A Streetcar Named Desire - STUDENT EDITION with Commentary & Notes

This revised Student Edition includes an introduction by Bess Rowen, Assistant Professor at Villanova University, US, which looks in particular at the play's treatment of rape, vulnerable people, mental institutions (especially in connection to Williams's own family), sexuality and sexual desire

A Streetcar Named Desire shows a turbulent confrontation between traditional values in the American South - an old-world graciousness and beauty running decoratively to seed - set against the rough-edged, aggressive materialism of the new world

Through the vividly characterised figures of Southern belle Blanche Dubois, seeking refuge from physical ugliness in decayed gentility, and her brutal brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski, Tennessee Williams dramatises his sense of the South's past as still active and often destructive in modern America

METHUEN DRAMA STUDENT EDITIONS are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and classic repertoires

As well as the complete text of the play itself, this volume contains
An Introduction
Cultural Context: The United States in the 1940s
The Glass Menagerie and the Beginning of an Era
Williams and the Writing Process
Realism, Naturalism, and Expressionism
Method Acting and Elia Kazan
Depicting Rape and Vulnerability
Sex and Sexuality
Production History and Adaptations
Further Reading