual landscape as a dynamic chaos of Sound and Fury conf confusing the sight and mind of its players about what is right and wrong as we see from the stage directions a locomotive is heard approaching outside she claps her hand to her ears and crouches over the headlight of the locomotive glares into the room and Thunders past as the noise recedes she straightens slowly and continues speaking and then she continues afterwards we pretended that nothing had been discovered yes the three of us drove out to Moon Lake Casino very drunk and laughing all the way and then the poker music sounds in a minor key faint with distance we danced the Vu Viana suddenly in the middle of the dance the boy had married broke away from me and ran out of the casino a few moments later a shot the poker stops abruptly blanch Rises stiffly then the pker resumes in a major key now after this moment blanch reveals the ghastly climax of The anecdote which is the moment when she Witnesses Allen's having stuck the revolver into his mouth and fined with back of his head blown away a key element to focus on about this moment in relation to the idea of hiding one's true self is the motif of the far of Viana to traditionally the varana was known to be a Polish Walt but later in the 19th century it suffered a decline in popularity because of its supposed rhythmic vulgarization so perhaps there's something about the nature of this musical genre that's echoed in blanche's trajectory as someone whose original associations were of sophistication only to then have to send into moral vulgarity as a result of making unsound Life Choices note that this is also the first time this poker music appears previously any musical accompanyment in this player has always been the blue jazz piano Melody and this far VI poker music later recurs towards the end of the play when Stanley tells blanch to leave the French quarter and as well close to the moment of Stanley's rape of her specifically when at the start of scene 9 the stage directions tell us that the rapid feverish poker tune the V ofiana is heard which forbids the state of frenzied violence that will soon take place in the kski bedroom coupling the first appearance and the later recurrence of the V sopiana we can interpret this FAL music as been symbolic of the unevitable resurfacing of traumatic memories which will always return to haunt the individual if left unresolved and there you go guys the historical social and cultural context of street car I hope you found my video comprehensive and useful especially in my attempts at illustrating how we can weave those contextual points into our textual analysis seamlessly for your next video then I recommend that you watch my analysis on the theme of love in street car where I do a deep dive into the main characters blanch Stanley Stella and Mitch hit that Thumbs Up Button below if you found this video helpful in any way so that the YouTube algorithm will know to spread it to other passionate lit Learners like yourself or all around the world and that you can encourage me to keep making these useful study videos for you so please subscribe if you haven't already and switch on that Bell notifications so that you never miss out on my future weekly videos finally you can consider joining my membership program for exclusive video requests and Essay review perks you can check that out by clicking The Joint button right below and as always I will see you in the next one bye