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Streetcar Named Desire Light Analysis

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Mood Lighting
Lighting is an important aspect of plays. It helps set the tone, the mood, and enriches the setting. Lighting seems to be an even more significant component in Tennessee Williams’ work, Streetcar Named Desire. In the play, protagonist Blanche DuBois, a disgraced southern belle living with her sister and brother-in-law, maintains a unique relationship with lighting. DuBois never allows herself to stay in anything that could be considered adequate lighting. She instead insists on remaining in partially light areas, even arranging her schedule in a way in which she can avoid all sunlight. DuBois’ complete refusal of being fully illuminated is a metaphor for the way the character hides her true personality and it showcases the unease …show more content…

The DuBois’ were a family of great wealth and success. They dwelled in a grand manner, the Belle Reve, and held reverence amongst the locals. However, Blanche is clearly not what is expected in a DuBois. Not only has she lost her job for incriminating reasons, but she is also suffering from debilitating anxiety and remains unmarried, a true tragedy of the era. She succumbs to desire, something a true lady could never fathom. While in the darkness, Blanche feels that she can conceal her shortcomings and keep up the illusion of being a classic, refined DuBois. The truth is easily discovered through the use of light, and as Blanche exclaims, “daylight never exposed so total a ruin” (Williams, 1120). The night also aides in Blanche forgetting her current station in life. Under a comforting cloak of darkness, she can imagine that she is not living in a two-room apartment with her little sister Stella, but in the ornate estate that she has lost forever. Therefore, Blanche’s preference of darkness is used to create this other persona in ways that are both based on appearance and on an extremely human need to feel

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