Williams presents the tension between the past and present through Blanche as emblematic of the fading antebellum South, while Stanley represents the emergent, pragmatic masculinity of post world war 2 america. Their conflict exposes Blanche’s futility as a non-conformist figure, whose reliance on illusion from a collapsed past cannot survive within the present society that privileges realism. Through this clash, intensified by Williams’ use of dramatic stagecraft and Blanche’s romantic illusion of Mitch as a means to preserve the past, the playwright crafts an atmosphere of a competitive game between the past and present—evident in the play’s final line being ‘this game is a seven card stud’. Williams warns of the past as inherently being fragile even while powerful enough to haunt Blanche, because illusion driving one’s survival is ultimately unsustainable in the truth of an immovable present social order. Tensions between the past and present are already established through the opening stage directions and dramatic theatre of props and sound. Blanch enters the a bustling New Orleans with a dainty antebellum sense of femininity, wearing a ‘fluffy bodice, earrings of pearl, that ‘suggests a moth’, rendering her ‘incongruous’ to her surroundings of New Orleans that exude vitality of a ‘raffish charm, ‘redolences of bananas and coffee’ and an ‘atmosphere of decay’. It can be understood that the luxurious imagery of jewellery and vanity is what highlights her aura of fragility as a non-conformist against the withering backdrop of her setting—foreshadowing the susceptibility of Blanche’s succumb to a fate of decay and withering of that said vanity. Blanche clinging onto the bygone remnants of her genteel past is what accelerates her destruction in a present societal order that ostracises the ‘other’ as in 1947, ideals rapidly shifted to become more liberal and meritocratic, minimising the importance of hierarchy and so the position of aristocracy became redundant as many of these noble ranks were built on centuries of slave labour and plantations. When Blanche lost the rights to her estate, ‘Belle Reves', she had also lost a part of her identity. Blanche’s pervasive moth-like and fragile image already puts forward the notion that Blanche may have already met her fall from grace and might meet her full destruction in New Orleans, particularly when she was told to ‘get off at Elysian Fields’, ironically being a symbolic paradisiacal greek allusion for the final resting place for Greek heroes. Williams cleverly subverts the Greek tragedy convention of the tragic hero meeting their fall at the end, positioning her as our heroine a-typical and mysterious. With little information of Blanche’s motives; it poses a question to why else would a woman of genteel status seek the metropolitan working-class domain of New Orleans? When we see Blanche settle in her sister, Stella’s, home, she first drinks and bathes. Both actions become ritualised for Blanche throughout the play as a form of purification and rejuvenation from her haunting past to preserve the illusion built on that past. This is evident in, ‘drinking fairly steadily’, ‘drinking and packing’, ‘freshly bathed’, ‘out of the bathroom in a red satin robe’. These all allow Blanche to maintain control over a past that is often unpredictable and invasive as seen in the distinctive musical motif, ‘polka rises up’, ‘rapid feverish’ and it becoming a ‘weird distortion’ crossing between both diegetic and non-diagetic premises which spotlight her own battle with the past, especially when she admits of her husband’s death, ‘the boy—the boy died’ here the fragmented speech echoes her powerlessness and own refusal of acceptance. However, Blanche reels in her power from maintaining the illusion of her gentility by keeping everything that enhances her beauty and youth, but Stanley who prioritises his dominance through his masculinity believes in Huey long’s principle of ‘Every man is a king’ and deems Blanche as suspicious: ‘pulls up a fist full of costume jewellery’ and declares, ‘the treasure chest of a pirate’. Both images of a pirate and costume enforce the deception in Blanche’s persona in protecting and manipulating the past as a form of survival which reinforces the competition between Stanley and Blanche, the warring past and present. Williams’ intention may be to expose how the fragile rituals of the past cannot withstand the blunt, meritocratic realism of post-war America, positioning Blanche’s illusions as both her refuge and her ruin. Blanche’s romanticism also highlights tensions between the past and present and this is seen through Stanley and as well as Mitch, the potential ‘rosenkavelier’ for Blanche. Stanley at the beginning is known to be completely cynical of Blanche and the moment where he rifles through the trunk and finds Blanche’s old love letters is what exemplifies Blanche’s value on the past and Stanley’s determination to annihilate it. Blanche admits they are ‘yellowing with antiquity’ and yet ‘he rips off the ribbon (...) blanche snatches them from him, and they cascade to the floor’. The violent verbs encompass this struggle of attrition between the past and the present. Symbolically, Blanche doesn't want Stanely to contaminate the past, her romantic illusion not soiled by the present which is also evident in Blanche and Mitch’s dynamic. Blanche continuingly complains of light and this motif across the play becomes a strong testament to her aversion towards present reality and conviction in clinging onto illusory remnants of her past such as, ‘cant stand a naked light bulb’ and her inclination towards ‘paper lanterns’ and during the poker night where she first meets Mitch, he helps her cover the harsh overhanging light with a chinese paper lantern which metaphorically helps her soften the truth of the present, which introduces this relationship as already built on an illusion of the past for Blanche. They trauma connected over death when Blanche asserts that ‘sincerity always make up for sorrow’ and when she recognises a sonnet engraved on Mitch’s cigarette case: ‘I shall but love thee better after death’. Their love being constructed on past grievances is what seals their relationship’ fragility against the present realist forces of society as indicated when Mitch learns of Blanche’s sordid, promiscuous past from Stanley; saying, ‘you are not clean to bring home to my mother’ which represents the present contaminating the past. Contextually, the southern belle was socially compromised entering an industrialised post-world war 2 society that had eroded the old class structure that valued family name, codes of honour, and had at least idealised women instead of the new merit-driven, patriarchal forces that forced them out of wartime jobs and into domestically dependent positions in the household. They were expected to embody gentility and dependence in a world that now rewarded pragmatism and male dominance, resulting in profound social displacement, especially for Blanche who was also a widowed older woman. This forces Blanche to rely on her past and use performance as a means of survival when she outwardly recognises in scene 5, ‘you've got to be soft and attractive, And i-i’m fading now!’