Traditionalism versus Defiance in a Streetcar Named Desire

The themes of Tennessee Williams's Streetcar Named Desire follow Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind: the emotional struggle for supremacy between two characters who sym - bolize historical forces, between fantasy and reality, between the Old South and a New South, between civilized restraint and primitive desire, between traditionalism and defiance. If Blanche DuBois represents defunct Southern values, Stanley Kowalski represents the new, urban moder - nity, and pays little heed to the past. If …

…r family estate slip through her fingers, fails to see the decadence of her patrician Belle Reve existence; Social Darwinism has replaced gentility, and this "old maid schoolteacher" (55) is really an alcoholic, nymphomaniac, parasitical casualty of the changeover. She puts on the airs of a belle who has never known indignity, but Stanley sees through her. As Eunice says, "Life has got to go on. No matter what happens, you've got to keep on going" (133).