A Streetcar Named Desire

These prompts can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before or after reading the play.

Pre-Reading Warm-Up

Imagine that you are a woman who has just lost your job, as well as the home where you’ve lived for your entire life. You must go live in a two-room apartment in a city you’ve never traveled to with your younger sister and her husband, who you find to be brutish and uneducated. What might an entry in your journal look like? How are you feeling? What are you thinking? What are you worried about?

Teaching Suggestion: Use this prompt to help students think about what resources a single woman in the 1940s has available to her. With such limited options, what should a woman do to secure financial stability and physical safety?

• Visit this website on gains and losses for women after WWII.

Post-Reading Analysis

1. Split the class in half and give students 10 minutes to prepare their argument for a debate on the following statement: Blanche’s regression into psychosis--an imaginary world in which she is still a young southern belle with suitors tripping over themselves to marry her--is the last remaining way for Blanche to cope with her rape and her sister’s denial of that trauma. The “pro” side of the class supports this statement; the “con” side of the class contends that there are other, better ways for Blanche to cope.

Teaching Suggestion: Ask students to imagine themselves in an analogous situation (they were in a car accident, they witnessed a natural disaster, etc.) and, when they tell the most important person in their life what has occurred, that person refuses to believe them. What are the consequences of not being believed when one speaks the truth? (theme: imagination versus reality)

2. Does Williams present an optimistic view of love? Consider the types of “love” portrayed in the text: Stella and Stanley’s marriage, Mitch’s courtship of Blanche, Blanche’s love letters and her notions about romance, Eunice and Steve’s marriage, etc. (theme: the meaning of desire)

Teaching Suggestion: Encourage students to think about stereotypical performances of love and marriage and to contrast those ideas with the way love is portrayed in this play. Show students the clip from the movie in which Marlon Brando hollers “Stella!” as though he is dying. Does this portrayal of love feel real/genuine to them? Why or why not?