The Destruction of the Elitism South By the Rise of a New Society

During the period of the 1940s, the South underwent a struggle to define itself; forced to choose between a future as a society stemmed within elitism, or one that was aimed to destroy the current aristocratic foundation. Within Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire, the themes of race, class, and immigration all collide within a time where the South struggled to truly define itself. Through the characters of Stanley and Blanche, Williams demonstrates how Blanche’s resistance to Stanley emulates the conquest and demise of the traditional South among the infringing rise immigration and settlement of those considered to be of an outside, lesser ethnicity.

Between the interactions of the two characters, William argues of how the elite Aryan South unsuccessfully attempts to repel against the new outside race of immigrants who threaten the South’s current identity. Upon immediately meeting, Blanche despises all the things that Stanley himself represents, and the threat that his own race and class pose to the status of herself and her sister. This opposition is even referred to as the direct cause of Blanche losing her beloved Belle Reve, and the beginning her degradation in class and the status of her own race. As she yells to Stella, “I let the place go? Where were you-In bed with your Polack!” (Williams. Scene 1).  Williams uses the opposition between Blanche, a generational descent of the wealthy class and Stanley, a poor descendant of recent immigrants, to demonstrate how the rise of a modern “melting pot” America slowly diminishes the value of the traditional South. Blanche states very bluntly her opinion of Stanley by calling him the degrading term of a Polack. This effectively places Stanley within a lower status to that of Blanche purely because of his Polish ethnicity, one that Blanche views a impoverished and dirty, opposite of her own French wealth and aristocracy. Furthermore, race is not only characterized through Blanche’s own words, but also Blanche’s thought about Stella’s marriage shows her belief of an inferior race threatening her own lifestyle. By insinuating that the loss of Belle Reve, the DuBois’ beloved mansion, was completely avoidable by Stella having not have been occupied and sleeping with her Polish husband, Blanche believes that her own elite status of her race and the traditional South of which it represents is deteriorated by even the most simple interactions with those of the inferior race.  As a result, in the eyes of Blanche, Stella has betrayed her own French roots and the traditional South through the fulfillment of her wifely duties to a husband of lower status, affirming the Williams’ claim of how immigration allows for the once inferior race to dominate the formerly superior, threatening the structure of traditional society.

       While Williams uses the opposing perceptions that both Blanche and Stanley have of each other to prove how one race effectively threatens another, it is also Stanley’s rape of Blanche which affirms Williams’ claim about immigration destroying the superior elitism of the South. Williams demonstrates through Blanche’s vulnerability how the invasion of new Eastern European race, opposite to Blanche’s own,  and the rise of immigration threaten the livelihood of the elite Southern society. As Williams writes, “[He springs toward her, overturning the table. She cries out and strikes at him with the bottle top but he catches her wrist.] (Williams. Scene 10). Stanley’s physical power over Blanche not only represents the power of gender within the play, but Williams also uses this interaction as a physical demonstration to show the abstract dominance that one ethnic group is beginning to display over another within the South during the 1940s. Following the Civil War, the elite society in which people such as Blanche and Stella lived in was becoming extinct to the rise of integration and immigration. This is evident with the actions between Stanley and Blanche leading up to the rape, as William details how “[She moans. The bottle top falls. She sinks to her knees. He picks up her inert figure and carries her to the bed]” (Williams. Scene 10).  For no matter how much she fights back against Stanley, Blanche is not able to protect herself. Williams’s uses this vulnerability to show how self identified prestigious race cannot defend against the intrusion of other races that are considered inferior. According to Williams, Stanley’s physical rape of Blanche represents much more than just a volatile act; it is the domination and suppression of the elite South, with a new race and class coming to define the South as that of their own.