A Streetcar Named Desire: Allusions 5 key examples

Tennessee Williams named these streetcars after real conveyances in New Orleans—the streetcar which ran through New Orleans’s French Quarter really was named “Desire." Streetcars were a very popular means of getting around in the mid-20th century, meaning that "Desire" would have been a well-known cultural touchstone for New Orleans locals at this time. “Desire” would also have been deeply associated with the lifestyle and the community of the French Quarter, one of the city’s most notorious and historic neighborhoods. In order to get to the Kowalskis’s place, Blanche recounts that she had to take “Desire” from “Cemeteries” to “Elysian Fields.” In addition to referring to real things in New Orleans, these names all refer to the afterlife in Greek mythology.

In Greek legend, the Elysian Fields are the final resting place of the heroic and virtuous. They are a place of eternal reward and happiness that people favored by the gods can reach after they die. Blanche has taken a symbolic journey through death in this scene. After her life at Belle Reve and in Laurel ends, she starts her journey to the Kowalskis with “Desire.” "Desire" is both the streetcar which takes her to Stella’s apartment, and the driving force behind all of her real-life issues. She passes through “Cemeteries” to reach “Elysian Fields," which optimistically implies that Blanche has entered a sort of heaven that will end her suffering.

All of these references, though, are full of situational irony. The “Desire” which drives the actions of all the characters in this play, certainly hasn’t conveyed Blanche to heaven. Blanche's arrival at Elysian Fields, which to the ancient Greeks would represent a heavenly reward, is far from a paradise. Instead, she finds herself in a neighborhood that she finds to be dirty and frightening, and her sister is living in a way Blanche thinks is unbearable. Rather than being a safe place for her to land after she loses everything, coming to “Elysian Fields” in New Orleans only makes Blanche miserable.

Blanche is being extremely rude here, alluding to Edgar Allen Poe's "Ulalume" to imply her sister's apartment is macabre and decaying. “Ulalume” is a poem about a man who wanders into the tomb of his dead lover in the unpleasant and “ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.” It’s full of imagery of hopelessness and rotting, so it’s no wonder that Stella seems shocked by Blanche's comment. By saying that "only Poe" could accurately describe Stella’s apartment, Blanche is implying that her home in New Orleans is so grim and horrible that it’s like a Gothic horror poem.

Blanche’s hyperbolic claim that only Poe could do justice to the grimness of the apartment is a clear overstatement. The apartment, though it’s modest, is not actually nearly as grim or as dreadful as Blanche suggests. Her response to it is based far more on the distance between her expectations for Stella and the reality of her sister’s life in New Orleans. Even though Blanche’s own life is hardly as glamorous as she would like to imply, she’s shocked enough by Stella’s standard of living that she forgets to be polite.

As he angrily complains to Stella that he thinks Blanche has been siphoning money away from them, Stanley alludes to the Napoleonic Code. This "code" is a real legal framework, established in France in 1804, that influenced many legal systems (including that of Louisiana). However, the specifics of Stanley’s claim are pretty dubious. The code itself does not stipulate that “what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband, and vice versa.” It does contain provisions about community property, but the way Stanley recounts this information implies that his knowledge of the code is secondhand and misguided.

This moment shows two important things about Stanley: he’s willing to leap to assumptions based on minimal evidence, and he’s also under the strong impression that he possesses both Stella and everything she owns. His statement here is a blatant misunderstanding of the law, which he incorrectly believes gives him rights to any assets his wife might have inherited.

The irony of Stanley invoking the Napoleonic Code—a law from the Old South—is almost painful here, given his disdain for the genteel traditions that Blanche and Stella represent. Despite his contempt for their aristocratic background, he’s very quick to leverage this outdated legal point of order when he believes it might benefit him. Stanley firmly believes that he should be in a position of power and able to subjugate the women in his life, using any means available to assert his dominance.

This phrase is a biblical allusion to Matthew 15:14, where Jesus warns his followers about the dangers of following ignorant leaders. The expression refers to the idea of being led by someone who doesn’t themselves know where they are going. By using this allusion, Blanche suggests that Stella’s behavior is hopeless and misguided. It’s unclear whether she’s referring to an anxiety about going out at night in the mean streets of New Orleans, or whether she’s criticizing Stella for her choice of husband.

To the second point, Blanche's remark implies that Stella is also unaware of what Stanley is really like and what marrying him means for her future. The way she makes this allusion implies that she believes both she and Stella are navigating their lives without proper guidance. Blanche disapproves of Stanley, believing his lower-class background and “animal blood” shouldn’t mix with Stella’s aristocratic heritage. Stella disagrees, but Blanche—even though she’s hardly successfully married herself—can't bring herself to feel like Stanley is a better outcome.

Stanley's allusion to ancient Egypt and the Queen of the Nile here refers to Cleopatra. Cleopatra VII Philopator was the last ruler of the Ptolomeic kingdom of Egypt, a dynasty that ruled after the death of Alexander the Great. Cleopatra was known for her brilliant political acumen, but also for her fondness for a luxurious lifestyle. By comparing Blanche to Cleopatra, Stanley not only mocks her pretensions of grandeur but also criticizes her manipulative behavior. Like Cleopatra, Blanche loves luxurious things and likes to indulge. While Cleopatra preferred baths of milk and honey, Blanche likes scalding water, liquor and delusions.

As Cleopatra did through her romantic and political alliances, Stanley is also suggesting that Blanche uses her charm and ability to lie to influence the people around her. By “sprinkling the place with powder and spraying perfume,” he rages, Blanche is trying to turn his apartment into a place she can control.

Additionally, the idiom "pull the wool over this boy’s eyes" is doing some important work here. This phrase, which originates in 18th-century England, generally means to deceive someone. In the way it’s usually employed, it also implies that the deceived person is naïve or foolish. Stanley's insistence that Blanche has never deceived him—and the fact that he refers to himself as a “boy” here—shows that he knows Stella thinks he’s stupid gullible. This outburst contradicts the brutish, naïve image that Stella has of him, demonstrating how shaky the foundation of her falsehoods was all along.