A Streetcar Named Desire: Plot Summary

A Streetcar Named Desire: Plot Summary

Blanche DuBois, a Southern belle, moves to live with her younger sister: Stella Kowalski in New Orleans, because of the loss of Belle Reve, the DuBois family house in Laurel, Mississippi. Although Stella welcomes the arrival of her sister, it is obvious that Stanley Kowalski, Stella’s husband who dominates and abuses Stella emotionally and physically, does not want others disturb his life with Stella.

Blanche, who pretends that the Old South is not the past, leads her life in an imagination of the fantasy world of the cultivated, old South. Her behavior annoys Stanley because as a working-class man he thinks that Blanche looks down on him and she really does.

One day, Stanley discovers the real reason why Blanche leaves her hometown and comes to New Orleans. The truth is that Blanche fell in love with one of her students when she was an English teacher in a high school. The scandal spreads out so she was fired. To force Blanche face the music, Stanley confronts her in an outside department. At there, Stanley uses the cruel and violent method to attempt to make Blanche admits her terrible past. In the last confrontation, Stanley rapes Blanche. Such horrible reality results in the nervous breakdown of Blanche because of disillusion of her world. 


Sources from
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/streetcar/section10.rhtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Streetcar_Named_Desire_(play)