A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, first published in 1947, is considered a landmark piece of 20th-century American drama, earning author Tennessee Williams a Pulitzer Prize. One of its most important themes concerns the contrast between reality and illusion. The purpose of this essay is to examine how this contrast is reflected in the way the main character constructs his identity. As Ruby Cohn calls it in her essay "The Garrulous Grotesque of Tennessee Williams," A Streetcar Named Desire is "a poignant portrait of a gentle Southern woman who has disappeared into the modern world" (46). The play's protagonist is Blanche duBois, a vanishing Southern belle, who comes to New Orleans to live with her sister Stella and her husband Stanley Kowalski. It is the site of a clash of two cultures: Blanche on the one hand, symbolizing the dying Southern nobility, and Stanley on the other, representing the pragmatic rising middle class. Blanche is a character conditioned by the society in which she was raised, her origin influencing her personality. Dissatisfied with her life, she cannot or does not want to change it for the better. She prefers to retreat from reality into illusions and fantasies, constructing multiple facades of her identity, which she presents to the characters she interacts with. She was raised to emulate the ideal Southern femininity – the beautiful, sometimes shy, sometimes flirtatious but always chaste woman. But the harsh reality of 20th-century urban America is at odds with this ideal, and Blanche is disillusioned, forced to make her way in a world that doesn't understand her and that she doesn't understand. His promiscuity and alcoholism are ways of escaping these ordeals, as she... middle of paper......he actually wears a mask throughout the entire play. While trying to hide the lonely, disillusioned and desperate woman she truly is, she slowly but surely moves toward depression.BibliographyVenezki-Griffin, Alice. Living theater. A Study Guide to Great Plays. Heilman, Robert Bechtold. “The Tennessee Williams Tragedy Approach.” Tennessee Williams. A collection of critical essays. Ed. Stephen S. Stanton. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice – Hall, Inc., 1977. 17-35Blackwell, Louise. “Tennessee Williams and the Plight of Women.” Tennessee Williams. A collection of critical essays. Ed. Stephen S. Stanton. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice – Hall, Inc., 1977. 100-106 Ganz, Arthur. “A desperate morality”. Tennessee Williams. A collection of critical essays. Ed. Stephen S. Stanton. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice – Hall, Inc.., 1977. 123-137