. Blanche’s sensitivity due to her connection towards a diminished past is what solidifies her as a victim to Stanley’s mission of uncovering her falsehoods when there is the repeated sound of the passing streetcar throughout the play, which announces Stanley’s next imminent move as a predator. Blanche complains of ‘the rattletrap streetcar bangs through’, which suggests a sense of male dominance through the phallic imagery and symbolically, an inescapable nature of the truth that the present beholds and this disrupts Blanche’s genteel illusions built on the past of having to ‘shimmer and glow’ to survive. Williams’ intention was to demonstrate how romantic idealism being a source of feminine power in the Old South becomes a liability in a society that scrutinises the position of women to elevate the pragmatic man. The tensions between the past and the present rises to a crescendo in focus on Stanley who symbolises the defiant and immoveable force of the present because of his masculine alpha hegemony, he can assert control over Blanche’s fragile illusions. After the disaster of the poker night, Blanche extensively vents out her frustrations towards Stella for being with a man like Stanley, ‘Downright bestial, ‘dont hang back with the brutes’. The animalistic imagery dehumanises Stanley, asserting her own feminine power which is reflective of the antebellum codes of chivalry and respect towards women. After her monologue, the same ‘rattletrap streetcar’ passes through as if reality crashes in because Stella instantly embraces Stanley when he arrives home despite her sister’s concerned reservations and so he ‘grins through the curtains at Blanche’. Although there is mutual hatred, Stanley seems to enjoy their rivalry while Blanche is wary as she actively seeks out her protection in a crumbled past when Stanley is already protected by his status as the man of the house in a meritocratic society. Blanche’s power over her past is shattered in scene 7 when Stanley begins to uncover her deception by a series of sordid truths while she is bathing. This scene is extremely ironic when the ritual bathing is what allows her to reset her illusions and ground herself back into the present untarnished whilst clinging onto her past, but Stanley simultaneously dismantles that illusion. This is reflected in when he mimics, ‘soaking in a hot tub’ as it is telling of how, him being the physical product of the present social order, knows of her futility in her own form of baptism. Stanley is the archetypal conformist as the self-made man, he wields the power to reject Blanche’s attempts for survival which introduces the pre-destined nature of her fate as a tragic hero—her hamartia has always been her inability to conform due to the past she relied on as refuge. Through Williams’ dramatic theatre, Stanley exclaims that ‘Sister Blanche is no lily’ while contrapuntally Blanche sings, ‘it wouldn't be make believe, if you believed in me’ suggesting her illusion of upholding the past as survival is reliant on others being fundamentally futile as she is an outsider who can never be truly accepted. Stanley continues, ‘She has been washed up like poison’, ‘No siree, Bob! (...) a seventeen year old boy she’d gotten mixed up with!’ Stanley as the pragmatic bearer of truth does not sympathise with Blanche and instead relishes in every sordid detail of her past which showcases his enjoyment over asserting power. This completely annihilates the perfection of her illusions as in scene 10, she is seen to be wearing ‘crumpled white satin’ and ‘rhinestone tiara’, a soiled echo of her first appearance in the play which exposes her faded gentility and the internal chaos masked by illusion built on the past. She continues incoherently mumbling, ‘If u hit a rock, you won't come up tomorrow’, evidently she is psychologically deteriorating and this is due to the escalating power of the present truth eroding away at her past deceptions due to Stanley. Blanche mental spiral foreshadows imminent danger from Stanley, the predator will strip her of redemption which seals her fate in scene 11, ‘we’ve had this date from the beginning’ where ‘night is filled with inhuman voices like cries in a jungle’ and this presents an inescapable present as the victor, branding Blanche defeated into an oblivion. The plastic theatre of sound becomes claustrophobic for the contemporary audience and elicits us to sympathise with her, but audiences of the 40s would have been cheering on for the side of the victor, Stanley as we now recognise the harrowing and socially compromising circumstances for women like Blanche in an apathetic, straightforwardly patriarchal society. At the end of the play, Blanche is completely hysterical as she continues to cling onto her illusions through her literary and romantic exultations of ‘I'll be buried at sea (...) into an ocean as blue as my first lover’s eyes!’ The natural imagery presents a calmness and solitude in this final liberation for death and this is coupled with the final epithet of always depending on ‘the kindness of strangers’. This becomes the few pivotal moments of truth instead of deception from her as she embraces her illusions in totality—she no longer seeks control over them to survive as she no longer can play the game of survival when she is finally ostracised by society into a mental institution. Her illusions still had provided that protection and ‘temporary magic’ in order to survive as a widowed, aging woman of a pragmatic society. It can be surmised that Williams’ intention was to critique the brutality of a society that rewards dominance over compassion, revealing how the modern world destroys those who cannot conform to its unforgiving realism and retreat back into illusion.