Marxism In Streetcar Named Desire

In 2012, when the Premier of the State Council, Li Keqiang, said to the People’s Daily that, “Urbanization is not about simply increasing the number of urban residents or expanding the area of the cities. More importantly it’s about a complete change from rural to urban style in terms of industry structure, employment, living environment, and social security” (Bloomberg). A Streetcar Named Desire is a play centered in New Orleans surrounding the struggles between the Kowalski family and Blanche. However, when looked at through the Marxist lense it shows the diverse hierarchy struggles between the old Southern aristocracy to the newer,diverse, and modern society that lives in the city. During the post war era of the late 40’s the push towards …show more content…
Most of them moving from the rural farms looking for stability and consistency that were available with the industrial plants. As explained by the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, “In the United States, population classed as “rural” has fallen some since the 1940s, while that classed as “farm” has fallen sharply, from 30.5 million in 1940 to 14.3 million by 1962.” ("Industrialization" 259). Across the two decades, the number of farm workers continue decline as they start working in the factories. The play that is set in the late 1940’s was part of the time where there was a great move for urbanization from the rural areas to the cities. When the workers moved to the cities some of the living conditions were not always as pleasant as the rural areas or the aristocratic South is used to. As the Moss describes most living areas to be, “squalid, cramped urban housing inhabited by the working class city dwellers.” The low living conditions were looked down upon from the aristocrats, and the example in the play was the shock of Blanche “Why, that you had to live in these conditions!” (Williams 12). Blanche acting upon her southern belle image that she portrays is not used to the small apartment that has people living form all sides of it. Blanche is in shock to how her sister lives, which is an example of the vast differences in the rural aristocratic mansion Blanche is …show more content…
Blanche continues the racial remarks on Stanley throughout the book which represents the “racists ' fear of miscegenation, and its twin conviction that America, overwhelmed by an influx of inferior others, was committing 'race suicide '” (Polish Language and History in A Streetcar Named Desire). The previous Southern ideology of the pure white race was not carried out and considered old fashioned and ignorant within the diverse cities. Within the cities the issue of race were shrinking as they lived, struggled, and worked together. The effects of industrialization was pushing society forward as the center intermingling societies were more accepting of each other, as “Industrialization continued to expand in the South, and the old Southern class structure could not withstand its effects… The more successful members of these groups became part of a burgeoning middle class that slowly replaced the disappearing aristocracy of the Old South” (Moss and Wilson 365). Moss brings a key point to the image of the South, the old South that is the ignorant and composed of hating people is shrinking away and replace by a working class that is made from the people that used to be in the bottom of the hierarchy ladder. Society under this renewed structure is a lot different than anything the south saw to this point. Yet the society that is seen emerging is not perfect, yet a lot better than